Introducing Forced Migration

Patricia Hynes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781351678544
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Derecho migratorio

At a time when global debates about the movement of people have never been more heated, this book provides readers with an accessible, student-friendly guide to the subject of forced migration.

Readers of this book will learn who forced migrants are, where they are and why international protection is critical in a world of increasingly restrictive legislation and policy. The book outlines key definitions, ideas, concepts, points for discussion, theories and case studies of the various forms of forced migration. In addition to this technical grounding, the book also signposts further reading and provides handy Key Thinker boxes to summarise the work of the field's most influential academics. Drawing on decades of experience both in the classroom and in the field, this book invites readers to question how labels and definitions are used in legal, policy and practice responses, and to engage in a richer understanding of the lives and realities of forced migrants on the ground.

Perfect for undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in courses related to migration and diaspora studies, Introducing Forced Migration will also be valuable to policy-makers, practitioners, journalists, volunteers and aid workers working with refugees, the internally displaced and those who have experienced trafficking.

1 Introduction to the study of forced migration

Introduction

One cold night in late February 1987 I stood on a gravelled road which was the border separating Iran from Afghanistan. It was around midnight. Deadly silent and pitch-dark. ‘If I take a step,’ I thought, ‘I will be somewhere else. When my foot touches the ground on the other side of the road, I will not be the same person. If I take this step I will be an ‘illegal’ person and the world will never be the same again’.

(Khosravi, 2007:321)

When Shahram Khosravi stepped across this border, he began a journey across international borders, through different national structures and a range of legal or socially constructed categorisations and labels given to people which rarely capture the complexities and nuances of the experience during migration (Crawley and Skleparis, 2017; Richmond, 1994; van Hear, 2012; Zetter, 2007). At an early stage of his journey he experienced being ‘smuggled’ from place to place by a ‘middleman’. Such middlemen are often referred to as human smugglers, agents, brokers or facilitators. Later in his journey he met an ‘undocumented’ migrant who helped him escape the war in his own country and who Shahram could not consider to be a ‘smuggler’ due to his own precarious legal status. Others he encountered on his journey were being ‘trafficked’ for the purposes of exploitation into occupations not of their choosing and/or as a result of force or coercion. Being classed as ‘irregular’ or ‘illegal’, he was outside the protection of national laws and sought asylum in more than one country. After these various attempts, he became a ‘refugee’ and gained the protections of that legal status under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Ultimately, after many years negotiating the actual journey and reinventions required of each label, he became a ‘citizen’ of Sweden.

In the space of a few years, in different locations and at different points in time, Shahram experienced the labels of being ‘illegal’, ‘smuggled’ by an ‘undocumented’ ‘migrant’, an ‘asylum seeker’, then a ‘refugee’ and ultimately a ‘citizen’. Each of these labels offered forms of status that held with them different legal protections and entitlements (or lack of) rights.

There is considerable debate about whether these categorisations and labels constructed by policy makers or agencies with mandates to protect people who meet particular criteria are useful when thinking about migration – or, in the case of this book, forced migration. As we will see in in subsequent chapters, the labels of ‘refugee’, ‘asylum-seeker’ and ‘trafficked person’ lead to particular policy responses and outcomes. As Crawley and Skleparis suggest, the dangers of using these categories uncritically can lead to dynamic processes of migration being concealed:

Taking the dominant categories as the basis of our analytical approach can limit our understanding of migration and make us potentially complicit in a political process which has, over recent years, stigmatised, vilified and undermined the rights of refugees of migrants.

(Crawley and Skleparis, 2017:3)

Roger Zetter (2007) has also outlined the way in which rights and entitlements people depend upon and how they are labelled in the first instance are important. He argues that it is convenient for states to put people into neat bureaucratic categories – sometimes as ‘political’ refugees or ‘economic’ migrants – but that these categories invariably do not reflect the reality of people’s lives. In relation to the label ‘refugee’, Zetter suggests that this and other categories are a source of bureaucratic ‘fractioning of the [refugee] label’ (2007:172–192) driven by the need to manage migration, particularly forced migration (see Key Thinker Box 2.4 in Chapter 2). As we see later in this book, there are often ‘mixed flows’ of migrants that are not easily categorised, reflecting the heterogeneous causes and drivers of displacement.

International migrants considered to have migrated following some form of persecution or force include internally displaced persons, refugees, asylum seekers, victims of trafficking, smuggled migrants, international migrants, internal migrants and various others. In practice, these categories overlap. People may gain refugee status, but following the logic of bureaucratic fractioning, ‘temporary protection’ may be offered, or forms of status that deny particular entitlements such as family reunion. ‘Illegal migrants’, ‘overstayers’, ‘failed asylum seekers’, ‘trafficked migrant’ and ‘undocumented migrants’ are just some of the labels now used to describe people forced to migrate. These definitions matter.

There is considerable power in definitions, and defining a population within such categories may or may not lead to appropriate responses to needs. Policy categories that inform humanitarian organisations should not be taken for granted as forms of knowledge. How forced migrants are labelled and the power of these definitions are considered throughout this book, as are the policy responses that follow on from such labels and definitions.

For some, migration is a defining characteristic of the post-Cold War period and beginning of the 21st century, and it has been asserted that we are living in an ‘age of migration’ (see Key Thinker Box 1.1 – Stephen Castles). For others we live in an ‘age of mobility’ with non-permanent migration accounting for much of the global movement of people (King, 2015; Skeldon, 2015). The forcible displacement of people is a part of this, with people fleeing persecution within and from their countries of origin. Bobbio (1996) has suggested we now also live in an ‘age of rights’, something which may be difficult to accept when thinking about the displaced. At the time of writing this book, immobility was a recurring theme during discussions about the impacts of a global pandemic.

Certainly, the subject of forced migration has arguably never been more topical. As this book is being written, people seeking sanctuary in Europe are dying en route in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas (Crawley et al., 2018; Crawley and Skleparis, 2017; IOM, 2016, 2017). During the summer of 2015, parallel narratives played out in the media of refugees in boats crossing the Mediterranean and the Andaman Seas. Those who made it to Europe were left facing fear of daily violence with rights and freedoms severely curtailed. The refugee ‘crisis’ in Europe took centre stage in media and policy discourses, and the ‘crisis’ narrative manifested itself into new border fences, increasing negative attitudes among European states towards those arriving. Behind these European headlines, refugees continue to flee persecution across the globe. In 2015 Rohingya refugees fled Burma in rickety boats across the Andaman Sea to seek refuge in Southeast Asian countries. Since 2017, some 670,000 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Bangladesh. Without the protection of a state, thousands of people such as the Rohingya live as ‘stateless’ persons.

Additionally, within the Americas, some 3.7 million Venezuelans were displaced during 2019, with the island of Aruba hosting the largest number of Venezuelans relative to its national population (1 in 6) (UNHCR, 2020). According to UNHCR statistics, this meant that there are now 4.5 million people from Venezuela across Latin America and the Caribbean displaced – made up of 93,300 refugees, 794,500 asylum seekers and 3.6 million ‘Venezuelans displaced abroad’. Across Africa, following independence, 2.2 million people from South Sudan have been displaced, and there has also been renewed fighting and conflict within the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Central African Republic, leading to further displacement.

This introduction provides an overview of this sometimes arbitrary distinction between voluntary and forced migration and causes that are often perceived as either political or economic. The difference between voluntary and forced migration is difficult – many say impossible – to clarify. There is no single explanation of what distinguishes the causes and motivations for ‘voluntary’ migration from ‘forced’ migration, and a number of authors in this book highlight this in their work. Some argue that forced migration is one part of migration studies more broadly. Others consider forced migration as a distinct area of study in both its causes and consequences. The study of forced migration emerged in part out of ‘refugee studies’, which has its origins in the refugee studies programme set up by Professor Barbara Harrell-Bond at the University of Oxford in 1982, to address the gap of critical research in the field of refugee assistance (see Key Thinker Box 2.1 in Chapter 2).

This book has the title Introducing Forced Migration. However, a key caveat is that any attempt to bring together all writing, concepts and different perspectives on forced migration would fail. The topic of forced migration is not simplistic, rather it is multi-faceted and complex. This book is a starting point in understanding these complexities. This book seeks to unpack and explain the different forms of forced migration as they are socially and legally constructed. This book begins by looking at key questions about who forced migrants are, where the forcibly displaced are located, why people migrate and seek international protection, how people recreate their worlds in the face of increasingly restrictive legislation and policy and what happens to the forcibly displaced, including children. Migration of people across the globe is an enduring theme of human history, be it referred to as ‘forced’, ‘voluntary’ or a migration with ‘mixed motivations’.

The main purpose of the book is to introduce the topic in an accessible and, hopefully, inspiring way. The key aims are twofold:

• Firstly, it seeks to provide a basic understanding of forced migration, particularly the key definitions, statistics, changing patterns, ideas and key theories involved
• Secondly, to provide opportunities and signpost readers towards richer and thicker understandings of forced migration by carrying out further reading, exploring the listed websites, reading the case studies that illustrate the lives of those who have been forcibly displaced and highlighting the realities of forced migration

Throughout the book, summaries of key thinkers who have shaped refugee studies and the study of forced migration are provided, although these by no means fully represent the breadth of authors engaged in the study of forced migration. Further key thinker summaries will be made available. There are also flagged opportunities for further reflection, critical thinking and points for discussion around the interdisciplinary study of forced migration. Some of the headings are framed as questions, and the subsequent text allows for exploration and consideration of the contested nature of terms and debates in forced migration.

Key Thinker Box 1.1 Stephen Castles – The Age of Migration

Stephen Castles is a Professor at the University of Sydney. Prior to this he was based at the University of Oxford, firstly as Director of the Refugee Studies Centre and then as Director of the International Migration Institute. His research and publications have been highly influential in the development of interdisciplinary research on migration studies for many years, none more so than a key text written by himself and co-authors – The Age of Migration: International Populations Movements in the Modern World, now in its fifth edition.

This book is widely considered to be a landmark study in migration studies, providing a foundation of knowledge by successfully framing and defining migration studies (Carling, 2015; Collyer, 2015; King, 2015; Skeldon, 2015). As King suggests, The Age of Migration does ‘more than any other to ensure that the academic study of migration now occupies a central place in the social sciences’ (King, 2015:2366). Simply put, it is considered to be the ‘best and most successful introduction’ (Skeldon, 2015:2356) to migration studies.

The Age of Migration was first published in 1993 and aimed to provide an accessible introduction to the study of global migration and consequences for society. Commencing with general trends and challenges ...