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Rethinking Global Economic Governance in Light of the Crisisinternational leaders to the global trading framework has protected it from a potentiallycatastrophic collapse that could have reversed half a century of progress. Sucharguments do not apply with the same force to migration. Although the EU has a rangeof directives that set minimum standards on issues such as immigrant employment,access to welfare, family reunification and asylum policy, these do not apply elsewhere.Yet even outside the EU, any shift towards restrictive immigration policy has beenmuted.The truth is that we still do not fully understand how immigration policy evolves, andwhy it seems so different now than in the past. Nevertheless, we can point to some keyfactors.• With rising education, attitudes to immigration are better informed and there is alsoless to fear from the competition of unskilled immigrants.Thus, with a few exceptions, there is no pre-existing upward trend in anti-immigrantsentiment overall.• While people may be concerned with the cost of the welfare state, unlike the moredistant past, it also provides them with a safety net.• At the international level cooperation has increased, within the EU and beyond, anddraconian immigration rules could potentially be inimical to negotiations on otherissues.But such arguments must remain speculative until they can be subjected to morerigorous examination.152