ABSTRACT
The relationship between global governance, rights-based regimes and
ordinary people is the central concern of this book. The liberal defence of
‘soft’, norm-based global governance is that it produces a better and more
ordered world in which rights can genuinely be made to matter. Does this
claim hold up in practice? We explore this question by discussing what soft
global governance means in two specific issue areas – namely, migrants and
children. We examine how global rules have changed the global construc-
tion of migration and the relationship between states and children, the nature of the rules that are being developed to manage childhood and
migration, and the extent to which these two work in practice to force states
to make rights-based changes or allow non-governmental actors to advocate
for rights.
