Peace (Re)settlement: The Treaty of Versailles and the Reshaping of Global Migration Governance

Szabla, Christopher

Abstract

In recent years scholars have increasingly revisited the signing of the Treaty of Versailles as the beginning of a period of interwar internationalism that forged precedents for contemporary global governance. Others have demonstrated that the nineteenth-century was the origin of many contemporary internationalist initiatives. As this chapter shows, the treaty represented both the continuity and the transformation of multilateral migration regulation. Prewar efforts focused most concretely on regulating migration in a way that balanced the commercial need for mobility with travel restrictions to halt the spread of disease through the mechanism of the International Sanitary Conferences. These initiatives did not end after the war. Yet the Treaty of Versailles represented the beginnings of a new paradigm of migration governance meant to achieve similar aims in the new context. Centered on the International Labour Organization, it was concerned with maintaining stability in Europe by draining its “surplus population” and facilitating the movement of the unemployed over newly-closed borders to find work. Like the disease control paradigm, this effort was meant to maintain the security of border controls—now meant to keep out the “contagion” of revolution—while still facilitating human movement. Such mobility was now also meant to prevent the instability that contemporaries believed the “congestion” of overpopulation might stir.

Citation

Szabla, C. (2023). Peace (Re)settlement: The Treaty of Versailles and the Reshaping of Global Migration Governance. In A. Wu, & S. W. Sawyer (Eds.), The Making of a World Order: Global Historical Perspectives on the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles (199-217). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003213703-15

• Online Publication Date: Sep 14, 2023
• Publication Date: Sep 14, 2023
• Deposit Date: Jan 8, 2024
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 199-217
• Book Title: The Making of a World Order: Global Historical Perspectives on the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles
• Chapter Number: 10
• ISBN: 9781003213703
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003213703-15
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2116595