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Beyond Emergencies: Towards a More Nuanced Understanding of the Various Impacts of Crises on Migrants

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Forced Displacement and Migration

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Abstract

A number of recent conflicts and natural disasters have highlighted the particular vulnerability of migrants during crises in countries of destination and transit. A particular catalyst was the Libyan revolution of 2011 and the ensuing violence. In response to this and other crisis a specific initiative – the ‘Migrants in Countries of Crisis initiative’ (MICIC) was launched to address such situations. Designed as an informal process the Initiative aimed at developing guidance on how states and other stakeholders could address situations when migrants are caught by a humanitarian crisis in a destination or transit country. This chapter discusses the origins and focus of the initiative. Drawing on data gathered in a study comparing six crisis situations, the chapter highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of the impacts of crisis on migrants. The chapter shows that there are indeed specific challenges migrants face when confronted with a crisis. These relate to general policies (such as migration policies) shaping experiences during crisis, specific responses to emergencies and societal conditions, including attitudes towards migrants.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Available at: https://micicinitiative.iom.int/guidelines.

  2. 2.

    However, both capacity building and research activities launched in the context of the MICIC Initiative continued beyond this date and have – such as contingency planning or consular protection during crisis – also been mainstreamed into regular activities of major stakeholders such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

  3. 3.

    Population figures are taken from the World Bank database at http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&country=LBY; estimates of migrants are taken from Zampagni et al. (2017).

  4. 4.

    Libya has long been an important transit country for refugees en route to Europe, primarily from sub-Saharan African countries, notably from the Horn of Africa, but also from elsewhere (Aiazzi et al. 2015; Zampagni et al. 2017).

  5. 5.

    In response to challenges in providing fast and reliable emergency relief, IOM created an emergency funding mechanism that was designed to bridge the gap between the occurrence of a crisis and commitment of donor funding. See https://micicinitiative.iom.int/micicinitiative/iom-migration-emergency-funding-mechanism-mefm.

  6. 6.

    The nexus between migration and environmental change had become an increasingly salient issue during the 2000s in the context of the mounting evidence on the impact of climate change on mobility (see Foresight 2011). In 2012, the Nansen Initiative was launched to address challenges related to disaster-related displacement across international borders. The initiative concluded its mandate in 2015 with the publication of the Agenda for the Protection of Cross-Border Displaced Persons in the Context of Disasters and Climate Change. The latter specifically addresses the issue of foreigners abroad at the time of a disaster. The recommendations of this Protection Agenda are now being implemented by the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD), see http://disasterdisplacement.org/. For a recent review of protection challenges in the context of migration and environmental change and implications for asylum and migration policies see Kraler et al. (2020).

  7. 7.

    Roberta Cohen’s paper was commissioned by the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University in the context of its crisis migration project in view of drawing lessons for the development of guidelines in the course of the MICIC project. ISIM’s migration crisis project was alongside ICMPD’s EU funded MICIC project the main source of research input to the MICIC Initiative. ISIM also was a member of the MICIC working group.

  8. 8.

    Two major research projects were funded in association with the MICIC Initiative, ISIM’s ‘Crisis Migration’ project (https://isim.georgetown.edu/Crisis-Migration) and ICMPD’s research on migrants in countries of crisis (see https://research.icmpd.org/projects/migration-governance/micic/). In addition, several country-specific research studies, including on Mexico and Thailand were separately commissioned from IOM. Research on the topic is collated at the MICIC Initiative’s website at https://micicinitiative.iom.int/resources-and-publications/studies-and-research.

  9. 9.

    Personal communication of one senior expert involved in the initiative to one of the authors, March 2016.

  10. 10.

    In Tunisia, one of the countries in which fieldwork was conducted in the context of the Libya case study, migrants stranded in Tunisia were the focus.

  11. 11.

    The MICIC Initiative also covered other non-nationals, for example tourists who happened to be in a country when a crisis hit.

  12. 12.

    More detailed results of the study are presented in Kraler et al. (2017).

  13. 13.

    In fact, the majority – 8 out of the 15 principles of the MICIC Guidelines – focus on the pre-crisis phase. Of these 8 principles principle no. 3 (“Empower migrants to help themselves”) is specifically concerned with addressing structural barriers and issues that put migrants into a more vulnerable situation (see MICIC Initiative 2016).

  14. 14.

    For more information on capacity building activities see https://micicinitiative.iom.int/capacity-building.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Assistant Professor, Department für Migration und Globalisierung, Donau-Universität Krems, Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Straße 30, 3500, Krems, Austria

    Albert Kraler

  2. Director Policy and Research, Deputy Director General, International Centre for Migration Policy Development, Gonzagagasse 1, 5th floor, 1010, Vienna, Austria

    Lukas Gehrke

Authors
  1. Albert Kraler
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  2. Lukas Gehrke
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Correspondence to Albert Kraler .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Political Science and Sociology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Hans-Joachim Preuß

  2. GIZ, Good Governance for Local Development, Tbilisi, Georgia

    Christoph Beier

  3. German Federal Environment Agency, Dessau-Rosslau, Germany

    Dirk Messner

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Kraler, A., Gehrke, L. (2022). Beyond Emergencies: Towards a More Nuanced Understanding of the Various Impacts of Crises on Migrants. In: Preuß, HJ., Beier, C., Messner, D. (eds) Forced Displacement and Migration. Springer, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32902-0_6

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