An Introduction to the Freemove Project

Governments worldwide engage in a variety of treaties to regulate the movement of people, which either impose restrictions or make mobility easier. However, the treaties facilitating movement are not properly categorized. Instead, scholars and policymakers often pile them up under the wider umbrella of free movement. Following the adoption of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), it has become necessary to carefully distinguish between three categories – free movement regimes (FMRs), visa liberalization  regimes (VLRs), and labor mobility schemes (LMS). The Freemove project, supported in part through a grant from the Open Society Foundations, is the first one ever to comprehensively map, analyze, and compare all bilateral and multilateral free movement of people regimes at the global level. This website presents the result of this effort which is led by Professor Diego Acosta and the work of Dr Luuk van der Baaren as Senior Researcher. Users can access information about each regime, see how they have evolved over the last 30 years, compare them with others, and assess trends in this crucial area which affects the rigths of millions of people in situations of human mobility.