10,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Global Futures
- Sprache: Englisch
Every minute 24 people are forced to leave their homes and over 65 million are currently displaced world-wide. Small wonder that tackling the refugee and migration crisis has become a global political priority. But can this crisis be resolved and if so, how? In this compelling essay, renowned human rights lawyer and scholar Jacqueline Bhabha explains why forced migration demands compassion, generosity and a more vigorous acknowledgement of our shared dependence on human mobility as a key element of global collaboration. Unless we develop humane 'win-win' strategies for tackling the inequalities and conflicts driving migration and for addressing the fears fuelling xenophobia, she argues, both innocent lives and cardinal human rights principles will be squandered in the service of futile nationalism and oppressive border control.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 142
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
Ähnliche
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Preface
Notes
1 A Crisis Like No Other?
Lessons from History: A Brief Overview of Migration’s Longue Durée
Four Broad Drivers of Migration Across the Ages
Massive and Global Population Movements: Centuries of Continuity
Nationalism, Racism, and Border Control: The Advent of Modern Migration History
The Migration Consequences of Ethnic Separation
Some Historical Take-Aways
Notes
2 A Duty of Care
Appealing to Emotions: A Polarized Response
In God’s Image: Religious Attitudes to Our Duties to Strangers
The Forces of Reason and Emotion: Philosophical Approaches to the Ethics of Hospitality
Our Common Humanity
Notes
3 The System at Breaking Point
Mobility and Immobility: A Humanitarian not a Migration Crisis
Distress Migration
Crossing Borders: The Building Blocks of Modern International Mobility and Immigration Control
Fleeing Persecution: A Legitimate Claim on Hospitality?
Urgent and Unfinished Business
Notes
4 Finding Workable and Humane Solutions
Addressing Some Key Drivers of Distress Migration
Conflict
Humanitarian Disasters and Climate Change
Global Inequality and Poverty
Demography
The UN’s Approach to Solving the Refugee and Migration Crisis
Toward a Rights-Based Refugee and Migration Management System
Notes
Further Reading
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Pages
ii
iii
iv
v
viii
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xiv
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
Global Futures Series
Mohammed Ayoob, Will the Middle East Implode?
Christopher Coker, Can War be Eliminated?
Howard Davies, Can Financial Markets be Controlled?
Jonathan Fenby, Will China Dominate the 21st Century? 2nd ed
Andrew Gamble, Can the Welfare State Survive?
David Hulme, Should Rich Nations Help the Poor?
Joseph S. Nye Jr., Is the American Century Over?
Tamara Sonn, Is Islam an Enemy of the West?
Dmitri Trenin, Should We Fear Russia?
Jan Zielonka, Is the EU Doomed?
Can We Solve the Migration Crisis?
Jacqueline Bhabha
polity
Copyright © Jacqueline Bhabha 2018
The right of Jacqueline Bhabha to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1943-9
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bhabha, Jacqueline, author.Title: Can we solve the migration crisis? / Jacqueline Bhabha.Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2018. | Series:Global futures | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2017035018 (print) | LCCN 2018000320 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509519439 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509519392 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509519408 (pbk.)Subjects: LCSH: Emigration and immigration--Social aspects. | Emigration and immigration--Government policy. | Emigration andimmigration--Psychological aspects.Classification: LCC JV6225 (ebook) | LCC JV6225 .B53 2018 (print) | DDC 325--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035018
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
For my Rafa and Sebas, our future
Acknowledgments
Writing a very short book on a topic one has spent one’s whole life working on is no easy endeavor. Communicating one’s distilled thoughts cogently and accessibly, without the customary academic toolkit of footnotes and technical language, is, if anything, even more challenging. If I have managed to overcome these hurdles, it is thanks to most generous help along the way: intelligent research assistance and constructive criticism from colleagues, friends, and family.
I am grateful to my students Lauren Windmeyer and Alexandra Lancaster for their assistance, and to Faraaz Mahomed for the unusually fine research support he so consistently provided. Colleagues at the Fletcher LLM Seminar, Princeton, the University of Connecticut, York University in Toronto, the Center for Migration Studies, a Bellagio Seminar on Global Migration Law, and Rutgers have all helped refine my thinking. Courageous migrants and refugees as well as dedicated migration activists working within the UN system and in NGOs on the frontlines of human distress have continued to fuel my strong sense of the urgency to do more and better.
My Harvard colleagues at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Graduate School of Education, the Department of Global Health and Populations at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and above all the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights offered invaluable feedback on early drafts and inchoate ideas. Close friends and family, including Ana Colbert, Nancy Cott, Michal Safdie, Oliver Strimpel, Homi, Ishan, Satya and Leah Bhabha, provided insights, suggestions, and encouragement without which I would still be lost en route to my destination. Finally, I am indebted to insightful peer reviewers and an exceptionally fine editorial team whose clear vision helped develop my own.
Preface
The rate of contemporary migration is staggering: 24 people are forced to leave their home every minute. The cumulative scale of this global displacement is equally dramatic. At 65.3 million, the population of forcibly displaced people exceeds that of the UK, of Canada, of Argentina, of Australia, and of Kenya. If this displaced population were a nation, it would be the 21st most populous in the world.
Because the modern world is divided up into states with borders and a strong interest in controlling the entry of non-citizens, this large-scale, unregulated migration has become a global political priority of the first order. It continues to dominate both international and domestic agendas. It has severely affected one of the most promising political innovations of the postwar period, denting free movement within the European Union, perhaps irreparably, and unleashing virulent xenophobia across the continent. It has dramatically impacted political leadership, contributing to the precipitous fall of UK prime minister David Cameron, and to the surprising victory of US presidential candidate Donald Trump. And it has altered the political bargaining power of whole countries – Turkey most obviously, despite that country’s rapid descent into authoritarian and undemocratic rule. Even the increasingly nationalistic and commercially driven world of global sports has taken note. Setting a world precedent, the standard bearer during the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games was not a national representative but a refugee, a member of the first ever Refugee Olympic Team.
It is not just the scale and rate of current migration that attract attention, but the wide-ranging, and, until recently, unimaginable responses. In 2014, who would have predicted that Germany would admit more than 1 million asylum seekers, becoming within a year the de facto conscience of Europe? Or that EU member states would erect razor wire fences where free border crossing had been the norm, painfully evoking Europe’s darkest hour? Or that a single, unforgettable image of a drowned 3-year-old Syrian, with relatives in Canada ready to sponsor him and his family, would lead a guilt-ridden young president to dramatically increase his country’s refugee resettlement figures overnight? Or that a newly elected US president would attempt to legitimate explicit religious discrimination in immigration admissions and bar entry indefinitely to refugees fleeing one of the most murderous civil wars in decades?
Many of these developments have faded from the headlines with the passage of time and the advent of yet more human tragedy and political instability. But it is the apparently irresolvable nature of the refugee and migration problem, and its ramifications for the contemporary geopolitical order, that continue to provoke a sense of anxious panic and drastic reactions among policymakers and voters alike. At the same time, with vicious conflict raging, and dramatic political and economic inequality plainly evident for all to see, migration, however dangerous, presents itself as one of the few available exit strategies for millions. For both sets of affected constituencies, we need to ask: do better alternatives exist and, if so, what are they?
To answer these questions, I propose to pursue four avenues of inquiry. First, when do population flows constitute a “crisis” rather than the ebbs and flows of normal migration fluctuations? Are there previous episodes of massive population movement and related migration panics that provide instructive historical data points for the present set of challenges and dilemmas? Second, taking a step away from history and politics, what do we think ought to happen – or, more broadly, how do we evaluate the ethical issues raised by the current situation? What do we consider the entitlements and the claims on ourselves, our governments, and our common resources of populations to whom we are either completely or largely unrelated? Conversely, what moral entitlements if any should members of a community have to determine their own composition, and to restrict access to outsiders seeking to live within their midst? Joseph Carens, a prominent ethicist of migration, presents the repudiatory treatment of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany as an extreme and, he presumes, unacceptable consensus limit case for exploring available options. Unless we have a sense of what spectrum of alternatives might count as “fixing” the refugee and migration “crisis” and what strategies would fall outside that defined field, we cannot satisfactorily resolve the question.
Third, I will outline central elements of the legal and administrative framework that states apply to movements of people across international borders. This will cover both official responses to forced movement, including refugee and humanitarian flight, as well as state policies toward migration that is considered “voluntary,” often referred to in contrast to refugee flight as economic migration. Finally, I will consider the main drivers of contemporary forced migration1 and positive and workable strategies for the future. This will involve consideration of issues beyond the field of migration and refugee management per se. I will suggest that no viable or just resolution to current refugee and migration pressures can be sustainably reached without addressing the factors that drive people to leave home, whether temporarily or permanently. Measures to reduce distress migration will fail, in the medium and long term, without attention to legitimate quests for greater social, political, and economic equality. I will outline some ingredients of this far-reaching reform program and tie them to some of the initiatives currently being undertaken.
Notes
1.
In the following pages, I will use the term “distress migration” to cover the large-scale migration flows, of both refugees and others, that are precipitated by home situations considered intolerable by those leaving and that generate a sense of crisis in host societies. I will define the term in Chapter 3 and contrast its scope with other widely used terms.
1A Crisis Like No Other?
In Chinese, the word “crisis” is formed with the characters for danger and opportunity. This captures some of the duality at stake in use of the word – a moment of threat that introduces pressure to innovate. Crisis discourse features in many contexts – political, economic, organizational, personal. Among the different glosses on “crisis,” two are particularly relevant to migration. Laura Henderson suggests that the purpose of crisis discourse is to dislocate existing narratives, substituting a new narrative that offers solutions: tackle danger by discarding current remedies in favor of new ones.1 A second approach analyzes crisis-driven rhetoric by reference to three key actors: a responsible villain, an affected victim, and a resolving savior. While the villain causes a crisis for the victim, the savior intervenes to resolve the situation, taking advantage of the need for action to generate the consensus needed to drive change.2
Reactions to recent migratory events have deployed some of these narrative strategies. The notion of “crisis” has become ubiquitous, a shorthand for marking the unique features of the present and the legitimacy of radical measures to address them. I will argue that current circumstances are not unique, and that instead of quick fixes focused on migration (essential though some such measures are), we need to develop an integrated approach to the factors that propel large-scale distress migration. A historical perspective on human mobility contextualizes current pressures within the long-standing ebb and flow of complex human migration patterns. This perspective offers precedents for anticipating and addressing the multiple ripple effects of movements of people that we are seeing today.
Lessons from History: A Brief Overview of Migration’s Longue Durée
By contrast with dominant contemporary accounts of the refugee and migration crisis, migration history encourages us to think of human movement as being separate from the act of border crossing.3 This history demonstrates, across a broad canvas of time and space, that the factors affecting human mobility have been remarkably constant over centuries (indeed, over millennia). Equally constant is the range of mechanisms for responding to this mobility, mechanisms characterized by power asymmetries and self-interest. Historical, linguistic, and archeological evidence suggest that only where migrating populations have brought with them superior technical abilities or unknown germs have their arrivals posed fatal threats or long-term security challenges to the settled population.4 This is a useful corrective to the inflated rhetoric of civilizational crisis often invoked in connection with contemporary migration.
To point out that “people have always moved” is to state the obvious. In a well-known book, Benedict Anderson noted more than 30 years ago that nations are “imagined communities,” cultural products of individual human endeavor and collective organizing rather than facts about any inherent or permanent link between place and people.5 They are also recent inventions, as are the borders that define them.
Our species, Homo sapiens, first emerged from Africa about 150–200,000 years ago. Genetic and archeological scholarship now confirms that an “African Eve” was “the mother of all humanity.”6 The movements of early human groups were determined by the evolving ability to exploit two large clusters of natural resources, those generated by water (lakes, rivers, seas, oceans) and those generated by soil. The imperative to secure means of survival and to adapt to changes and opportunities in one’s environment has always been a fundamental driver of human mobility. From the earliest traces of history, human migration and its interaction with increasingly diverse physical and climatic environments, at the water’s edge and inland, contributed to dramatic breakthroughs and the diffusion of new animal and plant breeding techniques. Survival, innovation, and ambition continue to be drivers of human mobility.
