Drawing Lessons from COVID-19 to Migration Management

Migration is not only a constant of human society but has also greatly contributed to its history. The development of non-restrictive and inclusive migration policies has consistently proven a challenge to many governments. But what lessons could be drawn from the COVID-19 pandemic to improve migration management?

In a famous speech delivered in Dakar in 2007, Nikolas Sarkozy, the former French President, irately noted that migration to Europe should be highly selective – “immigration choisie” – a policy that aligns towards a managed, high-skilled, demand-led immigration. While such a policy celebrated the reopening of the French labor markets to immigration for the first time since their closure in the 1960s and 70s, it also meant a closure to those considered undesirable.

This approach captures not only the French policies against migration from developing countries but implicitly that of EU institutions regarding those they want to admit into the continent. The approach, implemented by FRONTEX, which since 2004 has been tasked with border control in coordination with the border and coast guards of Schengen Area member states. The securitization of borders has, increasingly, given rise to far-right nationalist politicians and governments in Europe, North America, and some African countries with expanding economies, who whip up nationalistic sentiments against immigration and seek to put a stop to it.

Movement as Part of Human History

This strict and less welcoming border control policy targets immigration from developing countries and is oblivious to the fact that the world’s history is a history of migration. Movement is intricately woven and engrained into the fabric of human society. Cross-border movement is a way of life that needs careful management rather than condemnation.

Consequently, irrespective of FRONTEX, or patrols in Calais, or the Sahara desert, people, especially the youth, will always seek ways of migrating (Alscher 2018, Collier 2013, Nyamnjoh 2010). Studies have shown that stricter migration controls are not efficient in managing migration but rather give rise to an explosion of illegal migration (Watkins 2020). This is indicative of the inadvertent inability of governments to fully capture the management of migration flows given this is largely within the competence of market actors (brokers), who play key roles in determining migration outcomes – including the scale and direction associated with migration flows (Lori & Schilde 2020, Nyamnjoh 2021).

Restrictive Approaches to Migration

Globalization, which represents the free movement of goods and people, has been utterly selective prioritizing those who can meaningfully contribute to the economies of developed countries. Restrictive and selective migration stems from the fact that nation-states have normalized the notion that migration presents a challenge to the world order rather than being an embedded feature of human life (Lori & Schilde, 2020). What this suggests is that certain forms of migration from developing countries (the less educated and those considered a liability to the host country) continue to be frowned upon and condemned (Ferguson 2006, Massey 1999). However, migration crises have been largely a result of states’ implementation of migration policies.

COVID-19 and Borders

In the current context of the Coronavirus Pandemic, COVID-19 has not only defied borders but exemplified how the management of borders and migration respectively is premised on policing what is known and visible. This suggests that with the management of migration, we should, if anything, learn from the humbling lessons that COVID-19 has invariably taught; that of tolerance towards others by adopting a well-coordinated global response to the global health crisis (Nyamnjoh 2020). Relatedly, a recalibration of migration policies and a global response towards managing migration focusing less on narrow categorizations of migrants as desirable or undesirable would change the notion of migration as a crisis. Current policies are intently focused on using competing values rather than competing evidence. They are often undergirded by restrictions and closure of borders, reducing the receiving countries from seeing themselves as complete. Because of these policies, we are led to believe there is no need for immigrants. Such binaries give the illusion that societies are self-sufficient, while in reality immigrants are often needed to provide services that local citizens are unable or unwilling to take on.

To discipline, punish, condemn, and curb mobility by building physical and aerial walls seek to deny the very essence of humans as social beings, but also make a mockery of the compression of time and space rendered by globalization (Nyamnjoh 2020). In the wake of the pandemic, there will be heightened mobility of people whose livelihoods have been decimated because of a loss of income. Hence, they are seeking better economic opportunities or migrating due to inadequate health facilities as is the case of migration between Zimbabwe and South Africa, exemplified by the mobility and intense border control at the Beitbridge border in South Africa.

Future Management of Migration

Since migration is a private act, usually decided by individuals and their families, this private decision affects both host societies and societies of origin and may potentially infringe the rights of others. It is legitimate for public policy to factor in these effects that migrants themselves may ignore. How then should migration be managed as opposed to condemnation? If anything, the world should draw lessons from the rapid response to the COVID-19 cure soliciting imagination, creativity, and innovation, as similar approaches could help in managing migration, rather than curbing or condemning it.

Henrietta Nyamnjoh is a Senior Researcher at the University of Cape Town.

References:

– Alscher, Stefan (2018). Knocking at the Doors of “Fortress Europe”: Migration and Border Control in Southern Spain and Eastern Poland. Working Paper 126. The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies CCIS University of California, San Diego, 1–28.
– Collier, Paul (2013). Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World. Oxford: Oxford University Press
– Ferguson, James (2006). Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham/London: Duke University Press.
– Fasani, Francesco & Jacopo Mazza (2020). IZA Policy Paper 155: Immigrant Key Workers: Their Contribution to Europe’s COVID-19 Response. Accessed (15/01/2020)
– Watkins, Josh (2020). Irregular Migration, Borders, and the Moral Geographies of Migration Management. Environment and Planning C.38(6), 1108–1127.
– Lori, Noora, Kaija Schilde (2020). A Political Economy of Global Security Approach to Migration and Border Control. Journal of Global Security Studies 0(0), 1–9.
– Massey, Douglas (1999). International Migration at the Dawn of the Twenty‐First Century: The Role of the State. Population and Development Review 25(2), 303–322.
– Nyamnjoh, Francis (2020). Covid-19 and the Resilience of Systemic Suppression, Oppression and Repression by Francis Nyamnjoh. Accessed 6/01/2020
– Nyamnjoh, Henrietta (2010). We Get Nothing from Fishing”. Fishing for Boat Opportunities Amongst Senegalese Fisher Migrants, Bamenda/Leiden: Langaa RPCIG/African Studies Centre.
– Nyamnjoh, Henrietta (2021). Ambitions of Bushfalling through Further Education: Insights from Students in Cameroonian Universities. Social Inclusion 9(1), x–x.