Migration and International Relations

Front matter

IMISCOE Researc h Series

Catherine Wihtol de Wenden

Migration and International Relations

Introduction

The emergence of migration as a major issue in international relations is a relatively recent phenomenon, since migration was previously studied mainly at the national or local levels, without attention to its connections or interdependency at the global level. For a long time, migration was absent from many international university courses and conferences in international relations, as well as from diplomatic agreements and discussions. Since the 1990s, the importance of migration at the global level has become increasingly apparent, in a large number of domains: refugee crises, the externalisation of borders, the migration-development nexus, the development of migration diplomacy (led by countries of emigration, but with a focus from countries of immigration on border controls, dual citizenship, and multiple allegiances), diasporas and transnationalism, environmentally displaced persons, and finally the emergence of global systems of migration governance with the creation of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and the Marrakech Compact on Migration of 2018, both led by the United Nations. It is therefore apparent that migration has become a central topic of international relations. Public opinion largely fails to recognise the extent to which questions of migration go beyond the level of the state, reducing them instead to more and more localised issues of “living together”. However, this vastly increased visibility of migration in both international debate and international mobilisation poses new questions and challenges for the future. This is the central argument of the present work.

How Questions of Migration Bring New Challenges to International Relations

Migration was first studied by sociologists and economists, who focused on its impact on receiving societies, while neglecting the perspective of countries of emigration and the international “soft diplomacy” connected to population movements. Until the 1990s, migration was barely addressed in the field of international x Introduction relations, except with regard to refugees, and even this was long considered to be a very minor topic. The increasing politicisation of migration policies and mobilisations on the part of migrants, descendants of migrants, and transnational actors, together with the development of comparative studies, led to migration being addressed at other levels of analysis: first at the intersection between the national and the international order, and eventually at the global level. Nonetheless, there remains resistance to seriously addressing questions of migration in many international meetings and conferences.

Migration flows and settlement are increasingly disturbing the paradigm of nation states, challenging their presumed sovereignty over their territory, their laws, and their populations. Nation states often perceive a threat to their prerogatives from the tendency of transnational and international forces to weaken border controls, national identities, and rules governing citizenship — all of which function as classical symbols of power — while promoting cosmopolitanism and an increased role for external actors. Soft diplomacy, manifested in influence, intrusion, or systems of global governance, is gradually replacing state-to-state diplomacy. The growing interdependency between regions in the so-called Global South and Global North is giving a more prominent voice to the former, and bringing new issues onto the international agenda, such as those of environmentally displaced persons, humanitarian problems, and statelessness. The project to construct systems of global migration governance, with the creation of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and the Marrakech Global Compact for Migration (GCM) of 2018, is bringing together actors who were not formerly active in the domain of international relations: IGOs, NGOs, associations, trade unions, churches, experts, and countries of the Global South have all come to play an increasing role in discussions and negotiations.

Citizenship has become an international issue, intersecting with many different domains: notably in countries of immigration, migration raises questions of the granting of citizenship (through naturalisation), dual citizenship, and multiple allegiances, and more broadly of the access of migrants to local political rights. In contexts of rising ethnic identities, common issues include the secularism of the state, religious identities, radicalisation, discrimination, and questions of community-building and exclusion.

In discussions of global migration governance, borders have become the symbol of migration control and management. Such control now uses sophisticated instruments, involving both the internal and the international order, the externalisation of borders into transit countries, and the development of camps and “jungles”. It also results in extensive human smuggling, and large numbers of deaths. These phenomena highlight the inequality of citizens across the world with regard to their right to mobility and access to passports. Some of the poorest people in the world are also those who are threatened by environmental disasters (Bangladesh) or statelessness (the Rohingya).

New forms of soft diplomacy are developing, influenced both by immigration and emigration countries, notably relating to border controls and repatriation, and often linked to the negotiation of development policies. Some countries, including

Introduction xi

Turkey, Libya, Morocco, and Mexico, have managed to leverage their role as transit countries to gain bargaining power. Some countries harness the power of their diaspora communities in other countries: this can give rise to the paying of remittances, the creation of elite and cultural networks that can support migrant associations in the country of immigration, and control of religious practices abroad. Such practices have led to an increased voice for many of these countries (including Mexico, Turkey, Morocco, Bangladesh, and Nepal) in the global governance of migration, notably in discussions conducted through organisations in the UN System.

The present work provides an international overview of these developments in the place of migration in international relations, drawing on many examples from all over the world, but with a particular focus on the European region. It also adopts a number of different perspectives and theoretical approaches relating to international levels of analysis: the relations between the international and internal orders, and between levels of scale from the local to the global, the changing nature of borders and their externalisation, the roles of diasporas and transnationalism, the failure of nation states in maintaining control of their borders, questions of citizenship, allegiance, and multiculturalism, and finally the development of migration diplomacy.

Contents

1.2 Other Important Developments Over the Last 30 Years hike pee ER!

1.3 The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reinforcing

1.3.1 IMI - Migration in the Euro-Mediterranean Space:

Chapter 1 ® International Migration as a World Issue gss

ATLAS MIGRATIONS : pp. 10-11 ouverte, 217,6 x 127 Les flux migratoires dans le monde

L = a de Sido popelaton totale)

11] tH iF ra Grondo zone de A obis de road

Migration flows in the world

Europe: EU (no need to translate the other names Italy, Switzerland) Africa: Western Africa (Mali, Ivory Coast), Maghreb (Libya), South Africa Middle East: Israel, Gulf States

Russia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan

Asia: India, China, Japan

South-East Asia: Malaysia, Singapore

Australia, New Zealand

North America: USA, Canada

Latin America and Caribbean’s: Peru, Bolivia, Argentina

Source: OECD, SOPEMI (2020)

In the twenty-first century, migration has become a global phenomenon, not only because of the sheer number of people involved in migratory flows throughout the world (284 million international migrants, or 3% of the world population), but above all because of its ubiquity: no region, no country in the world is unaffected by migratory flows, and all countries in the world are involved either in emigration, or in immigration, or as a transit country. Most countries are involved in all three of these processes to some extent.

© The Author(s) 2023 1 C. Wihtol de Wenden, Migration and International Relations, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-03 1-31716-3_1

2 1 International Migration as a World Issue 1.1 The Globalisation of Migration

This trend towards the globalisation of migration has been increasing sharply since the 1990s, when the fall of the Iron Curtain suddenly granted a right to exit one’s country to many inhabitants of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Around the same time, many countries in the Global South started to grant passports more readily to their citizens. These countries had formerly been reluctant to give out substantial numbers of passports to their nationals, sometimes because they considered that their population was their main resource, and sometimes because they feared that their nationals abroad might endanger internal political stability.

Both these factors contributed to the development of a much more extensive right to emigration. At the same time, this growing right to leave ran up against a growing difficulty of entry into countries of immigration, who increased their visa requirements. Now, according to a report by the International Association of Air Transportation (IATA) in 2021, the right to mobility is closely linked to access to national passports that grant access to large numbers of countries without a requirement for visas. For example, Japanese and Singaporean passports grant access to 192 countries without visas, for South Korean passports the figure is 190, for EU Member States the figure varies between 186 and 189, for the US it is 186, and Australian and Canadian passports grant access to 185 countries. The last place is occupied by Afghanistan, whose passports grant access to only 26 countries without a visa, mostly neighbouring and poor countries. This context plays a determining role in the possibilities of mobility open to people throughout the world, and also helps to explain the increasing role played by human smuggling and trafficking.

12 Other Important Developments Over the Last 30 Years

Recent decades have seen a diversification of migration flows: these now include 110 million refugees and asylum seekers (including 27.1 million statutory refugees as recognised under the Geneva Convention of 1951), 6 million Palestinians recognised as displaced persons by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA), and various other forms of humanitarian and temporary statuses that have been granted in response to forced migration.

These increasingly diverse migration flows now include large numbers of women (half of global migration flows), children (with a particular increase in numbers of unaccompanied minors), highly skilled migrants, families (especially in longstanding immigration countries such as the US and some European countries), workers (particularly from the Global South), and many people without any precise status: irregular migrants or so-called “illegals” (approximately 11 million in the US and 5 million in Europe), environmentally displaced persons (approximately 50 million), and stateless people without any citizenship, such as in Myanmar and Bangladesh, but also in many other places (4 million, UNHCR report 2023) of statelessness people.

1.2 Other Important Developments Over the Last 30 Years 3

Another major development is that the scale of migration flows to the Global South (140 million) has reached the scale of migration flows to the Global North (140 million), if we include in these figures North-North and South-South migration as well as migration between these two areas. It is a very new phenomenon for the combined number of South-North migrants (particularly families, workers, refugees, and students) and North-North migrants (skilled people, students with exchange programmes, tourists) to be matched by the combined number of North- South migrants (skilled workers driven from the North to the South by the economic crisis, older people looking for better weather, entrepreneurship by second and third generation migrants moving to the countries of their parents or grandparents, people seeking to exploit raw materials) and South-South migrants (those moving to countries with emerging economies and Gulf states, refugees, and also environmentally displaced persons).

There is an increasing tendency for the categories of migrants to be blurred, as many people involved in family reunifications or seeking asylum are also looking for jobs. The sociological profiles associated with these different categories has become much closer, whereas it was previously far easier to distinguish, for example, between dissidents from the Soviet Union and illiterate workers travelling to make up labour shortages in Western Europe. Now, statistically, a migrant entering a country will have a level of qualification higher than the average of the population of that country, and will be three times more productive than in their country of origin. Depending on their level of qualification, they may adopt one of the many possible statuses open to them. The closure of European borders to low-skilled labour migration from the 1970s onwards, and the increasing focus on border control as the main instrument of restrictive migration policies (including asylum policies), has led to a more complex mix of migration flows. In many cases, claiming asylum offers the only means of attaining a right to remain in the country of destination without passports and visas.

All these developments over the last 30 years have brought two broad trends into stark contrast: on the one hand, an aspiration towards a human right to mobility in an era of modernity, and on the other hand, the growth of restrictive policies aimed at curtailing that right. Certain social changes across the world are contributing to these trends. Urbanisation is increasing across the planet, especially in Africa, which is projected to change from a 70% rural population in 1950 to a 70% urban population by 2050. Demography is another crucial issue, since there is a large contrast between the ageing populations of the Global North (where the median age is 40 years old) and younger populations of the Global South (with a median age, for example, of 25 in the Maghreb and 19 in Sub-Saharan Africa). The large numbers of older people reaching the so-called “fourth age” is creating a growing demand for new jobs in care, largely provided by migration. Meanwhile, jobs in agriculture or in services that are traditionally associated with migrant workers continue to be dependent on migration, and some highly qualified jobs are proving difficult to fill, such as medical workers in rural areas of the Global North. In the last 30 years, most countries in the Global North have developed more security-orientated immigration policies, with the aim of closing borders to newcomers, even though this generally contradicts the need for migration in order to make up for labour shortages and maintain competitiveness and creativity. There is therefore a conflict between the imperatives of economic liberalism at the global level and nationalist and security concerns that dominate politics at the level of individual states. In most cases, the latter have the upper hand in determining policy, owing to the pressure of public opinion. The consequence of this is an emphasis on security instead of providing hospitality to migrants (including refugees).

This securitisation of borders has forced migrants to make a choice, in the words of Aristide Zolberg (1978), between “the main gate and the back door”. As Zolberg explains, “the illegals are victims of the hypocrisy of political decision-makers who admit this situation”. The main immigration countries are leading this trend towards the restriction of immigration policies. Since every state defines its own conditions for entry, these decisions at the national level shape and limit the right to mobility at the global level. The right to exit, which became a universal right protected by a number of international conventions (the UN Declaration of 1948, the Geneva Convention on Refugees of 1951, the UN Convention of 1990 on the rights of migrant workers) now runs up against the difficulty of entry, which depends on decisions made by nation states.

The consequence of this disequilibrium is to give a very important role to the management of borders. For migrants travelling from countries in the Global North to those in the Global South, exit and entry are both easy, but the rights of migrants may be restricted in the countries of destination (access to citizenship or property ownership, for example). For migration between countries within the Global North (North-North migration) people similarly enjoy easy exit and entry (without visas in many cases), and also have rights in the countries of destination that are close to those of citizens. However, in the case of South-North migration, it is now easy to leave but difficult to enter, to the extent that these journeys result in large numbers of deaths at or near borders (for example, in the Mediterranean and at the US/ Mexico border). Nonetheless, a legal migrant, after spending some years of residence in their country of destination, may come to enjoy similar rights to those of citizens, or even gain access to citizenship. In the case of South-South migration, no rights are recognised in most cases, but entry and residence are tolerated for asylum seekers, and some countries link residence with work (notably the Gulf states).

Another consequence of this disequilibrium is the disproportionate role played by major immigration states in shaping migration regimes: the US, Canada, certain European states, Japan, and Australia all play a major role in defining the main rules of the migration regime, while none of these have ratified the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (CRMW). This convention of 1990 was intended to be signed by all UN Member States, but has so far been ratified by only 56 states, all from the Global South. States in the Global North have been reluctant to ratify it owing to the rights that it confers on irregular migrants (so-called “illegals”) and asylum seekers. Global migration governance has therefore been shaped to a large extent by the strongest countries, often against the wishes of small states and those in the Global South, and in ways that produce many unfortunate results: large numbers of

1.2 Other Important Developments Over the Last 30 Years 5 irregular migrants, unaccompanied minors, and asylum seekers without recognition of refugee status, the extensive use of camps, prisons, and repatriations, and even large numbers of deaths.

12.1 I-The Main Factors Affecting Migration

Migration is a structural phenomenon, rooted in migration systems. The concept of migration systems was first developed by Douglas Massey (2003), who defined it in relation to the US/Mexico region. Most migration systems arise in response to an accumulation of different types of disparities or gaps: in demographics, economics, culture, and politics (notably the difference between democratic and authoritarian regimes). Where a solution to these “gaps” does not present itself within regions of departure, candidates for migration perceive a possible solution in the option of “exiting” that country or region. In this world of restrictive border policies (two-thirds of the population of the planet do not have the right to move freely outside the borders of their country), many new actors are confronting this international order dominated by the power of individual nation states (Sassen, 1996). Transnational networks are creating many linkages across borders, including family networks, networks facilitated by new technologies (TV, mobile phones, the internet), and networks of remittances sent by migrants to their families, which amounted to $550 billion in 2021, that is, more than all the public funds devoted to development policies. The development of family networks is supported by second or third generation migrants gaining access to dual citizenship, thus allowing them to move across borders more easily. The general aspiration of these actors is for easier access to mobility, including exit, entry, and return. Indeed, this easier mobility was previously possible in many earlier contexts, particularly during the period of large-scale labour migration, which came to an end in Europe in the mid-1970s and at the US/ Mexico border in 1965 (the end of the “Bracero Program”). Conversely, mobility became possible from East to West in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Iron Curtain in 1989, leading to the adoption of mobility as a way of life.

In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, new paradigms of migration transformed former emigration countries into countries of immigration and transit. For example, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Malta became immigration countries, partly owing to the closure of borders within Europe. Borders were also effectively externalised beyond Europe itself, since Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Turkey, and certain Sub-Saharan African countries were forced by Europe to accept policies of repatriation and to control departures from their own borders. In populations on the southern rim of the Mediterranean, there was a growing demand for visas to allow young people — often well-educated but with limited prospects for work — to find new opportunities. Some regions that have been involved in emigration for a long time (such as the valley of the Senegal river, the north of Morocco, and Berber regions in Algeria) have a strong dependency on migration. This is now also the case for Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria thanks to the new possibilities for mobility between countries of the European Union. The externalisation of borders into the southern Mediterranean region is also having the effect of transforming these countries into countries of transit: people on the move in these contexts are referred to as “transmigrants”, reflecting their provisional situation. The same phenomenon can now also be observed in the US, Mexico, and Central America: migrants from Central America are first moving to Mexico, where some of them stay because entry into the US is made more difficult by the existence of drug cartels. Just as migrants from Sub-Saharan countries sometimes end up remaining in Morocco, migrants from Central America may end up in a long-term state of “transit” in Mexico. The externalisation of borders is thus extending to greater distances, giving rise to new migration routes, and creating new sites of transmigration, such as Niger or Mauritania.

One of the greatest drivers of migration flows is the sense of hopelessness and insecurity experienced by those exposed to situations of war. Most migrants are young, urbanised, educated, and informed, yet consider that there is no future or suitable employment for them in their countries of origin. They sometimes say that they are already dead before they face possible death in the Mediterranean sea or at the Mexican border. More than half of young people in the Global South want to leave their countries of origin. Those who end up leaving are not the poorest, but rather those who have the means to develop a project, access to international networks, and the possibility of raising money to pay people smugglers if they cannot get a visa.

12.2 TII- The Various Forms of Mobility

The available statistics related to migration mostly describe regular or legal migration. These include data from the SOPEMI reports of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the annual reports produced by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which issues annual data on refugees and asylum seekers at the global level. Most legal migrants belong to three categories: workers, family reunification, and refugees. There has also been a significant rise in the numbers of international students, short-term (seasonal) migration, and rich people from poor countries who are able to gain access to residence permits owing to their investments, funds, trading activity, or real estate assets. Some new migration flows are emerging but in small numbers: migration for access to health services, to flee sexual mistreatment (harassment, discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, etc.), and to escape from environmental threats. Across the world, the scale of migration flows has grown form 77 million people in 1975, to 120 million by the end of the 1990s, and now to 284 million. In other words, it has increased by a factor of 3.5 over 45 years. However, migration flows and patterns of settlement have also developed within certain regions. We can thus observe a distinct Euro-Mediterranean Space and a distinct US-Mexican Space, which make

1.2 Other Important Developments Over the Last 30 Years 7 up two of the most substantial migration flows in the world: most migrants entering Europe depart from countries on the southern rim of the Mediterranean, while Mexicans and Central Americans make up half of all migrants entering the US. South America is in itself a migration region, with new migration flows arising from Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, heading towards Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. After European countries and the US, the next largest destination (in terms of numbers of migrants) is made up of the Gulf states, which receive large numbers of South-South migrants, primarily from Arab countries, but also from emigration countries as far away as Pakistan, the Philippines, and some Sub- Saharan countries. The fourth largest destination is Russia, which primarily receives migrants from states that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union (particularly in the South Caucasus and Central Asia), owing to the strength of their former links (language, knowledge of Russian administration, and the existence of short-term visas for work). Turkey is also a major country of immigration and transit, owing to the recent refugee crisis (producing migration flows from Iraq, Iran, and Syria), while also remaining the largest country of emigration to Europe (there are 4.4 million Turks in Europe, mainly in Germany). Japan, South Africa, and Australia also receive migration flows from the region immediately around them. For all these immigration countries, the number of migrants entering from countries in the same region is greater than the number of migrants entering from other regions. This fact illustrates the general tendency towards the regionalisation of migration flows. This trend can be observed in the development of a number of new regional spaces across the world, such as migration within Europe (with the opening of borders between European countries and the closure of borders to non-Europeans), the Nordic Space (including some countries that are not EU Member States), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) (in spite of conflicts in the region), the Trans- Tasman Travel Agreement (TTTA) between Australia and New Zealand, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which helps South Asian emigration countries to engage with other Asian countries, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which strengthens ties between South Africa and its neighbours. Turkey has also opened its borders to more than 40 countries in order to facilitate trade and tourism, and to attract workers from Russia. There are also a number of regional spaces where free circulation is possible in principle, but where mobility is complicated by the existence of conflict zones.

Along with these various kinds of mobility, we can observe new patterns and statuses of migration: commuters across borders (such as between countries of Eastern and Western Europe, since the fall of the Iron Curtain), seasonal workers who sometimes remain illegally in the immigration country waiting for new seasonal work, irregular migrants who remain in place until they attain a regularisation of their status, formal or informal family reunifications, unaccompanied minors sometimes spending years on the road, deciding whether to continue, return, or stay where they are (sometimes called “transmigrants”), and various forms of citizenship, statelessness, and dual nationality (particularly for second generation migrants).

We are therefore witnessing, at the same time, the opening of many borders and the closure or strengthening of many others. Over 50,000 deaths have been counted in the Mediterranean Sea since the end of 1990s. European policies have always responded to the perceived “migration crisis” with an increasing securitisation of borders, leading to greater expense for border controls, and more deaths.

13 The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reinforcing the Migration Gap Between North and South

This situation in which almost no migration took place over the course of several months led to a fall in remittances of 20%, according to the World Bank (the total figure was $530 billion in 2019). This phenomenon could be observed both in the European/Mediterranean region, and across North, Central, and South America. In India, the COVID-19 pandemic had a drastic effect on internal migration: hundreds of thousands of people travelled from the north to the south of the country at the beginning of the crisis, exacerbating the spread of disease, which led to large numbers of deaths, and consequently large numbers of children becoming orphans, with limited prospects for their future education. In Venezuela, many de facto refugees returned home from Colombia or Brazil, where they had sought shelter. In Africa, which was struck by COVID-19 later in 2020, the closing of borders all around the planet created particular challenges, since most employment there is informal and social welfare is largely absent. The African continent also closed its borders, which had the effect of increasing inequalities (Green, 2020). Countries in the south of Africa still have a poor level of vaccination coverage, but nonetheless have a relatively low rate of deaths. Whereas Europeans and Americans had not experienced such a large-scale pandemic for many years, African populations had already been living with pandemics: notably malaria (400,000 deaths per year in Sub-Saharan Africa), tuberculosis, and HIV (350,000 deaths).

When migration largely came to a halt in 2020, the phenomenon had an impact on immigration countries, creating shortages in some sectors of the labour market (agriculture, healthcare, and construction, as well as a reduction in the number of foreign students in higher education). This also had the effect of increasing competition between these rich immigration countries to recruit highly qualified people and carers for the older population. Meanwhile, migrants who had already settled in these countries saw a deterioration in their situation, due to unemployment, the difficulty of accessing public services and healthcare, and the higher mortality of ethnic minorities compared with other populations. In emigration countries in the Global South, the decline in remittances from diasporic migration drastically reduced the resources available to Sub-Saharan countries. The general decrease in employment, the increasing precarity of migrants, and the reduction in economic activity paired with labour shortages in certain sectors all brought to light the strong, interconnected dependency on migration of both Western (immigration) countries

1.3 The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reinforcing the Migration Gap... 9 and Southern (emigration) countries. However, despite the stark demonstration of this interdependency, immigration countries did not decide to change their migration policies after the COVID-19 crisis in response to labour shortages.

Along with the general globalisation of migration flows, migration is therefore also structured across the world in a series of regionalised systems, determined by complex systems of complementarities and relationships of demographic and economic supply and demand. In the Global South, development is not, in the short term, an alternative to migration. In the past, Southern European countries ceased to be countries of emigration when they experienced economic growth and became more democratic. The same is also true for Eastern Europe, whose circular migration is due to their entry into the EU. In countries on the southern rim of the Mediterranean, we can expect that development (both economic and political) and demographic transition will weaken the strongest pressures driving the emigration of low-skilled workers.