ABSTRACT
In recent years, the world has witnessed a surge in the forced migration of diverse peoples to levels unseen in decades. In 2016 nearly 60 million people were displaced from homes, livelihoods, and lands by conflict alone, often forced across borders or into exile within their own country (UNHCR, 2016a). Millions more have been displaced by economic deprivation, by development projects and policies, and by degraded or dangerous environmental conditions (Bose et al., 2016). While the total proportion of the world’s people who can be accurately described as migrants remains small – less than 5 percent of the overall global population (UNFPA, 2016) – their departures and arrivals have caused increased anxieties and tensions among national governments, international organizations, human rights groups, local citizens, and many others besides. Variously described as ‘migrant crises’, the movements of populations both forced and voluntary are one of the pre-eminent social, political, economic, and cultural challenges of our time. Issues of justice, fairness, equity, democracy, integration, acculturation, alienation, and economic vitality are but a few of the questions confronting migrants and host communities alike. How we understand and address the causes of forced migration is a complex problem, as is the attempt to find both short term and durable solutions to these issues. One of the key challenges is a definitional one – who is deemed a ‘legitimate’ refugee and thereby entitled to protection or possible resettlement? The global refugee regime as it is currently constituted is based on assisting those forced to flee their homes and homelands due to war, conflict, and various forms of persecution based on identity. Yet as this chapter explores in greater detail, there are a great many overlapping, complex, and sometimes contradictory motivations that drive displacement. The international systems of protection remained firmly rooted in a post-Second World War structure of addressing forced migration, with concepts of borders, repatriation, temporary refuge, and occasional resettlement guiding many of the responses to various conflict-related crises (Loescher et al., 2008). It was indeed many decades until the international community began to recognize the existence of internally displaced persons (IDPs), those who had been forced out of homes but not across an international border. In recent years, there have been attempts to extend the definition of refugee to those affected not only by conflict and political and identity-based persecution, but also those displaced by other factors such as various forms of development and a range of environmental causes 458(White, 2011). Such efforts have not been successful for many reasons. Some argue that it has been difficult enough to provide protection for conflict-related refugees and that trying to also address other kinds of forced migration would simply dilute the existing protections and stretch thin already scarce resources (UNHCR, 2012). Others see the causes for displacement as being qualitatively different – conflicts and persecution often have a goal of displacing specific populations whereas such dislocation is often an unintended consequence of development projects and environmental degradation. Intentionality, not outcome, is key from such perspectives (Warner, 2010).
