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In the past fifteen years, migrations have been subject to an internationalization process with states increasingly debating issues raised by the transnational mobility of people. This article focuses on how different international forums (international organizations, global forums, international committees) attempt to conceive of migration as a transnational process which calls for coordinated policies and forms of “global governance”. The international construction of migration constantly vacillates, as will be shown, between a transnational paradigm of interstate mobility understood as a normal feature of a globalized world, and a national paradigm which assumes national belonging to be crucial not only in developing the “governance” of migration but also in understanding migrants’ identity and the very nature of migration. The persistence of national frame is explained by both political factors (a working framework which is mainly intergovernmental) and intellectual factors (an inability to understand migration beyond state-centered schemes).