Migration Crisis: Concept and Criteria

Abstract

The article examines the concept of “migration crisis” in the context of other types of crises (economic, demographic, financial and others). The author gives a definition of the migration crisis in a narrow and broad context. The scientific literature was dominated by the approach to understanding the migration crisis through the prism of the migration situation in 2015-2016 in Europe, which was due to the massive influx of refugees and economic migrants from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa to the countries of the European Union. It is proposed that the migration crisis should also be considered for countries with a massive outflow of migrants. The study identifies the criteria for migration crises, including migration inflow (outflow) of the population in a relatively short period; ineffectiveness of traditional instruments of migration policy; activation of informal actors of the migration market, which fill the gaps of ineffective actions of supranational and state structures; the impossibility of using traditional schemes for analyzing and understanding migration flows in a situation of a migration crisis; devaluation of human life. The author notes that the main reasons provoking migration crises are such extraordinary events of a geopolitical and environmental nature as civil war, external invasion, armed conflicts, ethnic cleansing, environmental disasters, accidents, and economic crises can be the reasons for the massive outflow of the population from the country, catastrophic growth in unemployment, political pressure, persecution on ethnic, religious and sexual grounds. The article outlines the socio-economic and demographic consequences of migration crises for countries of destination and destination of migrants in the short and medium term.