Migrations by The Paris Globalist

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GLOBALIST IN THIS ISSUE Riding â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;La Bestiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; through the Mexico-US border Should China fear brain drain? Understanding the British rhetoric on immigration

Can Brazil handle an exponential rise in asylum seekers? Undocumented and unaccompanied minors in Paris Can the Burundian diaspora impact politics at home?

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January 2015, Unity March in Paris, photo credit: Guillaume Levrier

Contents

p. 36 From Haiti to Brazil, a New Migration Flow Heloisa Harumi Miura

Theme: Migrations

p. 42 Reforming French Asylum Law Rozalia Harsanyi

p. 6 A Better Alternative: Interview with the International Detention Coalition’s Advocacy Coordinator Katie Youtz

p. 47 Remittances and Foreign Investment in Tajikistan Andrea Jansson

p. 10 The Paradox of Lampedusa Cristina Orsini

p. 51 En Quête de Stabilité : immersion au sein de la diaspora burundaise Lou Perpes

p.13 European Brain Drain Stefania Maggio p. 16 Why China Need Not Fear “Brain Drain” Raya Yampolsky p. 18 The Rebirth of Immigration to Brazil Lucas Valente da Costa p. 21 Nomadism in the Sahel Region Alida Toé p. 24 Off-Target: How EU Immigration to the UK Affects Non-EU Immigration Alfred Wong p.28 Frontière Sud du Mexique : frontière oubliée Kim Nommesch p. 30 Foreign “Housemaids” in Malaysia Pauline Vidal p. 33 Palestiniens de Syrie : l’exil deux fois est destructeur Caroline Fréchard

p. 54 Jamaking It Work Emilie d’Amico p. 56 UNRWA Mutation Julia Roy p. 59 Undocumented and Unaccompanied Yena Lee p. 62 Flux Migratoires en 2013 Atelier de Cartographie de Sciences Po p. 63 Student Mobility and the Internationalisation of Higher Education Services Elham Torabian p. 67 Digital Migration as the End of the Nation State? Eeva Metssalu p. 69 Jumping Off in New Places : Programa Frontera Sur Marlené Nancy Lopez

Photo Credit: Yena Lee

Volume 9 Issue 1 Theme : Migrations

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Editorial In late 2014, The Economist published an article entitled “What Have the Immigrants Ever Done for Us?” with the tongue-in-cheek subtitle “Rather a lot, according to a new piece of research”. Indeed, it would seem that immigrants in Britain contribute a significantly larger amount ($6.4 billion) to government revenue than they take away in welfare benefits. The Economist followed up with an uproarious parody - a “speech” made by “Egaraf Legin”, leader of the “United Kingdom for Immigrants Party (UKFIP)” who says, “The burden of the native population on this country is simply insupportable.”

Editor-in-Chief Sara Chatterjee

President Yena Lee

Vice President Sarah Vallée

Editors

No matter the findings of academics (or the ever-welcome antics of The Economist), anti-immigration sentiments are currently taking Europe by storm. In Dresden, the epicenter of a new anti-immigrant movement led by Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the west), protesters hold up banners that read “We want our homeland back” and “Send the criminal asylum seekers packing”. Such references to what exactly constitutes “otherness”, belonging and criminality strike at the heart of our considerations this spring.

Daria Karaulova Alexander Hurst Cristina Orsini Angele Cauchois Rebecca Rosman Elham Torabian Jieun Jang

While immigration is certainly a central part of this issue of The Paris Globalist, we chose to explore the theme of ‘Migrations’ using the broadest possible lens. Our contributors have investigated all kinds of relocation - the lives of Palestine refugees, China in the face of brain drain, climate change migration in the Sahel region, and what digital migration means for Estonian citizenship. Beyond often-cited economic facts and sociocultural consequences, the idea has been to explore the experiential and the human side of migration.

Katie Youtz Raya Yampolsky Lucas Valente da Costa Alida Toé Alfred Wong Kim Nommesch Pauline Vidal Caroline Fréchard Heloisa Harumi Miura Rozalia Harsanyi Andrea Jansson Lou Perpes Emilie d’Amico Julia Roy Yena Lee Elham Torabian Eeva Metssalu Marlené Nancy Lopez

You may recall an award-winning film called Ilo Ilo, that tells the tale of a young Filipina mother who moves to Singapore to work as a nanny for a middle-class family. You may – as I did – have spent much of your winter break listening to Serial, a twelve-part podcast that revisits the 1999 case of Adnan Syed, a young man of Pakistani heritage accused of murdering his ex girlfriend of Korean heritage, Hae Min Lee, in Baltimore. I suppose you also might have read about the “Miracle Baby” who was found washed up on the shores of Spain alone in August 2014. Or are you merely an anxious “international student” hoping to find work in the UK after graduation? Each of these narratives has its place in the Spring 2015 issue of The Paris Globalist. Sara Chatterjee January 2015

Contributors

Cover Artist Pranav Sarin

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A Better Alternative Interview with Ben Lewis – Advocacy Coordinator for International Detention Coalition by Katie Youtz

en is an international human rights lawyer with extensive policy advocacy experience working with irregular migrant populations. He is responsible for coordinating government engagement around alternatives to detention at the International Detention Coalition (IDC), a not-for-profit network of more than 300 organizations in 70 countries globally. Katie Youtz: The IDC is one of the leading organizations advocating for the use of alternatives to immigration detention (ATD) worldwide. You define ATD as “any legislation, policy or practice [allowing] asylum seekers, refugees and migrants to reside in the community with freedom of movement while their migration status is being resolved.” Can you tell us what this looks like in practice?

Then there are a whole host of non-housing placements as well; things like allowing people to live on their own with free movement. That’s the ideal, and when paired with case management, this allows migrants and migration officials to work towards the fair and efficient resolution of cases without impinging on rights. For example, migrants can be provided with temporary visas and identification documents so that they can work and take care of their families themselves. There are really a great variety of options available. KY: For someone who is awaiting an immigration decision in a community-housing arrangement what would day-to-day life look like?

BL: At the start, when we’re talking about alternatives to detention, we mean non-custodial, communitybased settings. If it’s custodial, it’s just detention by another name. That’s important, because some of the practices we’re seeing are being called “alternatives” but in fact they’re custodial. People Ben Lewis: I think the most important thing to cannot leave. They’re in a confined space. So in understand about alternatives to detention in an effect they are alternative forms of detention rather immigration context is that these don’t have to be than alternatives to detention, and there is a need to be more clear and precise with language. physical locations. In fact, the most effective alternatives we’ve found globally are not physical locations but instead effective procedures and approaches to migration governance more generally. These are things like effective screening mechanisms to help states identify people that might pose a risk to safety and security in exceptional cases rather than detaining people en masse or upon arrival. There are also screening procedures to identify vulnerable categories of individuals such as children, asylum seekers, the elderly, victims of trafficking, stateless persons, or LGBT individuals. For those individuals the state has an enhanced duty of care, so it’s important to screen those people out of the detention environment. But then once screening is effectively done, there are a number of community-based models that look more like housing and that might be the more traditionally understood notion of an alternative. There are specialized units of housing for victims of trafficking, for example. We’ve seen some great models of psychosocial care provision for victims of torture or trauma and intensive case-management models coupled with housing for unaccompanied minor children. 6

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Ideally, a community-based setting looks much like it does for you and me. People would come and go. They would send their children to school. They would go to work. They would form bonds with their neighbors and other community members while their immigration case is being processed. In fact we’ve found that this is often the most effective way to get people to engage in the migration procedure – by treating them with dignity, care, and respect. In the United States people seeking asylum were historically simply given a court date. They were able to move around like any other temporary visa-holder within the United States until the court determined whether or not their asylum status was valid. In Jordan we’ve seen a fantastic NGOprotection model for victims of trafficking. Some shelters that have traditionally served victims of domestic violence (DV) are increasingly able to receive referrals from the police or the InterMinisterial Task Force on Anti-Trafficking to accommodate victims of trafficking, who are oftentimes female migrant domestic workers. While housed at these NGO-run shelters migrant women are able to come and go, live with their

families, they’re provided with medical care, psychosocial support, and assistance to return to their country of origin. This is a good example of a protective care model, where people are actually cared for rather than seen as threats to society.

vs. how many migrants or asylum seekers are in detention facilities?

BL: This is a great question because it’s important to note that the use of immigration detention is not “traditional” at all. This is a relatively new way of approaching migration governance. It was only in the late 1980s and early 1990s that certain countries, such as the United States or Australia, started using criminal-like detention facilities to hold migrants on a much larger scale. After 9/11 this became an increasingly popular way of managing migration, because migration became conflated with security and terrorism risks.

So there’s no way to be sure of the proportion of people being placed in alternative settings. What we do know is that a number of countries are working to explore, develop and implement alternatives to detention across all regions of the world and that there is increasing global pressure to cease the practice of detaining migrants purely on the basis of irregular entry.

BL: The problem is that we don’t know how many people are being held in custodial detention centers. States are not currently tracking this KY: How prevalent are alternatives to detention, information very systematically or, if they are, it’s compared to “traditional” custodial practices? not being shared publicly.

At the UN-level there have been consistent calls not to conflate security and migration issues. Just because someone is seeking asylum does not mean that they are a risk to national security. There also has never been any statistical evidence that the increased use of immigration detention deters irregular migration or makes countries safer. So how prevalent is the use of alternatives? We’ve seen good alternative practices in most every country in the world, and these practices have often pre-dated the rise in the use of immigration detention. I think the challenge is getting governments to realize that alternatives can be just as effective, more humane, and more cost-effective in governing migration.

KY: What are some of the problems with custodial immigration detention centers that alternatives are specifically trying to address? BL: The most fundamental problem with immigration detention facilities is that they look and feel much like prisons and criminal detention facilities. The cardinal rule of administrative detention is that it should never, in purpose or effect, be a punishment. It’s meant to simply get people through a migration procedure. But many countries actually use criminal prisons to house migrants. Oftentimes those prisons are overcrowded, there’s a lack of adequate shelter, lights, space, food. This is a clear violation of international legal obligations.

The irony with administrative detention is that there has been no crime committed, per se, as there is in KY: You’ve said these models are more cost- a criminal justice setting. effective than detention. Can you give us some figures? BL: We did a global study in 2011 called “There are Alternatives” in which we looked at compliance rates, cost savings, and the humane benefits of alternatives across 28 countries. From a compliance perspective, alternatives have maintained very high rates of compliance with appearance at immigration proceedings. In a recent study collecting data from 13 programs, we found compliance rates ranging from 80% to 99.9%. Such high compliance rates would seem to discount the need for putting people into custodial detention settings in the first place. From a cost savings perspective, on average alternatives cost 80% less than custodial detention models. In Canada we found 93% cost savings, in Australia 69%, and in a couple of models in the EU we found around 70% cost savings.

Photo Courtesy: Ben Lewis

KY: Are there reliable figures for how many people are living in these kinds of alternative care models

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But in the criminal justice setting there are much more robust due process protections. People don’t have the same access to legal assistance or access to the courts in the administrative setting and that has been highly problematic. But even when the detention conditions are relatively humane, there are certain particularly vulnerable individuals who should never be placed in detention settings. The most obvious are children. Even in very “nice” conditions or for very short periods of time, children suffer life-long developmental, physical and mental health harms due to the heightened risks of abuse and neglect in immigration detention facilities. They often show heightened rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. What we’ve seen, at least initially, is that this is born from the idea that there’s been no crime committed but they feel a sense of punishment. These kids can’t go outside and play. They’re not able to go to school with their peers, and it doesn’t make sense to them why they’re being locked up in a detention facility. You could say the same for asylum seekers and torture and trauma survivors. KY: You’ve given some examples of relatively successful models of ATD. Are there any other models in Europe that are having similar success rates?

BL: There is no one country that does it perfectly, but we’ve seen positive practices in every country we’ve visited. Belgium in particular has taken the lead on eliminating the immigration detention of children. They have a housing model that is quite good, including return houses for families that are not custodial so that they can exercise their freedom of movement, however we understand that this practice is currently being reviewed and we’re concerned that Belgium may backtrack on years of positive practice. I visited a really wonderful center for unaccompanied minors in Sweden. It is an open accommodation center, where the kids have access to the internet and phone services, and can visit with friends. They are also cared for by 24-hour case managers and provided free legal advice, medical care and job support. There’s another wonderful center in Germany where I saw a dedicated team of social workers and psychosocial professionals providing housing and support to children who have migrated across the Sinai and who have often been subjected to horrific abuse, both physical and sexual. Many arrive in the EU having experienced extreme trauma, some suffering from PTSD, and as a result there are high incidences of self-harm and suicidal ideation amongst this group. As children, they are placed in intensive case management and psychosocial care and support settings that are open facilities rather than detention centers.

Photo Credit: Flickr/CC/DIBP - Christmas Island

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KY: How does the IDC lobby government to adopt best practices and to invest more in alternatives rather than in custodial detention? BL: States continue to resort to detention despite clear legal obligations requiring it to be a measure of last resort. So we work closely with the regional and UN bodies to make stronger statements against the increasing use of detention. At the same time, we have over 300 member organizations in 70 countries, many of whom are engaging in direct lobbying work with national governments. But mostly, states themselves are looking to make a change in the way that they approach migration. They understand that the use of immigration detention is incredibly expensive and inhumane and subjects them to criticism from NGOs and the UN system. So they are seeking to implement alternatives that our research shows have incredibly high compliance rates, are much cheaper than custodial detention, and uphold the human rights of migrants. KY: How does ATD help with integration of migrants into the host community? BL: When people have liberty and free movement and can access health, social services, and education they are able to integrate naturally and more seamlessly. Detention itself has been shown to be incredibly damaging to mental and physical health, especially the use of prolonged detention. In many countries in the EU people are sometimes held throughout the entire process of their asylum claim. The impact of that detention is incredibly traumatizing, and this practice is, in fact, creating individuals who are more likely to be a burden on society because they’re not able to take care of and support themselves in the long term. It’s not only that alternatives are better at promoting integration, but also that detention severely hinders integration. KY: What recommendations does the IDC have to encourage governments to combat the political discourse that migrants pose a threat to domestic economies and societies? BL: We’ve put together a framework that we call the “Community Assessment and Placement” (CAP) model in which we make a number of recommendations to states. The first recommendation is that states adopt stronger legislative measures to prohibit certain types of immigration detention practices such as the detention of migrant children. It should be clear in in the legal and policy frameworks that these types of practices are not acceptable.

sure that detention is only ever used as a last resort and that states are detecting the people with vulnerabilities for whom they have a duty of care. The third step of the CAP framework is looking at community-based models that could be used even if states have concerns about compliance or security without resorting to custodial detention. These are some of the care and protection models, which I mentioned earlier. Finally, states can look at imposing restrictions or conditions on the movement of individuals until their immigration matter is resolved. But I’ll note that our research finds that overly-restrictive conditions can actually be counter-productive in ensuring that individuals are engaged in the process and comply with adverse immigration decisions. When these various tools fail, it’s possible that short-term custodial detention may be appropriate, but clearly this would be in very limited cases, which helps states to respect their international legal obligations against arbitrary and unnecessary detention. So using this CAP framework, we help governments to envision a different way of managing migration starting with legal reform, through to initial screening and assessment of needs, and all the way through to imposing limited conditions or restrictions on movement if necessary. We also strongly encourage governments to resist linking migration and migration policies to security concerns or xenophobic attitudes. There is a disturbing trend of states using detention not because it’s effective but because it seems to be popular with the general public. We cannot be systematically denying people of their rights and dignity simply because it plays well to popular opinion, and this requires strong and brave voices from within governments themselves to combat these trends.

Katie Youtz is a second year Master’s student in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action at PSIA. Her studies center on international migration in Europe and Africa.

Next, we recommend states implement robust screening and assessment procedures to make The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

Opinion | The Paradox of Lampedusa by Cristina Orsini

f I speak of sun, crystalline waters, and culinary traditions on an island in the Mediterranean, your mind will probably indulge in warm, sweet thoughts about summer holidays. If I say “Lampedusa”, you will probably think about (im)migration, nameless bodies sinking in the depths of the sea, and your stomach might produce a feeble feeling of discomfort in light of a repeated tragedy that seems to have no solution. The recent history of Lampedusa indeed touches upon some of the most important issues related to what is today often referred to as “illegal” migration to Europe. In the last decade, Lampedusa has been the first European soil touched by more than 150,000 migrants; it has been the theater of clashes between migrants and local inhabitants, but also of joint protests against the Italian government. Lampedusa has also seen militarized border control, managed by Frontex, the European border agency. Over a year after the death of 500 African migrants in October 2013, Frontex’s new border protection operation, “Triton”, is being implemented in Lampedusa. Unlike previous programs, Triton does not provide for search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, leaving nothing but grim prospects for the future of migrants. At the same time, Lampedusa has been the theater of six yearly editions of the “festival of migration and of the retrieval of oral history”, Lampedusa in Festival. The festival is a contest for filmmakers who want to depict migration in a way that reverses stereotypes and brings the migrant back in the picture - not as a body among several on the waters of the Mediterranean, but as an individual with a history, fears, and hopes. In the very place where migration has become primarily connected with riots, security problems, and death, this festival wants to promote an image of migration that does not articulate itself in the dialectical opposites of the foreign and the local, the outside and the inside; who belongs and who is not welcome.

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Along with the submitted movies, the festival gives space for music, installation art, and debates within its very diverse audience, which includes students, journalists, musicians and activists. Movies do not need to focus on Lampedusa itself. For example, the documentary “The land between” covers the physical and mental preparation of migrants attempting to cross the metal net that divides the Moroccan territory from the Spanish city of Melilla. Indeed, a documentary about migrations in Lampedusa today would be one without migrants. The reception center of Lampedusa is currently empty, as migrant boats are stopped at sea and directed towards other reception centers in Sicily and southern Italy. Lampedusa has, indeed, become subject to alternating “reception” policies, which vary according to the political strategies of the government in charge in Italy and in Brussels. For example, the flux of boats reaching Italy’s shores strongly declined when Rome promised Gaddafi a steady purchase of gas and oil in exchange for a Libyan effort to prevent migrant boats from leaving the African coast of the Mediterranean. The lack of migrants in Lampedusa seems deeply paradoxical when considering that Lampedusa, the island that has become (in)famous as a dangerous bridge for illegal migration, hosts an increasing number of security personnel and relief workers, to the point that the very demographic composition of the island is quickly changing.

Photo Credit: Flickr/CC/Vito Manzari

This paradoxical image of Lampedusa as the “migrants’ island” has severely damaged the local inhabitants’ possibility to exploit the island’s high touristic potential. To worsen the situation, before the summer of 2014, news was circulated about a possible Ebola contagion on the island. While this was absolutely false, it was enough to further kill Lampedusa’s already extremely fragile tourist market. In this context, the festival’s organizers also use Lampedusa in Festival to voice the preoccupation of the local inhabitants who dream of Lampedusa not as a military base, but as a place where tourists can peacefully enjoy their holidays. I interviewed Luca, a participant in the festival’s last edition, which took place in the final week of September 2014. He told me how the resentment of local inhabitants towards the current neglect of their needs was powerfully summarized by an old man sitting outside a bar. Talking with Luca about the image of Lampedusa in the world, he said, “Too many people invent and issue judgments in Rome and beyond. In the meantime, here we get fried in a pan”.

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When I asked Luca what the festival had taught him regarding the arrival of migrants’ boats in Lampedusa, he smiled, pointing out that I was asking the wrong question. “Observing and judging the simple fact of the arrival of migrant boats on Lampedusa is not only limiting, but wrong. The fact that these people reach our shores is the result of historical events and political choices strictly connected to each other. If you look at the timing of the arrival of migrant boats in the last ten years, you can immediately see that their alternating rhythm mirrors the outburst of wars or other specific political choices, for which our own European countries are often responsible”. Lampedusa has become the image of a tragedy that does not only regard the innumerable migrants that sink at its shores. It has become the symbol of a growing misleading way to look at migration as an intrinsically humanitarian and security issue. Looking at migrants as security threats and/or as bodies to be saved strips their act of migration from its essential political dimension. Migration, thus, becomes depoliticized, and the images of dramatic shipwrecks broadcasted on TV unite governments, citizens and migrants for a few days, just to leave space for the next emergency. In the meantime, however, militarization and lack of opportunities remain the daily reality of the island’s inhabitants; human rights violations the daily reality of migrants. It is precisely the term “human rights” that Luca would like to repeat to those political parties, in Italy and beyond, that build their propaganda on the securitization of migration and xenophobia.

to tell. People do not have pleasure in leaving their families, walking across desert, and risking their life at sea. They would not do it if they were not both desperate and courageous enough to aim for a better life. Migration is nothing but a legitimate answer to all the conflicts that we ourselves contribute to unleash. The presence of migrants is important. It should trigger our self-questioning about the society we live in, without being aware of those living in the hardest conditions and fighting to change them.” This year’s edition of Lampedusa in Festival ended with a play performed by Memento Mari, an Italian and Belgian theater group. In a medley of noises from the sea, voices from news programs and music, fragments of stories of migrants who attempted (successfully or not) to reach Lampedusa were read out loud. According to Luca, this long list of names and personal stories of people whose existence becomes primarily defined by the word “illegal” was one of the most touching moments of the festival. The performance ended with the one minute repetition of a single word: Welcome. A call for tourists to go and bathe in Lampedusa’s crystalline waters under the sun, to taste its cuisine, and to bring with them opportunities for the few who still live there. A call for those migrants who have the courage to leave everything behind, and would like to bury their stories and be reborn. But also a call to ourselves, as if infinitely repeating the word “welcome” could expiate the sins of a society of rejection.

“I would knock at the door of these politicians together with an immigrant without a residence permit to translate what he or she would have

Cristina Orsini is a first-year Master’s student at PSIA, where she studies International Security and Human Rights with a focus on the Middle East.

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European Brain Drain Old Myths, New Perspectives by Stefania Maggio

ince the Industrial Revolution, immigration has been one of the main elements of globalization. If it is true that money and better standards of life have been some common “push” factors over time, something has changed: in the last decades workers have been classified as highly skilled. Although migration is a kaleidoscopic phenomenon involving several countries, the case of European Brain Drain merits special consideration. Brain drain is a phenomenon that has changed the international scenario. This term was coined by the British Royal Society to describe the immigration of British scientists to Canada and the US in the 50’ and 60’s. Although brain drain may be a positive reality, “circulation” is fundamental for a country that is to be an attractive pole for skilled immigrants, in order to replace the brain drain with brain gain. While European immigration to “attractive” countries has been easy enough in the past few decades, nowadays the most attractive countries’ policies are getting stricter towards immigrants, in particular towards Southern Europeans. This renders the possibility of staying in that country increasingly difficult.

professionals coming from India, Russia and China, several workers from the OECD countries have migrated to the US with a temporary visa. The most important channel the US government has used to recruit people has always been the educational system. In fact, according to the OECD, in 1999, 25% of workers with temporary visas in the US were previously students in the US. Although this was true fifteen years ago, the situation is now changing. In fact, even if the US government easily releases temporary visa such as the HB-1, these last only six years, which makes it difficult for students to stay after their graduation. Why is it so difficult obtain permanent residence? Since every part of the application is sensitive, workers cannot change their status quickly when they change jobs or address, and the same happens with the employers.

Old and New Destinations The US’s Restriction Policy In the 19th century, the world experienced the European inter-continental emigration of unskilled workers to the land-abundant New World. The most attractive pole for skilled workers is still the US. In fact, apart from skilled

French student freshly graduated from a US university. Photo credit: Hélène Barthélémy

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DOSSIER: DEMOCRACY

The consequence is that the number of students who have graduated in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) is decreasing. The real issue is that companies’ demand is not met by the offer of skilled STEM students. According to Bill Gates, the United States of America is number one in educating thousands of talents, with the majority of students studying on scholarship. However, most of these students leave the country upon graduation. The case of the US seems to be a peculiar one since after students have been prepared for insertion into the professional world, restrictive migration policies cause them to leave. Great Britain and Its Predictable Drastic Shift Great Britain represents the second most attractive pole for immigrants. Why? According to the London School of Economics, Great Britain had a striking plan to consecrate £62 million to foreign students, considering that £254 million are invested in local ones. The British government also boosted scientist and researchers’ salaries by 25%. While this happened in 2002, nowadays things have taken a predictable turn. As reported by Open Europe Organization, the migration rate in Switzerland in 2012 was four and a half time higher than in the UK. In the same year, Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland received more immigrants each than the UK. In May 2014, David Cameron announced that he was willing to cut the immigration rate from European countries, since after the Arab Spring, many Northern Africans had access to Europe, primarily through Italy. Even if it is true that Great Britain is trying to cut European immigration, it demonstrated to be doing quite well in what is called “circulation”. In fact, in 2004 the British Government published a plan called “Sciences and Innovation Investment Framework (2004-2014)” that set the goal of investing the 2.5 percent of GDP in research and sciences. According to Aspen Institute Italia, although these figures are promising, this has not stopped British scientists’ exodus.

Canada and Australia: New Destinations Canada: A Two-Flow Policy Although Canada has also experienced brain drain, since most of its high-skilled workers have migrated to the US, it remains a big importer of human capital. A two-flow policy seems to be the key. In this country, “circulation” of brain power is often temporary, which is a very beneficial factor if we think in terms of country economic and social gains. Canada is one of the most European-friendly coun-

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tries, because it has not excessively suffered from the financial crisis of 2008. The good news is that the Canadian government admit to be filling some economic gaps thanks to European immigration. If in the 19th century, Irish immigrants preferred the US over all the other countries, Canada has actually become their second preferred choice in the last few decades. According to the Canadian Official website for Visa, more than 11,000 Irish immigrants have been flown to Canada in the last few years, who are now filling positions in the field of fisheries, mining and oil. For knowledge-based workers Quebec seems to be the most popular state, thanks to its appealing PhD visas and the Quebec Skilled Workers Program. Australia: More Applications, Less Visas In the last few years, the Australian phenomenon rose considerably. Thousands of Europeans, above all from the poorest European countries, have left for Australia with dreams of working on the beach between a nap and a glass coconut milk. Since the first Australian settlers were Irish and British criminals, Australia has a special connection to Europe. In fact, in the after- war period, the highest immigration rate to Australia was registered in the case of Italy, Greece, Germany and Croatia, according to the Migration Heritage Centre. For example, Melbourne is the city with the biggest Greek community in the world. The fact that in 1945, the Australian population amounted just to 7, 400,00 million people, compared to the 20 million of today is an important element to understand the country’s attractiveness. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2013 there were 414,000 immigrants in Australia, most of them from Europe. In 2014, they have been reduced by 30,000. Even if temporary work and tourist visas are relatively easy to obtain, the same cannot be said of extensions, since it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a sponsor. Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s plan is to reduce immigration to a maximum of 250,000 people a year, which is more than 100,000 persons less than the current number. The good news concerns permanent immigrants: the main percentage of them are skilled workers, since from the 80’s the Australian Government created a Migration Program Plan that divided immigrants quotas into three fields (family, skilled and humanitarian). According to the 2013-2014 Migration Programme Report, the total migration program outcome of 2013-2014 amounted to 128,550 skilled immigrants.

A Good Lesson for Southern Europe: The Case of Italy

Brain drain positively affects the world economy in term of providing benefits when it is a temporary phenomenon. To do so, politicians should implement “two-flow policies”, as in the case of Canada or “return policies” to minimize the economic damage caused by the emigration of skilled workers, as Great Britain did. A non “circulation” issue is affecting South-European countries such as Italy, where the government is investing neither in research nor sciences, rendering the country a non-attractive pole for skilled immigrants. Almost 400,000 students have left Italy in the last decade, and only 50,000 foreigners have been attracted. Short term contracts and unpaid internships are not attractive elements in emigration processes. According to the Aspen Institute Italia Report, Italy does not have specific programs that facilitate the

entry of high skilled people - most of the immigrants in the peninsula are not skilled. This reticence to improve the attractiveness of the peninsula has both economic and social costs. In the last few years, Italy and other South European countries such as Greece experienced a harsh economic crisis, showing to be unable to deal with it both from a financial and a structural points of view. Although in the last decades one of the solutions to escape poor standards of living and the economic crisis was migration to rich countries, nowadays the situation is changing. Indeed, old destinations such as the United States, Great Britain and Australia have implemented stricter policies concerning immigrants. In a nutshell, although migrants find still quite easy to access these countries, it is not so simple to stay.

Stefania is studying International Security at PSIA.

Tsinghua University students on a volunteer trip to Shanxi Province, China Photo courtesy: Djavan De Clercq

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 69 Issue 1

Why China Need Not Fear “Brain Drain” By Raya Yampolsky

eng Xiaoping reopened China to the world when he implemented landmark reforms in the 1970s. With the advent of “reform and opening up”, the Chinese government sent burgeoning leaders abroad for training and education, and reinforced business ties with the outside world. Learning from the mistakes and successes of elected officials in Europe and the US became an important element of the CCP’s policy-making process. As the economy expanded and the country industrialized, droves of young Chinese students were granted the opportunity to follow in their leaders’ footsteps. Institutions of higher education around the world welcome international students from China at everincreasing rates. According to the Chinese Ministry of Education, in 2013, the total number of Chinese youth educated abroad reached 3.05 million. Only 1.44 million have returned to China. Most countries striving to boost their human capital in the context of today’s globalized world are at risk of “brain drain,” or having their highest skilled population emigrate. For China, this problem was initially limited to older professionals with families, whose opportunities for career development and financial reward were better abroad. Today, it is the students who receive education abroad that pose a potential threat

to China’s continued development. country’s threat of brain drain “the world’s worst.” Some economists The benefits of studying abroad believe that losing the most eduare numerous and well docu- cated section of the population mented, and for those students has a negative impact on the trahailing from developing countries, jectory of the country. In particular, the impact is strong. In an informal graduates of math and sciences survey, Chinese students at Sci- programs are more likely to stay ences Po named typical reasons abroad, and with little surprise. for their choice to leave China for Experts in these fields are highly their studies: experiencing differ- prized in a country like the US, ent cultures, seeing more of the for example, where math and sciworld, and learning about different ences scores rank consistently ways of life. For some, studying lower than foreign counterparts. abroad offers better opportunities and higher standards of educa- Once their programs are comtion. The prevailing thinking that pleted, students who return to the Chinese educational system China face dim prospects in the alone isn’t enough to train the job market. A joint study of 68 citnation’s future leaders has carried ies by Peking University and Ganji. over from the 1970s. com found that starting wages for entry level jobs average less The increasing number of higher than 300 euro per month — much education institutions courting Chi- less than what a young Chinese nese students is helping facilitate graduate might earn abroad. this pull: in 2013, over 600 schools Post graduation, the prospect of from around the globe participated continuing gaining professional in the two-day China Educa- experience in an international tion Expo. Their investments are setting, with the added bonus of showing results - the number of earning euros or dollars, is highly Chinese students enrolled at US attractive. Of Chinese nationuniversities reached an all-time als studying at Sciences Po, an high last year. And it isn’t just uni- overwhelming majority responded versities: private high schools are that they would prefer to stay also seizing the opportunity to abroad for at least five years folattract foreign students. lowing graduation. One student explained his rationale: the first What is the downside? Most uni- step on the path to making a real versities boast foreign exchange difference in his country is becomprograms, and having some form ing a foreign-trained academic. of international experience is prac- Only after building a successful tically de rigueur for any young career abroad, where he could graduate. But for China, the risks continue his academic career and of having their best and brightest eventually become a professor stay abroad are tangible. In a par- in a foreign university, would he ticularly fearful report published plan to return to China. How much last year, China Daily named the time is necessary to complete this

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

Photo credit: Flickr/CC/Ross Pollack

path? Two decades. The consequences of this trend, however, are not all bad. As some economists have found, brain drain contributes to raising educational standards within the originating country of emigration. China has responded to its weaknesses accordingly, and increased the research capacity of many top universities. These universities have also expanded educational partnerships and expert exchange programs with universities in the US and Europe, deepening cooperation with institutes abroad. These elite institutions have climbed in international rankings in recent years. Additionally, government spending on research & development now outpaces that in the US. Chinese firms are filing for more patents than those in any other country. Chinese indigenous innovation, once the subject of international scorn with regards to reverse engineering or copyright infringement, has yielded great examples in the past decade,

such as the e-commerce platform Alibaba or the telecommunications firm Huawei. Increasing foreign education should only serve to make these examples the norm. The initial rationale behind studying in a foreign setting has changed little since the era of Deng Xiaoping: learn from the best, and adapt. In a country as large as China, gradual changes can sometimes be implemented so slowly that their impacts are not immediately visible. However, the government, in responding to the threat of losing its foreign-education students, has developed several policies aimed at bringing both students and experts back home. Holders of Chinese Scholarship Council scholarships or grants for international scholar exchange, for example, are required to return to the country upon finishing their program abroad. Some students are further required to remain in China and work for a certain period thereafter. Prizes are offered for Chinese students innovating overseas,

such as the “Chunhui Innovation and Entrepreneurship Cup” or the Chinese Government Awards for Outstanding Students. The State Council has also earmarked funds to recruit overseas experts and bring them back home. These developments will become a key component of the government’s shifting growth model away from manufacturing and heavy industry towards the service sector. This plan requires an increase not only of highly skilled labor, but also the development of highvalue industries within which this labor can flourish. The new leadership appears keep to ensure that China’s economic path moves towards global innovation. The gains for the domestic educational and entrepreneurial sectors are large, and will continue to be a positive externality of brain drain. So long as the conditions at home develop at pace with these ideas, Chinese graduates will have the incentives to return.

Raya is a dual-degree Master’s student with Peking University in Sustainable Development and International Relations. She is studying International Energy at Sciences Po.

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

The Rebirth of Immigration to Brazil Dealing with a Fifteen-fold Increase in Asylum Seekers By Lucas Valente da Costa

razil is known as a country of immigrants. Its present diversity is a reflection of centuries of immigration that shaped the country as it is now, full of different colors, accents, traditional foods and architecture. However, a new recent wave of migration has taken Brazil by surprise and the country is struggling to appropriately handle it. The history of immigration to Brazil is rooted in slavery. An estimated 4 million Sub-saharan Africans were trafficked to the country and enslaved for almost 400 years, constituting 38 percent of all slaves taken to the Americas. Until the first half of the 19th century, the government offered land to foreigners to occupy the territory, which is bigger than Western Europe. This encouraged a number of Portuguese, Swiss, and Germans to move to Brazil, specially to the South, where they established several cities. Following the end of the slave trade in 1850 and the very welcoming Lei Áurea that formally abolished slavery in Brazil in 1888, the country needed a new workforce, since many former slave owners refused to begin paying salaries for the now free people. The government then stimulated immigration by offering to pay for immigrant’s ship tickets to Brazil. In this massive flow, millions of Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, Germans, Japanese, Syrians and Lebanese arrived in Brazil’s ports, to work not only in the coffee industry but also in the factories and commerces profiting the opportunities from the boom of urbanization that Brazil was witnessing. The massive flow of immigrants lasted until 1930 due to a crisis in the industry generated by the Wall Street crash of 1929. After this, immigration

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to Brazil diminished, with the exception of a modest increase in the 1970s with the immigration of Koreans, Chinese, and other South Americans, especially Paraguayans and Bolivians. Since 2010, however, Brazil has been facing a new wave of migrants - asylum seekers. Despite the efforts of the government, the country seems unprepared to deal with these new migrants accordingly. They encompass 81 different nationalities, mainly coming from countries like Syria, Colombia, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Senegal and more. Between 2010 and October 2014, requests for asylum multiplied by almost fifteen-fold from 566 to 8,302. The number of those granted refugee status went from only 150 to 2,023 during the same period. These figures don’t include the massive flow of Haitians that arrived after fleeing the earthquake of January 2010, which resulted in 39,000 Haitians living in Brazil today. Relatively speaking, Brazil is progressing in giving refugee status and resident permits. Yet the situation is still alarming because of the hurdles these people face and the bureaucratic process required in order to have an established legal situation. Authorities are not well prepared in dealing with the number of requests - but when compared to other countries, there are not many requests. France, for instance, with a population three times smaller and territory thirteen times smaller, had 51,732 asylum seeker requests as of January 2014, a figure almost ten times larger than Brazil’s. The situation is complicated and led to 77 percent of requests for refugee status to be shot down in 2013.

According to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, refugee status should be granted to someone who, ”owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” Under this definition, Syrians represent the largest nationality to be granted refugee status in Brazil today. But most people arriving, notably Haitians, are economic migrants, fleeing natural catastrophes or poverty, and therefore do not qualify as refugees under the convention. Fortunately Brazil, a longstanding human rights champion in international conferences, does not deport them. Instead, even if these immigrants don’t qualify as refugees, they are usually granted a five year residence permit. Moreover, to prevent them from having to request refugee status once they arrive in the country, Brazil established a humanitarian visa for Haitians in 2012, facilitating their residence permit approval

upon arrival. It had the goal to regulate their immigration and prevent the enormous costs (amounting to up to five thousand dollars) of migrants entering Brazil illegally through the Dominican Republic, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and the Amazon rainforest. Although the number of irregular entries hasn’t gone down, at least those who manage to get an appointment at the Brazilian Embassy in Port-auPrince are able to avoid this perilous route. The humanitarian visa has been expanded to Syrians and other nationals fleeing the war and has been welcomed by the UN Agency for Refugees, the UNHCR. Brazil’s intentions with the humanitarian visa and the non-deportation policy, while admirable, are not enough. The country still lacks basic infrastructure in housing asylum seekers and numerous staff that directly deal with migrants’ legal statuses processing only speak Portuguese.

Graphics: Yena Lee | Requests for Asylum includes the number of those who may not be granted asylum status

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One of the most disastrous cases of its mismanagement of the situation was brought to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS in 2013. The shelter in Brasileia, in the state of Acre, that was supposed to welcome 200 migrants crossing the border in the Amazon was overcrowded with four times its capacity and was insalubrious to the point that 90 percent of its residents had diarrhea. The humanitarian crisis forced the government to shut down the shelter and move the migrants to the state capital Rio Branco, 200 km away.

“ For the first time since World War II, the number of refugees and internally displaced people around the world exceed 50 million people”

Situations like this one in Brasileia are worrisome because they show how unprepared Brazil is in dealing with so few new immigrants, even if breaking historical records in refugee status approvals - Brazil has now 7,289 recognized refugees among its 200 million inhabitants. France has 232,487.

The number of asylum seekers, climate refugees, and economic migrants will only continue to rise, according to current trends. For the first time since World War II, the number of refugees and internally displaced people around the world exceed 50 million people. Brazil can and should play a bigger role in welcoming more people in its territory, honoring an immigration history that shaped the country throughout centuries. However, it needs to start preparing for this. National legislation on the matter is outdated and needs urgent reform. There needs to be an increased awareness about this population in order to s diminish current discrimination and exploitation. Better policies that would grant asylum seekers access to proper housing, employment, language classes and simple information on their status and rights need to be urgently

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sought. It must provide adequate infrastructure to welcome these foreigners, and, notably, make a bigger effort to simply welcome more immigrants - as long as their basic needs are fulfilled. 2014 is the 30th anniversary of the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, a Latin American commitment to address legal and humanitarian problems that affected refugee persons in the region. In early December, Brasília hosted the Cartagena + 30. The ministerial meeting discussed contemporary trends in migration in the region whose outcome was a comprehensive Declaration and Plan of Action. With it, Latin America commits itself to protect immigrants and assure their human rights, also becoming the first region in the world to endorse UNHCR’s campaign to end Statelessness. Brazil must assure its commitments in promoting human rights, and make sure the Plan of Action for the next decade actually becomes action, able to effectively and significantly address the challenges that face the 6.5 million of refugees and asylum seekers in the region. Brazilian civil society is ready to work with the government and with UNHCR, as it has been doing for many years already, and it will be holding the government accountable for its commitments.

Lucas is a dual degree student of Sciences Po and SIPA (Columbia University) and studies Human Rights and Migrations.

Nomadism in the Sahel Region An Ineffective Migration Pattern in the Face of Climate Change By Alida Toé

Photo credit: Lea Raunch

e have all certainly encountered stories about “Small Island Developing States” like Kiribati, which are so vulnerable to climate change that their entire populations might have to be relocated in the future. In recent years, terms like “climate change refugee”, “environmental migrant”, or “environmental migration” have surged in popularity and usage. Migration has become a two-pronged phenomenon, used both as an adaption strategy and as an ultimate solution. It is often synonymous with having lost the fight against climate change. It is clear that in the current debate, concern regarding the potential societal effects of climate change and environmental degradation has risen. This is how the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has come to propose defining environmental migrants as “persons or groups of persons who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad.” In fact, when we

take a broader historical perspective, we find that nomadic people have long used migration as a way to adapt to environmental changes. Today, this coping mechanism is starting to fail them. A good example is the Sahel region which represents the southern edge of the Sahara desert and is bounded by the Sudano-Sahelian belt to the south. Home to nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, the best known being the Fulani and the Tuareg people, this semi-arid region covers some parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan and Eritrea. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already stated that the Sahel is among the most vulnerable regions to future climate fluctuation, and the climate trend that has been observed in the region over the last forty years shows that temperatures have risen overall, and as a consequence droughts have become recurrent and severe. This has also contributed to increased desertification of the Sahel, impacting the rain-dependent agriculture that is central to livelihoods and the wider economy. Furthermore, in recent decades the annual rainfall patterns have been so highly variable that some studies argue that is almost pointless to speak of a “normal” annual rainfall in the Sahel region.

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Migration has historically been an integral part of traditional nomadic culture, but the deteriorating environmental conditions in the Sahel are threatening to disrupt and reshape the lifestyles of its nomadic inhabitants. Sahelian nomadic peoples have always depended on pastoralism and transhumance, both having played an important role in their lives, leading them to migrate and travel with their cattle in search for better pasture and water bodies. Droughts and changing rain patterns that threaten the traditional grazing areas on which their livestock depend render them particularly vulnerable to climate change. Thus, even though migration seems to be the ultimate adaptation strategy in other regions of the world that are vulnerable to climate change, in the Sahel it is a culture of migration itself that is beginning to break down.

can also have significant effects on the environment. In addition to being one of the poorest regions of the continent, the Sahel also faces a rapidly increasing population rate, leading to overuse of natural resources, overgrazing and over-farming. According to the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), the population of the Sahel is estimated to double to 100 million people by 2020, and swell to 200 million by 2050. This will ultimately lead to

ian farmers. The Malian farmers had not accepted the reservation of a pathway exclusively for transhumance purposes and had used it to grow their crops instead. On top of dwindling natural resources, land degradation, food insecurity and water scarcity, the security situation in the Sahel is exacerbating an already vulnerable situation. The 2012 revolt of various rebel, Islamist, and Tuareg separatist groups against the Malian government has resulted in a humanitarian crisis that continues to affect the whole region.

The population of the Sahel is estimated to double to 100 million people by 2020, continuing the degradation of natural resources and resulting in an increase in food insecurity.

Changing environmental and climatic conditions are not the sole cause of this new trend — indeed, it is not easy to establish a clear and direct causal link between migration, climate change, and the environment, as economic and social factors that are influenced by environmental changes themselves play an important role in the ability to migrate and the decision to do so. Therefore, environmental migration should not be treated as a distinct category set apart from other migration flows. It is important to acknowledge that migration can have both positive and negative effects on local coping capacity and on the ecosystems in areas where the nomads establish themselves. Consequently, just as environmental degradation can cause migration, movements of people

continued degradation of natural resources, and thus increasing food insecurity. Already in 2012, a reduction in crop yields led to a major food crisis that endangered millions of people. This deteriorating situation has led to recurrent conflicts between nomadic pastoralists and sedentary farmers. With increasing demand for food and pasture, land has become a conflictual issue. Nomadic pastoralists have pushed into regions used by farmers while farmers have begun to cultivate lands that were previously used by pastoralists. One of the more prominent clashes took place in 2012 at the frontier between Mali and Burkina Faso, where 30 Fulani herders from Burkina Faso were killed by Mal-

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Despite — and perhaps because of — the movements that are taking place within the nomadic communities of the Sahel, more and more nomads are settling and engaging in a diversification of their livelihood strategies. Consequently, agropastoralism — often accompanied by seasonal and circular migration — is becoming increasingly popular. Agropastoralism combines both farming during the rainy season and livestock breeding. This new trend will certainly increase the already existing tensions between farmers and nomads competing for land and water. It is also important to consider the social structure of nomadic families when considering changing migration patterns as a way to adapt to environmental changes. For instance, the wealth of a nomadic family does not only lie in its cattle but also in the number of people within the family that are working-worthy. Considering that agropastoralist

Photo credit: Flickr/CC/CIFOR

large households have the potential to diversify economically. For example a large family will be able to have enough people to stay at home, enough to engage in short transhumance and agricultural production while sending other members — mainly men — to earn additional money in the cities. As a result, households that do not have the necessary resources to migrate are forced to stay even though the conditions are worsening. It is in such cases that a changing environment and climate lead to less mobility, trapping the most vulnerable people in high-risk areas. Moreover, there is also a social and political pressure on nomadic people as their mobility is seen as abnormal. Paradoxically then, while climate change will be at the foundation of future waves of migration and “climate refugees,” in the Sahel, it is actually undermining traditionally nomadic ways of life. Taking all these factors into consideration, it becomes clear that the link between climate change and migration remains complex. While nomadic people are directly dependent on natural resources and are thus directly affected by climatic change, other factors such as overpopulation and security issues are also intertwined with explanations for the decision to migrate or not. For that reason, environmental

migration and migration in general are phenomena with multiple explicative factors. In the case of nomadic peoples, environmental migration is not an adaptation strategy anymore, but is rather the economic diversification of livelihoods that is helping the population to be resilient to the changing climate. . Finally, one should also consider the lack of coherent environmental and development policies by governments to take nomadic peoples and their lifestyle into account. Policy makers must recognize that recurrent drought crises have pulled vulnerable Sahelian households into a downward spiral from which there is not enough time to recover until the next environmental shock hits. Therefore, new adaptation and resilience strategies have to be put in place quickly in order to avoid a hunger crisis such as the one that was witnessed in 2012 in the Sahel region. In the future, migration due to environmental changes will have to be taken into consideration by policy makers as it will enable them to build resilience against slow-onset environmental changes such as desertification.

Alida is in the Master’s in Environmental Policy at PSIA.

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 69 Issue 1

DOSSIER: DEMOCRACY

Off-Target

How EU Immigration to the UK Affects Non-EU Immigration By Alfred Wong

n 25 March 1957, under the Mannerist frescoes of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, the leaders of six European nations signed the Treaty of Rome. On that day, the European Economic Community was created, making the free movement of people in Europe a reality which endures to this day. Today, migration in the European Union (EU) has become highly controversial, not least in the United Kingdom. According to the Financial Times, a majority of the British population now name immigration as their top concern. The UK Independence Party (UKIP), which calls for Britain to leave the EU and for drastically reducing immigration, has become one of the major forces in British politics in less than five years. Antiimmigrant rhetoric about Britain being “swamped” by immigrants now come not from the far-right fringe, but from government ministers. Much of this debate revolves around migration into the UK from the EU. Since this is based on the free movement principle, EU immigration has continued unabated despite the controversy. But what is often neglected is the impact

of this debate on non-EU migrants to the UK. These migrants range from students at university and doctors in the National Health Service (NHS), to workers on construction sites and asylum seekers fleeing persecution. In fact, net migration from outside Europe has always exceeded that from Europe: according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), 265,000 non-EU citizens migrated to the UK between March 2013 and March 2014, compared to 136,000 EU citizens.The negativity suffusing EU immigration as a political issue has led to policies and perceptions which instead harm non-EU migrants, and which harm the UK as well. Too Much of a Good Thing? - EU immigration to the UK EU immigration to the UK became a political flashpoint in 2004, when net migration (immigration minus emigration) from the EU more than doubled to 130,000, according to the ONS. This was caused by the EU A8 countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) joining the EU in May 2004. Since then, public concern over immigration and EU free movement has grown. In 2013, British Social Attitudes reported that 77% of people wanted immigration reduced “a little” or “a lot,” with 56% wanting the latter.

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This was due to the low skills and different culture of new migrants, which caused growing unease over the displacement of lowskilled British workers, the provision of benefits to migrants, and the problems with integrating EU A8 nationals. The UK government’s constitutional inability to stem the influx of EU migrants has further stoked resentment amongst a plurality of the public. The political consequences of EU immigration is most notably seen in the meteoric rise of UKIP, a eurosceptic party whose anti-immigrant stance resonates with as much as 25% of the British electorate. UKIP wants to bring net migration from both inside and outside the EU to 50,000 a year, and admit only the most skilled and valuable migrants through an Australianstyle points-based system. Its most recent electoral success was the May 2014 European elections which UKIP won with 27.49% of the vote. This was the first time in its history that UKIP had won a nationwide election, upending the British political establishment in the process. But the more pernicious effect of growing xenoscepticism in politics is the increasing influence of Eurosceptic backbench Members of Parliament (MPs) within the main political parties. The Conservative Party in particular is riven between pro- and anti-EU MPs. In January 2014, the coalition Conservative-Liberal Democrat government faced a rebellion from 87 Conservative MPs over its Immigration Bill, who voted against it for being too soft on immigration. The Immigration Bill had previously been criticized by various lobbies for being too harsh, most notably in requiring private landlords to check the immigration status of their tenants or face fines. While the bill still passed, this event reflects growing political support for ever-stricter immigration policies to assuage public concerns over EU immigration. ‘Tens of Thousands’ - How This Affects British Policy on Non-EU Migrants

Photo credit: Flickr/CC/Duncan Hull’s photo of Banksy’s “racist pigeons” in Clacton-on-Sea

In response to public opinion and the increasingly antiimmigrant political climate, the British government under the current coalition has toughened its policies and rhetoric on immigration. The first and most prominent example of this was the Conservative Party’s 2010 campaign promise to bring net migration down to the “tens of thousands” by 2015. However, the fact that Britain cannot restrict EU immigration without breaking EU law meant that the coalition government’s only option to fulfil its pledge was to instead restrict non-EU immigration. This resulted in various policies aimed at reducing the number of non-EU immigrants of all types. A prime example is the tightening of immigration policy for students, which is particularly important because students are the single largest group of non-EU migrants. The most significant policy change was the closing of the Tier 1 (Post-Study Work) visa to new applicants in 2012. This had previously allowed non-EU graduates of UK universities to work for up to two years.

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Instead, students may now stay only if they have a job offer with a starting salary of at least £20,300 from a company licensed and willing to sponsor them. There are signs that more curbs may be in the offing: in December 2014, the Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May stated that she supported requiring foreign students to leave Britain on expiry of their student visas, which means that they will have to reapply for new work-based visas from their own countries. All this has a deleterious effect on the attractiveness of UK higher education. According to a 2013 British Council survey of prospective international students, the most important factor in selecting a country for study was future career prospects. The stricter conditions for working after graduation directly worsens career prospects for non-EU university students. This move also has a considerable impact on the UK economy. The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has argued that the new policy is “far less” simple and competitive, and that the £20,300 minimum salary was too high to ensure sufficient STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) graduates for UK employers. The result is that, according to the ONS, the number of non-EU students staying for more than 12 months has fallen from approximately 240,000 in 2010 and 2011 to 177,000 in the year ending March 2014.

though thankfully still widely condemned. The most recent example was the Conservative Defence Secretary Michael Fallon stating in October 2014 that parts of Britain faced “being swamped by huge numbers of migrant workers,” and that some towns “[felt] under siege from large numbers of migrant workers.” While he later apologised, former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett has also supported his statement. Luminaries from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Archbishop Desmond Tutu have spoken out against toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric in British politics, especially during the run-up to Romania and Bulgaria entering the EU free movement area on 1 January 2014. As both the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee and the Parliamentary group Conservatives for Managed Migration have warned, such sentiments create international perceptions of the UK as unwelcoming to foreign migrants, whether intentionally or not.

The Rest of the Iceberg - The Impact on British Rhetoric on Immigration

The media coverage of both EU and nonEU immigration have also been, with some exceptions, inordinately negative. A study by the Migration Observatory at Oxford University found that the most common descriptor for the word “immigrant” in British national newspapers from 2010-12 was “illegal.” The most common geographical descriptors were “EU” and “Eastern European.” Moreover, numbers (‘million’ and ‘thousand’) and water metaphors (‘flood,’ ‘influx’ and ‘wave’) were consistently common descriptors for migrants in all newspaper types. Another study by the same organization found that in 2012-13, when the UK immigration debate centered on the imminent entrance of Romania and Bulgaria into the EU free movement area, tabloid newspapers most often focused on “crime and anti-social behaviour” when describing Romanians.

While the coalition government’s immigration policy is detrimental to the UK in and of itself, the arguably greater harm from the debate over EU immigration comes not from concrete policies, but from the resulting anti-immigrant rhetoric. This creates an international impression of a Britain which does not want immigrants, which at best damages the UK’s standing abroad, and at worst diminishes its attractiveness to would-be migrants around the world. The problem stems from the political sphere, with the ever-harsher rhetoric on immigration across the political spectrum. While this is to be expected from far-right politicians running on anti-immigration platforms such as those in UKIP, such remarks are increasingly mainstream,

“ The problem stems from the political sphere, with the everharsher rhetoric on immigration across the political spectrum”

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This may have contributed to the finding by Ipsos Mori that between 2006-10, there is a consistent 50% gap between the percentage of people concerned about immigration as a national issue, and the percentage concerned about it in their local area. While a direct causal link has not been conclusively proven, this may also provide an explanation to an inconsistency in public views on immigration. While a large majority of the public want immigration reduced, they also have starkly contrasting views about different types of migrants. Yougov found that 71% and 68% of Britons favour increasing the immigration of wealthy investors and university students respectively. Conversely, 72% are against increasing low-skilled labour immigration.

Of course, none of this means that the EU principle of free movement is detrimental to the British national interest because it reduces non-EU immigration, as UKIP leader Nigel Farage has argued. EU immigrants provide tremendous value to the UK, in economic, fiscal, cultural, and more ways than can be described here. What is needed are policies which solve voters’ concerns about immigration, but which also harness the benefits brought by immigrants from both within and without the EU. Anxieties over NHS capacity should be dealt with by reforming the NHS, rather than scapegoating immigrants’ usage of it. Worries about well-paying British jobs should be tackled by creating more jobs, rather than preventing immigrants from obtaining them. There are definite costs to hosting immigrants, but Britain needs to realise that the benefits outweigh those costs.

This reflects a divergence between public perceptions of immigration to the UK, and the reality. The most widely held belief among Britons about the most common motive for immigration is “EU citizens coming to the UK to work”, at 40% of respondents to the British Social Attitudes Survey. Conversely, only 7% believe that Photo credit: Flickr/CC/Cory Doctorow the most common reason is to study at UK universities, and 10% that it is non-EU citizens coming to the UK to work. What this means is that while British people are broadly supportive of some types of immigrants, they do not think that these are the predominant types. According to this logic, it follows that immigration policy should focus on cracking down on the less beneficial types of migrants. The problem with this is that the stricter policies and rhetoric that ensure also make the UK less attractive to prospective non-EU skilled migrants and students. The resulting dwindling of these migrant flows is bad for both Britain and prospective migrants to Britain.

Alfred is a second-year exchange student from LSE, where he studies International Relations.

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La frontière sud du Méxique: une frontière oubliée?

Les mineurs non-accompagnés originaires d’Amérique Centrale

by Kim Nommesch n juillet 2014, Obama a remis à l’ordre du jour la question de la migration des mineurs en la définissant comme un problème humanitaire urgent. Les dimensions prises par la migration des mineurs non-accompagnés originaires d’Amérique centrale représentent un défi assez récent. Selon les estimations du Center of Foreign Relations américain, 63 000 mineurs nonaccompagnés ont traversé la frontière étasunienne entre octobre 2013 et juillet 2014, soit le double de l’année précédente. Même si la plupart des migrants mineurs sont accompagnés, ces chiffres soulignent qu’il y en a de plus en plus qui se mettent en route seuls. Alors que l’attention est surtout dirigée vers la frontière très sécurisée qui sépare le Nord du Mexique des États-Unis, un scénario similaire se développe actuellement à la frontière sud du Mexique. Le gouvernement a fait des investissements importants dans la militarisation le long de la frontière avec les États de l’Amérique Centrale: la sécurisation des frontières a augmenté et les contrôles sur les routes en direction du Nord ont été renforcés. Les États-Unis apportent leur soutien financier et technique au Méxique à la frontière sud, espérant ainsi réduire les flux migratoires vers les États-Unis. Toutefois, la police mexicaine reste mal formée en termes de droits des mineurs migrants et il n’est pas rare que les passeurs (coyotes) donnent de l’argent aux enfants pour soudoyer les officiers. Les mineurs en tant que victimes d’un manque d’information Selon le directeur du Centre des droits de l’Homme Fray Matías de Córdova (centre basé à Tapachula, ville au Sud du Mexique où se trouve le plus grand centre de détention 28

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de l’Amérique Latine), 9 893 mineurs ont été arrêtés au Mexique en 2013, desquels 84% ont été déportés et seulement 50 ont obtenu le statut de réfugié. Les mineurs arrêtés sont mis dans des centres de détention avant d’être déportés quelques jours plus tard. Selon le droit international, tout citoyen peut rechercher la protection internationale dans un autre pays si son propre pays n’est pas en mesure de protéger ses citoyens. Ainsi, le personnel des auberges publiques devraient informer les jeunes de leurs droits en tant que réfugiés, mais en pratique les efforts restent limités et le manque d’information persiste. Au contraire, les migrants peuvent se trouver dans l’impossibilité de faire une demande d’asile, ou bien être menacés de devoir rester à vie dans le centre de détention s’ils en font une. C’est un mécanisme facile pour réduire les demandes parce que la vie dans ces centres est souvent dominée par l’insécurité, la mauvaise alimentation et un sentiment d’enfermement, une vision qui fait peur. Le risque d’être déporté met les migrants mineurs dans une situation critique. Rentrer dans leur famille signifie, pour beaucoup, revenir à une vie dominée par la violence domestique, le rejet familial et/ou les menaces des gangs, à des situations qui les ont motivés à quitter leur maison en premier lieu. En outre, c’est souvent la famille qui rassemble l’argent nécessaire, parfois avec l’aide de la communauté, pour payer le coyote (personne connue dans la communauté qui conduit les migrants à travers la frontière étasunienne). Si l’enfant retourne à son lieu d’origine, il risque l’exclusion parce qu’il n’a pas été capable de gagner de l’argent et l’envoyer à la famille. Or, même si les migrants arrivent à passer la frontière mexicaine, ils restent très vulnérables: le manque d’argent peut les soumettre à l’exploitation sexuelle; d’aucuns vendent cigarettes et sucreries

dans les rues et les groupes du crime organisé profitent de leur vulnaribilté pour les kidnapper ou en abuser sexuellement. Alternatives à la criminalisation et à la détention? Une réponse unidimensionnelle basée sur une politique de détention, de criminalisation et de stigmatisation est inadéquate et apparaît comme une violation des droits de l’Homme. La complexité du phénomène requiert une approche intégrée et basée sur l’intérêt supérieur de l’enfant, le droit à la vie et au développement ainsi que la réunification familiale, tous étant des principes maintenus dans la Convention Internationale des Droits des Enfants. Malgré le caractère non-contraignant de la convention, elle a un certain pouvoir moral qui peut forcer les États signataires à reconsidérer leurs pratiques. L’Article 22 souligne l’obligation de l’Etat de protéger les mineurs, accompagnés ou non, ayant le statut de réfugié ou étant demandeur de ce statut, et de garantir que leurs droits et besoins soient respectés. Ainsi, l’enfant a le droit d’avoir une opinion,

de l’exprimer, d’être écouté et de participer au processus administratif de sa demande d’asile. L’accès à l’information, à la justice et le droit de présenter sa cause devant un juge en cas de refus de la demande d’asile, permettent de répondre aux nécessités de l’enfant migrant et de le voir comme sujet plutôt qu’objet de droit. Une politique de décriminalisation du jeune migrant qui prend en compte la complexité de la problématique peut aider à créer un cadre adéquat pour protéger les droits de ces enfants.

Kim est en Master de International Public Management à la PSIA.

Photo credit: Kim Nommesch

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

Foreign “Housemaids” in Malaysia The Feminization of Global Migration by Pauline Vidal

n the 7th of March, 2014, a Malaysian couple was sentenced to death for murdering their Indonesian maid by starving her to death. The High Court ruled that Isti Komariyah, 26 years old at the time of her death in 2011, “died of deliberate starvation” and reports in the Malaysian Insider said that she “weighed just 26 kilos when she died”. Similarly, in 2012, a Cambodian maid was starved to death by her employers, which led them to being sentenced to 24 years in jail, a year after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen had suspended the Cambodian domestic workers trade to Malaysia following multiple reports of cases of abuse and sexual harassment. In Malaysia, cases of abuse are consistently documented by local migrant rights organization such as local migrant-rights NGO Tenaganita, which claims that the current situation of domestic workers in Malaysia, as in many other Asian host countries, is comparable to “modern-day slavery”. How to Explain the Supply and Demand of Foreign Domestic Workers in Malaysia According to Human Rights Watch, families in Malaysia currently employ around 300,000 domestic workers, primarily from Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and India. Understanding the supply and demand of Foreign Domestic Workers in Malaysia is simple. On the one hand, Malaysia, one of the most developed countries in South-East Asia, strives to raise productivity and the labor force participation rate, especially for women. The increasing employment opportunities for native Malaysian women are a significant contributing factor to the growing demand for domestic workers. Indeed, in order to achieve these new empowering tasks and to build a career, the way traditional homemaker tasks are performed has to change. Since there has not been a splitting of domestic duties between

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men and women, hiring a migrant “foreign female domestic worker domestic workers has become the solution for Malayare both substisian women. tute homemakers In this context, and symbols of foreign female domestic workers Malaysian families’ are both substiachievement of tute homemakers and symbols of middle class-hood” Malaysian families’ achievement of middle class-hood, to paraphrase the academic C.Chin in an 1998 article. On the other hand, inequality in development and wages between Malaysia and its close Asian neighbours, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Cambodia, continuously attract migrants from these countries. Becoming a domestic worker in a foreign country is one of the few opportunities women from developing countries have. It enables them to earn money to provide basic necessities for their families and allow their children to get an education through the remittances they send back. Moving to become a domestic worker also means attaining a certain status and prestige among the village peers and countrymen for the women. The Feminization of Labor Domestic work has two main features: it is short-term (contracts are signed on a two-year basis in Malaysia) and it is overwhelmingly feminine. It is therefore relevant to examine the situation of domestic workers in the context of the feminization of labor. According to Chin, patterns of labor migration flows in Asia have “shifted from the outflow of mostly men workers for infrastructural projects in the Gulf States, to intra-regional flows of women and men workers for a variety of 3D (dirty, dangerous, difficult) jobs”.

Additionally, the feminization of international labor migration changes the way that gender intersects with sociopolitical and economic concerns. Indeed, female migrant workers cross international borders “as autonomous economic migrants” rather than “trailing spouses”. Because of this change of status, the women encounter different sets of problems and constraints. How Are Domestic Workers’ Rights Protected in Malaysia? Although many migration projects are successful and allow these women to reach their goals, their physical and financial security are by no means guaranteed. Indeed, in many receiving countries, the combination of the significant lack of protection laws, the immigration regulations, sexism and racism has contributed to exploitative working conditions for migrant domestic workers. Some employers make their domestic workers work long hours without giving them enough rest, give them no days off and little or no pay, do not provide them with proper food, keep their passports and travel documents and prohibit contact with the outside world and their families back home. According to Human Rights Watch, migrant domestic workers also endure violence and sexual abuse in some cases. In Malaysia, employers can have domestic workers repatriated at will or withhold consent from a worker who wishes to transfer to another employer. Most receiving countries do not allow domestic workers to enter with their family, which increases their vulnerability. Domestic workers are only entitled to two-year work per-

mits renewable on the condition that they do not marry Malaysians or become pregnant. Moreover, they must undergo six-monthly medical screenings for pregnancy, HIV and venereal diseases; without exception, those who fail the medical examination are immediately repatriated. Since it is work performed within the household, domestic work is often excluded from the receiving country’s existing labor laws. This is the case in Malaysia, where domestic workers are excluded from the Employment Act. In the absence of a framework law for domestic workers, the Malaysian government has set up individual agreements with the governments of these countries to determine employment terms for domestic workers. Rather than create binding bilateral agreements, however, Malaysia has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) that are not actually binding on either state party but similar to guidelines. How to Explain the Vulnerability of Domestic Workers The nature of domestic work can partially explain the apparent impunity abusive employers enjoy. There is a blurry line between housework and work as domestic work happens within the confined space of homes, which restricts freedom and contact with the external world. As the work environment for domestic workers is within private homes, the issue of privacy makes it arguably difficult for authorities to enforce regulations.

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What about the Sending Countries? The hands-off approach is often shared by both the sending and the receiving country. For instance, Indonesia has laid down guidelines, by nature non-binding, governing the processes that their migrant workers go through at the point of origin but have done little to establish policies concerning the workers’ rights while abroad. The reason behind this lack of proactive regulations by countries such as Indonesia is the fear that increased protections for their nationals will result in a decrease migration and therefore fewer remittances being sent home. Competition with workers from other sending countries also erodes governments’ negotiating power when they are reluctant to take a stance on labor standards that could impede the employment of their own citizens. As such, this competition between states to secure employment opportunities for their own citizens abroad is a systemic obstacle to efforts to negotiate conditions for domestic workers.

does happen entirely within a single country’s borders”. Furthermore, according to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, Gulnara Shainian, “Domestic workers who are overworked, underpaid and subject to abuse—whether physical, emotional or sexual in nature— are effectively being treated as slaves.”

To conclude, domestic work can be, under certain conditions, a tool of empowerment and independence as women renegotiate and reinvent their roles and domestic workers organise with the help of national and regional civil society through the narrative of “domestic work as work”. Indeed, the success of these women’s migration projects is dependent on many factors and the migration experiences are diverse. However, as long as there is no regional and global agreement on domestic workers employment standards, women migrant domestic workers will not be able to make their migration journey an empowering Claiming Their Rights: The Question of one. Advocacy

To be recognized as worker is the basis of the large majority of domestic workers advocacy. Indeed, domestic workers are portrayed in the media either as economic heroines or as victims who bear the social costs of economic globalization. Chin has written “ the actions and perceptions of labor-sending and receiving state officials, middle-class employers, and representatives from private domestic employment agencies have had the effect of representing Filipina and Indonesian female domestic workers respectively as economic soldiers, criminal-prostitutes and pariahs, girl, slaves, and/or commodities. Taken individually and collectively, such representations obscure the fact that foreign female domestic workers are workers who ought to be protected by labor legislation”. In 2011, the International Domestic Workers’ Network concluded: ‘‘Domestic workers are not ‘helpers’; we are not ‘maids’; and we are not servants. Certainly none of us should be slaves. We are ‘workers’ (. . .) we are arguing for recognition for the work we do, for our rights as workers, and for our voice to be heard’’. The link to “human trafficking” and “slavery” is increasingly made when addressing the issue of domestic workers in Malaysia as advocates argue that human trafficking does not require “physically moving an individual against their will, nor does it require a person to be transported internationally; trafficking can and

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Pauline Vidal is pursuing a Double Degree in International Relations at SciencesPo and LSE. She spent one year in Malaysia studying at Monash University, Sunway Campus and working for various local human rights NGOs.

Photo Credit: Flickr/CC/Kai Hendry

Palestiniens de Syrie L’exile deux fois est destructeur

nent au Liban des ravages de l’exil. La petite salle du camp de réfugiés palestiniens de Chatila sent encore la fumée des cigarettes d’adultes, mais aucun des enfants rassemblés là pour écouter des histoires n’y prend garde. Leurs rires fusent, leurs yeux pétillent alors qu’une bénévole narre l’histoire de Tariq, réfugié découvrant une pastèque géante. «L’atelier de lecture permet à ces 20 enfants pour la plupart des orphelins venus de Syrie après 2011 de retrouver un cadre sécurisant. Beaucoup ont perdu des membres de leurs familles », explique Zaynab Hajj, qui habite depuis sa naissance en 1976, ce camp au Sud de Beyrouth. « Et la pastèque grandit...grandit ! » s’exclame avec assurance Bilal, gamin de quatorze ans fier d’être le traducteur, vers l’arabe, du conte inventé spécialement pour les enfants réfugiés par Helen Patuck, Anglaise résidant à Beyrouth. À la fin de l’histoire, le héros Tariq décide de transformer la pastèque géante en école, et Bilal interroge ses camarades : « vous, qu’est-ce qui vous manque ici ? ». Les

mains se lèvent timidement : « mon école », « ma maison », « mon papa »... Et que feraient-ils d’une pastèque géante ? « Un restaurant pour gagner plein d’argent !», « un gros festin !», s’écrient ses amis, qui rient maintenant aux éclats. Seul un des vingt enfants ne prend pas la parole. «Le cas d ‘Ahmad est particulièrement difficile,» souffle Zaynab Hajj. Après l’assassinat de ses père et frère en 2011 dans le camp syrien de Yarmouk, il a fui avec sa mère au Liban, où ils ne trouvent pas l’accueil espéré. Ils passent d’abord de longs mois dans un garage de Beyrouth, avant de trouver refuge à Chatila, auprès d’une famille palestinienne. La famille est pauvre elle aussi, ils savent que cet accueil ne pourra pas durer. La mère d’Ahmad finit par dénicher un travail au noir, qui lui permet de partager un nouveau loyer. « S’ils avaient connu ce qui les attend au Liban, je peux vous promettre qu’ils auraient décidé de mourir à Yarmouk, se désole Zaynab Hajj. Ahmad ne rit plus comme avant ». Réfugié parmi quelque 22 000 autres apatrides, dans le plus petit des douze camps palestiniens du Liban, qui ne comptait que 10 000 réfugiés avant la crise syrienne (estimations des habitants de Chatila), le garçon a gardé de sa fuite de Syrie, comme les 53 000 Palestiniens réfugiés au Liban après 2011, le goût amer de l’exil.

Photo Credit: Caroline Fréchard

chacune de leurs migrations, la fenêtre des espoirs rétrécit pour les réfugiés palestiniens. Deux fois déplacés, ils témoig-

by Caroline Fréchard

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 6 Issue 1

Au Liban, les Palestiniens de Syrie privés de tous leurs droits

“Où trouver la force de se battre pour un travail, si l’on risque de le perdre le lendemain ? Combien de temps encore avant d’être jetés sur les routes ?”

Les plus de 300 000 Palestiniens exilés au Liban après 1948 sont déjà privés de nombreux droits. « Nous n’avons pas de nationalité et ne pouvons pas demander la citoyenneté libanaise. Mais si nous ne pouvons ni accéder à la propriété, ni exercer de nombreuses professions, la situation des nouveaux réfugiés arrivés de Syrie est bien pire que la nôtre », s’indigne Zaynab Hajj, qui habite légalement le camp en vertu de son visa de résidence. « Le visa qui a permis aux Palestiniens de Syrie d’entrer au Liban périme au bout de deux semaines et les autorités libanaises refusent de le leur renouveler. Ils vivent donc dans l’illégalité la plus totale ! ». « Les Palestiniens de Syrie vivent dans la peur permanente d’être expulsés du «En Syrie, ces 53 000 Palestiniens Liban, où ils se sont entassés dans les avaient tous les droits, à l’exception 12 camps surpeuplés qui existent déjà, du vote », rappelle Ansar Jasim, qui puisque ce pays n’a pas voulu leur en a habité un an parmi les Palestiniens construire de nouveaux. Des cas de de Yarmouk, le plus grand camp de déportations ont déjà été relevés», réfugiés en Syrie. La jeune femme, qui continue Ansar Jasim. Cette peur pararédige aujourd’hui un mémoire sur les lyse en particulier les générations ayant conditions de vie indécentes des Pal- connu la Naqba. Elle les empêche de estiniens de Syrie au Liban, évoque construire. En ouverture du documenles camps syriens avec nostalgie : « taire, Fatmeh Abu Khurj raconte le jour là bas, nous avions de l’électricité, de de son second exil, si semblable à l’eau, pas comme cette mauvaise eau celui de 1948 : «[en descendant dans salée que l’on boit à Chatila. Il y avait la rue avec ma famille], je pensais qu’il une grande effervescence à Yarmouk, n’y aurait que nous. Mais les rues étaiqui ressemblait plus à un quartier de ent pleines de monde. Tout le monde Damas qu’à un camp. Les Palestiniens marchait en silence, et pleurait. Qu’estpouvaient même exercer des postes à ce que cela signifie ? Est-ce que nous responsabilité». vivons la Naqba, une seconde fois ? ». La catastrophe, une seconde fois La chute de leur niveau de vie en arrivant au Liban est, pour ces réfugiés palestiniens un choc d’autant plus terrible que de nombreuses familles ont déjà été déracinées une première fois, lors de la Naqba, exode qui débute en 1948 à la suite de la création d’Israël. En raison de leur fuite ou de leur expulsion, quelque 300 000 Palestiniens s’étaient installés au Liban et plus de 500 000 en Syrie avant 2011, les mêmes qui aujourd’hui reprennent la route de l’exil. «Il faut comprendre qu’en Syrie, les Palestiniens avaient déjà recommencé

de zéro », explique Carol Mansour, auteure d’un documentaire (We Cannot Go There Now, My Dear, 2014) qui raconte ces double-exils. Arrivés ou nés dans les camps syriens, nombreux avaient passé leur vie à se reconstruire. Les yeux brillants de tristesse lors de la l’avant-première du documentaire, Fatmeh Abu Khurj, une maman palestinienne de Syrie, témoigne des destructions engendrées par ce second exil, lors duquel le caractère « temporaire » de leurs situations apparaît comme une fatalité aux réfugiés palestiniens. Où trouver la force de se battre pour un travail, si l’on risque de le perdre le lendemain ? Combien de temps encore avant d’être jetés sur les routes ?

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Le jour de la catastrophe semble se répéter, mais les Palestiniens de Syrie, « regroupés sous l’acronyme PSR qui gomme leur identité et leur humanité », sont, plus que quinconque, persona non grata au Liban, où ils perdent jusqu’à la solidarité des leurs, déplore la cinéaste Carol Mansour. «Les Palestiniens du Liban ne les considèrent pas comme tels, mais comme des Syriens ». « Comment leur jeter la pierre ? Ils ont eux mêmes tellement souffert depuis leur arrivée au Liban ! De nombreuses blessures n’ont pas cicatrisé. Ils ont peur, aussi, que ces nouveaux réfugiés volent leurs aides et emplois», qui sont la condition même de leur survie.

« Ces réfugiés n’ont pourtant pas mer la frontière avec la Syrie le choisi de quitter la Syrie! » 24 octobre, décision officielle qui n’a pas été remise en cause par « Les Palestiniens de Syrie sont l’Europe lors de la conférence de marginalisés. Ils ne retrouvent des Berlin du 27 octobre à propos de la membres de leur famille au Liban situation de ces réfugiés. Déjà avant que dans des cas infimes. Beaucoup cette fermeture officielle, les Palespréfèrent des habitations vétustes tiniens étaient refoulés, comme le et plus chères à la vie insupport- notait un communiqué d’Amnesty able dans les camps libanais », International en juillet 2014, dénonraconte Ansar Jasim. Zaynab Hajj çant l’existence d’une « politique reconnaît que sur le long terme, il de refus des réfugiés palestiniens est difficile d’absorber l’afflux de de Syrie à la frontière libanaise, Palestiniens de Syrie, bien que « sans regard à leur conformité aux les familles de Chatila se soient nouvelles conditions d’entrée.» montrées très solidaires, en particulier lors des premières arrivées «Il existe une sorte de xénophobie en 2011. Elles ont réaménagé leurs libanaise envers les Palestiniens, habitations pour libérer de l’espace qui remonte aux années 1960-1970, aux réfugiés de Syrie ». Où loger lorsque certains éléments se sont ces nouveaux venus, lorsque les radicalisés», estime C.B., travailcamps sont surpeuplés et qu’il est leuse humanitaire spécialiste de la interdit de les étendre ? L’enfant question des réfugiés. Mais pour de Chatila sourit, index pointé vers Ansar Jasim, le problème doit être le plafond: «comme il est inter- pris à l’envers. «Cette radicalisation dit de construire en largeur, nous n’a pas eu lieu en Syrie, où ils étairajoutons de nouveaux étages ! ». ent traités à presque-égalité avec les nationaux, seulement au Liban Les habitants de Chatila ne sont où les Palestiniens sont opprimés. pas les seuls à peiner pour intégrer Les gens oublient que ces réfugiés les réfugiés. À leur image, le Liban n’ont pas quitté la Syrie par choix !». croule sous le poids des plus de 1,2 millions de migrants de Syrie, Leur exode remonte à 2011, mais soit le quart de sa population. Ses «malgré les explosions de mortiers, dirigeants ont donc décidé de fer- nombreux sont restés dans les

camps jusque fin 2012». À l’instar des 150 000 habitants de Yarmouk, de nombreux Palestiniens auraient décidé de ne pas participer aux manifestations, pour rester en marge du conflit. « Ils se pensaient protégés, car si certains Palestiniens, notamment ceux de Homs, ont manifesté, c’était toujours hors des camps. En juillet 2012, ils ont dénoncé le régime dans Yarmouk même et ce dernier leur a fait comprendre sa colère. Le camp est bombardé par les MiG quotidiennement depuis décembre 2012 ». À ce moment extrême, les Palestiniens auraient pris la décision de partir, le nombre de réfugiés passant de 135 000 à 40 000 dans Yarmouk de fin 2012 à début 2013, selon un témoignage recueilli par InfoPalestine en 2013. Assiégés par le régime syrien, 18 000 d’entre eux ne peuvent plus aujourd’hui s’échapper de cette prison, où ils meurent de privations d’eau et de nourriture. À Chatila, le flux des arrivées de Palestiniens de Syrie se tarit depuis que la frontière s’est refermée. Dans ses ruelles étroites, les enfants de Yarmouk jouent sous le regard de leurs parents. Innocents ou inquiets, ni enfants ni adultes ne savent où ils seront dans six mois ou un an.

Caroline est en Master de International Security à la PSIA. Elle est actuellement stagiaire au quotidien L’Orient-Le Jour à Beyrouth.

Photo Credit: Caroline Fréchard

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 6 Issue 1

From Haiti to Brazil, A New Migration Flow by Heloisa Harumi Miura

aitians have a long history of migration which has seen a steep increase during this last century. However, several environmental and social factors, including the catastrophic earthquake that ravaged the country on 12 January 2010, have led to an unprecedented and new flow of migration primarily towards Brazil, a country with no history of any significant Haitian community. Consequently, in 2013 the number of Haitian migrants in Brazil tripled and refugee demands increased by 600%, including young Haitian men ranging from 20 to 40 years. By the end of 2014, it is estimated that approximately 50,000 Haitians are living in Brazil - many of whom remain undocumented and therefore, forgotten. The 2010 Earthquake Caused by a rupture on the Enriquillo Fault, the earthquake reached a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale. Many aftershocks continued to affect the country with an official death toll of 230,000 people, half a million injured and more than 1 million homeless out of a population of about 10,400,000 people, according to the Red Cross. The earthquake not only destroyed cities and its buildings, but also undermined the weak economic dynamics that existed previously. Unlike other countries hit by highly destructive disasters such as the case of Fukushima (Japan), the Haitian government was unable to provide means of survival to everyone affected and the situation was worsened by the lack of economic capacity in other unaffected cities. Consequently, this particular earthquake became a key push factor for a sharp increase in migration trends among Haitians. To make matters worse, Hurricane Sandy struck southern Haiti in October 2012 leaving another path of devastation at a time when the country was still struggling to recover from the earthquake.

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

Disastrous

floods

followed

Hurricane

Sandy.

The floods were mainly caused by a poor capacity to face and mitigate the effects of natural disasters and also due to decades of deforestation that have left few natural barriers to the raging waters. To complicate matters further, the country was taken by a sudden increase of cholera cases followed by grave losses in agriculture thus providing more reasons for many - especially young men - to flee the country. Such dramatic environmental disasters continue to resonate and are the main direct and indirect cause for an increased internal displacement of people as well as regional and international migration from Haiti in the last few years. Why Brazil? Haitian migration trends have traditionally been upward mainly towards the United States and Canada or the Dominican Republic. However, a new trend of migration downwards and to the Southern countries have gained strength during the last years. The Haitian community in Brazil went absolutely unnoticed until the 2010 earthquake. In fact, during 2010-2011, Haitians did migrate to Brazil but this was considered as a trivial wave. In 2013, a new pattern of increased migration to South America and especially towards Brazil was established, drawing close attention from the media and the authorities. After decades of â&#x20AC;&#x153;brain drainâ&#x20AC;? from Brazil to industrialized and developed countries, the rise of Brazil as an economic force transformed it into a magnet for job-seeking migrants. The MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti) is in a way seen as another contributing factor to this migration flow from Haiti to Brazil. The mission led by the Brazilian Army marks the first strong relation between the two countries and is based on long desired South-South cooperation. However, it is also seen as a symbol of multilateral interests since Haiti had no civil war or high crime rates to justify the deployment of UN armed forces even for preventive reasons.

Some Haitians managed to obtain visas in the capital Port-au-Prince and then left Haiti by plane directly to Brazil. But the majority were guided by smugglers or coyotes usually following the same path: they leave Haiti or its neighboring Dominican Republic by plane and head to South America where it is easier to arrive without a visa through Peru, Ecuador or Bolivia. The remainder of the trip is made by bus, boats and even on foot to the borders of Brazil. Illegal transfer expenses with coyotes range from USD 2,000 to USD 4,500, not to mention the bribes that should be paid to local officials. In order to raise such an amount of money, Haitians are usually forced to sell everything they possess in Haiti, resort to their entire lifetime savings or accept to undergo humiliating situations, such as drug smuggling or prostitution, which expose Haitians and other migrants to frequent abuse.

Conditions upon Arrival and Adaptation Strategies In terms of human resources and infrastructure, Brazil was not ready to receive so many immigrants in the last years, including Africans and neighbors from Latin America. This situation has led to a humanitarian crisis. According to the Federal Police, in early 2014, more than 50 Haitians were arriving in Brazil every day. Camps were established as a palliative measure to provide shelter for the immigrants, but food was scarce, people had to sleep on the floor and showers were few, with reports of diarrhea among almost 90% of the people in camps. This emergency situation served to emphasize the complete lack of efficiency to deal with such cases, as there were no institutional channels for migrants to seek survival conditions (neither before nor after arrival) and they had to rely on the solidarity of churches and local communities of peasants to survive.

Photo Credit: Flickr/CC/DFID

Migration Paths, Illegal Migration and Coyotes

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By the time they crossed the border and arrived in Brazil, Haitians without visas would ask for refugee status, which was generally denied by the government - the definition of “refugee” established in international conventions does not cover environmental migrants. For Haitians left in such legal traps and without official documents, it becomes a staggering task to rent a house, open a bank account, and find a formal job. For this reason, most migrants resort to the informal market where they are exposed to labor rights violations and exploitation by their employers. Recently, a special humanitarian visa was created to fit the Haitian situation but this only shows that the government worked on a case-by-case basis and neglected other nationalities that also needed special visas.

Connections with Haiti and Future Expectations It is estimated that almost one-fifth of the Haitian GDP is made up of remittances sent by migrants to their families who stayed in Haiti which sums up to more than five times the exports revenue of the country. This is easily observable in many exchange offices in São Paulo, with the main destination of immigrant salaries being Haiti. Since many do not hold regular documents, they rely on friends or illegal agencies to transfer money back home, oftentimes with the intent of paying the travel costs to reunite with their families in Brazil.

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Although somehow unappreciated because of their origin, social status, and color, many Haitian migrants in Brazil are highly educated. Almost 85% of Haitians with higher education degrees had left their country by 2010. The problem is that Haiti urgently needs these qualified workers to help rebuild the country but unfortunately without appropriate job opportunities, brain drain remains a huge challenge that Haiti is failing to address.

In Brazil, the fate of Haitian migrants is often based on luck as many have to rely on assistance organizations or find jobs on their own expense. Often employers, go to Haitian camps in search of workforce. This leads to the objectification of Haitian men who are seen as products to be “imported” to other parts of the country and fill the gap of vacancies in low-paying jobs. But as opportunities come and go quickly, migrants have no other choices but to take them.

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But what are the real costs for these migrants? Selling everything they own in Haiti to pay bribes to smugglers, suffering from lack of governmental policies in Brazil and being mistreated by authorities, to mention a few. In a way, this lesson may be useful to show that the struggle of refugees and environmental migrants are still unknown to many Brazilians who erroneously see migrants as criminals and inferior people wanting to “steal” jobs and public money in a country where many nationals are also suffering from a lack of public assistance. Sporting events like the World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro are now at the epicenter of Brazil’s economic buzz, but the such events have disastrous consequences for the vulnerable. Many immigrants working in civil construction will find less and less opportunities for employment. To make matters worse, Brazil’s social security system is clearly not ready to cover unemployed migrants. In the worst case, those who cannot find a job end up living on the streets. As the prospects grow from bad to worse, some people regret the choice of leaving their country, wishing they could return home. In the words of 30 year-old migrant called Vincent: “If my legs could walk 100 days in a row, I would go back to Haiti”. The main point to consider now is whether something is being done to effectively remedy the destitution that Haitians endure in Haiti and abroad. Improving the situation in Brazil is urgent, but it will not cut the roots of the problem or stop emigration. Haiti must face the need to reconstruct itself materially, but most importantly, to rebuild the morale of the Haitian people.

Heloisa Harumi Miura is pursuing a Master’s in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action at PSIA.

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Reforming French Asylum Law Ambitions and Limits by Rozalia Harsanyi

The number of applicants has doubled since 2007, reaching almost 66,000 last year. The situation has become increasingly urgent.

hen Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve presented a new bill on asylum law on 23 July 2014, few could contest its necessity. During his time as Cazeneuve’s predecessor, Manuel Valls had already judged the system in place as “running out of steam” and, as Prime Minister, he now aims to create a more efficient, less costly and speedier procedure. The three main areas of the reform aim at cutting down delays in the examination of files, delays in the appeals procedure and providing accommodation to asylum applicants. The proposed bill shows the ambition of policymakers to save the concept of asylum law, defined as a key component of the French republican identity by Cazeneuve. The reform, adopted by the National Assembly on 16 December 2014 (with 329 deputies voting for it, 188 against and 29 abstaining), keeps the original intentions of the bill, while also adding some significant amendments. However, many critics still doubt whether the new law respects the fundamental human rights of asylum seekers and if it is financially feasible to implement all of the intended changes. Reforming an Outdated, Unsustainable System Currently, those in need of protection have to apply to the prefecture of the department in which they are housed. It then becomes the job of OFPRA (the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) to examine the application. OFPRA itself is under the judicial control of the National

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Court of Right of Asylum, or CNDA, an authority that rules on appeals against decisions rejecting asylum applications. OFPRA’s acceptance rate remains marginal: despite its increase in the past couple of years, it reached 12.8% in 2013. Although almost 90% of its decisions are contested, the court only overturns 15% of them in appeals. Another problem is that the French Office for Immigration and Integration allocates accommodation to asylum seekers on a national level, adding another burden to the already complex system. On average, the time needed for the whole process, from registering at the prefecture until getting the final decision, can take up to two years. During these years, more than 40,000 people are housed in emergency accommodation centres annually: both the shortage of such temporary homes and the length of the process show the inefficiency of the system. Even if France only accepts one asylum seeker out of five, the large majority of those rejected stays in the country. As the number of applicants has doubled since 2007, reaching almost 66,000 last year, the situation has become increasingly urgent. The first goal of the reform is to shorten the process: instead of two years, the time to handle one dossier would be reduced to nine months by 2017. Another important innovation is the accelerated procedure for individuals coming from “safe” countries. Asylum seekers hailing from one of the seventeen states belonging to this category (such as Albania, Macedonia and Senegal) are not deemed to be in imminent danger.

As “safe” countries are considered to respect human rights, liberty, democracy and the rule of law, the new bill aims to speed up the analysis of these applications. Currently one third of migrants go through an accelerated procedure which means a decision on their status is made in three months. After the most recent amendments, the reform also considers the situation of women and the existence of gender-related persecution in a region when widening the list of safe countries. Rash Decisions While the logic behind the measures is clear (to free up space in an overcharged system, aiming to prioritize those in real need), they can be attacked from several points of view. In fact, according to some critics, they have the potential to worsen the already precarious situation of asylum seekers. Many of them criticize the fact that the dossiers of those coming from “safe” countries would be examined by one judge, without the presence of a public rapporteur. The possibility of making mistakes coupled with the lack of accountability is alarming. Without the more nuanced opinion of several members of the court, for example, the rapporteur’s role would be to intervene in the decision making, the appointed judge may not be able to measure correctly the severity of each case. As generalists, their lack of a specific geopolitical expertise regarding the situation in the country where an applicant comes from, can be especially damaging.

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In an interview with the French Daily La Croix, Sandrine Mazetier from the Socialist Party claimed that for this reason, the requirements towards these judges will be higher, but she did not specify how exactly she aims to measure their competence. Another issue is the criteria used to determine if someone comes from a “non-dangerous” country: relying on applicants’ declarations, among a dozen other factors, cannot guarantee the fairest treatment of the candidates. What is worse is that, in accelerated cases, only three members of the Asylum court would be present, instead of the usual five. This measure is criticized by Julian Fernandez, judge of the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees at the CNDA for potentially leading to unreasonably rash decisions. The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 6 Issue 1

In an amendment made in December, the bill now contains the possibility for asylum seekers from “safe” countries to not go through accelerated procedures via OFPRA. Indeed, if the person can justify with serious reasons why their personal situation would make returning to their home country unsafe, they will not face the fast track procedure. Another promising change is the introduction of the term of “credibility”: if the applicant can prove his or her situation with satisfactory evidence and coherent, plausible declarations, his or her demand will be considered as credible. The question remains, however, about determining what counts as “coherence” and “satisfactory”: despite the changes, the accepted text can still allow for an overly broad interpretation. Apart from the problem of time, the reform also plans to find an answer to the lack of accommodation available to asylum seekers. The bill aims to increase the places available at the asylum seekers’ reception center, or Centre d’accueil pour les demandeurs d’asile, by 4000 in 2015 and another 5000 in later years. One of the biggest challenges in this area the geographic concentration of the placement of asylum seekers. Currently, 50% of applications are submitted to the Ile-de-France region, while other territories are lacking applicants. In order for cities such as Paris to better deal with the demand, the bill aims for a fairer distribution of places. Those who reject accommodation - that may be offered in any one of the French regions - will be severed from receiving aid from the state. This suggestion too has been met with criticism. According to Amnesty International lawyer Natalys Martin, such measures can result in vulnerable people losing their benefits because of their desire to stay in a city for personal or professional reasons, or simply because they did not ask for permission before they move. Whose Job Is It Anyway? The Secours Catholique, the French branch of Caritas International, is equally concerned that these propositions hide a will to control the actions and freedom of movement of asylum seekers and reinforce the existing suspicion against them. The organization also thinks that, by making the French immigration office responsible for this part of the project, the bill creates a dangerous confusion between providing sanitary and social protection to the population, and policing.

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However, human rights issues are not the only possible problems with the reform. At this point, no one knows if the budget necessary for building the new accommodation centers will be available next year. Pierre Henry, the director of charity France Terre d’asile, fears that austerity measures in 2015 will make it the task impossible. Although theoretically, there will be money saved from the cost-effective policies proposed by the new bill. While aiming to create fairer decisions, the accelerated asylum process also results in decreased spending, by halving the time of procedures. Despite the high number of criticisms, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees claimed that the bill was leading to a rationalization and simplification of procedures, making them more efficient. The National Consultative Commission on Human Rights equally expressed their approval, highlighting the reform’s positive aspects, such as the recognition of the right to accommodation for all applicants. Nonetheless, the risk exists that speeding up the procedure will not create more equality, but severely hurt the rights of refugees, without the time needed for an informed judgment. As lawyer Marianne Lagrue said to French weekly La Vie, making the process faster is an advantage, but rushing it is a mistake. A group of charities defending asylum seekers’ rights under the umbrella association Coordination française pour le droit d’asile is also afraid that, while pretending to be humanist, the government’s policies are more concerned with controlling migration than protecting the human rights of the applicants.

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Meanwhile, the text of the reform has been accepted with a surprisingly restrained debate in the Assembly, with a consensus on the left. The question of immigration, which the right-wing parties brought into the public debate whilst discussing the current law, will be a subject of another bill, to be voted on in the spring of 2015.

Rozalia is an undergraduate at the University of St Andrews, on exchange at Sciences Po Paris.

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Diasporas

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DIASPORAS

Remittances and Foreign Investment in Tajikistan

The Dangers of Short Term Solutions to Long Term Problems by Andrea Jansson

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uperficially, Tajikistan is a country which enjoys significant annual growth and a steadily increasing population. Equipped with enviable natural resources and potential for energy export, it is a small country which – in spite of often being forgotten – seems to hold great promise and opportunity. However, reality holds a different picture. Tajikistan is the most remittance-dependent country in the world according to World Bank estimates, with remittances sent from nationals working abroad making up close to half of the national GDP. This has in many ways proven to have important repercussions on foreign policy and power dynamics, as Tajikistan is effectively dependent on lenient Russian policies towards its labor migrants, as well as internal policies and priorities. Crucially, the potential positive effects of labor migration in terms of development and economic growth that can be experienced by sending countries risk being curbed as the gov-

ernment resorts to short term tactics in order to avoid uncomfortable reforms. Money inserted into the economy from abroad has been able to – at least in the short term – restrain stagnation and corruption in the public as well as the private sector, and the government’s attempts to find new sources should neither be regarded as surprising nor necessarily unwelcome. Tajikistan has seen a rocky autumn as the country has struggled with economic problems, and October 2014 saw the government launch the first ever investment conference in the hope of vying potential investors and increasing interest in Tajikistan’s plentiful resources. Indeed, as reported by the Financial Times, President Rahmon himself stated that “The development of the private sector and attracting investment is one of our top priorities”, adding in a somewhat uncharacteristic pleading tone that “We definitely need huge investment to fully realise our resources and potential”. This attempt to generate interest for the Tajik market as a new potential investment frontier thus constitutes a part of a broader government objective to assert itself in the global economy, and benefits from the decision of the central bank to sign up Standard & Poor to provide the country’s first credit rating.

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These attempts to attract foreign capital are a natural response to financial problems which have been exacerbated by the reduced remittances resulting from the global financial crisis and a weakened Russian economy. But it does not come without a cost, as foreign and migration policy remains intricately intertwined with the practical implementation of such policies. The small economy has enjoyed significant growth over the last years in spite of global recession, as well as boasting impressive natural resources, including gold deposits, substantial antimony production, and electric power resources of which only a fraction of the actual potential is used. Now a member of the WTO since early 2013 and an EITI candidate, Tajikistan is undertaking a clear strategy in order to invigorate investment and growth through attraction of trade and capital. However, the fact remains that most investment remains sourced from Russian and Chinese companies, based on geopolitical concerns, and various international finance institutions. In truth, this is endemic of a small economy suffering from infrastructure problems and unreliable electricity supplies. The nature of these investments has done little to strengthen national institutions, or curb the high levels of emigration. In spite of attempts to accommodate for transparency, the legal and financial framework remains shaped by fluctuating tax and custom regulations as well as high levels of cor-

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ruption. Particularly important are the effects of the pressure resulting from the economic slowdown in Russia, an issue which becomes crucial in the light of the high levels of labor migration. This is of interest since labor migration â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and subsequently remittances sent from laborers residing in foreign countries â&#x20AC;&#x201C; can yield significant benefits for developing countries under certain circumstances. Tajikistan is thus far from unique, and the topic has received significant attention in recent scholarship as total remittances have seen steady growth worldwide, surpassing official development assistance since the 1990s. The remittances sent home enhance the wellbeing of those left behind, and various studies of global labor migration have pointed towards beneficial effects such as increased wages and possibilities of human capital investment. Although this holds true under certain circumstances, Tajikistan displays the problems facing a society where continuous migration both illustrates and generates sys-

temic problems and effects. As young people may be less willing to invest time and money in acquiring skills relevant to the local community and development, there is a greater focus on internationally marketable skill-sets as opposed to domestically relevant ones. Such tendencies can, and do, have adverse effects on institutionbuilding. Similarly, although remittances can have powerful poverty-reducing effects, cases such as El Salvador display the possible danger of large foreign exchange inflows when this results in Dutch disease-like symptoms. Furthermore, in terms of practice and experience, it remains unclear if the workers seeking work abroad would be of more benefit to the home economy had they stayed in the country. The failure to use investment to provide worthwhile employment at home thus constitutes a grave problem. Consequently, not presuming to settle the intricate debate concerning the specific economic and social effects of labor migration, it is sufficient to note that the migration and remittances we are witnessing

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in Tajikistan form a reflection of problems of employment and prospects which have become deeply rooted in society since the end of the civil war that shook the country in the early 1990s. It also renders the country heavily reliant on external actors in general, and Russia in particular, as a heavy concentration of its migrants currently works there. With the recent problems confronting the Russian economy in the face of falling oil prices and Western sanctions the country is rendered vulnerable, and judging by the Russian dependency on fuel exports and the continuing strained relationships between Russia and the EU, this situation may be expected to continue for quite some time. Undoubtedly, such concerns have formed part in the government initiatives to boost foreign investment and reinvigorate the domestic market. Unfortunately, as has been suggested earlier, the prospects of such initiatives may be less than certain when taking into consideration the underlying causes for the large outflows of labor migrants; causes which short term investment policies fail to alleviate. Tajikistan suffers from crippling youth unemployment, and a mismatch between education and labor markets. As many as one million men leave the country each year to work abroad, according to Al Jazeera, and young people know that finding jobs that meets their preferences as well as their qualifications can be challenging, if not impossible. The World Bank estimates that male unemployment in the age group of 15-24 amounted to as much as 20% in 2010-2014, although people interviewed informally for the purpose of this article seemed to be of the view that there were jobs to be had if one was willing to lower expectations and accept very low salaries. The sad truth is that Tajikistan has a young and eager working force which is not used or trained effectively at home. The country saw the institutionalizing of a Soviet style system of public services during the years under the USSR, but the infrastructure for health as well as education and government services has eroded since independence in the face of falling salaries and widespread corruption. Tajik youth thus enjoy access to numerous universities, but these often fail to provide the requisite skills needed to secure employment after graduation, and former students have commented that it is commonplace to pay for places at the better schools and that grade inflation means that good performance no longer guarantees jobs. Recent attempts have been made to tackle the issue of

equal opportunities and quality of students entering into higher education, notably through the introduction of the University Entrance Examination (funded by the Russia Education Aid for Development Project (READ) and administered by the World Bank). A former student noted that the project presented a “good step in challenging corruption and making higher education, especially government scholarships, more accessible to all”. However, initial reactions by students and relatives have been mixed, ranging from optimism to more sombre observations that participants soon can, and will, learn how to cheat the system. Such educational challenges are coupled with a competitive job market, where finding jobs as well as getting access to capital for investment in entrepreneurial ventures can prove extremely difficult in spite of the presence of several microfinance banks. A local entrepreneur commented that it was difficult to find credit since banks “do not give credit to start-ups unless you have real estate to secure the loans against.” Instead he secured capital through a private consumer loan.

“The sad truth is that Tajikistan has a young and eager working force which is not used or trained effectively at home.”

These issues propel emigration, and reforms thus far have been insufficient. This partly comes down to the wide rift between the letter and the actual implementation of the law. A young lawyer and entrepreneur noted that it is the enforcement rather than the content of the national legislation which is problematic, as initiatives to boost incentives for investors and startups such as tax relief have been made. Small businesses, he explains, are taxed under the so called “Simplified System of Taxation”, and all businesses report online in order to prevent corruption and make the system more efficient. But these reforms, as well as the free economic zones established to facilitate foreign investment, remain obstructed by practical difficulties and flawed implementation which are common also to other areas of the legal system.

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As a result, institutional weaknesses and a lacklustre labor market drive young people to seek opportunities working and studying abroad, resulting in a brain drain which could prove ruinous in the long run. With high levels of corruption and problematic implementation of property rights it is questionable if the strategy will hold, at least in the short term. Significant reforms of the public and private sector, as well as a changed political outlook, would be necessary to make attractive foreign investment a viable option. Similarly, attracting long term and sustainable investment, which makes the best possible use of the countries’ many resources and offer employment options for nationals, needs to become a priority. Although the very fact that the government is attempting to attract investment highlights the recognition that the current model is not working, it again runs the danger of locating the solution to domestic problems conveniently outside of the domestic sphere. As potential sources of unrest have sought wealth and fortune abroad the government has partly been able to benefit from a lack of the discontent and unrest which generally plagues economies of high unemployment. The streets of Dushanbe are calm and, partly as a result of still traumatic memories from the upheavals of the Civil War, a sense of quiet resignation seems to prevail. Serious pressure for reform has not been experienced by the government, and pressing issues of finances have been alleviated by the massive labor migration as remittances have combined with various types of development aid and low interest loans from China. Also, Russia has been able to use this dependency to its advantage, as lenient migration policies can be traded for concessions in other areas of foreign and security policy. Thus, the government does not itself appear to follow any targeted long term strategies to limit emigration or undertake reforms effectively strengthening the institutions that

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would help young people find employment. The local entrepreneur interviewed poignantly commented that the issues concerning education and prospects are systemic and require an appropriate response: “The whole community must actively take part in tackling them; starting from government to the private sector, from NGO to small communities in villages. They aren’t one person’s fault. They are our fault and our issues. It indeed takes time, hard work, responsibility, courage, and optimism to overcome them”. Thus, as youth unemployment persists it is clear that reform and a changed attitude are necessary, moving away from using labor migration as an excuse for status quo, relying on remittances to boost GDP so as to be able to avoid making uncomfortable decisions. In part, this appears to be under way, but attempts often remain propelled by external actors and with limited impact on the society and economy as a whole. The challenge now is to ensure that foreign investment does not replace remittances as an easy, but vulnerable ‘fix’, obscuring and failing to alleviate the underlying problems.

Andrea Jansson is a dual degree student at Sciences Po and LSE and studies International Political Economy.

DIASPORAS

En quête de stabilité Immersion au sein de la diaspora burundaise by Lou Perpes

orts d’un quatuor estudiantin, nous avons plongé dans les méandres de la diaspora Burundaise en France et Belgique, et plus particulièrement dans ses revendications politiques. Nous étions sur nos bancs de classes lorsque le sujet a émergé, en cours d’ethnographie appliquée, et nous ne nous attendions pas à tant de tumultes, de passion et d’oppositions. Le pays a traversé deux génocides, en 1972 et en 1993, laissant un paysage politique très instable. De fausses initiales sont utilisées afin de protéger l’identité des personnes interrogées. En guise de première définition, la diaspora renvoie à un phénomène de migration d’une population à travers le monde, mais est aussi utilisée pour témoigner d’un sentiment d’unité et de solidarité. Aujourd’hui le nombre de diasporas a explosé, sur internet notamment les sites qui leur sont consacrés ont incroyablement augmenté depuis les années 2000. Tristan Mattelart, professeur en communication internationale à l’Université Paris 8, explique que les membres de ces diasporas forment «une communauté imaginée qui unit ses membres dispersés en une sorte de prolongement,

dans le monde virtuel, de la nation réelle.» La diaspora offre ainsi une image très positive, refoulant les vieilles idées de migrants isolés et désorientés. Nous avons réalisé une dizaine d’entretiens de janvier à mai 2014 avec des Burundais résidant principalement en France, chamboulant ma vision très abstraite des beaux concepts tels que celui de « liberté d’expression » ou de “démocratie”. Echanger et côtoyer des personnes extrêmement engagées, à cœurs ouverts et décidées à agir pour leur pays, a changé la donne et donné du corps aux dits concepts. Désormais avertie de la part de risque que ces confessions comportaient, sans même mentionner le temps accordé, je ne peux que leur en être extrêmement reconnaissante. Avec un certain dégout des politiciens au pouvoir, les interviewés ont tour à tour dénoncé les failles du système électoral - au niveau de la fraude comme de la corruption - et le bafouement des droits civils et politiques, en particulier de la liberté d’expression. La critique des dirigeants est forte, certains dénonçant le fait que « ceux qui ont les mains tachées de sang sont au pouvoir », ils n’ont « pas seulement exterminé ta famille mais en plus ils possèdent tes terres. » Pour nombre d’entre eux, s’organiser en diaspora permet « d’enfin casser la gueule à l’impunité. » Les interviewés ne sont pas pour autant aveuglés par cette haine,

générée par la guerre civile tout juste finie. S’ils laissent libre cours à leur colère, c’est aussi pour réclamer que réconciliation soit faite. Non au travers d’une justice implacable, car les membres de la diaspora soulignent qu’elle serait porteuse de bien des défauts, mais aussi d’un dialogue sur le passé, afin d’enfin pouvoir raconter « l’Histoire » à leurs enfants: une histoire dénuée d’incertitudes, mais constituée de faits, posés pour construire l’avenir. Une démocratie sans histoire commune ne peut être, souligne un interviewé. C’est à cette fin que certains défendent l’urgence de la mise en place de la Commission de Vérité et de Réconciliation (CVR). Cette commission non juridique est pourtant prévue par les Accords d’Arusha, accord de paix signés sous l’égide de Nelson Mandela en 2000. D’autre part, toujours en vue de « casser la gueule à l’impunité », la diaspora entend éveiller ses compatriotes restés au pays à la politique, et surtout à ses carences. L’association Rassemblement de la Diaspora Burundaise de France (RDBF), envisage notamment une campagne d’information pour que la CVR soit véritablement mise en place. Les membres de la diaspora se considèrent en quelque sorte comme agitateurs politiques responsables : « Si vous approchez la population ordinaire, soit les personnes sont dégoutées de la politique, car elles se sont rendus compte qu’ils sont tous des magouilleurs, soit elles n’ont jamais ressenti la nécessité de s’intéresser à la politique ! La poli-

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tique , c’est toute une éducation à moral pour certains. On observe faire. » une opposition nette entre les Burundais expatriés qui ne se Toutefois, un certain décourage- sentent pas « redevables » mais ment pointe aussi car les impacts qui assument au contraire devoir ne se font pas ressentir. Un inter- s’occuper de leur famille, avant de viewé nous relatait qu’il avait s’attaquer à la reconstruction de d’abord été très impliqué dans leur pays. AB lui-même, au fil de une association dynamique « Fils l’entretien, nous parle de son proet Filles du Burundi Nord Pas de jet de retourner un jour au Burundi Calais», mais pour lui les résultats et de s’investir en politique ou n’étaient pas au rendez-vous ; et d’aider le pays à se développer « ça ne sert à rien de crier au loup économiquement, en ouvrant une si cela ne peut changer quoi que entreprise par exemple. In fine, ce soit. » pour lui il s’agit soit d’assumer son expatriation et la portée limitée de AB : « On rentre et on fait quoi son assistance au pays, ou bien ? On a quoi à proposer ? D’ici, de rentrer, s’installer et vraiment qu’est-ce qu’on peut faire? Ecr- aider à remettre le pays sur pied. Il ire va changer des choses ? Et il reste cependant encore une cause y a des gens qui disent ‘bon bah de désenchantement : le rejet de ce n’est pas le moment, tu n’as certains des compatriotes restés aucun impact, construis ta vie, et au Burundi, lançant lors de discuspeut être qu’en construisant ta vie sions « ah, ça fait longtemps que ici ou ailleurs, ça te permettra de t’es en France toi, t’as vraiment contribuer plus tard.» rien compris », balayant questions et critiques. Il ajoute que « ce n’est pas simple de contribuer, le débat n’est Ce sentiment de culpabilité lié à pas résolu » ; la question d’aider l’inaction s’est fait ressentir au le pays est un véritable dilemme cours des différentes interviews et

un autre membre de la diaspora le formule aussi clairement. CD : « Je pense qu’on est en France, je suis là depuis 14 ans, j’ai fait mes études et j’y travaille maintenant. J’ai fait mon petit chemin mais en même temps, quand je fais mes calculs par rapport à mes cousins qui sont restés dans les campagnes… J’estime que je suis privilégié par rapport à eux et que quelque part ma conscience m’empêche de dormir si je ne fais rien pour eux. J’ai beau m’accomplir en France, j’ai beau réalisé de belles choses, j’ai beau aimer ce pays, mais voilà, ce n’est pas spécialement pour moi. Pour toutes les personnes qui ont émigrées, c’est comme ça, ils aiment leur pays d’accueil mais ils restent attachés à leur pays d’origine, à leurs cousins. C’est leur chair, c’est leur sang, voilà tout simplement. » De ce déchirement entre l’idée d’aider, de ne pas se sentir redevable et un certain désespoir quant

“Location Burundi AU Africa” by Alvaro1984 18 - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons 52

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à la possibilité réelle d’avoir un impact, la plupart des associations de diasporas se concentrent sur une solidarité et un dialogue au sein même de la diaspora - ce qui n’est pas toujours gagné d’avance. Notons aussi que l’idée de remettre les pieds dans les conflits politiques et ethniques du Burundi en effraie plus d’un. D’autre part, alors que les élections présidentielles se profilent en 2015, en laissant plus d’un soupçonneux quant à une tenue libre et équitable, on constate à nouveau deux leviers d’action privilégiés : avertir et éveiller les consciences politiques, ou rejeter un quelconque impact dans ce domaine et préférer apporter une aide économique au pays. Les membres de la diaspora rencontrés sont bien conscients des difficultés auxquelles se heurtent les habitants du Burundi. Leur propos n’est pas d’un combat pour la démocratie pour la beauté du mot, au contraire, ils entendent en faire leur fer de lance pour réellement changer la situation, ce dont une stabilité économique et politique découlerait, permettant à chacun de vivre sa vie, simplement. Les espoirs restent forts quant aux élections de 2015, EF témoigne « Le rendez-vous de 2015 est très attendu. Tout le monde se pose la question, comment ça va se passer ». GH ajoute aussi « Mais il n’est jamais trop tard. 2015 est une année cruciale, parce que ça va être bien animé, et il faut simplement veiller à ce qu’il y ait le moins de casse possible. » La tension est palpable, le conseiller de l’ambassadeur parle de fièvre électorale débutant déjà (en mars 2014), et pour GH et IJ :

GH : « On sent, avec 2015, la mayonnaise commence à monter. IJ : Le mot est faible, la mayonnaise. » Cette métaphore hâtive nous parait pourtant judicieuse. En effet, les espoirs prennent corps et sont battus par les partis politiques, celui au pouvoir tentant d’imposer sa couleur unique au mélange. Le pouvoir est dans les mains des électeurs, si les résultats sont à nouveau falsifiés comme en 2010, les accepteront-ils ? Quant au parti au pouvoir, osera-t-il tenter à nouveau de passer outre la Constitution ? (ndlr : Le président n’est pas autorisé à cumuler plus de 2 mandats selon la Constitution. Or en mars 2014, Pierre Nkurunziza avait essayé de faire amender la Constitution à ce sujet, sans succès (échec le 22 mars, à une voix)). La proposition de la diaspora de mettre en place la Commission Vérité Réconciliation sera-t-elle suivie ? La campagne de sensibilisation prévue par certains membres sera-t-elle effective ? Ou cette Commission n’estelle pas plutôt un cachet de la diaspora en soif de justice (nombreux de ses membres ont quittés le Burundi pour de sérieux motifs) et influencée par la vision de leur pays d’accueil, prônant ce type de Commission ? L’avenir nous le dira, notre seule certitude est que ces élections seront attentivement suivies ; la diaspora en France est fortement mobilisée, ses membres sont prêts à éveiller leurs compatriotes et à secouer les habitudes, afin que les élections falsifiées de 2010 ne se reproduisent pas.

Lou est en Master de International Public Management à la PSIA. Actuellement en année de césure, elle termine un stage au Haut Commissariat des Nations-Unies aux droits de l’Homme.

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

DIASPORAS

Jamaking It Work

Engaging the Diaspora in Development Strategies by Emilie d’Amico

igh emigration rates are often considered to negatively affect a country’s economy and development. At the same time, a lack of opportunities or hope push nationals to emigrate and look for better opportunities abroad. This phenomenon of brain drain causes the depletion of human capital, and undermines a country’s potential for innovation, competitiveness, economic growth, and prosperity.

2010, 82.5% of Jamaicans who had completed tertiary education had then migrated to another country, which makes Jamaica the third country most touched by brain drain, as a proportion of educated labor force. This phenomenon deeply affects many small islands and developing states in the Caribbean: indeed, the emigration rate of highly trained and skilled workers exceeded 80% at the beginning of the 2000s in Guyana, Suriname, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago. In this context, mobilizing the diaspora appears to be a key element for the development of the Caribbean region.

However, a country benefits from having nationals residing overseas, and strengthening ties with their diaspora is becoming part of the development strategy of some developing countries. Jamaica’s government has undertaken significant steps in this direction since the beginning of the 1990s. Subsequently, the country has established itself as a leader in that field in the Caribbean, a region with high emigration rates, where countries would have much to gain in working with their overseas population.

Since the mid-1990s, Jamaican authorities strengthened dialogue and cooperation with Jamaican citizens abroad, in order to foster their participation in national development. The fifth Biennial Jamaican Diaspora Conference, on “Jamaica-Diaspora Partnership for Development” held in Montego-Bay on the 16-19th June 2013, was specifically oriented towards providing incentives for trade, businesses, and investments in Jamaica. Moreover, the goal of this meeting was also to identify strategies which will expand the contributions of the diaspora in pillar sectors such as education and healthcare, through investment and remittances.

36.1% of the

Jamaican population lives abroad According to World Bank estimates, the stock of Jamaican emigrants abroad reached 985,000 persons in 2010, representing 36.1% of the national population. Although migration flows decelerated during the last decade, compared to the 1970s-1990s, the net migration rate was still of -5.4 migrants/1,000 population in 2013. The main destinations are the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as the other Caribbean countries. Highly trained and skilled young professionals are over-represented within this population of migrants. In 54

The The Paris Paris Globalist Globalist || Vol. Vol. 69 Issue Issue 11

Jamaica is one of the countries in the LAC region with the highest percentage of households receiving remittances. The impact of these money transfers on the country’s development is considerable. The total amount of transfers reached USD 2,277 million in 2013, representing almost 16% of the annual GDP. Remittances contribute to improving living conditions, and supporting the day-to-day expenses of the receiving family members. Moreover, they reduce the vulnerability of households exposed to poverty, shocks, economic downturns, and natural or man-made disasters. In other terms, these payments are a central aspect of Jamaican economic growth and development. Therefore, as illustrated by the fifth biennial conference, the challenge faced by the government is

DIASPORAS

encouraging senders and receivers of these private funds to invest in community based projects, entrepreneurial initiatives, or any sector which is crucial for economic development in general. It is the objective of a project currently being implemented with the support of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the country, as well as in Belize, Guyana, and Suriname. The project aims to facilitate the transfer of funds by promoting partnerships with financial institutions as well as supporting actions that will promote the funneling of money towards development. The project also tackles another facet of the diaspora’s possible involvement in national development: organizing the return, and direct transmission of migrants’ expertise to small national businesses and entrepreneurs. It seeks to deepen and extend to other Caribbean countries an initiative implemented for the first time in 1994 in Jamaica. Indeed, almost twenty years ago, the ‘Return of Qualified Nationals’ program allowed 60 Jamaican migrant workers and entrepreneurs to share their experience and skills with nationals in various sectors such as chemical, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering, information and communication, agriculture and policy analysis, etc. However, in order to optimize the transmission of knowledge and skills and to maximize the potential participation of emigrants to national development, the first necessary step is determining the location of diaspora members, their profile, interest and skills. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched the

project Mapping Jamaica Diaspora in 2014, with the purpose of creating a database with the characteristics of Jamaican emigrants. Comparing their expertise with skill gaps in the country of origin, will permit to “shape a more strategic, and mutually beneficial relationship between Jamaica and the Diaspora”. The mapping allows localizing and estimating the total number of migrants residing abroad. Although it is an essential step in the process of involving highly-trained migrants in sectors where they can bring innovation and competitiveness, such an investigation has not been made in any other country in the Caribbean. The migration-development nexus is increasingly acknowledged by national governments in the Caribbean, and is entering the agenda of international political dialogue. However the lack of adapted structures, financial instruments, programs, and accurate data concerning the stocks and profiles of emigrants is still an obstacle to effectively bring useful capital, knowledge and contacts to the country of origin. Jamaica, through various governmental and civil society projects, has certainly established a well-advanced connection with its diaspora in the entire Caribbean. But more efforts are yet to be made in order to fully exploit emigrants’ potential contribution to human and social development.

Emilie d’Amico is studying International Development at Sciences Po Paris.

Photo credit: Flickr/CC/Carl Lender

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

UNRWA Mutation

A Constant Process of Adaptation for Palestine Refugees

hile the hostilities of last summer in the Gaza strip and the tensions in Jerusalem raise fears of a third Intifada, the international community is still unable to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More than sixty-five years of conflict and deadlock has left Palestine refugees marginalized and their situation uncertain, so that they have become the symbol of the issue of refugees around the world. According to Michael Dumper,a researcher in the field of Middle Eastern politics, they are the largest population of refugees and displaced people in the world. Yet, Palestine refugees are a unique and different case study because of the nature and the history of the conflict. Unlike other refugees, they do not depend on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Indeed, the United Nations (UN) created in 1949 a special agency for Palestine refugees, the United Nation Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Since 1949, UNRWA has been inside the storm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The events of last summer did not spare the UNRWA. On 29 July 2014, Israeli shellings over an UNRWA school killed several Palestinian children. UNRWA lost employees and facilities during the same summer. UNRWA has been a witness of the conflict for sixty-five years, and sometimes a victim. UNRWA is the main UN program for Palestine refugees. The agency was created by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949. The agency is financed by voluntary contributions. Its mandate specifies that the UN General Assembly must vote every three years to decide if the UNRWA should continue its mission as the Agency was originally meant to be temporary. UNRWA defines who are the Palestine refugees and deals with their basic needs on the ground. The definition of Palestine refugees is

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by Julia Roy something very specific to UNRWA. Indeed, its definition of refugees is different from the one given by the UNHCR. In 1954, UNRWA stated that Palestine refugees are “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict”. This definition also encompasses the descendants of Palestine refugees. According to it, five million people can be seen as Palestine refugees. The definition we know today has been through several changes over the sixty-five years of UNRWA’s existence. The first, but often forgotten mission of defining Palestine refugees, is a basic condition for the acknowledgement of Palestinian refugees’ problems. Regarding the goal assigned to the UNRWA, its broad mandate stipulates that UNRWA should provide “assistance for the relief of the Palestine refugees (…) to prevent conditions of starvation and distress” and to enable their development. But it also gave UNRWA a political, yet unclear, role “to further conditions of peace and stability”. The UNRWA officially intervenes in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. On the ground, the UNRWA provides services in refugees camps, distributes food, provides education, health services (hospitals, schools) and promotes economic development through work programs. Its missions vary depending on the context. Since the start of the Syrian civil war, the UNRWA is present in refugees camps on the Syrian ground, but its mission is mostly limited to an emergency response, consisting “The main debate of food distribution and health assistance. has revolved around At first glance, UNRWA’s work does not seem problematic. Since its very creation, however, recurring questions liven up the discussions about it.

the question of whether a specialized agency for Palestine refugees should exist in the first place.”

The main debate has revolved around the question of whether a specialized agency for Palestine refugees should exist in the first place. Usually, the UNRWA is accused by its detractors of being useless, counter-productive and even perpetuating the Palestinian violence. In June 2014, UNRWA inspectors found rockets hidden in one of the UNRWA’s schools. A sharp debate about these rockets and the agency’s responsibility was initiated. Of course, UNRWA’s work does not have an unanimous support from Palestine refugees. Different criticisms can be addressed to the agency, related to difficulties encountered in empowering refugees. This dissatisfaction is not easily measured and understood. The reception of UNRWA services among Palestine refugees varies according to the period and the host countries. Debates about UNRWA and Palestine refugees should overcome these questions: because the international community has proven unable to consider and agree on a replacing program, the UNRWA is indispensable. Instead, a more constructive debate can focus on UNRWA’s evolution: what is UNRWA now? why is it no longer what it was in 1949? what is the best

way to use it to solve the Palestine refugees question? From a historical perspective, the creation of UNRWA was driven by the will to solve the refugees problem in a limited amount of time with economic prosperity. This idea can be found in the “W” (works) in the UNRWA’s name, which puts emphasis on peaceful integration and acceptance through work and prosperity. UNRWA was created before the UNHCR (1950) and before the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951). The creation of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees (1948 - 1949), and after that, UNRWA, was one of the first signs of multilateral progress on the issue of refugees. The agency was designed to be a model on how to deal with refugees. Unfortunately, this model did not turn out to be the solution, at least not how it was designed. But instead of disappearing, the UNRWA has adapted and evolved to meet the needs of Palestine refugees and the lack of international community’s attention. UNRWA’s discourses and actions have changed alongside the refugees’ situation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First, its mandate is broad, which gives the flexibility needed.

Photo credit: Flickr/CC/David Scaduto

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

According to UNRWA former Commissioner General Giorgio Giacomelli, “The Israelis, in discussing UNRWA’s responsibilities, say routinely ‘don’t go beyond your mandate’. We concur but we differ with the Israelis on what the mandate is. I believe UNRWA’s mandate is flexible”. Because the UNRWA’s mandate is not explicit on the services the agency should provide or not, it sets only few limitations to UNRWA actions. The agency’s orientations are closely related to the situation of Palestine refugees on the ground. Indeed, most of UNRWA employees are themselves Palestinian: out of a total of 30,000 employees, more than 25,000 employees are Palestinian. UNRWA actions are divided into two different phases. During situations of conflict that affected the refugees in the Middle East, UNRWA adopted emergency responses. It means that UNRWA gives priority to warfare needs, like specific medical assistance or food. UNRWA former Commissioner General Giorgio Giacomelli explained that, during a conflict, Palestine refugees do not immediately need aspirin or vaccine but surgery. For example, UNRWA remained present in Gaza during the whole of this summer to support and nurse the Palestine refugees hurt during Operation Protective Edge. Nine members of UNRWA staff died during this operation. Besides, the reconstruction needed after the conflict of this summer is slowing down the improvement of Palestine refugees’ situation. In periods of peace talk or cool down of the tensions, UNRWA can focus more on development. Education, healthcare and economic improvement, through loans for example, become priorities.

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UNRWA carries out actions close to a “welfare-state” policy. This difference in attitude, in times of conflict and in times of peace, is also a consequence of limited financings and materials means. A second feature of UNRWA’s evolution is the ambiguity between its humanitarian and political role. The General Assembly resolution of 1949, stated that UNRWA is a humanitarian agency. In reality, its work goes beyond humanitarian assistance. UNRWA is taking a role of public advocacy, of mediation. This is clear with current Commissioner General Pierre Krähenbühl, who grants the defence of refugees’ rights priority in the work of UNRWA. Again, its detractors can interpret this as a drawback. Moreover, UNRWA keeps a record of the Palestinian culture and history, and it has accumulated a massive database of videos and photos since 1949. UNRWA’s photo and film archives are composed of more than 430,000 negatives. This aspect of UNRWA is a key component of its work that has not been much taken into account. Palestine refugees have the will to fight and preserve their identity. UNRWA is a vehicle for the survival of the Palestinian culture. This does not mean, however, that UNRWA has no autonomy. The agency is trying to preserve its relationship with Israel and the other host countries. Indeed, at the heart of the relationship between UNRWA and Palestine refugees, the host countries are crucial. UNRWA is an agency like no other, as the Palestine refugees’ situation itself. It is part of the conflict’s DNA, far from New York and from the Secre-

tary-General of the UN office. The extensive interpretation of its mandate and the strong link with reality on the ground have led to its unusual development. Despite UNRWA’s continued efforts, a question still remains unanswered: how could UNRWA be integrated as part of the solution for the Israelipalestinian conflict instead of being an ad hoc answer?

Julia Roy studies international relations at the Doctoral School of Sciences Po Paris. She is writing her Master’s thesis about UNRWA.

Undocumented and Unaccompanied

How Is France Dealing with a Surge in Child Migration? by Yena Lee

wo years ago, fifteen-year-old Oumar* left his native GuineaConakry and arrived alone in Paris.

As a minor, he does not need to apply for a resident’s permit or a student visa. As a minor, he has the right to an education. This is why he is here. Bright, educated and from a well-to-do family, he says he had a happy childhood. “Before, things were good. Family, school, football...”, he says in an interview outside his new high school. After the death of his father, Oumar had to flee. As the oldest son of a first son, he was persecuted by one of his uncles for his inheritance. As Guinea is not in a war zone, he could not apply for asylum. He decided to emigrate to France, a logical choice as he already spoke the language. Oumar is one of the hundreds of unaccompanied minors in Paris, out of an estimated 8,000 in the whole country. These migrants do not have legal guardians. Most are from former French colonies and the vast majority are boys. All of them have escaped from poverty or persecution. But alone and with no friends or family, things were not going to be easy for these teenagers. Homeless shelters are either full or do not accept minors. After barely setting foot on European soil, Oumar had to adjust to the climate and brace the winter in the streets. “I slept on night buses and under the bridge at Stalingrad [metro station],” he says. He spent three months sleeping rough. “It wasn’t easy. It was ... an experience”. Embarrassed and afraid to worry his mother, he did not even tell her about his situation. Fortunately , he found a charity called Aide et Defense des Jeunes Isolés Etrangers (ADJIE).

Twice a week, volunteers help teenagers with their paperwork and legal troubles. Less than half an hour after ADJIE opens, there is always already a long queue at their office in the north of Paris. Malians, Guineans, Nigerians, Gabonese and a few Afghans and Bangladeshis line up to talk one-to-one with a volunteer about their situation. Stories of sub-Saharan Africans who cross the continent and face discrimination and violence in Morocco before they manage to escape to Europe are not uncommon. On this particular day, one boy at ADJIE explained that he came to France via Lampedusa, where a boat notoriously capsized in 2013, resulting in more than 350 deaths. These teenagers risk their lives for a better education in France. French social services take care of children in various circumstances. They are legally obliged to help foreign minors too. Once they have accepted a foreigner as an unaccompanied minor, they provide housing, food, French lessons, psychological care - as they would to any French national who is in their care. The problem is that only 40% of foreign youth who ask to be taken into care are actually accepted. A tangle of bureaucracy and lack of resources make it hard for minors like Oumar to be placed in the system. “ADJIE helped me apply for social services, but I failed the bone test. Then they helped me appeal. But that was rejected too.”

“A tangle of bureaucracy and lack of resources make it hard for minors like Oumar to be placed in the system”

French authorities use a bone test system to determine the age of migrants. Condemned by the EU and banned in the UK, this system of defining age is deemed unscientific.

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

The test was originally conceived for height prediction and not age. It can give results with fifteen or twenty years’ margin of error. But these calculations are crucial for unaccompanied minors - most of whom arrive in France in their late teens. It is an age when boys start to resemble men and girls are already women. More curiously, Oumar’s appeal was rejected by the juvenile court system with an interesting letter. “Judging by the evidence we have cited above, we have serious doubts about the authenticity of these documents”. Despite Oumar’s birth certificate being validated by his Embassy, the courts rejected these identification papers. One of the arguments brought forward by the court was that his place of birth stated on his birth certificate did not match his place of residence on his consular card. Whether this was a detail that raised doubts or a bureaucratic mistake on their part, it will be near-impossible to rectify. Despite the authorities rejecting his status as a minor, they do not consider him to be an adult either. All the better for him, as they cannot

expulse children from the country, but difficult when minors like Oumar want to sleep in homeless shelters. In the interest of safety, children are not often allowed to sleep in shelters - ironically their only solution is the streets or emergency housing offered by social services. Parisian social services have 20-25 beds per night reserved for foreign migrants as emergency solutions. Charities such as ADJIE say that there are between 70 - 85 teenagers queueing up every evening since September. Thanks to charities such as ADJIE and Education Without Borders, many teenagers are enrolled in school, as is their right. But after class, they have no place to go. Recently, a student union picked up on this situation and started to host fellow teenagers at their small office, providing food, a roof and solidarity. “FIDL is doing the job of the French government - we are protecting undocumented high school students” reads a sign outside their building.

Photo credit: Saba MBoundza 60

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A student union with one bed and a few mattresses cannot house all the homeless students in Paris, nor can they do it forever. Oumar is not one of the dozen students camping out at the FIDL (Independent and Democratic High-School Federation). He has been living at a retired teacher’s house for the past year. Mr Martinez* volunteered at ADJIE when he met Oumar. When he found out the teenager was sleeping rough, he decided to host him in a spare room. “He’s a very kind man,” says Oumar. “He comes home from traveling just to fill up the fridge with more food for me.” Mr Martinez is also helping Oumar with his paperwork, meaning that he spends less time down at the ADJIE after school. With a roof over his head and a full stomach, Oumar can concentrate on his studies. Despite the distance with his family and his fragile legal situation, he is a motivated student. Top of his class in his Parisian high school, Oumar hopes to work in military logistics when he grows up.

organized demonstrations to support their classmates. After weeks of general disruption and media interest, the local mayor’s office decided to reexamine their paperwork. One has been granted a residence permit, whilst the other’s demand was rejected once again. Like Oumar, he has to hope he will make it until graduation. Even if these teenagers have no choice but to leave France, they hope to leave at least with a diploma in hand. * The names have been changed in this article

Yena Lee is pursuing a Dual Degree in Journalism and International Development at Sciences Po Paris.

“Now, I’m fine,” explains Oumar. “But if you saw me back when I was sleeping under the bridge you wouldn’t have been able to recognize me.” He is not alone. The majority of unaccompanied minors spend a few months fending for themselves in the streets. Girls and teenagers from well-known war zones are quickly picked up by the authorities. For the rest, a system designed to deter awaits them. Even a positive reply from the system is often too little, too late. A reply from the judge takes at least four months and an appeal takes a year. For some teenagers, even if social services finally validate their age, they are no longer minors. This January, Oumar turned eighteen, leaving him vulnerable for deportation at every police check. Hopefully he will at least be able to make it until June, to pass his high school diploma, the Baccalauréat. Last month, two students from a town near Paris received orders to leave French soil within 30 days. Students rallied together and

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232 Migrants 7 162 POPULATION MONDIALE

Flux migratoires

Déplacés internes

Réfugiés

4 Étudiants internationaux

DIFFÉRENTES MOBILITÉS, 2013 (en millions)

PRINCIPAUX MOUVEMENTS MIGRATOIRES, 2013 Les données ne représentent pas des flux de migrants à proprement parler, mais une photographie des effectifs (stocks) en 2013. Les flèches montrent l'origine et la destination des migrants, ces personnes ayant pu se déplacer avant 2013.

Australie et N.-Zélande

Note sur les données : Par « migrants », les auteurs entendent, selon les pays, les étrangers (personnes qui n'ont pas la nationalité du pays dans lequel ils résident) ou les personnes nées à l'étranger. Les données ont été compilées à partir des effectifs bilatéraux de migrants issus des recensements nationaux et des estimations de la division Population des Nations unies.

Stock de migrants (en millions) 18,4 10

Asie du Sud-Est et Pacifique

flux entre régions flux à l’intérieur des régions

Asie de l’Est

5 1 0,4 Seuls les flux supérieurs à 400 000 sont représentés soit 94 % du stock total de migrants.

Inde Russie Asie centr., B., U. 3

Am. du Nord H.E.S. 2

Mexique

Pr.-Orient et Caucase Espace Sch. 1

Afrique du Nord

Golfe Persique

Afrique de l'Est et du Centre

Afrique de l'Ouest

Am. centrale et Caraïbes

Am. du Sud

Souscont. indien

Afrique méridionale

1 Espace Schengen 2 Europe hors espace Schengen 3 Asie Centrale, Biélorussie, Ukraine Sources : United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2013), Trends in International Migrant Stock: Migrants by Destination and Origin (United Nations database, POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2013), www.un.org ; Internal displacement monitoring centre (IDMC), www.internal-displacement.org ; Unesco, www.uis.unesco.org.

Student Mobility and the Internationalization of Higher Education Services: A Reflection

by Elham Torabian

igher education spaces are woven into the fabric of the social and economic projects of modern knowledge economies. Within the neoliberal free market imperative, nations are to outsmart each other by educating highly skilled knowledge ‘workers’- a ‘specialist kind’ of workers but not necessarily ‘cultivated types of citizens’. The employability and self-worth of these knowledge laborers is then defined by their individual commitment to succeed in joining the demand chain for the aggressively marketized supply of higher education worldwide. Based on these tenets, internationalization becomes a mechanism where a greater ‘equality of opportunity’ is provided for an army of mobile competitive individuals who are ready to invest in a degree from globally renowned higher education institutions. And all this in exchange for - sometimes the illusion of - a winning ticket in the ‘survival of the fittest’ game of global competition. This prevalent economic and marketing rationale of higher education supply is consequently manifested in ‘symbolic internationalization’ activities where recruiting mobile students/consumers becomes the most significant and visible activity of universities. Wrapped in the discourses of ‘freedom of choice’, ‘equal opportunity’, ‘multiculturalism and tolerance’, symbolic internationalization not only fulfills the self-interest and enthusiasm of fee-paying, willingly-mobile students/customers, but also accommodates the financial needs of cash-strapped higher education institutions, simultaneously raising their reputation and ranking in the global market. To animate this global exchange of knowledge and workers, international organizations such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the International Monetary

Fund (IMF) have promoted privatization, commodification, and marketization of cross-border education services. These organizations’ visible hand has turned education into a marketable service causing further inequality, especially in developing countries. Their initiatives embody genuine aspirations to assist the rising number of middle classes in developing countries to appropriate the forces of the market to their own benefit and to secure the ‘Equality of Access and Opportunity For Some - and Not “Many developing All’ with purchascountries have become ing power around customers of educathe world. Many developing countional services either tries have become customers of edu- by exporting their stucational services dent/consumers or either by exportby importing offshore ing their student/ branches of western consumers or by importing offshore universities.” branches of western universities. The subsequent impact has been a rapid shift from Durkheimian understandings of the social role of education to its current economic role and an exaggeration of the need for globally ‘certified’ labour. This has in turn encouraged the massive mobility of students/consumers. One logical expectation from this well-designed global plethora of higher education choices is the incorporation of a suitable system of statistical surveys and data gathering on mobile students for the sake of marketing - if not for the sake of the students. Such a system may provide useful information on trends of mobility and could set forth a clear and acceptable definition of mobility to distinguish between different categories of mobile students on the basis of the destination and duration of their mobility, to mention a few. The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

But this does not seem to be exactly the case. In fact, student mobility reports are not only statistically difficult to compile, and are therefore not annually updated, but have also failed to propose a common definition of mobility. Additionally they may have a negative impact on tailoring internationalization responses to students’ needs and requirements.

much (more quantitative than qualitative) research on international and mobile students has been concerned with comparing these groups’ characteristics with their ‘different local Others’. For instance, a high percentage of internationally mobile students in the US and the UK are of Chinese background.

ple, dates back to 2011 and has been published by the OECD. This report has not been updated yet but has formed the basis of several subsequent studies such as the recent 2014 special report by University World News (UWN). Nonetheless, both OECD and UWN reports provide an insight into mobility trends. The UWN reports that since 2000 there has been a 140% increase in the number of mobile students, implying a rise from 2.1 to nearly 5 million students, and thus an unprecedented mass movement in the history of humanity. The same report indicated that China, Korea, and India are the key Asian student/ consumer exporters - with 85%, 96%, and 90% student mobility towards OECD countries, respectively - and together account for more than a quarter of mobile students around the world.

“since 2000 there has been a 140% increase in the number of mobile students, implying a rise from 2.1 to nearly 5 million students, and thus an unprecedented mass movement in the history of humanity [...] The same reporte indicated that China, Korea and India are the key Asian student/ consumer exporters [...] together accounting for more than a quarter of mobile students around the world.”

One initial concern lies with the very usage of ‘mobile students’ as a general label to refer to a vast body of students with obviously different individual backgrounds in terms of education, culture, and socio-economic conditions. The hazards of using ‘mobile students’ as an umbrella terminology is reminiscent of the pitfalls of similar overarching labels, such as ‘international students’. As Foucault argued, discourses reflect and reproduce social and power relations, and therefore general labels as such may not only attach certain presumptions and/or stereotypes to mobile and international students as ‘outsider’ groups, but may also encourage a misunderstanding of their problems, challenges, learning styles, academic and pastoral needs, and coping strategies. The impact of such inferences is further isolation and exclusion of a large number of students based on their origins or nationality, which contradicts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international initiatives such as Education For All (EFA) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). A testimony to the existence of stereotypical presuppositions is that

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This has led many studies to either reason for their passive, rote-learning approaches in the classrooms or to negate such stereotypes on the basis that they originate from a lack of inter-cultural understandings, and the use of general labels for these individuals. Providing for the needs of individual learners in an inclusive and sustainable learning/teaching environment asks for a shift in worldviews and discourses from such general labels as ‘mobile’ and ‘international’ to more relevant categories based on ‘access’ and ‘equal opportunity’. As mentioned, compiling student mobility reports is a challenging task which may be among the reasons why information on trends of mobility is not annually updated. One main document available on students’ mobility trends, for exam-

The US, the UK, Australia, and Canada, on the other hand, remain the top destinations mainly due to the fact that English has become the lingua franca of international education. The US’s share of the market is still the highest, with an estimated number of 900,000 international students. The UK has followed the US with the highest number of international students maintaining a lucrative business worth 8.5 billion pounds according to a 2010 University UK (UUK) report. However, the UK’s competitive edge in the higher education market has gone blunt with the introduction of new strict migration rules for entry. The government’s recent policies may also have a negative impact on the

UK higher education market as they seek to plan for force majeure action in helping developing countries reverse their ‘brain drain’ trend by deporting their talented nationals - or sometimes not talented but deep pocketed - from the UK once their fee-paying period is over. Other countries have also experienced a rise in the number of mobile students they have hosted or exported. The World Education Services 2012 report highlights that Canada has seen a 67% increase in its gain in international student markets during 2000-2009, followed by Australia with a 62% increase. Students’ mobility in continental Europe has also increased from 2000-2011 mainly due to regional initiatives including the Bologna Process, the Erasmus program, and its newly introduced sister plan called Erasmus Plus. The EUROSTUDENT 2009 report highlights the impact of Bologna and Erasmus processes by showing that 80% of mobile European students remained in the EU and only 20% migrated out of the continent to pursue their studies. According to UNESCO/

OECD 2011 statistics, Germany has exported the highest number of mobile students (132,000),of whom 98% study in the OECD countries. France is next with 80,000 outward mobile students and a rate of 97% mobility within the OECD. In return, Germany, France, Belgium and Sweden have each hosted almost 10-15% of incoming foreign students. The number of mobile students and their percentage in OECD countries from the Russian Federation is 71,000 and 65%; 63,000 and 97% from Italy; and 55,000 and 55% from Ukraine. Students from other parts of the world are also attracted to the OECD higher education market: in Southeast Asia Vietnam has the highest number of student mobility towards OECD countries with 82%; the top exporting country in Latin America is Brazil (89%); and in Africa Nigeria maintains the highest percentage with 73% mobility towards the OECD. Such holistic reports of student mobility trends are of course useful, but they fail to provide a detailed and qualitative understanding of students’ mobility

experiences and challenges. In other words, they may provide a general image of student mobility, but they suffer from certain statistical shortcomings. In his paper on ‘International student mobility in Europe in the context of Bologna Process’, Teichler (2012) highlights that international statistics fail to propose a common definition of mobility and cannot provide information on the level of education (Bachelor’s or Master’s); the period of mobility (for one semester, one year, or the whole degree period); and the migration background of students (whether students and/or their parents are migrants in the host countries or if they have only migrated for academic purposes). For instance, 16% and 23% of French and English higher education graduates are reported to have a migration background while only 12% and 3% among them were born abroad, respectively. However, these are not the details one can hope to see in international reports on mobility. The international reports go astray from highlighting such complexities in mobility trends

Photo Credit: Flickr/CC/Richard Lee

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which are essential in understanding socio-cultural understandings into the design of curriculum and and economic needs of international students. pedagogies. By proposing ‘signature pedagogies’ and ‘inclusive curricula’ universities may help Additionally, mobility reports fall short in shed- students develop a ‘habit of mind’ to efficiently ding light on how the increased student mobility communicate and understand others with tolerfulfills the official motives of internationalization ance and respect. such as multicultural education, global citizenship, tolerance and equal opportunities. Clearly, Therefore, educating all students for sustaininternationalization is not about a simple supply- able, inclusive, and smart societies - and not demand mechanism and recruitment of students/ economies - requires transformative and not customers from other countries; although this has symbolic internationalization policies and strateformed the most visible and profitable activity of gies. It entails educating cultivated individuals internationalization strategies in higher education who understand themselves and their place in the institutions around the world. world as global citizens rather than training skillful ‘calculating pleasure machines’. It requires transA different understanding of internationalization formative internationalization to go far beyond suggests that it is ‘a process where interna- international students rubbing shoulders with tional dimensions are integrated into the tripartite ‘Others’ in university classrooms and eventually activities of universities: teaching, research and becoming knowledge workers. In the same vein, services’ (Knight, 2004). Understanding interna- tailored international and inclusive education ask tionalization based on this definition, therefore, for regularly updated reports on students’ mobility, entails a transformative approach in internation- proposing a definition for mobility, and developing alization policies and strategies where higher international indicators and data collection mechaeducation spaces benefit from the international nisms that can reflect students’ equal access and richness of experiences at their disposal. Drawing opportunity as well as their diversity in higher eduon the ‘collective intelligence’ of both international cation spaces. and local students, faculty, and researchers enables the universities to revisit the nature of their practices and policies and accommodate the academic and pastoral needs and requirements of all - subsequently promoting capabilities and wellbeing in the wider society. As such, transformative internationalization stands at the opposite end of a continuum against symbolic internationalization that suffices to seat international students in a classroom hoping that transformative values of tolerance, multiculturalism and global citizenship would occur by accident and just because ‘mobile’ and/or ‘international’ students are around in the university learning from informal settings. This is not to say that benefits of students’ mobility is not unequivocal; experiencing other cultures, even in a limited way, may reconstruct students’ identities. It is simply to emphasize the socio-cultural impact of formal inclusive pedagogies as opposed to economic agendas for higher education that pay lip service to these principles merely to increase financial gains. In other words, symbolic internationalization and some of its consequent abruptly introduced national policies and institutional strategies may suit the basic marketing and recruitment motives, but they may not succeed in creating suitable inter-cultural contexts for reflection and transformation. If internationalization is to be an intelligent action, it requires a well-thought formal integration of inter-cultural

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Elham Torabian is a specialist in education and sustainable development. She is a lecturer at Sciences Po and has recently been nominated as the ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) focal coordinator with UNESCO and OECD for the International council on Education for Teaching (ICET) in France.

VARIA

Digital Migration as the End of the Nation State? E-residency in Estonia by Eeva Metssalu

magine a world where your physical self is no more important than your virtual self. A world where you can sign important documents without being present, or start a company in a country that you have never been to. The world is becoming more globalized as the differences between different countries are made marginal by the use of the Internet, and the concept of the nation state is being seriously challenged by the process of (digital) migration. In December 2014, Estonia opened its digital borders to citizens of all others countries by introducing the concept of e-residency. This means that anyone can apply for an ID card that gives them access to the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advanced digital services. People who have the card can benefit from ser-

vices such as creating their company in the EU in just half an hour, filing their income tax returns in minutes, opening a bank account in the EU or adding an EU-approved digital signature to documents. The future is in Estonia. Such a concept allows all third country citizens to involve themselves in the EU economy without having to pass through lengthy bureaucratic processes or without even having to apply for a visa. The management of a company for example, can all be done from far away. Such an opportunity asks a very philosophical question - whether a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s physical presence has an importance over oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s virtual self. It also asks whether a nation consists only of its physical residents, or whether its virtual residents can also be considered as part of the nation if their economic activities are very closely related to the country. It has long been argued that the notion of a nation state might become obsolete if it holds to its

Photo Credit: Flickr/CC/Steve Jurvetson

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traditional static definition of strong ethno-cultural requirements. Such an obsolescence seems inevitable in the light of international integration and the rise of â&#x20AC;&#x153;global citizensâ&#x20AC;?. The possible rise of digital migrants poses a new challenge for the upholding of the nation state. It is proposed that the definition of a nation state should be continuous as opposed to a static one and allow for the country to stay an integrated community of citizens who can identify themselves with the country but also keep their cultural differences. As of now, the e-residency of Estonia is said to be a privilege and not a right, meaning that it offers e-residents access to several services but does not offer citizenship, serve as a travel document or grant the right to participate in elections. Thus, it does not allow a physical migration into the EU. However, it does open up its digital borders, meaning that a person can now at least digitally enter the region. It brings forth a question whether th digital migrants could be almost as important as physical ones as they could potentially affect at least the Estonian economic sphere.

The current vision is to have 10 million e-residents by 2025. It is an ambitious plan but also a competitive one, and once the concept has been proven successful, other countries may follow suit. Competition for such digital services may give rise to some upgraded versions of e-residency where countries may offer more rights in order to get people to invest in their services. The time may not be far when digital services may be accompanied by rights of entry or perhaps even electoral rights. Although this may appear to be a dystopian scenario, the EU actually already allows the citizens of all member states to participate in municipal elections, and some grant the rights to non-EU residents. The right of entry does seem like a less realistic idea. Should Estonia offer it to its e-residents, for example, its citizens would probably not even be able to enter Finland without a visa. Nevertheless, it is certain that in the light of new concepts such as e-residency, the notion of digital migrations is gaining more and more ground and should be further discussed.

Eeva Metssalu graduated from European-Asian relations at Sciences Po and is currently working at the financial sector in Estonia.

Photo Credit: Flickr/CC/Cyrus Farivar 68

The Paris Globalist | Vol. 9 Issue 1

Jumping off in New Places

Reflections on Mexico’s New Immigration Reform Plan, “Programa Frontera Sur” by Marlené Nancy López

entered the migrant shelter “Hermanos en el Camino” located in Ixtepec Mexico full of expectations, hoping to perhaps get an interview with its the awe-inspiring founder, Father Alejandro Solalinde. I was slightly taken aback by how little activity there was before me. Three migrants lounged besides the cafeteria chatting and two dogs lay in the sun. Somewhere off in the distance I could see a woman washing her clothes. This was definitely not what I expected. The disconnect came from having read a lot about the shelter prior to my arrival. This shelter, founded in 2007, was one of the first centers for migrants traveling through Mexico and, in that sense, was revolutionary. It has provided life-saving assistance such as medical treatment, daily meals and legal assistance to hundreds of migrants. The shelter spurred the creation of many other centers like it all up and down Mexico creating the “Albergue” or migrant shelter system. And yet, this migrant shelter that months ago received and fed hundreds of migrants daily, now lay almost empty. I was later told by one of my fellow volunteers that on a good day, the center now received between five and ten migrants. Surprised by all this, I decided I would try to investigate what had caused this dramatic decline in migrant numbers at the shelter and, more importantly, find out where all the migrants had gone. The answer starts with a new immigration reform called “La Programa Frontera Sur” (PFS), or the Southern Border Program, initiated on July 7th by the Peña Nieto administration.

Migrants at ad hoc shelter in Chahuites, Oaxaca, Mexico pray before they eat. Photo credit: Marlene Nancy Lopez

PFS was created as a response to the growing concerns surrounding the miserable conditions transmigrants face while traveling through Mexico. PFS states that one of its main objectives is to protect the security of migrants who often risk their lives to ride atop the notorious “Bestia” (The Beast) train, which they are drawn to for a lack of controls, and near-zero monetary cost. The train’s infamy is well deserved, for, in all of Mexico, it is here that some of the most heinous and violent acts against migrants take place. A report from the Washington Office of Latin America on Mexico’s southern border states that “the stunning frequency of kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, rape, and homicide on “La Bestia” puts Central American migrants’ plight in Mexico atop the list of the Western Hemisphere’s worst humanitarian emergencies.” To begin tackling these issues, PFS’s strategy includes the creation of a new agency within the Secretaría de Gobernación (Ministry of the Interior) to help coordinate affairs at the southern border.

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Humanitarian programs promise work permits for Central Americans in four border-states, amongst other things. But the heftiest part of the plan seems to lay in PFSs plans to secure and monitor the Mexican border at a greater capacity in the hope of deterring migrants from riding the train and capturing criminals who prey upon them. According to El Financiero, PFS plans to spend 6.058 billion pesos between the years 2014-2018 to restore and refurbish the railroad tracks in order to accelerate its velocity. Trying to ride the train would then translate as a death wish for migrants. In its attempts to “secure” the border, PFS will also increase the number of operativos or operatives and check-points on the trains. Operativos often force migrants to jump from the train to evade capture, often leading to injuries, run-ins with gang members, decapitations, and, in some cases, death. All these operatives come from the Army, Navy, Federal Police, and the migrant support group know as the BETAs. These groups will all be coordinated by the government and be dependent on the Instituto Nacional de Migracion (INM), the immigration authorities. The strategy is applauded by the US which has put pressure on Mexico to act after the exposure of the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children to the US last year. Thomas Shannon, Counselor of the Department of State announced that 86 million dollars would be directed to the PFS under the Merida initiative. It is tempting to believe that a more controlled and supervised Mexican southern border equates to less human rights violations, more law and order, more safety and perhaps, as America hopes, a slow down

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of Central American migrants heading northward. Unfortunately, after much research and my own experiences at the shelter I came to realize that PFS was not securing the safety of migrants but, rather, creating a whole new humanitarian crisis at the border. My question of where all the migrants had gone, was answered by a new horrifying reality. There were still migrants in Mexico, but they were being pushed away from their support networks, making them more vulnerable to corruption and crime than ever before. PFS makes migrants less secure in Mexico for several reasons:

1. PFS takes no serious actions against the corruption within the INM. The INM has notoriously been involved in crimes against migrants. In 2013, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, CNDH) received 454 complaints of human rights violations by INM officials. Migrant shelters across Mexico have received testimonies from migrants describing widespread incidents of extortion, kidnapping, and other abuses committed by both criminal groups and state agents, including federal, local police officials, and INM officials. PFS does not address these concerns but continues to add jurisdiction and monetary support to the INM. Once in Ixtepec, it became clear that the PFS did not embolden INM officials to secure migrants rights but in actuality exacerbated the pre-existing corruption within the organization.

The author and several migrants sit in front of ad hoc shelter in Chahuites, Oaxaca, Mexico. Photo Credit: Armando Amante

An example of this can be seen in the migrant support group BETAs, whose sole purpose is to provide assistance to migrants on route. I was advised to be careful with the BETAs since they have now been seen working alongside the INM. On many occasions, migrants told stories of BETA agents taking their names and ID’s (which they are not required to do) in exchange for food and water and, shortly after, calling immigration officials on them.

the lives of the thousands of migrants who encounter these officials daily. 2. PFS’ checkpoints create easy pickings for criminals.

It was on a fact-finding mission atop the Bestia, with the human rights group Pueblos Sin Frontera Centro America, that I had my first encounter with the BETAs and the INM. As we rode atop the train, the BETA agents began taking pictures of us.

One of my jobs at the migrant shelter was to register the new arrivals and record their stories. Whether it came to being robbed, threatened with death or kidnapping, something always struck me about these stories - many of these crimes occurred near an INM checkpoint. Indeed, the scrambling that occurs when migrants come across a checkpoint leads many straight into the hands of people who wish to harm them.

Minutes later, we were stopped and forced off the train by about twenty INM officials. The intimidation began as soon as we got off the train. I was surrounded by seven INM officials, yelled at, and forcibly led towards a car. Thankfully, a fellow activist stepped in and freed me from their grip. I escaped the mayhem before the INM agents began to beat my colleagues. Unable to get them into their vehicles, they settled on beating the cameras away from the activist and left.

I recall a day in which several waves of migrants arrived at the shelter frightened and sad, all telling a similar story. Just outside town stood a bridge that was easy to get around, and where the INM had consequently set up a checkpoint. Apparently, two men on motorcycles and in civilian clothes began to chase and shoot migrants not far from this bridge. It is hard to believe that all this chaos occurred without a single INM official taking notice.

It is this type of excessive force, brutality and silencing of the truth that continues to be the INM’s legacy in Mexico. Just how infiltrated the BETAs are is difficult to say, but considering the amount of monetary support the INM has now received, the corruption could be staggering. All of this will have a direct impact on

Many crimes occur near checkpoints because the presence and apathy of the INM creates an opportunity to exploit, rob, hurt or kidnap migrants. More checkpoints as mandated by PFS will not create safer travel but instead easier pickings for criminals and delinquents.

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3. PFS forces migrant support networks and shelters to start all over again. Nowhere is opening a migrant shelter an easy task and, despite Mexico being the leading migrant-sending country in the world, it is no exception. The humanitarian workers who created the “Albergue” system have fought tirelessly for their places in their villages. Over the years, they have strategically found allies among their neighbors, worked to raise awareness, and learned how to use their local resources all against a backdrop of threats and intimidation. As the PFS begins to shut down traditional migration routes with checkpoints and operatives, the situations of migrants become more desperate, and humanitarians are forced to find their new routes. Some are even setting up ad hoc shelters to address this rising crisis. If they do not work quickly enough, their efforts could be in vain - towns could stop their actions or gangs could catch wind of their intentions and intervene. As a result, they are overworked, underprepared and lack supplies, all of which endangers their work, lives and their abilities to help during this crisis.

I was asked to join a small group in building one of these impromptu shelters in a town called Chahuites. It was there that migrants were arriving by the dozen every day. Our shelter was nothing more than a dilapidated house with no functioning toilet, shower, or electricity, but for the migrants it was a rare corner of safety, comfort, medical treatment and food. We worked endlessly with little to no equipment, making fire from trash, making our limited food supplies last so that each got a little to eat, sleeping on the ground, and treating wounds with a single bottle of alcohol. Those were long and yet rewarding days. Since many could not ride the train anymore, they walked. They walked great distances in the hot Mexican sun. Some arrived only to collapse and sleep for days. One man had walked so much that we had to peel his melted shoes right off of his burned feet. We also received machete victims since Chahuites is situated near a gang stronghold. It was in Chahuites that we saw the best and the worst of scenarios that human rights workers face when opening a new

shelter. One community member began bringing us food everyday, our town mayor extended his support and welcomed us, another town official warned us of upcoming opposition and even housed me for days to recover from an illness. On the other hand, we had our shelter vandalized with anti-migrant graffiti, we were asked to leave by several community members, and our migrants were robbed by local cops. Shortly after my departure, I was informed that one of the volunteers had been identified and was beaten by local gang members which resulted in his hospitalization. When these workers are forced to start anew, it is a struggle for everyone at the shelter. So, where have all the migrants gone? They are still on the train, but are jumping off in new places, they are walking more, they are hiding, but they have not gone. When I asked one of the migrants, “Why take this risk?”, he responded, “Better to die trying here, than not trying and dying there”. As many face the epidemic of gangs, corruption, and deep poverty, they place their faith in God and begin walking. PFS does not reflect a plan that takes this reality or migrants’ safety seriously, but rather wishes to appease its Northern neighbors while creating a new humanitarian crisis on the southern border of Mexico. Hermanos en el Camino may not be as full as it once was, but it will be a long time before the help it provides is no longer necessary.

Migrants making lemonade in front of ad hoc shelter in Chahuites, Oaxaca, Mexico. Photo Credit: Armando Amante

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Marlene is studying Human Rights and Humanitarian Action at PSIA.

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