"The Myanmar government has been practicing ethnic cleansing to get
rid of the Rohingya people ever since Ne Win came to power in 1962.
Simply speaking, they don’t want them there and as such have created the
‘push’ factor for the Rohingyas to move out, failing which they can
even get killed in any of the periodic pogroms that are orchestrated by
the government forces at the central and local levels with full support
of the racist Rakhine Buddhist majority in Arakan. The dream of living a
safer and secure life outside Myanmar surely ‘pulls’ the Rohingya to
seek asylum or refuge in any country willing to give them a shelter."
Human beings have been on the move since the beginning of time. That
is why what was once a single family has now become a family of nations,
comprising some seven billion people, spread out on all the continents
of the planet. People have historically moved from rural to
industrialized urban areas in search of job and to better their economic
conditions.
Migration can be both within and outside one’s own
country. A migrant can be either a willing or an unwilling (forced)
person. When it is for the latter reason, we often call them refugees.
Thus we can establish two main simplified categories of migration:
external and internal.
Internal migration can be due to a plethora
of reasons including climatic, e.g., devastating effect on the
ecosystem. Based on statistics, some 150 million people will be on the
move because of climatic factor in the next 40 years (by 2050). Nomadic
peoples across the planet have been engaged in seasonal internal
migration for thousands of years. Hilly tribal people in certain parts
of the world continue to move from one location to another in search of
newer territories for their ‘dry’ cultivation.
Sometimes politics
has played a great role in relocation of people from one part of a
country to another. In places like Xinjiang – the Uighur territory in
China’s western frontier – the Chinese government has been encouraging
migration of Han Chinese to move to the territory so as to deliberately
alter the demography of the region and deny granting of real autonomy to
the persecuted Turkic speaking indigenous people. As a result of such a
state sponsored relocation policy, the Uighurs are now a minority
within their own territory. Both the Chinese and Indian governments have
been accused of relocating Hindus and Han Chinese to the restive
regions of Kashmir and Tibet, respectively, in obvious plans to alter
regional demography. In the state of Assam in north-east India, the
ruling Congress party has also been accused of playing politics with
vote tally by encouraging internal migration of Bengalis and Biharis
from nearby Indian states of West Bengal and Bihar, who are known to
vote in big numbers for the party rather than for the separatist ethnic
parties.
War and state persecution have also been major factors for internal relocation and migration.
What
is, however, of interest to us is that no time in past history have so
many people migrated than our time. Truly, migration has become a
regular feature of our time with individuals living temporarily or
permanently in countries that they were not born in.
According
to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Migrants, a “working
migrant” is a “person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has
been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is
not a national.” Similarly the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on
Human Rights has established the following categories for
migrant/refugees and stateless people: (1) Persons who are outside the
territory of the State of which they are nationals or citizens, are not
subject to its legal protection and are in the territory of
another State. (2) Persons who do not enjoy the general legal
recognition of rights which is inherent in the granting by the host
State of the status of refugee, naturalized person or other similar
status. (3) Persons who do not enjoy either general legal protection of
their fundamental rights by virtue of diplomatic agreements, visas or
other agreements.
As can be seen it is quite difficult to define
what constitutes a migrant and/or refugee how nation legislations may
differ in accordance with their own interpretation of the terms. This
difficulty has led United Nations to create a permanent commission
regarding the question of human rights and the status of migrants and
refugees. Unfortunately, while the United Nations might legislate and
categorize who is or is not a migrant/refugee, it is all up to
individual countries to legislate internally and in the case of
totalitarian states human rights are usually breached with regards to
those who are “foreign”.
In her
article -
The Why and the “Therefore” of Human Migration: A Brief Overview
(Lives in Migration: Rupture and Continuity), Dr. Sue Ballyn of
Barcelona University reviews questions like the factors that contribute
to migration and the consequences thereof.
As to the factors that
lead to migration are frequently referred to as “push” and “pull”
factors. These are, to a large extent, self-explanatory. “Push” forces
one from one’s homeland and “pull” attracts migrants offering, for
example, opportunities not available in one’s homeland. Ballyn writes,
“The “push” factors have not really changed that much since the human
race began to spread across the planet. People have been driven to seek
new “homelands” as a result of: famine, drastic climate change, poverty,
civil war, wars between nation states, territorial annexation, imperial
expansion, religious, racial, ethnic, political and gender persecution.
The list is longer and any of those mentioned, together with others one
might add, can be considered “forced migration”, which lies at the
heart of the verb “push”. Individuals and collectives are impelled by
circumstance to move away from their homeland in order to survive and
many could and are classified as refugees, especially those seeking
refuge from war torn areas, genocidal policies, and states where Human
Rights are held in abeyance. However, forced migration can also connote
the violent expulsion, taking violent in its whole range of meaning, of
both an individual or community from their homeland."
Consider,
e.g., the case of Chagos Islanders who were forcibly relocated to
Mauritius by the British. The islands, numbering around sixty, were/are
part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. The reason for this ‘push’
migration, as noted by Ballyn, was to allow the construction of the
Diego Garcia Airbase by the USA.
The people of Ocean Island (also
known by its Kiribati name Banaba), one of the Kiribati Islands in
Pacific Micronesia, were victims of overriding neo-colonialistic
economic factors. There were ‘pushed’ out. As to the causes behind such
forced migration, Ballyn writes, "The Banaba had something the rest of
the world wanted and was going to get at whatever the cost to the
people: phosphate. This devastating story of international greed at
whatever price has its beginnings round about 1900 when the Pacific
Islands Company Limited got the Banaban people to sign away the total
right to phosphate mining to the British Company, later to become
British Phosphate Commissioners under the joint ownership of the
British, Australian and New Zealand Governments. The results of
intensive mining, which includes the use of dynamite, have reduced
the island’s subsoil structure to something like a honeycomb, or gruyere
cheese. The surface cannot sustain buildings with foundations and the
island’s ecosystem has been endangered. The removal of many of the
Banaban people began in 1945 when the British Government relocated the
majority to Rabi Island, thousands of miles away in Fiji. As the island
became increasingly unstable further waves of migration followed to Rabi
only a few returning once mining finished in 1979. It is now estimated
that only some 200 people have returned to live on the island and the
debate remains as to the weight of population the island could actually
sustain. It has become, to all intents and purposes, inhabitable after
thousands of years of human habitation."
Millions of the people
across the globe have faced similar ‘push’ factors for constructing dams
and barrages, and exploration activities related to energy resources –
coal, oil and gas, and mineral resources when they were forcibly moved
from their localities. Many of those victims were never compensated for
the loss of their possessions.
Genocidal activities of
eliminationist regimes have led to forced migration of millions of
victims. Ballyn writes, “If we move back through history we will find
multiple examples of violent expulsion of peoples from their homelands
often going hand in hand with persecution and genocide. Another form of
violent forced migration frequently accompanies agendas of
imperial expansion.” She cites the example of how through British
colonization of Australia in 1788, not only the indigenous people were
slaughtered and forced to relocate from their ancestral homes, the
former British convicts were forced to settle in the new colony. She
also cites the examples South Africa and of Newfoundland, where the last
native was shot in 1823.
Ballyn says, "South Africa before and
during the apartheid era caused a massive removal of African peoples to
black townships, while many leading opposition figures and
freedom fighters were exiled within or deported from South Africa,
tortured, executed or murdered. There is no end to the systematic
dispossession and internal exile of Aboriginal peoples across the world
from the time of the Greek empire to the neo-colonialism of the twenty
first century." Not to be forgotten in this context (which is
unfortunately overlooked from Ballyn’s analysis) is the case of
establishment of the Zionist state of Israel, which has not only led to
the exodus some 700,000 Palestinians but also an influx of many European
and American Jews to the Holy Land. The apartheid structure of the
Zionist state has also resulted into miserable living conditions for
millions of Palestinians living within, who are relegated to the third
or fourth class status.
Ballyn believes that “forced” migration is always either as a result of violence or the drive to survive.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Part 2:
As we have already noted
the ‘pull’ factor of migration is often related to economic
considerations to seek out a better quality of life. Better economic
prospective has always pulled many people throughout history to move to
newer territories.
But there could be other reasons for the
‘pull.’ Here, I can cite my own example. I came to the western world for
pursuing higher studies and ended up being absorbed within the USA
first as a Green Card holder and then as a Naturalized Citizen. My wife,
who joined me in Los Angeles, was admitted to UCLA to pursue her
doctoral studies in Physics. Soon after completing her Ph.D., she, a
chairwoman and professor in Physics now with a small campus in the state
university system, also got ‘pulled’ into the USA. Financially, both of
us come from very well-to-do families, and our decision for migration
had everything to do with our frustration about the seemingly hopeless
political situation in our native country than anything else. At times I
strongly felt about returning to my country of origin only to be rudely
made aware that it was not ready to benefit from my years of learning
and skills I have gathered, even when I was ready to share such without
any economic consideration.
Sue Ballyn’s own migration story
moving to Spain from UK to live with her partner and raise family is,
similarly, a ‘pull’ phenomenon. Being of European race, she was not
considered a migrant though but the Moroccans who moved to Spain on
similar grounds were, thus, clearly underlining "the racial equations
that work within the definition of migrant in host communities." My wife
and I can testify that being of the south Asian origin, we are easily
recognizable as migrants to the USA, unlike many white Europeans
(Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans) and black
Africans who have settled in the USA, being perceived as belonging to
either of the major races here (and not as migrants).
In recent
decades, a new ‘pull’ phenomenon is in vogue in many western countries.
These countries with low fertility rates amongst the native population
(leading sometimes to negative growth rates) are pulling foreigners to
move into their territories. These countries need extra people not only
to make-up for the deficit in the workforce but also to collect taxes
from their income to support the cost associated with caring for the
retired older people. (In these countries with longer lives of the
retirees beyond their nominal age of retirement, the social security
network would collapse, and requires regular infusion.) This has led
many of these countries to open up their gates of immigration to
professionals from the developing countries.
And then there is the
case of pulling in tens of thousands of computer experts (e.g., from
India) during the Y2 scare of the so-called Millennium Bugs. Many of
these special visa holders have since been absorbed into these countries
because these adopting countries needed their expertise on an on-going
basis and that they don’t have enough people internally to fill in such
roles. Massive immigration is necessary in many of these countries to
sustain the lifestyle that their people got used to. Such needs need not
all come from the technology sector, but can be in the low wage-earning
non-technical areas. In many of the oil-rich countries of the Arab
world, there are not enough local people to run the factories, hotels
and malls or sweep their streets and toilets in the airports. These
countries have been pulling in millions of temporary workers (especially
from South Asia) to work in those sectors. For decades many foreign
doctors, engineers, nurses and pharmacists have also been working in the
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. Many of them have found out that it
is easier for them to later settle in western countries, esp. the USA
and Canada.
The USA, with most of the best research universities,
has been pulling tens of thousands of best talents from around the globe
to study and contribute to on-going research works. Outside the
students coming from the rich oil producing countries and some of the
emerging powers in Asia (esp., Malaysia, South Korea and Singapore), the
USA has been able to retain ninety percent of these students who have
become American citizens. As a result of this brain-pull phenomenon many
of the breakthrough technologies owe their discovery and success to
these new immigrants in the USA. The USA, a nation of refugees, is more
successful than most other nations because of such a ‘pull’ policy.
For
decades, the USA has also been attracting workers – mostly poor and
illiterate - from Mexico and other Central and South American countries
to sneak into illegally and work in low wage-earning sectors of the
economy. However, without social security number, their wages could not
be taxed. Consequently, the federal and local states were losing a
fraction of such incomes earned within the illegal migrants. At various
times while the government agencies punished employers who had hired
illegal migrants, such practices were never vigorously carried out
everywhere because of the heavy demand for cheap labor in those economic
and social sectors that needed them to be more competitive in the
global market. The U.S. Congress, therefore, slackened laws allowing
many such illegal migrants to apply for amnesty and eventually pulled
in. In the 1980s and 1990s, the USA even allowed illegal migrants who
had worked in the agricultural sector to apply for permanent residency
status. While the privilege was for farm workers (mostly from Mexico),
many Asian, African and Latin Americans who had never worked as
agricultural workers took advantage of this opportunity to apply and
become legal residents of the USA. [The issue of granting legal status
to illegal entrants or extending amnesty to such individuals continues
to be a hot debating item in every presidential election since the days
of President Ronald Reagan.]
Let’s now consider the atypical case
of the Rohingyas of Myanmar (Burma) who are recognized as the worst
persecuted people on earth. Their status has no parallel in our time.
The apartheid regimes there have declared them ‘stateless’ denying them
citizenship rights in spite of the fact that they have been one of the
earliest settlers in Arakan (Rakhine) state of Burma for nearly a
millennium.
Refugees International has highlighted the plight of
the Rohingya people stating: “Official Burmese government policy on the
Rohingya is repressive. The Rohingya need authorization to leave their
villages and are not allowed to travel beyond Northern Rakhine State.
They need official permission to marry and must pay exorbitant taxes on
births and deaths. Religious freedom is restricted, and the Rohingya
have been prohibited from maintaining or repairing crumbling religious
buildings. Though accurate statistics are impossible to come by inside
Burma, experts agree that conditions in Northern Rakhine State are among
the worst in the country. Rohingya refugees commonly cite land
seizures, forced labor, arbitrary arrests, and extortion as the
principal reasons for flight. Once a Rohingya leaves his or her village
without permission, he or she is removed from official residency lists,
and can be subject to arrest if found.”
“A stateless people, the
Rohingya have nowhere to go and are marginalised even in Burmese refugee
communities. The Rohingya are not the only stateless refugee people in
the world. What has forced them out of Burma and is attempting to
undermine their very existence within their homeland is the deliberate
construction of them as stateless."
The Myanmar government has
been practicing ethnic cleansing to get rid of the Rohingya people ever
since Ne Win came to power in 1962. Simply speaking, they don’t want
them there and as such have created the ‘push’ factor for the Rohingyas
to move out, failing which they can even get killed in any of the
periodic pogroms that are orchestrated by the government forces at the
central and local levels with full support of the racist Rakhine
Buddhist majority in Arakan. The dream of living a safer and secure life
outside Myanmar surely ‘pulls’ the Rohingya to seek asylum or refuge in
any country willing to give them a shelter.
In her overview, Sue
Ballyn, however, categorizes the Rohingya migration as part of the
‘pull’ factor only. She writes, “As to the second category that does not
respond to push factors are those people who are stateless and exiled
from all social and legal benefits in their own country. Those who seek
refuge outside their own frontier, where possible, obviously are pushed
out by a laws or situations which have deprived them of their
nationality. There is a community in question worth looking at in this
regard and about whom not much is being done on an international level.
The Rohingya people in Burma (Myanmar) have been fleeing to Bangladesh
and Malaysia in countless thousands. Racially, religiously
and linguistically the Rohingya people are distinct to mainstream
Burmese society. Under the 1982 Citizenship Law brought in by the
military junta, the Rohingya people were not recognized as citizens
along with the descendents of Chinese and Indians living in the country.
While individuals of Chinese and Indian descent could claim their own
national citizenship once outside Burma, the Rohingya people could not.”
While
Ballyn’s analysis about the Rohingya problem is correct, I disagree
with her on treating their migration issue as part of a ‘pull’ factor. I
believe it to be a hybrid case with both factors working
simultaneously. As a matter of fact it is difficult to think of a ‘push’
factor without the ‘pull’ factor in play concurrently. Whenever ‘push’
exists, the targeted people will be drawn to ‘pull’ factors for reasons
for their emigration.
As to the consequence, Ballyn rightly
doubted that even a step towards democracy may not be sufficient to stop
marginalization of the Rohingya. She says, "Should Burma recover
democracy, would the historic reticence regarding the Rohingya in their
own country relieve their inner exclusion and marginalisation? One would
like to think so, but their present marginalisation among Burmese
refugees suggests that maybe not.” And, as the recent experience of
so-called reform movements within Myanmar has amply demonstrated, Ballyn
is absolutely right. The leaders of the so-called democratic movement
have proven to be closet fascists, and no better than the military
regimes that have ruled the country for the last half a century.
Stateless
people like the Rohingya are a particularly vulnerable group; of no
homeland, they technically have no document which will allow them to
claim a nationality and thus a homeland to which to return should they
so desire.
Refugees International estimates that there are some
twelve million stateless people and comments on some of the consequences
that arise from this “non-status”: “Stateless status often keeps
children from attending school and condemns families to poverty. Because
statelessness often originates in past conflicts and disputes over what
constitutes national identity, granting citizenship, which can only be
done by national authorities, is inherently difficult… Nationality is a
fundamental human right and a foundation of identity, dignity, justice,
peace, and security. But statelessness, or the lack of
effective nationality, affects millions of men, women, and children
worldwide. Being stateless means having no legal protection or right to
participate in political processes, inadequate access to health care and
education, poor employment prospects and poverty, little opportunity to
own property, travel restrictions, social exclusion, vulnerability to
trafficking, harassment, and violence. Statelessness has a
disproportionate impact on women and children."
As to the "pull"
factors, Ballyn writes, “‘Pull factors’ have not changed over centuries,
nor will they for the foreseeable future. While war, famine,
persecution and a long list of etceteras exist so will the “pull forces”
that drive migration outwards: a better standard of living, security,
hope for future generations, among others. Unless we can provide a world
in the near future in which resources can be equally shared across
national frontiers then migration will persist. The thousands of
migrants that move legally/illegally in the twenty-first century do so
because capitalism has created a massive rift between those who have and
those who have not, even within a nation’s own frontiers.”
Lack
of freedom, safety, security, democratic and economic rights including
those pertaining to ownership have also resulted in ‘pull’ phenomenon
for people to emigrate.
Concluding words:
Is it
possible to stop these ‘pull’ factors for migration? I agree with Ballyn
that unless the so-called first world nations are genuinely
interested in “filling in the rift”, providing infrastructures and
support on all levels for developing nations to become self sufficient
migration will continue because of the pull phenomenon.
How about
the ‘push’ factors? Can we stop these? I tend to believe that while not
all problems, e.g., like those of climate refugees can immediately be
solved, but there is no excuse for stopping the push phenomena which
cause forced migration. I would like to believe that by identifying and
prosecuting the state and/or non-state forces that are responsible for
forced migration we can show that such crimes against humanity will not
be tolerated. No government should reward these parties for their
horrendous crimes. Unfortunately, as we have repeatedly seen greed is
tarnishing human morality, and thus, shamelessly, many of the
governments do business with those culprits. This rewarding phenomenon
thus makes a mockery of the whole issue around forced migration, and the
bleeding and suffering never ends.
With fierce global
competition, fast pace of emerging technologies and customers’ demands
for better, on-time and cheaper products and services, the world we live
in today is quite different than the world lived by our parents and
grandparents. And so will the trend be for our children and
grandchildren. There is no turning the clock back. This economic reality
of our time is making the old ideas of ‘pull’ migration rather invalid
or impractical forcing pundits and planners to rethink their strategy
and find alternative solutions to address them. Multi-culture and
integration (and not chauvinism or exclusion) is becoming the signature
solution to this reality of our time.
As such, those countries
that can pull and utilize the talented and necessary resources faster
and appositely are going to be better off tomorrow than others that
don’t. That is the hundred trillion dollar formula for sustainable
growth and prosperity. Kapish?
Fr
Frank Brennan SJ is professor of law at the Public Policy Institute,
Australian Catholic University and adjunct professor at the College of
Law and the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, Australian
National University. He will appear next week as part of Eureka Street's 
