Global Migration Centre

Remittances have moral dimensions that, albeit implicitly addressed in migration literature, have not yet been the focus of explicit attention and analysis by social scientists. Building on recent developments in the anthropology of ethics and morality, this article proposes theoretical and analytical pathways to address this important but often neglected aspect of remittances. It does so mainly via a critical analysis of existing scholarship on remittances, and ethnographic data drawn from research among Cuban migrants in Cuba and Spain. The reflexive scrutiny of scholars’ moral assumptions about remittances opens the way for the study of the moral dilemmas and ethical demands articulated by remittance senders and recipients. Family roles and obligations, and the uses of the money sent by migrants, are identified as key areas of moral difficulty. Their analysis shows how remittances inform moral reassessments of family relations, individual responsibility, economic practice, and development. The notion of ‘moral remittances’ is proposed as a heuristic comparative tool that serves to illuminate the moral aspects of remittances. This notion is put into perspective to complement and reconsider more metaphorical takes on remittances, notably the concept of ‘social remittances’, of which it helps reveal some epistemological limitations while opening future research avenues.

This article discusses the role of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the context of significant changes in global migration governance. Drawing more specifically on examples from the Asia-Pacific region, it sheds light on the way UNHCR and IOM cooperate in situations where both organisations might claim to have legitimacy to intervene based on their mandate, eg in situations of ‘mixed flows’ of people and in the context of large-scale movements, especially when people may not be recognised as refugees but may still be in need of international protection. The recent changes in global migration governance, including the entry of IOM into the UN system, have arguably failed to bring clarity on the respective roles and responsibilities of UNHCR and IOM in such situations. While ad hoc arrangements have been established in various contexts, the lack of clear and predictable arrangements to allocate responsibilities and accountability between the two organisations in situations where both are involved is likely to fuel further tensions between them.

The ‘boat people’ crisis that erupted in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea in May 2015 tragically exposed the vulnerabilities of migrants and refugees in the region. Following the initial reaction of states, which consisted of preventing boats from landing, a set of measures was adopted to put an end to the crisis and to address the issue of irregular movements by sea in the region over the long term. This article analyses the main elements of the response and discusses its implementation in the region in light of the already important practice and experience of Southeast Asian countries in dealing with large-scale arrival of ‘boat people’. It is argued that despite the calls for the resettlement of the Rohingyas and for the regularisation of their status as migrant workers, the situation will mainly be dealt with in an informal manner, with most of them joining the already significant community of Rohingyas living in a precarious situation in Malaysia. While the movement of Bangladeshis could well be addressed through other measures, in the case of Rohingyas, addressing the factors that prompt their departure in the first place – the so-called ‘root causes’ – is the only viable way to stop the movements.

Improving EU and US Immigration Systems' Capacity for Responding to Global Challenges: Learning from experiences

The European Union (EU) has innovated in establishing a subsidiary form of international protection in its Qualification Directive, granted, to those who would face upon return a real risk of suffering 'serious and individual threat to a civilian's life by reason of indiscriminate violence in situations of international or internal armed conflict'. The EU has however created a marvellous legal challenge for international refugee lawyers: how to apply Article 15(c) of the Qualification Directive, a provision which revealed to be 'poorly drafted' in a 'convoluted language of political compromise'? Among the main issues raised by Article 15(c) remains one that is still dividing national asylum decision-makers and scholars: the role of international humanitarian law (IHL) for the purpose of interpreting Article 15(c). This chapter suggests that fundamental reason militates against an IHL interpretation of Article 15(c): the distinctive functions of IHL and subsidiary protection or, international refugee law (IRL). Keywords: European Union (EU); internal armed conflict; international humanitarian law (IHL); international refugee law (IRL); Qualification Directive

International migration law (hereinafter IML) can be described and conceptualized as a deconstructivist architecture both literally and metaphorically. It is an architecture of fragmentation based on dissonance and asymmetry that questions the traditions of harmony, unity, and stability. Initiated by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the deconstructivist architectural movement distorts the conventional oppositions between form and function, center and margin, outside and inside.

Abstract The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration has prompted an intense political debate at both the international and domestic levels. Most controversies focus on its legal stance and highlight the hybrid character of the Compact as a soft-law instrument. While acknowledging the political nature of the Compact, this paper delves into its legal dimensions from the perspective of international law. This inquiry into its normative content discloses three main features: (1) the Compact is not a codification of international legal norms governing migration; it is an instrument of both (2) consolidation and (3) expansion of international law to foster inter-governmental co-operation and promote safe, orderly and regular migration.

This paper is assessing the legality of border closures decided by a vast number of countries with the view of limiting the spread of Covid-19. Although this issue has raised diverging interpretations in relation to International Health Regulations and regional free movement agreements, international human rights law provides a clear-cut answer: the rule of law stops neither at the border nor in times of emergency. Against this normative framework, border control can and must be carried out with the twofold purpose of protecting public health and individual rights, whereas border closure is unable to do so because it is by essence a collective and automatic denial of admission without any other form of process. This paper argues that blanket entry bans on the ground of public health are illegal under international human rights law. They cannot be reconciled with the most basic rights of migrants and refugees, including the principle of non-refoulement and access to asylum procedures, the prohibition of collective expulsion, the best interests of the child and the principle of non-discrimination. The paper concludes on the ways to better integrate at the borders public health and human rights imperatives in due respect with the rule of law. In both law and practice, public health and migrant's rights are not mutually exclusive. They can reinforce each other within a comprehensive human rights based approach to health and migration policies.

Since 2015, the European Union has stepped up its efforts to curb irregular migration from sub-Saharan Africa through increasingly restrictive measures targeting transit countries along migratory routes, including Niger. While the EU has heralded the success of its policies to limit migration through Niger, EU migration policies have disrupted the economic system in Agadez, where transit migration has been one of the main sources of income and a factor of stability since the end of the Tuareg rebellions in 2009. This article discusses the impact that EU migration policies may have at the local level in countries of transit, and highlights the potential for these policies to fuel tensions between local and national authorities. The Agadez case study illustrates the importance of a multilevel approach to migration governance that takes into full consideration the role of local authorities and local communities in countries of transit.

Based on ethnography of touristic encounters in Cuba, the article reflects on competing approaches to difference, inequality, and intimacy in tourism and in anthropology. Comparing the understandings of tourists and Cubans involved in these informal engagements, of the Cuban authorities, and of scholars and commentators, three idealized scenarios and modes of interpretation are teased out. Rather than assessing their degree of accuracy or suggesting the primacy of one over the other, the article reflects on their co-presence and competing rationales, focusing on the conditions of their emergence and assessing their epistemological, moral, and political implications. In so doing, it foregrounds how the expectations, desires, and moral underpinnings that inform our findings and interpretative horizons resonate with those of the people we study, opening up different possibilities for estrangement and familiarization, and highlighting what is at stake in these processes both for anthropology and for those with whom we work.

Due to the lack of formal refugee protection framework, the Asia-Pacific region represents a particularly interesting case study regarding the interface between migration management and refugee protection. Since the end of the Indochinese refugee crisis in the late 1990s, priorities have largely shifted towards a more security and law enforcement approach, as embedded in particular in the Bali Process on People smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, the main Regional Consultative Process in the region. Yet, various others migration-related initiatives have been taken in recent years outside the Bali Process, and somehow against the Bali Process. These resulted in the adoption of numerous statements, roadmaps or of more formal (albeit non-binding) ‘declarations’, some of them with a stronger focus on refugee protection. This contribution sets out to shed light on the development of regional migration governance in the Asia-Pacific by analysing the reasons behind the proliferation of migration-related initiatives in the region and the resulting increase in the number of non-binding intergovernmental frameworks on migration in the region. Against this backdrop, it is argued that this phenomenon is essentially the result of a situation of “contested regionalism” where either substantive issues (in particular the inclusion or lack thereof of human rights and refugee protection considerations in the work of the Bali Process) or organizational/institutional issues (essentially the prominent role of Australia) have been contested by other states and/or international organizations through processes known as “regime shifting” and “competitive regime creation”.

This paper provides an analysis of the institutional regime complexity in the field of migration governance in the Asia-Pacific region, with a particular focus on UNHCR’s role in this context. The primary objective of the research is to understand the consequences of regime complexity on the development of a framework pertaining to the protection of refugees and migrants in the region, in particular those travelling by sea in the region of the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea. In other words, this research aims to determine whether the increasing regime complexity in the field of migration in Asia-Pacific has led to a weakening and a dilution of the protection framework, or, on the contrary, whether this situation has resulted in a reaffirmation of some of the core principles related to the protection of migrants and refugees.

Abstract The fact that most Southeast Asian States are not party to the main instruments pertaining to the protection of refugees has given rise to the ‘rejection of international refugee law’ theory, which has largely dominated the literature on the issues pertaining to refugees in Southeast Asia. Based on an analysis of the practices of Southeast Asian States with regard to refugees, this article argues that although they are not party to the 1951 Convention, the main countries of asylum in the region, i.e. Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, de facto treat differently the people they acknowledge to be in need of some sort of protection: that is, refugees. Unlike other irregular migrants, refugees are protected against non-refoulement and, to a certain extent, are also protected from detention for irregular entry into the territory of another State. In doing so, Southeast Asian States maintain a ‘fiction’ according to which they preserve sovereignty over the borders of their countries while in reality largely accepting the limitations posed by international refugee law.

Abstract This article provides an overview of the development of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ (IFRC) approach to migration and displacement. The focus of the IFRC and its member National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (National Societies) in this regard has traditionally been on refugees and other so-called “displaced persons” – that is, people who have been compelled to flee their place or country of origin and for this reason are deemed to be particularly vulnerable. However, this focus has been extended recently, in the course of the past decade, to cover all people who find themselves in a vulnerable situation in the context of migration. The IFRC Migration Policy, which was adopted in 2009, has offered much-needed guidance to National Societies in dealing with all migrants, including irregular migrants. However, it is argued that there is a need today – taking into consideration the increasing number of displaced people worldwide and the numerous contexts in which National Societies are dealing with refugees, internally displaced persons or cross-border disaster-displaced persons – to better understand the programmatic aspects that are specific to displacement compared with migration. This is a necessary condition in view of the development of more adequate and effective responses to the vulnerabilities and needs of migrants and displaced persons.

Reflecting the focus of this Special Issue on “Rule of Law and Human Mobility in the Age of the Global Compacts,” this article contributes to the discussion on the threats to the rule of law posed by immigration detention through the lens of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). In GCM’s Objective 13, states committed to use immigration detention only as a measure of last resort, work towards alternatives and draw from eight sets of actions to realise this commitment. Given the attention the GCM attracts, its nonbinding character and the voluntary nature of its review can be used by states as justification for their inadequate implementation of binding human rights obligations and insufficient reporting on implementation to the supervising bodies. While acknowledging these challenges to the rule of law, this article explores the ways the GCM can actually foster the rule of law in the area of immigration detention. To strengthen the rule of law principles of legality, legal certainty, prohibition of arbitrariness, access to justice and the right to an effective remedy, Objective 13 needs to support a binding human rights regime by preventing arbitrary detention and its implementation at the domestic level. The article discusses the interplay between Objective 13 on the one hand, and, on the other, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and Convention on the Rights of the Child at three levels—the detention provisions, the support provided to states for the implementation of these provisions and the monitoring of states’ implementation—and it proposes means to strengthen the synergies between the two frameworks.

This book provides an in-depth exploration of South Asian readaptations of race in vernacular languages. The focus is on a diverse set of printed texts, periodicals and books in Hindi and Urdu, two of the major print languages of British North India, written between 1860 and 1930. Imperial raciology is a burgeoning field of historical research. So far, most studies on race in the British Empire in South Asia have concentrated on the writings of Western-educated elites in English. The range of Hindi and Urdu sources analyzed by the author provides a more varied and complex picture of the ways in which South Asians reinterpreted racial concepts, thereby highlighting the importance of scrutinizing the vernacular dimensions of global entanglements. Part I of the book centers on the debates on "civilization" and "civility" in Hindi and Urdu periodicals, travelogues and geography books as well as Hindi literature on caste. It asks if and in what respect the discussions changed when authors appropriated racial concepts. Part II revolves around the "science" of eugenics. It scrutinizes more popular genres, namely, early twentieth century advisory literature on "fit reproduction." It highlights how the knowledge promoted there was different from "eugenics" as the (mainly English-writing) founders of the Indian eugenic movements endorsed it. A fascinating analysis of the ways in which colonized elites have adopted and readapted racial concepts and theories, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Modern South Asian History, History of Science, Critical Race Studies and Colonial and Imperial History.

Moving beyond comparison as a method that juxtaposes community-based case studies, this article explores how migrants with different backgrounds and trajectories themselves deploy comparison in their everyday lives and decision-making. To do so, it examines Cuban and Ecuadorian migrants’ comparative appraisal of different places, values, and visions of a “better life”, shedding new light on the motives, stakes, and effects of their endeavors. The proposed approach advances understandings of how migrants cope with the dominant comparative scripts and hierarchies that migration activates, notably by either conforming to, subverting, or unraveling them. Also highlighted are comparison’s entanglements with questions of choice, belonging, and its experiential and emotional effects, including the suffering it elicits. A multi-dimensional exploration of how comparison plays out among migrants opens research avenues related to transnational living and people’s pursuits of a “better life”, while also raising ethical and epistemological questions for comparative research on migration and beyond.

In comparison with other trans-boundary issues, the management of migration at an international level remains relatively week, with very few forums established at the international level to deal with the movements of people. Instead, efforts towards the better “governance” of the migration and displacement phenomenon have largely shifted toward the regional level, as reflected in the number of forums and processes dealing with migration-related issues. Ironically, the largely incoherent proliferation of regional migration-related institutions and initiatives may have had the side effect of undermining the pursuit of increased cooperation in the field of migration. A focus on clearly identified migratory routes and the adoption of a so-called mixed migration approach could contribute to resolving the complexity of regional migration governance.

While migration is as old as mankind, it is the subject of heightened debates in today’s societies. In a post-9/11 world where states are still struggling to recover from the last economic crisis, ...

In today’s data-rich societies there is a strong tendency to assess and analyze complex issues through quantitative methods utilizing new, and rapidly evolving and constantly expanding, user-generated data. While new data and new data science present enormous opportunities for innovation and scholarship, we are also witnessing intensification and expansion of digitalized public discourses that are increasingly enabling misinformation on migration and migrants through the devaluation of accurate data and evidence and proliferation of ‘fake news’ and inaccurate information. Harnessing ‘new’ data while utilizing ‘traditional’ migration data and offering new analytical perspectives underpinned by deep domain knowledge through collaborative science–policy partnerships extends knowledge, fosters inquiry, and promotes accurate understandings of migration. There is the critical role of global reference reports—such as the World Migration Report—that collate, present, and analyze data for consumption by general, policy, technical, and educational audiences. Maximizing utility of such reports requires investments in interactive data visualization that support sustainable efforts in countering misinformation on migration and migrants through engaging and appealing design that do not compromise accuracy, but act to promote it in an accessible way.