Viet Nam Human Rights
The Development Story Behind Irregular Migration
29/10/19
Achim Steiner is Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)Last week, a too-familiar human tragedy captured news headlines. 39 people were found dead inside a shipping container on an industrial estate in Essex in Southeast England; 31 men and 8 women from China whose individual identities, for now, remain anonymous, as authorities begin to investigate one of Europe's worst people-trafficking cases.
While I hope I am wrong, we may never know the stories of those 39 people; why they left their friends and communities to make a perilous, hidden journey to the United Kingdom. And they are not alone. Just like the 71 migrants found dead inside an abandoned truck in Austria in 2015, or the thousands of men, women and children who have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Africa to Europe -- over 1,000 already in 2019 -- we may never see or remember all their faces. After the headlines, interest usually moves on, with those who died at risk of becoming 39 statistics, numbers that drive the debate on the strain and stigma of irregular migration.
It reaches some counter-intuitive conclusions. First, it finds that getting a job was not the only motivation to move, that not all the irregular migrants were ‘poor' in Africa, nor had lower education levels. 58 per cent were either employed or in school at the time of their departure, with the majority of those working earning competitive wages at home. The average age of respondents when they arrived in Europe was 24. They are of the ‘springboard generation' – beneficiaries of two decades of remarkable development progress in Africa. Still, some 50 per cent of those working said they were not earning enough.
Second, it finds that barriers to opportunity, or ‘choice-lessness', were critical factors informing the calculation of those surveyed; that in spite of development progress at home, 77 percent felt that their voice was unheard or that their country's political system provided no opportunity through which to exert influence on government. Third, despite the danger and risks of the fraught journey from Africa to Europe, only 2 per cent of all those people surveyed said that greater awareness of the risks would have caused them to stay at home. In fact, 41 percent of respondents said ‘nothing' would have changed their decision to migrate to Europe. The findings of Scaling Fences confirm some truths that need to be better understood: that migration is really a story of development; that in an unequal world, human mobility both drives and is driven by development progress, albeit progress that is uneven and not fast enough to meet people's aspirations. It confirms that people will move in the pursuit of larger freedoms and opportunities, including through irregular means if they believe they must, to create a space for themselves and their families in the kind of world the 17 Sustainable Development Goals are designed to help us all attain. That they travel through irregular rather than regular migration channels does not diminish the importance of their stories. Rather, it highlights the need to both expand safe, legal pathways for migration, in line with the 2018 Global Compact for Safe Orderly and Regular Migration, and to continue investment in a future-focused Africa of socio-economic and political choice and opportunity. Although migration in all its forms is sometimes painted as an emergency – a ‘lose-lose' situation for everyone -- it is actually a long-term development trend: one that started long before there were legal frameworks or sovereign borders to cross and one that will continue long into the future, accelerated in today's globalized, hyper-connected societies. Understanding how to harness the potential of human mobility to accelerate human development – in the countries that migrants move from and move to - starts by understanding the determination that drives people to scale metaphorical and physical fences towards a better life. If we can work together to do that, then perhaps it will be one very small step towards preventing such tragedies as we saw unfold last week.
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All comments [ 20 ]
Irregular migration was spotlighted as a critical theme for development
Irregular migrarion may be more common among females in Asia than in Europe or North America, parricularly in occupations seen as "typically female," such as domestic service, low-level health care, and entertainment
if returning migrants bring home new ideas or facilitate technology transfer, undocumented immigration may have a bigger impact than legal immigration since undocumented migrants are more likely to return home.
Since 2015, Europe has been challenged by the irregular arrival of migrants searching for support and the chance of a new life.
The increasing pattern of irregular migration has been labelled a crisis, and the EU has struggled to find a solution to the large volume of people attempting to cross its external borders.
The issues which Europe is currently faced with are more complex than simply monitoring migratory flows against their capacity to house and process migrants
There are various operational challenges right now.
This generates a series of problems not just for the people attempting to find and rescue the migrants, but for the whole process in terms of when to go to their aid and where to disembark the ships.
This issue has very specific challenges that have become ever more pressing in the last few weeks.
Is enough being done at an EU level to protect and aid migrants, whilst keeping a tight focus on addressing the crisis?
I think a lot has already been done, but I do believe that there are still a significant number of things than can be improved.
This links to the difficulties that the EU has faced in finding a common response.
This is an issue that needs to be resolved and when you have a union of 28 countries, I believe it is reasonable to expect that all of them can follow the same approach.
European countries have too many diversified responses, which means that occasionally they have opposing views on the same phenomenon.
Many things are going in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go towards better management of net flows.
We need to try and get out of this emergency crisis mode and begin to take a more structural, sustainable long-term policy approach in order to better manage migratory issues in Europe.
The EU often focuses on the term ‘irregular migration’ and policies aim to reduce incentives for irregular migration by addressing economic challenges in countries of origin.
Irregular migration refers to the people entering or attempting to enter EU territory without having the correct legal documentation. However, this type of migration does not include asylum seekers or people in need of international protection.
Many are escaping persecution and need aid, making it acceptable for them to pass irregularly. I think the issue of incentives is complex as there are a variety of reasons why somebody would be attempting to gain entry via an irregular route.
One of the main reasons behind irregular migration is the basic fact that people are searching for alternatives to life in their native countries; when they have no legal way of entering the territory, the only other way is to resort to movement via illegal channels. In our view, better conditions are needed to further allow people to migrate legally.
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