Migration in the New World Order

Migration is an inseparable part of human history. It means setting off and leaving, moving away. In essence we can say that birth is a migration, death is a migration, and what happens between the two is nothing but a migration too.

Thanks to technological developments in recent years, people’s mobility and their access to all kinds of information have increased. Naturally, this has brought enormous interaction between people and cultures. Indeed, we can say that migration has eroded the traditional boundaries between nations and cultures and thus contributed to diversity and to cultural and economic richness.

Even so, the phenomenon of migration is still perceived by many people and states as a threat. Why? We need to see and accept this as relatively natural in the current international climate.

Let us not forget that in the last century there were two world wars in which millions of people lost their lives. Today, the events in Ukraine and the Middle East, the small number of level-headed people or the faintness of their voices, prejudices inherited from the past and economic crises are fuelling people’s sense of insecurity towards those who are not like them. In our globalised world, migration has therefore become, in its various dimensions and effects, one of the main issues humanity must manage properly, and it has come to be perceived as a threat that disrupts the established order.

Whether you call the cause wars, internal conflicts, totalitarian regimes or environmental disasters, or the gulf in living conditions between developed countries and developing and underdeveloped ones, the mass migration of people today worries Western modern states and societies most of all, because they fear losing their established understanding of democracy, their prosperity and their economic gains. While people who have not had, or could not get, even basic schooling struggle to adapt to life in the modern cities they arrive in, migration from underdeveloped to developed countries provokes reactions among local people in many respects and causes insecurity.

To understand this problem of insecurity better, the phenomenon of migration must be examined in depth in the context of current terms such as migrant, refugee, irregular migrant, illegal migrant, xenophobia, migrant phobia, integration, assimilation and radicalisation. We constantly see how ignorance of the meanings of these concepts, and their hollowing out and misuse by the media or politicians, affect society negatively. First, however, I think we need to face some bitter truths.

The Reality of Migration in Numbers

In a statement on 25 October 2023, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that as of the end of September 2023 more than 114 million people worldwide had been forced to flee their homes because of conflict, persecution and human rights violations.

According to this statement, the war in Ukraine and the conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar, drought, floods and insecurity in Somalia, and the protracted humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan are the main drivers of displacement. While children under 18 make up more than 43 million of the figure announced (around 40 per cent), more than half (around 52 per cent) of the people in need of international protection come from just three countries: Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

In the statement, which stressed the international community’s failure to resolve conflicts or prevent new ones and the need to work together to end them, the UN Refugee Agency said: “We must allow refugees and other displaced people to return home or restart their lives.” What is more, the UNHCR report does not even cover the consequences of the Israeli-Palestinian war that began on 7 October.

While states keep putting off the measures that need to be taken, as if ignoring the real causes of the problems, the unending reality of migration continues to confront us in all its nakedness and complexity, and as a problem that grows like a rolling snowball.

Global Climate Change and Predictions for the Near Future

According to UNHCR, the consequences of climate change are enormous. In summary:

• Climate change, poverty and insecurity in access even to basic foodstuffs affect more and more people and force them to flee in search of safety.
• While food supply already remains a source of concern in many parts of the world, it is predicted that limited natural resources such as drinking water will certainly become even scarcer in the coming years, and that in extreme heat, cold, drought and floods many crops and some animal species will be unable to survive in certain regions.
• It is said that people will have to try to adapt to this situation, but that for many this will mean deliberately moving to another region in order to survive.
• It is also predicted that, as more and more people compete for fewer resources, this situation may have the potential to provoke conflict between communities.

The World Bank warns that unless politicians take more decisive steps against climate change, there will be more and more “climate refugees”. It is stated that by 2050 more than 140 million people could lose their homes and be forced to move elsewhere because of drought, crop failure, storms and rising sea levels. (In its updated Groundswell report published in 2021, the World Bank projected that by 2050 up to 216 million people across six regions could be forced to move within their own countries.)

Different aspects of climate migration therefore include displacement due to natural disasters, decisions to migrate because of the effects of climate change, and planned or voluntary relocation.

The status of “climate migrants” remains largely undefined. There is currently no international legal basis that people forced to leave their countries of origin because of the consequences of climate change, or who decide to migrate because of foreseeable consequences, can rely on. But there are attempts at a solution. The Nansen Initiative’s Protection Agenda, for example, endorsed by 109 countries in 2015, aims to ensure the protection of “climate migrants” at national and regional level.

Environmental changes and natural disasters not caused by climate change can also force people to leave their homes. Another concept is “environmental migration”. This concept shows how important changing environmental conditions can be in decisions to migrate, and it also covers migration driven by environmental causes other than climate change.

At this point we need to clarify some concepts we hear often but which are mostly used out of context, as well as the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the core instrument of international refugee law. I believe clarifying this convention and some terms will help us all better understand the causes of the hatred directed at migrants and refugees.