International migration is a prominent issue both within and between western industrialised states, and it has generated a growing recognition that effective national policies require significant international policy coordination. In the North American context, however, the increase and expansion of joint efforts to manage this policy area have been (in comparison with the European Union) so rapid and relatively uncoordinated that neither their extent nor their implications have been adequately outlined, never mind understood. The sheer scope of these developments can be seen in the fact that they touch on all forms of international migration to and within the region – legal and illegal, permanent and temporary, family and labour, tourist and refugee. The need to examine the practical features of such policy change is underlined further by the fact that they raise vital questions about state sovereignty and public accountability, for example, at both conceptual and political levels in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

This roundtable advances into these largely uncharted waters by drawing on the knowledge and experience of policy practitioners and academic observers alike to pursue three essential questions: How far have efforts towards international cooperation to manage migration gone in North America? What conditions have facilitated or inhibited their development? What are the prospects for their future development? In doing so, it focuses on developments along the Canada-US border, within the North American perimeter, and amongst western industrialised states.