(2024) 5 TWAIL Review 120-148
ISSN 2563-6693
Published under a Creative Commons licence. 

Growing transnational mobility resulted in the development and adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) under the auspices of the United Nations in 2018. Though a soft law document, the GCM was presented as a consensus document and a pivotal moment in the institutionalisation of a migration global governance regime that accounted for all the fragmented issues around transnational mobility – one of which was transnational labour mobility. Objective 5 of the GCM seeks to enhance the availability and flexibility of pathways for regular migration in a manner that facilitates labour mobility. Yet, despite the GCM containing twenty-three objectives and corresponding commitments, transnational labour mobility continues to face increasing political resistance through a complex system of inclusion and exclusion hinging on the issue-linkage of transnational labour mobility with border security, sovereignty and economic demands. Using Third World Approaches to International law (TWAIL) as a methodology and aided by a close examination of Objective 5, I assert that the GCM has deeply entrenched foundations often perceived as value-neutral. But, in fact, the normalisation of sovereignty, border security, and economic demands as embedded in the GCM furthers a racialised hierarchy of international norms. Finally, this piece concludes with a TWAIL way of thinking about transnational labour mobility as presented in the GCM, which centres the global south and its workers.