321 23. Knowledge controversies of global migration governance: understanding the controversy surrounding the Global Compact Scott D. Watson and Corey Robinson INTRODUCTION The adoption in 2018 of two United Nation (UN) agreements – the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration – was the cul- mination of an extensive inter-governmental process designed to strengthen the institutional architecture for global governance of migration that has emerged over the past 70 years. While various multilateral conventions, technical standards, and legal norms regulate state behaviour toward migrants, no single international legal instrument or binding agreement commits states to uphold the rights of migrants, without respect to status (Aleinikoff 2003; Ferris & Martin 2019). Despite, or perhaps because of, the absence of a coherent international regime, multilateral cooperation on migration has evolved significantly since the turn of the century. The so-called refugee crisis in 2015 renewed calls for greater cooperation and cata- lyzed international efforts to develop a more coordinated response to forced displacement, leading directly to the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants and the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, a multi-year process that concluded with the adoption of a new international normative framework for migration management in Morocco in December 2018. These international summits sought to generate widespread agreement on a single overarching framework for global governance of migration, which to this point has been incoherent and weak (Castles 2011; Betts 2011). Previous efforts to create a more robust global governance framework have failed to generate significant levels of support, as indicated by the low ratifi- cation of the International Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families (see Cholewinski et al. 2009). In contrast, the Global Compacts seemed to enjoy a high degree of international support: the 2016 New York Declaration was supported by a wide range of non-governmental organizations and 193 states (Ferris & Martin 2019). Yet, by the time of the international summit in Morocco, numerous states had signalled their opposition to the agreement and the Compact has now become a key point of contestation among populist movements in Europe and North America. In this chapter we explore the nature of the contro- versies that arose during the negotiation of the Compact, the impact of designing negotiations as a ‘hybrid forum’ to contain these controversies, and the ‘excess’ controversies that emerged outside of the official negotiation process that ultimately influenced final adoption of the agreement. To do so, we draw upon the literature in science and technology studies (STS) – in particu- lar, actor-network theory (ANT) – to conceptualize and analyse the debate surrounding the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. Specifically, we adapt the concepts of ‘translation’, ‘knowledge controversy’, and ‘hybrid forum’ to examine the controversy that