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.