| | | | | By Abraham Ename Minko It is a delicate moment for migration governance in Africa's Sahel region. Earlier this year, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger formally left the ECOWAS regional bloc, which has sought to advance regional migration integration. Meanwhile, violent extremism, transnational crime, and other security challenges have led to increased border controls and restrictions on movement. This article provides insight on the different directions in which migration and policy have been pulled in this dynamic region. |
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| | By Veronica Paez-Deggeller The number of international migrants globally has roughly doubled since 1990. Yet because the world's overall population has grown, the share of all people living outside their country of origin is only slightly higher than it was then. This useful, data-rich article puts the global migrant population in context. It offers current and historical statistics about the cross-border movements of workers, students, refugees and asylum seekers, and others. |
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| | "Wir schaffen das.” These are the three simple words, translating roughly to “We can do this,” that then German Chancellor Angela Merkel uttered ten years ago last weekend. At the time, the European Union and its Member States were confronting the arrival of an unprecedented 1.3 million asylum seekers, and Merkel instantly became perhaps the most visible advocate of a welcoming approach. In 2015, her country would receive half a million asylum claims, well more than double the 2014 figure and the highest on record. More than 1 million asylum claims were filed across the European Union in 2016, too. As the bloc grappled with how to respond, with many terming the situation a crisis, Germany quickly emerged as a stalwart for accommodating and integrating newcomers. Due to its booming economy, the country was also an attractive destination for many new arrivals. Merkel’s statement a decade ago may have been a high-water mark for this attitude. In the months and years that followed, public unease over rising spontaneous migration of asylum seekers and economic migrants would help spur the rise of far-right politicians and stringent restrictions, both in Germany and across the continent. Later, Merkel seemed to regret her earlier framing. “Wir schaffen das” was merely a “simple slogan, an empty formula,” she said in 2022, though one she acknowledged “provoked” some people. Yet the legacy of Merkel’s approach—and of the 2015-16 migration and refugee crisis more broadly—is decidedly mixed. True, the far right has grasped on to migration concerns to make major political gains and help impose sweeping restrictions in many EU countries and elsewhere. Amid new pressures on receiving communities with the arrival of millions of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion of their homeland in 2022, EU Member States have flirted with dramatic restrictions, including imposition of internal border controls within the free-movement area. But in another sense, Merkel was proven right: Germany did in fact do it. Towns across Germany today are populated by people who arrived in the 2015-16 era and are now thriving, with stable incomes, German passports, and bright futures. The longer refugees have remained in Germany, the more likely they have been to secure good-paying jobs. To be sure, the last decade has been an uneven one for German residents—including newcomers. But it would be unfair to say that Merkel’s claim was either completely undermined or entirely vindicated. Like every period of rapid, hastily managed migration, the positive and negative ramifications of the 2015-16 period are likely to be felt years and generations from now. All the best, Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
[email protected] |
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| | | | "The number of Tibetan refugees in India, Nepal, and Bhutan has shrunk over the last two decades, from a peak of roughly 150,000 in the 1990s to just above 100,000 today." |
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"New Zealand has experienced very high net immigration since the mid-2010s, averaging ten new arrivals per 1,000 population from 2015 to 2024, which is notably higher than many major immigration destinations such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States." |
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"South American immigration to the United States has been on the rise, growing three times as fast as overall U.S. immigration from 2000 to 2022." |
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| | The latest episode of MPI’s World of Migration podcast explores the promises and limitations of intergroup contact, with Linda R. Tropp. Migration Stories: Connecting Activism, Policy, and Scholarship, edited by Benjamin Gatling, brings together essays that bridge the gap between research and advocacy. In Music Refuge: Living Asylum through Music, Ailbhe Kenny explores how asylum seekers and refugees experience, share, and create music. Humanitarianism from Below: Faith, Welfare, and the Role of Casas de Migrantes in Mexico, by Alejandro Olayo-Méndez, sheds light on the shelters that migrants use as they pass through or settle in Mexico. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’s The Trafficker Next Door: How Household Employers Exploit Domestic Workers draws on research into migrant workers forced into domestic labor across three continents. Sociologist Edelina M. Burciaga compares the experiences of unauthorized immigrants in California and Georgia in Life Undocumented: Latinx Youth Navigating Place and Belonging. |
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| | The Migration Information Source is a publication of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, DC, and is dedicated to providing fresh thought, authoritative data, and global analysis of international migration and refugee trends. |
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