Crisis for who?

A refugee is a person who is forced to leave their home to escape danger due to war, persecution, or environmental hazards. In 2015, headlines filled the news about a European refugee crisis, caused in part by the Syrian Civil War. Millions of people left Syria, many of whom fled to Europe.

At the time, Western news media made it sound as if all the refugees in the world were flooding into Europe. Many Europeans feared that Europe was about to be filled with too many new migrants. Anti-
migrant, anti-refugee, and anti-Muslim protests filled European streets. Yet in reality, very few of the world’s refugees ever make it to Europe. Since the Syrian Civil War started, Turkey has consistently hosted the most Syrian refugees—with 4 million in 2019.

This situation is not only affecting Europe and Turkey. People have fled conflicts in North and East Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Columbia, and Southeast Asia. The world had over 65 million refugees in 2015. That is more than at any point since the Second World War.

Refugee migrations to wealthy countries draw the most media attention. Yet it is the poorest nations that carry the majority of the burden. Ten countries —some of the world’s poorest—hosted over half of the world’s refugees in 2016.

The European Union (EU) has strict border rules. That shifts the burden of refugees to neighboring countries like Turkey. Syria’s conflict pushed millions of refugees to Turkey as they tried to make a new home in Europe. Most do not make it. In 2016, the EU signed a deal with Turkey. They paid Turkey €6 billion.1 In return, Turkey agreed to stop refugees from migrating illegally into the EU. How did this situation come to be? Why are there so many refugees in the world today? The story begins a century before the 2015 crisis, with the First World War.

Nationalism, world wars, and new nations

People have fled wars and repression for thousands of years. However, it wasn’t until the early twentieth century that refugee became an official category. For the first time, governments thought about refugees as a “problem” that needed a solution. Countries created international organizations to care for refugees and control migration.

After the First World War, governments got really interested in regulating migration. Passports became more common, and new laws defined different types of migration.

Nationalism played a large role in creating stricter citizenship and migration laws. To be a nationalist means to have loyalty to one country over all others. The First World War tore apart many longstanding empires. As new nations rose from the ruins of these empires, nationalist leaders focused on building a common national identity. Many leaders also chose to focus on getting rid of people who, in their vision, did not qualify as citizens.

The Second World War redrew borders and broke apart other empires, creating new waves of refugees. Decolonization after the Second World War also led to massive refugee migrations. As new, independent nations emerged, ethnic, religious, and political groups struggled for control of their new nations. The winners expelled or killed their enemies.

Why seek refuge?

By the 1960s, Western European nations started to financially recover from the Second World War. This sparked a demand for cheap labor. Some countries had more people than jobs, giving rise to the migrant worker. People from across Latin America, the Philippines, West Africa, and the Indian subcontinent moved to places like the United States, France, and Britain for work. The governments of wealthy nations encouraged labor migration because it made them money. For example, in the US, migrants from Mexico helped fill agricultural labor shortages.

Most migrant workers moved because they wanted to build a better life. Others were pushed out of their countries. They wanted to escape violence and persecution. Others migrated to escape poverty, climate change, and bad government. Many migrated legally, but others moved in different ways to avoid legal restrictions. This meant that more and more migrants found themselves in debt to human traffickers. Meanwhile, nations increasingly closed their borders and passed laws regulating migration.

Building Fortress Europe

The numbers of labor migrants and refugees increased in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, Western European countries changed their immigration policies. They opened borders between countries in the European Union. At the same time, they placed restrictions on immigration from outside the EU, especially from countries in Africa and the Middle East. These policies are often described as “Fortress Europe.”

Worldwide, governments opened their borders to trade and investment. At the same time, they hardened their borders to migrants and refugees. This was true, for example, of Mexican immigrants in the US.

The century of the refugee?

Today, the “crisis” of 2015 is largely over. Yet European countries have not relaxed the restrictions they put in place that year. Governments continue to close their borders to migrants.

Citizens of wealthy nations are happy to welcome migrants when they need their work. But as migrant communities have grown and as they have begun to influence culture in their host countries, some people have reacted with fear and anger.

Political parties have used scare tactics to turn public opinion against migrants. Far-right candidates have campaigned against migrants. Some won political office in Hungary, Poland, Greece, Britain, the United States, and other nations. Meanwhile governments are placing more restrictions on immigration. So more of these migrants will be forced to put their lives at great risk to flee environmental conditions, poverty, and war.

1 That’s a little over $7 billion in 2020.