Editor's Note

In recent years, migration has impinged on public consciousness as never before. Rarely a week goes by without headlines about “refugees”, “economic migrants”, “asylum-seekers”, or “people-traffickers”. Many of the reports are regrettably alarmist, but the increased media attention does reflect a fact about our world: that mass migration is one of the most significant geopolitical trends of our day.

Around the globe, millions of people are on the move, fleeing conflict, persecution, natural disaster or poverty. This vast flux of humanity, across and within borders, inevitably has profound social, political and economic ramifications for host countries, source countries and, of course, the migrants themselves. The nature and consequences of the current migration phenomenon are explored in the pages that follow.

Mark J. Miller of the University of Delaware provides an introductory bedrock for our survey by examining what he terms the “Age of Migration”: the huge and politically significant flows of migrants produced worldwide by the pressure of economic globalisation. His broad-ranging essay illuminates the multiple implications of today’s massive population movements.

Migration between developing countries is at least as extensive as that from such countries to the affluent West, but it is the latter that dominates international awareness. Helen Hughes of Australia’s Centre for Independent Studies reviews the recent history of migration to the West, and assesses the challenges it poses for liberal Western democracies.

The chief international agency responsible for addressing the growing occurrence of involuntary migration is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Gerald E. Dirks of Brock University, Canada, looks at the UNHCR’s origins, development and prospects.

Millions of people are made refugees by conflict and political persecution. They are “forced”, as opposed to “voluntary”, migrants (although the distinction can often be difficult to draw). Susan F. Martin of Georgetown University weighs how forced migration can be averted at source without negating the right of refugees to flee danger.

Large-scale immigration is sometimes cited as the answer to the problems posed by declining and ageing populations in the developed world. Questioning this supposed panacea, David A. Coleman of the University of Oxford argues that migrants can place significant burdens on host societies. He concludes that borders cannot be unreservedly open.

One country that has dramatically tightened its borders in recent years is Australia. Don McMaster of the University of Adelaide discusses the repercussions of the August 2001 Tampa case, which saw Australia deny harbour to a ship carrying hundreds of mainly Afghan asylum-seekers. He detects in Australia’s official refugee policy the legacy of ugly episodes from the country’s past.

If Europe had an equivalent to Tampa as a focus for controversy about migration, then it was the Sangatte holding camp in north-eastern France, home over the years to thousands of refugees hoping to gain asylum in Britain. Liza Schuster of the London School of Economics traces the evolution of the Sangatte story, delineating the political and media manipulation that caused the camp to be seen as a problem rather than a solution.

Many asylum-seekers in western Europe have been smuggled there. Describing the experiences of smuggled migrants, Khalid Koser of University College, London, examines the scale of the illicit trade, its impact on asylum-seekers, and government policies to combat it.

European Union countries are among the world’s most sought-after destinations for migrants and asylum-seekers. Georg Menz of Goldsmiths College, London, identifies how these countries have tried, both individually and at the EU level, to cope with the resulting pressures.

Iran has been host to one of the largest refugee populations in the world—millions of Afghans who have fled their home country since the Soviet invasion of 1979. UNHCR officer Afsaneh Ashrafi and Haideh Moghissi of York University, Toronto, describe the strains and tensions this protracted situation has imposed both on the refugees and the host society.

What are the prospects of the Afghan refugee crisis’s being eased, now that Afghanistan has a new, internationally recognised post-Taliban government? Arthur C. Helton and Eliana Jacobs of New York’s Council on Foreign Relations consider how Afghanistan’s recovery can be promoted so as to allow the long-term return and resettlement of refugees.

More than fifty years after its origin in the 1948 war that led to the creation of the state of Israel, the Palestinian refugee crisis—the longest-lasting major refugee crisis in the world—shows no sign of being resolved. In fact, the plight of the Palestinian refugees continues to worsen. Otto Hieronymi and Chiara Jasson of Webster University, Geneva, argue that this deadlock arises largely from the failure to apply to the Palestinian case lessons from the experience of the international refugee regime, as embodied principally in the statutes of the UNHCR and in the 1951 refugee convention. Their call for a new approach to the Palestinian refugee problem brings our discussion of the migration question to a close.

Paul Theodoulou
Autumn 2002