The international migration governance literature tends to presuppose states with full recognition and functional institutional capacity as its baseline. This assumption generates significant analytical gaps when applied to political entities whose sovereignty is contested due to internal conflict, external intervention, or lack of international recognition. The literature on contested states, while offering detailed accounts of governance capacity and recognition spectrums, has largely overlooked the migration governance dimension. This study aims to bridge these two bodies of literature by examining how the absence of recognition systematically undermines migration governance.

The study analyzes the impact of non-recognition on migration governance through three analytical layers: capacity, actor, and accountability. At the capacity layer, it examines the structural obstacles that prevent contested states from establishing the institutional infrastructure required for migration governance. At the actor layer, it discusses how the international community navigates counterpart ambiguity and how external actors are compelled to act on pragmatic rather than normative grounds. At the accountability layer, it addresses the consequences of the absence or contestedness of an authority that can be held responsible for violations. This framework is tested through the cases of Libya and Syria, while Northern Cyprus is employed as a theoretical reference to demonstrate the structural and crisis-independent nature of these problems. The study argues that contested states fundamentally challenge the core assumptions of the existing international migration regime and aims to open a new framework discussion at both the legal and policy levels.