E-MINDFUL glossary #2: attitudes to migration, values, migrants, refugees and much more…
Join us as we learn more about attitudes, migration and much more.
As the project unfolds, we will publish few terms at every issue so that this glossary can help get oriented with the project activities and outcomes. The glossary will not follow an alphabetical order but rather a conceptual one, clustering terms around key topics under discussion. In this issue, we will explore migration and migrants.[1]
Migrant
“Any person who changes his/her country of usual residence” . The country of usual residence is referred to as “the country where a person has a place to live and normally spends the daily period of rest. Temporary travel abroad for purposes of recreation, holiday, visits to friends and relatives, business, medical treatment or religious pilgrimages does not change a person’s country of usual residence”.
The definition, elaborated by the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) for statistical purposes, provides an overarching concept that includes all people by on the move regardless the motives that drive the movement and the way international borders are trespassed. An important distinction is between internal and international migrants as “persons who change their country of usual residence across an international border to a country of which they are not nationals”.
The UNDESA has further detailed the definition, drawing the following distinctions: a long-term migrant is a “person who moves to a country other than that of usual residence for a period of at least a year (12 months) so that the country of destination effectively becomes the new country of usual residence”; conversely, a short-term migrant is a “person who moves to a country other than that of usual residence for a period of at least 3 months but less than a year (12 months)”.
Migration
While the term migrant is defined in international commitments, the term migration is not, although in the everyday conversation it is usually understood as “the movement of persons away from their place of usual residence, either across an international border or within a State”. In formulating commitments in the field of migration, the international community has deconstructed the process into the steps of leaving one’s own country, entering the national territory of a country different from the one’s own, and returning to one’s own country.
While international commitments grant the right of individuals to leave one’s own country and the right to return to one’s own country, the corollary right to enter the territory of another State is primarily regulated by the national laws of the destination country. This is not surprising as, in line with the modern age concept of territorial sovereignty, it is the prerogative of a State to determine the admission and exclusion of non‐nationals to and from the territory on which the State exercises its sovereign powers. The national laws regulating the entry, residence and exit of non-nationals are usually referred to as Immigration laws, Laws regulating the status of foreigners, Laws concerning the entry, residence and settlement of aliens, and similar.
Migration governance
The term usually refers to “the norms and organizational structures which regulate and shape how States respond to international migration”. It is an overarching concept that tries to grasp the complex relation between States as well as States and individuals’ rights when shaping approaches to regulate migration and respond to migration challenges. Given the structural power asymmetry between individuals and States, the international commitments seek to re-balance such disproportion, primarily by imposing limitations to the States’ sovereign powers, envisaging States’ duties towards ensuring a humane and dignified treatment of migrants as well as the protection of their fundamental rights. To this end, the primary purpose in migration governance is to ensure that States work collectively in ways that make them better able to fulfill their objectives and duties than they would be acting alone.
Migration management
It is usually used to refer to “numerous governmental functions within a national system of the orderly and humane management for cross-border migration, particularly managing the entry and presence of foreigners within the borders of the State.” The term also refers to “a planned approach to the development of policy, legislative and administrative responses to key migration issues”. While migration management refers more to the single State’s response, migration governance is a more comprehensive term that catches the dynamic interaction of different institutions within a State and the multi-level relation between States.
Types of migration: voluntary vs. forced migration
Moving from a country to another is usually a way to access opportunities for self-improvement and growth - such as study, employment, research - or to establish businesses and enterprises, to reunite with family members and relatives who already live and work abroad, or simply to satisfy one’s curiosity to explore a new environment. In some cases, individuals are moved by growing income differentials between countries, paired with the dissatisfaction in the capacity of their home governments to address socioeconomic challenges, to fight against corruption, to minimize unemployment, to ensure equal access to basic services, such as quality education, hospitals, transport. In other cases, people move because of pressing needs due to sudden economic shocks, chronic hardship due to underdevelopment, famine, natural or man-made disasters, persecution, conflicts and social unrest, environmental degradation, climate change.
The everyday experience – confirmed by the vast literature on this subject - suggests that the decision to migrate is the result of a complex combination of individual and contextual drivers and determinants as well as geopolitical root causes - overall understood as “the underlying socioeconomic and cultural conditions or accumulation of grievances that progressively compel movement” .
On the basis of these determinants, international commitments have shaped around the distinction between voluntary and forced migration, the first understood as “an international movement based on the initiative and the free will of the person”, while the latter is defined as “a migratory movement in which an element of coercion exists, including threats to life and livelihood, whether arising from natural or man-made causes”. In a world in which forced displacement and voluntary migration are often inter-related, this distinction may result increasingly unhelpful, calling for a more comprehensive and forward-looking approach.
[1] Definitions are taken from the Glossary of Migration edited by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN Migration Agency.
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