Regular Migration Research Articles

Public attitudes towards immigrants: A curious case of Croatia

AbstractThe Croatian population has been subjected to violent ethnic conflicts during the war in the 1990s and has more recently experienced large‐scale irregular and refugee migrations, as well as a notable increase in regular labour migration. Using data from the most recent wave of the European Social Survey, we have conducted an analysis of Croatian attitudes towards immigrants. Our study found that, despite Croatia's history of ethnic conflict and ongoing changes in its migration system, the Croatian population still exhibits relatively low levels of negative attitudes towards immigrants compared to other Eastern European countries. With regards to individual determinants of attitudes, one of the biggest surprizes is that political party preferences play a minor role in explaining attitudes towards immigrants. We discuss our findings and conclude that there is an urgent need for better theoretical and empirical framework for understanding illiberal tendencies in Eastern European societies, particularly within the current context of rapidly worsening security situation in Europe.

Contextualizing Fair Migration in Malaysia: From Sovereign Migration Governance Toward Developmental Global Migration Governance

This paper proposes that fair migration governance in Malaysia reflects a gradual shift from sovereign migration governance towards developmental global migration governance. It examines three approaches the Malaysian government takes to enhance migrant rights protection: concluding a zero-cost migration memorandum of understanding (MoU), digitalizing the recruitment process for foreign workers, and introducing joint liability schemes for employers and private employment agencies. These approaches are a significant move towards rights-based solutions, consistent with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 10.7: Facilitate orderly, safe, regular, and responsible migration and SDG 8.8: Protect labor rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers. Document analysis examines data from official documents and legislations, reports from international organizations, statements from migrant advocacy organizations and trade unions, parliamentary debates, and newspaper articles. The findings have two implications. First, it reflects a central shift in the conceptualization of Malaysia’s labor migration industry from a business model to a rights protection model through eliminating intermediaries. Second, it illustrates the transition of Malaysia’s migration policy from sovereign migration governance to developmental global migration governance. In the Malaysian case study, policy changes are both the consequence of a top-down statist approach and global and societal movements toward developmental global migration governance.

Migration as a Securitized Phenomenon: An Analysis of the Societal Security in Terms of EU Perception

In the 21st century, the diversification of communication and transportation opportunities has not only facilitated regular migration movements but also led to changes in the volume and dimensions of irregular migration. Migrants not only significantly influence the demographic, sociological, and economic structures of the countries they move to but have also become subjects of security concerns. Member countries of the European Union (EU) are targeted by migration movements due to attractive factors such as high living and working conditions, economic prosperity, and governance styles that respect human rights. Claims that migrants threaten the societal security of the EU by affecting its language, religion, cultural values, traditions, and national identities have become frequent topics of discussion in political and academic circles. In this regard, the main aim of the study is to determine whether migration poses a threat to the societal security of the EU or if such a perception exists in EU society. The findings indicate a strong perception in EU society that migration constitutes a threat to societal security.

Bangladesh's Climate Vulnerability and Overseas Migration: Navigating Challenges and Paving the Way Forward

Bangladesh ranks seventh on the Global Climate Risk Index 2021, which identifies the nations most susceptible to natural catastrophes, demonstrating how sensitive the country is to both climate change and natural disasters. Millions of people are forced to migrate to neighboring cities and urban areas in search of work and a living each year as a result of climate change and natural disasters such as river bank erosion, salinity intrusion, floods, cyclones, and landslides in Bhola, Khulna, Bagerhat, Patuakhali, and Gaibandha. Urban life is strained by this influx, especially in terms of housing, water supply, and sanitation. Many of these individuals also seek overseas employment as a means of survival. While numerous organizations, including government institutions, are working to promote safe and regular international migration and overseas employment, a portion of these individuals fall prey to labor trafficking due to a lack of information, monitoring, and services from the administration. Additionally, communities in climate-risk areas are ultimately forced to choose between internal and international migration due to the sluggish adoption of climate-resilient agricultural methods and technologies, as well as the dearth of technical and vocational education options. For these regions of significant natural disasters and climate change, the government has to provide more secure migration policies and encourage productive remittance investment.

Safe migration: Re‐embedding as anticipatory, de‐territorial governance

AbstractIn 2019, the United Nations (UN) promulgated the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration which charts the UN's global migration policy strategy, affording central importance to safety in migration. This ascendant focus on safe migration is echoed in a range of national and regional policy initiatives. Despite the policy enthusiasm for safe migration, to date, there is a dearth of critical scholarly attention to this policy shift. This paper builds on 7 years of ethnographic research on safe migration interventions in mainland Southeast Asia. Centring on the Mekong region, this paper examines two interlocking effects of safe migration policy instrumentalisation. On the one hand, safe migration discourse' spatio‐temporal underpinnings dispositions programmes to gravitate towards policy abstractions. Yet, in practice, safe migration interventions heavily depend on informal constellations of sociality, where migrants become re‐embedded as both objects and instruments of policy.

Enhancing the Rights of Protection-Seeking Migrants through the Global Compact for Migration: The Case of EU Asylum Policy

Abstract This article argues that the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is not only a breakthrough for a rights-based approach in international migration governance but also an asset to the international protection system. By way of example, three key issues of the European Union’s (EU) Common European Asylum System are discussed: access to protection, reception conditions, and detention. These examples illustrate that faithfully implementing the Migration Compact would require the EU and its Member States to make significant changes in their asylum policy. The parallel emergence of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) may suggest otherwise – namely, that the GCM is not relevant for refugees and other protection-seeking migrants. However, the legal construction that best serves the object and purpose of both documents is the assumption that the two Compacts have an overlapping scope of application. The GCM addresses specific protection needs of protection-seeking migrants who are not covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention, and it serves as an umbrella, strengthening the core human rights of migrants regardless of their status, including protection-seeking migrants. Hence, the GCM improves the international protection system as a whole and should be acknowledged as such.

The impact of policy and policy communication on COVID-19 vaccination inequalities among Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Colombia: a comparative cross-sectional interrupted time-series analysis

IntroductionEquitable access to vaccines for migrants and refugees is necessary to ensure their right to health and to achieve public health goals of reducing vaccine-preventable illness. Public health policies require...

The Underlying Structure of Preventive Behaviors and Related Factors During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comprehensive Network Analysis.

Various strategies against COVID-19 have been adopted in different countries, with vaccination and mask-wearing being widely used as self-preventive interventions. However, the underlying structure of these behaviors and related factors remain unclear. In this study, we aimed to explore the network structure of preventive behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic and their underlying factors, incorporating age and sex in the network. We used a multi-center sample of 20,863 adults who were vaccinated against COVID-19 in China between April 1, 2021, and June 1, 2021. Networks were estimated using unregularized partial correlation models. We also estimated the accuracy and stability of the network. The preventive behaviors related to network factors revealed that self-initiated vaccination was more connected with cognition factors, and mask-wearing was more connected with personal profiles. The two clusters were linked through information-seeking and political beliefs. Moreover, self-initiated vaccination was negatively connected with vaccine hesitancy and concerns about COVID-19 vaccines and positively connected with trust in the vaccines, pandemic-related altruism, political beliefs, and being married. Mask-wearing was negatively connected with being a professional/white collar worker and higher education level and positively connected with regular physical examination, self-rated health, migration, being married, and better family relationships. Incorporation of age and sex into the network revealed relevant associations between age and mask-wearing and age and self-initiated vaccination. The network was highly accurately estimated. The subset bootstrap showed that the order of node strength centrality, betweenness, and closeness were all stable. The correlation stability coefficient (CS-coefficient) also showed the stability of this estimate, with 0.75 for node strength, 0.75 for betweenness, and 0.67 for closeness. The internal structures of vaccination and mask-wearing behaviors were quite different, the latter of which were mainly affected by socioeconomic status and health-related behaviors and the former by knowledge about vaccines and political beliefs. Information-seeking and family relationships were the bridge factors connecting these two self-preventive behavior clusters, suggesting the direction of future efforts.

Migration and sustainable development.

To understand the implications of migration for sustainable development requires a comprehensive consideration of a range of population movements and their feedback across space and time. This Perspective reviews emerging science at the interface of migration studies, demography, and sustainability, focusing on consequences of migration flows for nature-society interactions including on societal outcomes such as inequality; environmental causes and consequences of involuntary displacement; and processes of cultural convergence in sustainability practices in dynamic new populations. We advance a framework that demonstrates how migration outcomes result in identifiable consequences on resources, environmental burdens and well-being, and on innovation, adaptation, and challenges for sustainability governance. We elaborate the research frontiers of migration for sustainability science, explicitly integrating the full spectrum of regular migration decisions dominated by economic motives through to involuntary displacement due to social or environmental stresses. Migration can potentially contribute to sustainability transitions when it enhances well-being while not exacerbating structural inequalities or compound uneven burdens on environmental resources.

Imperialism and labour: why global migration governance is unnecessary and why it works

In West Africa, the Maghreb and elsewhere, regular livelihoods and patterns of circulation have been uprooted, while migrants are terrorised by state policies in Africa and Europe. Global migration governance is apparently failing to encourage ‘safe, orderly and regular migration’ despite its rhetoric of human rights, African integration, free circulation and policy harmonisation. This article compares migration governance with structural adjustment in order to evaluate and expose the impact of its hegemonic policy frameworks. A political economy analysis of the historical formation of global migration governance and its current policies in Africa shows how European states and the USA contribute to the imperialist redivision of territories, the continued polarisation of wealth and destruction of the productive forces in African societies, both directly and via organisations like the International Organization for Migration. As they organise and regulate labour within and beyond their borders, these states reproduce social hierarchies and structures of exploitation in the service of capital. This contradiction of capitalist imperialism with the policy goals of global governance demands a radical approach to migrant solidarity which centres on an internationalist class response and continued pressure for justice in the international system.

Compatible Compacts? The “Social Life” of Vulnerability, Migration Governance, and Protection at the Zimbabwe–South Africa Border

The central argument of this paper is that interventions of humanitarian organizations at the Zimbabwe–South Africa border reveal the importance placed on making very clear distinctions between those needing protection and those who do not. This is the case even in times wherein migrants have other protection needs that fall outside these boundaries or intersect with those of others. These boundaries are retained in the stable definitions of migrant in/vulnerability that have been legitimized by the increased emphasis of two separate frameworks: one, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) for managing migration and the other, the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) that determines a set of stable norms for international refugee protection. These mandates are also connected to other tidy, established identities of vulnerability that pertain to gender, health, legal standing, and persecution. In contexts marked by conflicting and overlapping experiences for persons on the move, and mixed migration flows, these ideas are unstable as a way of governing migration. This is because they can also reproduce and intensify social divisions that may lead to inconsistencies and unethical practices in international protection and migration governance for irregular migrants, as well as failures to respond to “the ‘social life’ of vulnerability.” We propose this novel concept in the paper to capture and reimagine the limits and possibilities for protection

The Mobility-Democracy Nexus Betrayed: When the European Commission’s Talks Fall Apart in the Mediterranean

In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, the European Union’s (EU) relations with the Southern neighbour countries (SNCs) have been reframed in the light of a new élan of democracy promotion. The underlying logic of this approach was to leverage the building and consolidation of democracy and rule of law through enhanced cooperation in terms of more ‘markets, money and mobility’. A sort of mobility-democracy nexus has been assumed by the European Commission as a crucial dimension of the EU’s external relations with SNCs. Within this strategy, Mobility Partnerships (MPs) with SNCs have been identified as a key policy tool for EU democracy promotion. Via original qualitative analysis of European Commission’s documents, MPs, and other migration and mobility agreements that the EU has negotiated with SNCs since 2011, this paper explores how the mobility-democracy nexus has been defined in the Commission’s talks. We critically discuss the effectiveness of this nexus and demonstrate the inefficacy of MPs as a tool to promote democracy by fostering more mobility and regular migration flows. Looking at the content of MPs with three SNCs (Tunisia, Morocco, and Jordan) allows to trace the transformation of EU external relations with SNCs from a principled approach into selective issue-oriented cooperation based on more specific and sectorial policy choices. European Union, Southern neighbourhood, EU external policies, post-Arab uprisings, mobility partnerships, democracy promotion, migration, content analysis

THE CONSEQUENCES OF A FORCED MIGRATION SHOCK FOR THE ECONOMY OF A COUNTRY AT WAR: THE CASE OF UKRAINE

The full-scale war in Ukraine, which started with the Russian invasion in February 2022, has led to an unprecedented forced migration crisis not seen in Europe since the Second World War. The current Ukrainian forced displacement, which has no analogues in terms of its scale, geographical coverage, quantitative indicators and timeframe, represents an exceptional case to study in terms of its impact on the economic environment of the country of origin. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse the short- and long-term effects of the forced migration shock on the economy of a combatant country in the context of a full-scale war in Ukraine. Methodology. To address the task of classifying the economic consequences of a forced migration shock from the perspective of the country of origin, the publication uses the matrix diagram method. The matrix developed is based on two key characteristics that indicate the durability of the impact (short-term or long-term) and the nature of the impact (explicit or implicit). The analysis of the short-term and long-term effects of forced migration on the Ukrainian economy is based on macroeconomic statistics (key macroeconomic indicators, labour market indicators, public finance indicators, external sector statistics) in the pre-war period, the war period since 2022, and forecasts for 2024-2025. Results. Unlike regular labour migration, forced migration has a predominantly negative impact on the economy of a country of origin, both in the short and long term. The explicit effect of forced migration on the economic system of the country of origin is to damage the labour market. The implicit effects include a decrease in remittances, a reduction in production facilities, an increase in the budget deficit and regional budget imbalances, an increase in the level of external and internal debt, increased dependence on international aid, a decrease in consumption, investment and GDP growth rates. Practical implications. The practical results provide a basis for further research into policy measures to address the negative aspects of increasing migration processes in Ukraine, particularly with a view to the country's future post-war reconstruction. Value/Originality. The matrix developed to assess the impact of the forced migration shock provides a deeper understanding of the multifaceted effects of this phenomenon on the socio-economic system of a country at war.

THE NUMBERS DYNAMICS OF ANATIDS (ANSERIFORMES, ANATIDAE, AVES) IN MODEL AREAS IN DAGESTAN, NORTHEASTERN CAUCASUS, RUSSIA

The numbers of waterfowl and shorebirds declining on a global scale is largely due to the reduction in wetland areas in the era of climate warming. Long-term monitoring data obtained in 1995–2020 in two Key Bird Areas of Russia of international importance, i.e. the Sulakskaya and Turalinskaya lagoons, the Republic of Dagestan, are presented, the transboundary populations of Anseriformes (Anatidae) taken as examples, Both model lagoons are located in one of Russia’s largest bottleneck places of the western Caspian flyways, where the fly routes of European and Asian migrants intersect. The Anseriformes model group, which includes 18 predominantly background species, was chosen based on their regular encounters during migration. According to the information on the ring returns obtained from the Research and Information Center for Bird Ringing at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, a conditional outline of the generalized distribution range of Anseriformes was revealed, the faunogenetic basis of which is composed of widespread representatives of Arctic or Siberian fauna types. Based on all available data, including the information derived from literature sources, the geographic location both of populations and their regular migration areas was determined. The rating of 12 of all 18 study species was found to have significantly decreased, vs 2 that increased, and further 4 that remained stable. The resulting trends were synchronized with data available from literary sources on the same species of Anseriformes in their nesting areas. The coincidence of the corresponding trends with the distribution trends of the same anatid species in their nesting areas ensured the distance of distant populations of Anseriformes obtained along their flyways in the model lagoons to be correctly measured. This was found to correlate with the average monthly air temperatures in the autumn-winter period in the Primorskaya Lowland of Dagestan, 12 model species being associated with temperature fluctuations. The numbers of migratory populations of anatids in cold years are shown to lead to their increased migration in the study area, as a result the migration of migrants along the flight routes slowing down and their wintering places being changed. Correlation analysis showed a significant relation between the increased areas of Anseriformes wintering in the Caspian Sea with sea-level regression, in which the shallowing areas of marine waters limited the access of anatids to food resources (benthos). Three key factors determining the dynamics of a group of Anseriformes populations are discussed: hydroclimatic cycles, anthropogenic influence and foraging. A temporary ban on the hunting removal of 8 vulnerable species of anatids (the Greylag Goose, the Common Teal, the Garganey, the Gadwall, the Eurasian Wigeon, the Northern Pintail, the Northern Shoveler, and the Common Pochard) is proposed to be imposed in Siberia, Kazakhstan, the Urals Federal District, the Cis-Urals, the Volga region, and the Southern and North Caucasus federal districts until their populations become sufficiently restored.

Editorial: Return Migration and Reintegration: Discourses, Policies and Practices

Over the last few years, return migration has received growing attention in both academic and political discourse at the international, regional and national levels. This discourse on return migration is often linked to migrants’ safety and dignity. It was established during the development process of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), and it helped to unify the position of the various stakeholders involved (Panizzon and Jurt 2023). Even today, it is still being maintained when it comes to supporting member states in implementing the objectives of the GCM (United Nations Network on Migration 2021).

Building bridges or digging the trench? International organizations, social media, and polarized fragmentation

AbstractCommunication departments of international organizations (IOs) are important intermediaries of global governance who increasingly use social media to reach out to citizens directly. Social media pose new challenges for IO communication such as a highly competitive economy of attention and the fragmentation of the audiences driven by networked curation of content and selective exposure. In this context, communication departments have to make tough choices about what to communicate and how, aggravating inherent tensions between IO communication as comprehensive public information (aimed at institutional transparency)—and partisan political advocacy (aimed at normative change). If IO communication focuses on advocacy it might garner substantial resonance on social media. Such advocacy nevertheless fails to the extent that it fosters the polarized fragmentation of networked communication and undermines the credibility of IO communication as a source of trustworthy information across polarized “echo chambers.” The paper illustrates this argument through a content and social network analysis of Twitter communication on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). Remarkably, instead of facilitating cross-cluster communication (“building bridges”) Twitter handles run by the United Nations Department of Global Communications (UNDGC) seem to have substantially fostered ideological fragmentation (“digging the trench”) by their way of partisan retweeting, mentioning, and (hash)tagging.

Mountain agropastoralism: traditional practices, institutions and pressures in the Indian Trans-Himalaya of Ladakh

Animal husbandry of agropastoral communities in the mountainous region of Leh, Ladakh, has been transformed in response to socio-economic and geo-political changes. This study investigates the current state of agropastoralism in the Trans-Himalaya of Leh, Ladakh, focusing on two objectives: understanding grazing management practices and examining socio-environmental factors affecting traditional pastoral livelihoods. Through a mixed-methods approach, including interviews and focus group discussions, this study explores resource utilisation patterns and decision-making processes within local communities and institutions based on a comparative approach in three pastoral areas of Ladakh. The resource utilisation pattern differs from village to village as a response to meet seasonal fodder demands; accordingly, high-altitude pastures are assessed in winter and/or summer seasons. Key stresses to the perpetuation of traditional pastoral knowledge include livelihood diversification, increasing dependence upon exogenous food production system and diminishing significance of traditional livelihood practices with improved connectivity, higher education aspirations and development of tourism and military services. Broadly, changes could be perceived from the abandonment of regular seasonal migration to pasturelands, in livestock composition and size and the decreasing number of households practising animal herding. Apart from socio-economic and developmental pressures, pastoral practices are simultaneously threatened by wild predators as well as by global warming-induced occurrence of extreme climatic events and pest attacks. While pastoral practices are carried on by a limited number of households in the three detailed study sites, knowledge pertaining to resource management, pastureland system and grazing pattern is still intact considering the resource seasonality and range of social and environmental pressures the region experiences. Ladakh’s agropastoral practices, rooted in local ecological knowledge, face challenges from socio-economic changes, risking climate resilience, ecosystem degradation, cultural loss and food security for agropastoral communities and broader societal contexts. Thus, it becomes vital to safeguard these indigenous livelihood practices and to promote a participatory approach to enhance capacity building for the continuation of the practice, which could contribute to local economies in areas with similar socio-environmental settings.

Example of Syrian Refugees in the Scope of Turkey's Migration Policy and Management

The phenomenon of migration is a concept that is often encountered today. The phenomenon of migration has a critical importance especially for many regions and countries that have faced with immigrants and migration flows in various periods. Nowadays, many countries continue to struggle with regular and irregular migration, and many countries host refugees from different regions or countries. At this point, Turkey has been seen as a bridge between the West and the East and has been accepted as a migration country or migration route for refugees. In this context, Turkey draws attention as a country that has been exposed to migration flows from various regions and geographies from the past to the present. Furthermore, especially since 2011, the increase in Syrian refugees in Turkey after the internal conflict and war in Syria and refugees who left their country and migrated to Turkey in recent years, brought along various problems in Turkey. These increasing refugees and refugee flows have required Turkey to make various policies and regulations. This article will focus on the Syrian refugees problem in Turkey and analyze Turkey's migration policies and migration management regarding refugees.

Rights to life during migration in and from West Africa: the role of policies and narrative frames

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how policies on migration in West Africa and from the region to Europe address and frame migrants’ deaths and right to life in general and actions recommended in objective 8 of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in particular. The paper is based on an analysis of West African national, as well as African and (West) African-European transnational policy and strategy documents. It finds that while the adoption of GCM objective 8 has contributed to slightly increase policy attention to migrants’ deaths and right to life, narrative frames have been key for the justification of how the six actions recommended in the objective have been addressed and implemented at the national, regional, and transregional levels. African policy documents supporting human right-oriented narrative frames have tended to include more comprehensive provisions, and European Union-(West) African policy documents supporting deterrence-oriented frames have tended to include less provisions.

The Geopolitics in the Global Compacts: Sovereignty, Emerging Norms, and Hypocrisy in Global Migration Governance

ABSTRACT The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCM) were adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2018. After nearly five years, it is time for a critical reflection on the geopolitical interests that motivated the negotiations, agreements, and implementation. The purpose of this special issue was to critically examine how states used the Global Compacts to achieve their strategic interests using migration diplomacy. Each article attempts to question and problematise the assumptions, logics, and rhetoric put forward in the Global Compacts and resulting implementation by states and international organisations. The special issue also highlights the emerging norm of state responsibility for well-managed migration within the Global Compacts, and the notable silences around non-refoulement, internal displacement, and climate migration. The authors in this special issue worked to understand the gaps, hypocrisy, and contradictions in the implementation, now five years after the adoption of the Global Compacts. This introduction article lays out the driving questions for the special issue, along with our main themes, concepts, and contributions.