Every weekend in the summer, the editorial team of Duty offers you a reflection on the social issues that will shape our world in the coming years. Individual and collective challenges will challenge us constantly on these issues, which we will approach from the angle of solutions as far as possible. Today: the migratory waves of tomorrow.
There were five hundred of them, desperate to reach a better world by any means. But the boat that was supposed to take them there sank last month in the Mediterranean Sea, like too many others before it, leaving them all presumed missing, possibly through the fault of the Greek coast guard, which did not want them. came to reveal the Guardian. Such tragedies are on the rise. The rate of global migration is also set to increase. At the same time, more and more countries, seeing this migratory flow arrive, tighten their borders. The inconsistency is untenable and it will remain so.
The last few years have been those of all records. More than 108 million displaced worldwide, which corresponds to the largest annual increase ever recorded, says the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The war in Ukraine has contributed to this (about a third of the 19 million more displaced than in 2021), but not only. Natural disasters — the very ones that will only get worse — have been responsible for more than half of internal displacement within affected countries.
The world has also been the scene of an exceptional number of conflicts (56 in 2020), unheard of since the early 1990s. Make no mistake, these multiple causes of migration will only continue.
To these migrants fleeing war, persecution or the upheavals of the climate crisis are added those who leave in search of economic prospects. As long as countries in need of labor offer them jobs that their natives do not want (in agriculture, catering, health care – one can think of the “guardian angels” of the pandemic), these migrants will continue to hit the road. Whether we try to block it or not.
In Europe as in North America, the trend is to make migration more secure, through the militarization of interventions, the use of detention, the construction of fences on land or at sea. Budgets security exploded, without this slowing down arrivals. On the contrary, migrants simply take more dangerous routes, as evidenced by the tragic and repeated shipwrecks in the Mediterranean or the appalling deaths of migrants in the middle of the forest along the Canada-US border. Which “subsidizes” in passing a criminal industry of human trafficking estimated at 13 billion US dollars last year, according to professor and researcher at the University of Montreal Luna Vives Gonzales.
Travel is of course not all international. Many people try to find a better life in a nearby town. Thus, 76% of displaced persons resettled in low- or middle-income countries last year. States that often do not have the necessary infrastructure or services to manage this unexpected explosion of their population, which exacerbates tensions. The inequity with the rich countries, which themselves would have more means, is striking.
The ever-increasing immigration, however, also draws resources, housing and services from these countries, elements which could thus not be sufficient to meet demand, warn demographic projections.
This worries governments. And the reluctance of the local population to welcome a more generous number of migrants reinforces these leaders. This withdrawal into oneself is seen above all on the right, even on the extreme right, but the left is also divided, as evidenced by the internal debates within the American Democratic Party. The current climate is therefore not temporary. Neither is the wave of migration, however.
The year 2022 should serve as much of a warning as an example to the countries of the planet. In addition to migratory records, international development aid envelopes have also reached record highs (204 billion US dollars worldwide, an increase of 14%, and the fourth in a row). Here again, the support of many countries for Ukraine came to inflate the figures.
The war in this country will have shown that rich countries are able to adapt in times of crisis their reception thresholds and their aid budgets to less well-off states. What prevents them from reoffending? Because the solution, for the future, will have to go through one or the other.
Tomorrow’s migrants will not resign themselves to staying, for lack of an invitation to find refuge elsewhere, in a conflict zone or on a parched land. The countries of the planet (the richest, above all) will have to welcome them or invest in climate adaptation, governance and economic stability in order to help them stay at home or not far from their region.
The status quo is impossible and leads us straight to a wall. Only an orderly migration will enable these displaced people to find a better life in complete safety, but also, and above all, for the governments that welcome them to better manage their integration and their arrival.