Forced Displacement in Conflict Scenarios

Forced Displacement and Childhood: The Crisis of The Central American Refugee Children Andrea Hellemeyer We live in a time that witnesses two phenomena growing in inversely proportional ways. The world population has not stopped increasing, and the territory, far from remaining a solid and stable variable, is seen altered. More precisely, circumscribed and diminished. Wars, political instability, religious persecution, natural disasters, and the irreversible consequences of climate change have made vast portions of the planet uninhabitable.

In 2019, the number of migrants, globally, was estimated at 272 million, representing 3.5% of the world’s population. A third of these migrations were directed from the countries of the south to those to the north. Europe, North America, and the Gulf States are among the top three immigration regions. Additionally, during this period, 740 million people were displaced within their own countries. The figures speak for themselves; we are witnessing the second wave of migration in the modern era after the one in the late 19th century.

However, the interpretation of human movements in terms of waves invites further reflection.

Undoubtedly, the very idea of a migratory wave is fundamentally based on quantitative data. Figures show such a magnitude of a growth rate that it becomes impossible not to notice their presence.

The wave, however, awaits its recession, a return to a certain stillness. Is this image capable of apprehending a problem that presents itself, contrary to the metaphor, in an insistent and sustained manner? Is it that current living conditions incessantly drive towards displacement? In this regard, it is not difficult to verify the decline of National States in their role as guarantors of the preservation of institutional life. Once a State’s solid strength has declined in providing social meaning, another state of affairs arises. The firm ground Modernity has once provided is broken down, leaving in its place a fluid medium on which the subjectivities of our time are constituted. Along these lines, migration could no longer be considered in terms of a temporally circumscribed phenomenon of lesser or greater scope, but as a broader model of existence.

This complex problem deserves to be thought of within the background of connectivity. It creates an illusion of absolute ubiquity, providing a feeling of unlimited space without an interior or an exterior and, consequently, without a border. However, we are warned that globalization has a form of a paradox. Promoting, on the one hand, the rapid circulation of products, images, information, and capital (as well as pathogens, COVID-19 pandemic has made it possible to measure in real-time the speed of its expansion); and, on the other hand, increasing uncertainty and fragility due to the hardening of geographical borders. In this sense, the path that migration follows suggests that the increase in migratory movements is likely to persist due to the inability of States to reduce social and economic disparities.