Forced Migration in the Global South: Reorienting the Debate

Abstract

As of 2017, 65 million people worldwide had been forcibly displaced by war and political violence. Several millions more have fled because of environmental disasters and socio-economic marginalisation. As there is no immediate end in sight to this steadily increasing global trend, forced migration is one of the central challenges in world politics today - and it is very likely to remain so in the near to medium-term future. Only a small (albeit increasing) proportion of forced migrants have managed to come to the Global North. The main flows take place within and between Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. A focus on South–South displacement thus represents not only a more pluralistic, but also a more accurate picture of global forced-migration trends. The most visible drivers of forced migration are war and political violence. While Syria stands out in this regard, the country also shows that conflict-induced displacement is often intertwined with forced migration resulting from environmental disasters and the adverse effects of development projects. Disaster-induced displacement denotes population movements in the wake of global environmental change, including fast-onset events such as floods, storms, or fires, and slow-onset events, such as droughts, land degradation, and sea-level rise. With its low-elevation islands, the Pacific region of Oceania is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels. Development-induced displacement results from socio-economic exclusion as a result of large-scale infrastructure projects, mining, deforestation, urbanisation, and biosphere projects. The case of India underlines that many development-induced forced migrants are typically internally displaced. As forced migration continues to occur mostly within the Global South, it is necessary to better understand its causes, dynamics, and effects in Africa, Asia, ­Latin America, and the Middle East in their own right - and not primarily or even exclusively in terms of the implications for the Global North. Also, when drafting policy responses to forced migration, a holistic understanding of the complex interlinkages between conflict-, disaster-, and development-induced drivers and dynamics precludes one-size-fits-all approaches.