Refugee and Mixed Migration Flows

Managing a Looming Humanitarian and Economic Crisis

Bimal Ghosh

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319752747
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

This book provides an insightful analysis of the looming refugee and mixed migration crisis in the context of four major, contemporary flows: two in west and east Europe, and one each in the Americas and Asia. The analysis, in each case, is followed by a judicious identification of the key issues involved and the presentation of a set of proposed policy responses to them. The discussion is then placed in a global setting and dovetailed with the recently launched United Nations initiative to adopt global compacts on refugees and migrants. The author brings to this book, the first of its kind, his vast experience of advising, and actively engaging with, many of the principal international organisations concerned with refugee and migration issues.

This book will be of interest to researchers, students, NGOs, professional bodies, national ministries, international organisations and rights groups in the fields of economics, public finance, political economy, human rights and refugee law, and international relations and demography.

© The Author(s) 2018

Bimal GhoshRefugee and Mixed Migration Flowshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75274-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Gathering Violence, Widespread Persecution and Record Human Displacements: The Challenge of a Looming Crisis

Bimal Ghosh¹

(1)

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

Bimal Ghosh

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

The world of migration and refugees has been witnessing two contrasting scenarios: slow and wavering increase in new inflows of migrants through regular channels in the aftermath of the 2008/2009 economic crisis juxtaposed with the highest recorded level of uprooted people in the post-World War II era. These human displacements were being caused by waves of violent conflicts and persecution , combined with a worsening geopolitical and security situation and, in many cases, abject poverty . Much of these displacements have taken place in the last few years, especially since 2012 when their total number was hovering around 45.2 million. In 2013, an estimated total of 51.2 million individuals were found forcibly displaced worldwide. Some 16.7 million were refugees (including 5.0 million Palestinian refugees ), 33.3 million were displaced within their own countries (IDPs ), then the highest number on record, and close to 1.2 million were asylum -seekers. In the following year (2014), there were 59.5 million uprooted people , including 38.2 million internally displaced persons, 19.5 million refugees (including 5.1 million Palestinian refugees ) and nearly 1.8 million asylum -seekers. This was 8.3 million persons more than the year before—yet again, the highest annual increase ever in a single year.

The trend continued in 2015. The total number of uprooted people rose to 65.6 million (comprising 22.5 million refugees , 40.3 million IDPs and 2.8 million asylum -seekers). Figures most recently released by UNHCR show that there was no diminution of the level of human displacement in 2016 ; instead, the total number rose slightly more to 65.5 million.¹

The UNHCR estimated that in 2015, some 12.4 million persons (excluding returns) were newly displaced from their home. The enormity and poignancy of the problem become clearer when it is reckoned this implies that in 2015 on average 24 persons were forced to abandon their home and hearth every minute.²

We were thus living in a world in which one in every 107 persons had been forcibly uprooted . If all these displaced people were in one country, it would already have been the twenty-first most populous country in the world, with a population larger than that of the UK or Italy .

* * *

Roughly speaking, there has been a 55% increase over the number of refugees under UNHCR mandate in just four years since the end of 2011. In 2015, developing regions were hosting 13.9 million—or 86%—of the world’s refugees under UNHCR ’s mandate. This was then the highest number in more than two decades. The trend was also reflected in the number of new asylum applications, especially in Europe . Figures collected by UNHCR showed that more than 2 million asylum applications were lodged in 2015 in 38 European countries,³ almost three times the number (709,800) registered in 2014. According to the European Union ’s Statistical Office, the number of first time asylum -seekers in 2014 in its member states was 562,000; it jumped to 1.26 million in 2015 and remained nearly as high in 2016 at 1.2 million. As a region, the Middle East has seen the sharpest increase in human displacements which more than doubled between 2005 and 2016 , from about 25 million to around 54 million. Some of these persons were economically motivated, but the majority of them, especially after 2011, were victims of forced displacement , according to an analysis by Pew Research Center of the United Nations data.

As the script was going to press, and the conflicts and violence , especially in the Middle East, continued unabated, there was hardly any sign of a break in these relentless waves of human displacements .

Deaths on the Fatal Journeys

Worse still, many of those seeking escape abroad in desperation are not making it at all. The episodes of deaths of migrants on their way to the elusive destination are not entirely new. According to Amnesty International , as many as 23,000 migrants have lost their lives in trying to reach the EU across the Mediterranean in the past 15 years. The International Organization for Migration (IOM ) recently raised the number as high as 46,000 since 2000 and 60,000 over the past 20 years. More worryingly, the number of such risky journeys has been increasing in recent years.

In 2014, worldwide, some 4077 migrants ⁴ lost their lives at sea or in remote deserts or mountains, making it the deadliest year on record and doubling the number of deaths in 2013. More than 540 migrants faced death in the Bay of Bengal , and at least, 307 migrants paid the same ultimate price in trying to cross the land border between Mexico and the USA (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2).

Fig. 1.1

Deaths on the fatal journey worldwide, January–September 2014

(Source IOM)

Fig. 1.2

Global migrant deaths, 2015–2016

(Source IOM)

Since then, the situation turned still deadlier, with the number of migrants who died or disappeared worldwide rising to 5740 in 2015 and 7872 in 2016 , making a 30% increase over the number in 2015, and representing an average of over 21 deaths a day, according to the figures released by IOM in January 2017.

The rising global trend in fatalities among migrants on their way to their destinations was particularly marked in the Mediterranean , where nearly 4600 of them perished in 2015. The UNHCR estimates that in two years, 2014–2015 over 10,000 migrants lost their life on the fatal journey; and with at least 5079 deaths or disappearances in 2016 , these became the deadliest three years on record. And the trend, even if slightly subdued, seemed to continue, with the number reaching 1770, as of 10 June 2017.

The massive and cruel deaths in the small islands of Greece were starkly symbolic of the poignancy of the situation in some areas, with its painfully sobering effect. In October 2015, citing the local mayor, Al Jazeera reported that the Greek island of Lesbos had run out of room to bury the growing number of deaths at sea. Since autumn 2015, the accumulation of drowned bodies has become part of a wider migration crisis in Greece . The town morgue at Mytilene was full ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. The European Refugee and Mixed Migration Crisis in a Global Context
• Part II. Challenges Across Regions
• Part III. How to Manage the Crisis and Avoid Its Recrudescence
• Back Matter