Abstract
In Can We Solve the Migration Crisis, Jacqueline Bhabha, an expert on human rights issues and professor at Harvard University, attempts to address one of the most important issues in contemporary global politics: human migration. The United Nations estimates that there are 68.5 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, and among this number, conflicts and violence in South Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria alone have yielded approximately 11.3 million refugees (United Nations Human United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2019). These figures along with horrific images and stories of migrants undertaking perilous journeys have sparked an international debate about the collective responsibility to provide a durable solution for these vulnerable populations.
Through her book, Bhabha contributes to this debate and seeks to address whether safer alternatives exist for those forced to migrate. She contextualizes the current migration ‘crisis’ within the history of human migration, outlines the religious and ethical obligations of the international community to respond to the crisis, inspects the successes and shortcomings of the current domestic and international systems regulating human migration and, ultimately, proposes a multi faceted solution to the challenges facing distressed migrants.
By examining the history of migration, Bhabha contests the use of the word ‘crisis’ to describe the current trends in human migration. She summarizes historical events, such as colonialism, slave trade, world wars, the British Partition of India and the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), that yielded millions of migrants which dwarf contemporary ‘crisis’ figures. Bhabha’s critical analysis of the crisis narrative is key in finding solutions to the challenges that migrants face today: the use of the word ‘crisis’ feeds into the false rhetoric of uncontrollable and unprecedented human migration. By contextualizing the current trends in migration, she offers a grounded and realistic understanding of the subject to build her analysis.
On the one hand, images of migrant children drowned in the Mediterranean Sea have evoked empathy and sparked the moral imperative to provide more effective and safer alternatives. On the other hand, a wave of nationalist, right-wing movements has swept across the Western countries, calling for protectionism, isolationism and stricter border controls. For Bhabha, the moral obligation to act on these emotional reactions and help humans far beyond their national borders, stem from our common humanity, intertwined interests and dependence on one another. These binding characteristics propel us to act and will continue to be a driving force for us ‘to act, to save, to help, to share’ (p. 57). She clarifies that these shared duties must be clear and sustainable, and, furthermore, that the system should be set up with clear expectations on what we can do for each other. Besides these recommendations, Bhabha does not give any guidance on modifying existing systems, how this new system should be set up nor how it should be enforced, and so her envisioned system remains quite vague. A prevailing challenge in international agreements is the lack of a supranational authority to administer compliance. Formulating an international system which is ready to respond efficiently amidst humanitarian emergencies requires an enforcement mechanism, which obligates sovereign nations to respond and not shirk responsibility. So, besides suggesting the creation of a system, these common challenges remain unaddressed in her book.
Bhabha then revisits the notion that the current migration system is indeed in ‘crisis’. She concludes that while the current system works for a privileged subset of people, it does not work for everyone—especially those fleeing ‘distressful’ situations, which she defines as ‘migration that stems from desperation, vulnerability, and need, from living circumstances that are experienced as unbearable or deeply unsatisfactory and that precipitate serious obstacles to a reasonable or tolerable life’ (p. 65). This is perhaps one of the most impactful contribution of the book. Bhabha endorses the use of the term distressed migration, which encompasses a wider range of migrants than ‘forced migration’ that is limited to refugees and those displaced by natural disasters. By doing this, she calls for a more inclusive understanding of how we should view human migration as existing terms are too parochial and do not accurately capture conditions faced by migrants.
Additionally, Bhabha examines the international protection available to those fleeing distressful situations: the modern refugee protection system rooted in the World War II diaspora and the resulting international response. While she briefly mentions the shortcomings of the refugee system and its visible failures (such as the protracted crises in Gaza, West Bank and Zataari), she does not consider the limitations of the refugee system and its ability to provide protection to migrants fleeing distressful situations, especially those who do not fit the refugee criteria. In failing to do so, she also fails to critically address then to what extent the refugee system has served its mission if an increasing number of migrants remain unprotected.
The remedies Bhabha offers to the challenges faced by migrants are hefty: they require a significant overhaul of our global political and economic systems. For instance, she suggests reduction in violent conflicts, global arms sale, poverty, global inequality and an international effort to mitigate climate change, all of which she identifies as key drivers of distress migration. Bhabha’s proposed solutions indicate that there is no panacea for the migration ‘crisis’: its causes are rooted in complex development issues that require substantial international cooperation and a concerted effort to alleviate all these pressures. Perhaps this is also the book’s minor shortcoming: Bhabha proposes these solutions but does not analyse their feasibility, given the current global political climate.
Despite this shortcoming, Bhabha’s book provides an insightful introduction to a crucial issue facing us today. The author’s contextualization of the current state of human migration and her focus on the drivers of distress migration, which encompass a broader understanding of forced migration than the typical refugee definition, build a valuable base for formulating long-term solutions for the difficulties confronted by migrants.