Geopolitics: “the impact of migration is essentially regional”

At the glob­al level, this impact is min­im­al, as rela­tions between the major powers are not affected by migra­tion issues. On the oth­er hand, this impact can be seen on a region­al scale, par­tic­u­larly in Europe and Africa. Let us start with Europe, where two phe­nom­ena can be identified.

The first is the polit­ic­al sens­it­iv­ity of the sub­ject. The migra­tion phe­nomen­on itself has not got­ten any worse. In France, a coun­try of 67 mil­lion inhab­it­ants, there are about 150,000 addi­tion­al immig­rants every year. Apart from in Ger­many, the situ­ation is sim­il­ar in oth­er European coun­tries. But south­ern European coun­tries had no immig­ra­tion thirty years ago, and the nov­elty of the phe­nomen­on is caus­ing polit­ic­al dis­turb­ances. Among the north­ern coun­tries, Ger­many, Sweden, and Nor­way opened their bor­ders to refugees before back­track­ing. The sens­it­iv­ity of the sub­ject and the emer­gence of pop­u­list move­ments can have a polit­ic­al impact and shape the con­duct of European coun­tries, with inter­na­tion­al ten­sions as we have seen recently between Par­is, Algi­ers, and Rabat.

These ten­sions can also be seen with­in the EU. The hard line taken by Poland or Hun­gary goes hand in hand with a demo­graph­ic para­dox. The coun­tries of the East and the Balkans are in a pecu­li­ar situ­ation: their pop­u­la­tion is decreas­ing, their fer­til­ity is low, their cit­izens are emig­rat­ing, but these coun­tries are hos­tile to any migrat­ory influx. For example, Romania has gone from 23 mil­lion inhab­it­ants in 1990 to 19 mil­lion in 2020. They would there­fore need immig­ra­tion to main­tain their work­ing pop­u­la­tion or their level of edu­ca­tion. But the con­cern regard­ing their cul­tur­al iden­tity takes over.

This brings us to the second, much new­er phe­nomen­on: the use of migra­tion by some of the EU’s neigh­bours as a way to exert pres­sure. Belarus plays on migra­tion flows to put pres­sure on Poland or Lithuania, and through them on Brus­sels. Tur­key has an agree­ment with the EU on the man­age­ment of refugees from the Middle East; it mod­u­lates its pos­i­tion in its tense rela­tion­ship with the EU. One could also men­tion Libya and the flow of sub-Saha­ran migrants. In this par­tic­u­lar region­al con­text, migra­tion has become a geo­pol­it­ic­al weapon.

There is also the situ­ation regard­ing the bor­der between Mex­ico and the United States, with cara­vans of migrants com­ing from Cent­ral Amer­ica, but also from Haiti and Venezuela. This devel­op­ment increas­ingly impacts US domest­ic politics.

This is an emer­ging issue. What we know at the moment about so-called “cli­mate migra­tion” is that it occurs over short dis­tances. In the Mekong Delta and in Bangladesh, farm­ers move over short dis­tances: they go to the neigh­bour­ing hills. But if it gets too much, it could lead to some coun­tries becom­ing destabil­ised. This is what India fears, and it has set up elec­tric fences with Bangladesh.

In the Sahel, the advance of the desert – a long-stand­ing and often fluc­tu­at­ing phe­nomen­on – is mainly reflec­ted in the rur­al exodus. When the desert retreats, the farm­ers stay in the cit­ies. The same phe­nomen­on can be observed in Bangladesh: fol­low­ing floods, farm­ers leave their farms and move to the nearest towns. The poorest and most indebted stay in the town, those who have some assets return and take back their land.

Yes, this is the last major area of high fer­til­ity. A coun­try like Niger already has 22 mil­lion inhab­it­ants and is grow­ing at 4% per year: a doub­ling every sev­en­teen years. Niger­i­ens are mov­ing south­wards, towards Togo, Ben­in, and Côte d’Ivoire. Here, there are geo­pol­it­ic­al risks of destabil­isa­tion. We have already seen troubles in Côte d’Ivoire, about ten years ago. Mali, Burk­ina Faso, and Chad are also unstable. We ima­gine a risk for Europe. But a poor farm­er in Burk­ina Faso will not travel that far. Most of the inter­na­tion­al migra­tion from Africa takes place between Afric­an countries.

Yet more than issues of cli­mate migra­tion, the factor to con­sider here is civil war. The two best known examples are Dar­fur, from where between 500,000 and one mil­lion people have fled to east­ern Chad, and Somalia, from which one mil­lion people have left for Kenya, where the world’s largest camp houses 500,000 people. This cre­ates prob­lems with­in the coun­try itself. In Chad, on the oth­er hand, I have not heard of any major prob­lems, per­haps because some of the refugees from Dar­fur are Zaghawa, an eth­nic group that straddles the two coun­tries and to which the Chadi­an pres­id­ent belongs.

Part of Afric­an migra­tion is there­fore facil­it­ated by the mis­match between admin­is­trat­ive bor­ders and eth­nic dis­tri­bu­tion. Nev­er­the­less, the fact remains that Afric­an states, like oth­ers, are seek­ing to strengthen their bor­ders. This rein­force­ment can have side effects, such as those observed in Europe: by mak­ing migra­tion dif­fi­cult, flu­id com­ings and goings, such as “noria”, have been reduced in favour of defin­it­ive emig­ra­tion. This poses prob­lems for host coun­tries, but also for coun­tries of emig­ra­tion, because a large pro­por­tion of today’s migrants are qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als who settle in rich countries.