International Migration: The Political and Legal Dimension[Международные Миграции: Политико-Правовое Измерение]

International migration is so diverse, complex and controversial that the development of a coherent approach to its regulation is perhaps one of the most difficult problems in the emerging system of international governance. First of all, there is a conflict between migration policy and international law. Migration policy is considered the prerogative of nation-states, and the latter are guided by the imperatives of "national egoism." At the same time, the laws of national states enshrined the obligations to protect human rights formulated in international law. For all the severity of this collision, it cannot be argued that it is absolutely insoluble. Its solution (which each time occurs ad hoc) consists in balancing between pragmatic egoism and moral imperatives. A typical example of such ad hoc balancing is the decision of Angela Merkel to cancel the Dublin Agreement in September 2015. A number of observers argued that humanitarian rhetoric at the time of the decision to simultaneously allow an unprecedented number of refugees into the country was nothing more than a cover for a perfectly rational calculation. The political and legal dimension of the problem also lies in the opposition of two attitudes regarding the optimal immigration policy: “open”, “liberal”, on the one hand, and “closed”, “illiberal”, on the other. The personification of these two poles is the dispute between Angela Merkel and Victor Orban.