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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781509519408 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Polity Press |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2018 |
| Series: | Global Futures |
| Pages: | 140 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.80(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.40(d) |
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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 guiltridden 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.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Can We Solve the Migration Crisis"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Jacqueline Bhabha.
Excerpted by permission of Polity Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Chapter 1 - A Crisis Like No Other?
- Chapter 2 - A Duty of Care
- Chapter 3 - The System at Breaking Point
- Chapter 4 - Finding Workable and Humane Solutions
- References
- Further Reading