The future of migration
to europe

edited by Matteo Villa

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The Future of Migration to Europe

Edited by Matteo Villa
First edition: March 2020

This report is published by ISPI with the support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, in accordance with Article 23- bis of the Decree of the President of the Italian Republic 18/1967. The opinions expressed are those of the authors. They do not reflect the opinions or views of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Print ISBN 9788855261890

ePub ISBN 9788855262026

Pdf ISBN 9788855262033

DOI 10.14672/55261890

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Paolo Magri

1. What the Future Holds: Migration from Africa to the EU
Matteo Villa, Elena Corradi

2. Migration, Development and the 2030 Agenda
Marta Foresti, Jennifer Hagen-Zanker, Helen Dempster, Christopher Smart

3. The Future of Legal Migration: Labour Migration Pathways Between Europe and Africa
Michael Clemens, Helen Dempster, Kate Gough

4. Safe and Legal Pathways for Refugees: Can Europe Takes Global Leadership?
Daniele Albanese, Matthieu Tardis

5. The Future of Irregular Migration to Europe
Eugenio Cusumano

6. The Future of Integration: New Technologies for a Migrant-Centric Approach
Enrico Coletta, Giulia Baistrocchi, Giuseppe Ciarliero, Luigi Limone

The Authors

Introduction

Today we live in the era of “peak globalisation”. Despite simmering trade disputes, goods, services, and capital easily cross national borders. The same holds true when it comes to labour migration, at least for the high-skilled, rich global North.

Even as globalisation reached its apex, it took citizens some time before they started to fear international trade, finally realising that while trade liberalisation raises average living standards it might also increase the income gap between the richer and the poorer. For international migration, however, it is the other way around: citizens look at people crossing national borders with fear, and it is very hard for them to tackle the issue in a more rational, cool-headed manner.

Part of that is due to the fact that people come with “strings attached”: when they move, they bring along their culture, their education, and their beliefs. This makes it much harder to weigh costs and benefits in a rational way, and avoid reactions to immigration driven by fear.

By focusing on our emotions and instincts, we often tend to lose sight of the big picture. We speak about protecting our borders, but do not look at whether alternative, legal channels are available to those who may ultimately resort to migrating irregularly. And we tend to look at the future with uncertainty and uneasiness, rather than planning for what awaits for us down the road – or even just around the corner.

Even today, Europeans continue to look in the rear-view mirror. Yet, the 2013-2017 “migration crisis” (the period of high irregular arrivals to Europe) is increasingly in the past. The Eastern Mediterranean route – connecting Turkey to Greece – reached its peak level of flows in October 2015 (when more than 200,000 persons crossed the border irregularly in a single month) and ended in early 2016, after the EU-Turkey statement shrunk those flows to a trickle. The same happened in July 2017 for the Central Mediterranean route, after Italy and the EU struck deals with transit countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and convinced smugglers in Libya started to detain migrants for longer instead of sending them at sea as a consequence of more effective control by concerned local authorities.

Of course, today the risk of new, sudden surges in irregular migration to Europe is not zero. Spain experienced a significant increase as late as 2018. Turkish President Erdoğan threatens to send more migrants to Europe even as those currently hosted on Greek islands remain in dire conditions. And Libya feels like a powder keg, ready to explode.

Moreover, Europe’s public opinion does not seem ready to think of the crisis as a thing of the past. According to the Eurobarometer survey, in late 2019, 34% of European citizens still ranked “immigration” among the most important issues the EU has to face. That was down from 58% in 2015, but it still left immigration as the first reason for concern to European citizens, followed – at a distance – by climate change (22%) and the economic situation (18%).

The enduring perception of migration as a threat has gone hand in hand with the inability of EU Member States to handle the increase in arrivals by showing solidarity to each other. In fact, inaction and botched responses have likely entrenched a “state of perpetual crisis”. Many still remember the European attempts to help Italy and Greece in 2015. Back then, Member States formally agreed (not without any complaint) to relocate about 100,000 asylum seekers in two years, from countries of first arrival in Europe to other countries within the EU. Yet today, four years after the plan was launched, just around 35,000 persons have actually been relocated, while more than 600,000 have made it to Italy, Greece, or Spain over the same timeframe.

Against this background, EU countries have hurriedly attempted to come up with patchwork solutions, acting on three fronts. First, they “externalised” border management, by asking third countries to stop those already on the way, and discourage further departures. Second, they tried to strengthen returns of rejected asylum seekers to their countries of origin. Third, they leveraged development funds in order to improve conditions in countries of origin and transit. In the short run, this strategy of containment and local development appears to have paid off, with irregular flows crossing the Mediterranean shrinking every year since 2015. But will it last and are its costs worth it?

In essence, EU countries still struggle to come up with alternative solutions to foster safe, orderly, and regular migration pathways: either for people migrating for work, family and education reasons; or for those in need to get protection in Europe without risking their lives along the route (although some, including Italy, are leading the way in the latter respect). More in general, EU countries appear much less eager to look ahead and plan accordingly.

This is precisely what the authors of this Report set out to do. This Report tries to take a glimpse into the future of migration to Europe. It analyses the structural trends underlying migration flows, the interaction between migration and specific policy fields (such as development, border management, and integration), and the policies to put in place for safe and orderly migration.

In the opening chapter, Matteo Villa and Elena Corradi analyse the structural trends driving migration from Africa to the EU, accounting for demographic and economic forces, and try to leverage this knowledge to forecast what could happen over the next two decades. They focus on Africa, a continent geographically close to Europe and with the fastest growing population in the world. Africa’s population is set to double between 2010 and 2040, from 1 to 2 billion people. However, the authors find that migration from Africa to Europe is not expected to follow the same trend. Their findings call for a more sensible approach to migration policy, one that puts evidence-based findings centre stage. There is a clear need for pragmatic attempts to investigate plausible futures, and to avoid either scaremongering or minimising the extent of the challenges ahead of us.

Marta Foresti and her co-authors show that international migration poses both challenges and opportunities, and address the relationship between migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A lack of opportunities and investment in origin countries can drive migration; but migration can also improve development and investment in origin countries (through remittances and private investment), fill labour gaps and foster innovation in host countries, and play a role in development along the journey. The authors ask how migration may contribute to achieving the goals of the 2030 Agenda, showing that migration is not a development “problem” to be solved, but a mechanism or a strategy that can contribute to the achievement of many of the goals.

Michael Clemens, Helen Dempster and Kate Gough ask whether economic development in poor countries causes migration to decrease, or the opposite. The rhetoric of many policymakers in Europe shows that they believe that, by providing aid, they are addressing the “root causes” of emigration and therefore reducing further movements across borders. But this view is too simplistic, because migration is not (only) driven by a lack of economic opportunities. European policymakers should target aid at employment creation, and they should be putting in place robust border enforcement. But without promoting new kinds of legal labour migration pathways they will not be able to manage this movement in the longer-term, or to take advantage of the potentially positive impact it could have on European labour markets.

Daniele Albanese and Matthieu Tardis put a spotlight on forced migration and the need for asylum and international protection. They show that protracted crises last an estimated 26 years on average, but that there is a lack of durable solutions for persons seeking protection. A growing number of persons in need have thus embarked on dangerous journeys, often at the hands of human smugglers, facing detention and treacherous conditions along the way. In Europe, there is therefore a need to sustain the momentum gained by discussions around safe and legal pathways to obtain protection, be they refugee resettlement or complementary ways such as private or community sponsorship programmes.

Eugenio Cusumano looks at the future of irregular migration to Europe. These are probably the least predictable of migration flows. On the one hand, drivers are manifold, ranging from economic conditions to the need for protection. On the other hand, they strictly depend on EU and Member States’ policies, in particular the shortage of safe and legal pathways to reach Europe. By surveying the past two decades of irregular migration by sea, the author identifies some enduring dynamics and plausible future scenarios, concluding that the demographic and socioeconomic outlook of MENA and sub-Saharan countries suggests that northbound irregular migratory flows are set to continue. In the short term, however, the large-scale mobility flows triggered by the Arab uprisings will remain unmatched short of any new major regional turmoil, while EU policies based on border externalisation are set to remain part of the EU migration governance toolkit.

Finally, Enrico Coletta and the Ernst & Young team focus on migrant integration in Europe. They show that while the advent of new technologies, such as AI, blockchain, and Big Data is disrupting the connection between citizens and communities, the same technologies can also hold the key to unlocking the potential for tailor-made integration policies. When used as a strategic tool, new technologies can provide the missing link to help deliver better outcomes for both migrants and citizens in a more sustainable way. The key is to move further towards a “digital State” – one in which the production and delivery of information and services inside governments, and between governments and their citizens, is based on a user-centric approach and ICT-enabled procedures. This can help moving from “emergency” and short-sighted responses to “structural”, long-term ones.

In conclusion, this Report shows that migration does not need to be feared, and neither should it be approached as an intractable phenomenon. In fact, the opposite is true. We can study past migration, policy responses, and current trends in order to glimpse into the future and plan ahead. As we increasingly grasp what shapes migration and its outcomes, we will find it much easier to shed our instinctual responses and govern the phenomenon, rather than be governed by it.

Paolo Magri

ISPI Executive Vice President and Director

1. What the Future Holds: Migration from Africa to the EU

Matteo Villa, Elena Corradi

Over the last few years, in Europe the word “migration” has often gone hand in hand with the word “crisis”, as irregular flows to the European Union reached unprecedented levels between 2014 and 2018. Public opinion and policy makers’ attention has dwelled on existing difficulties and immediate responses. The EU-Turkey statement in March 2016, and agreements with transit countries in Africa (Niger, Ethiopia, and Libya) are examples of this short-term approach. Indeed, attempts at “externalising” border control have been successful at bringing down irregular arrivals to Europe: in 2016, arrivals to Greece shrank by 98%, and since mid-2017 arrivals to Italy have followed the same pattern (-93%). Evidence however shows that, while potentially effective1, restrictive migration policies cannot stop migration altogether2. This means that, even as the European “migration crisis” is now over, its conclusion will not mark the end of irregular immigration to the EU. Long-term responses are therefore sorely needed.

At the same time, the belief that migration to the EU will rise uncontrollably in the near future seems to be gaining traction. Recently updated UN projections show that the African population is meant to double between 2010 and 2040, from 1 to 2 billion people (i.e., four times the population of the EU28). These projections have fuelled fears of a potential “multiplier effect” that demographic growth could have on migration from Africa to Europe3. In this chapter, we set out to investigate whether these fears are grounded. We attempt to leverage data on half a century of migration from Africa to Europe to forecast what could happen in the future. We do so as we believe that an evidence-based projection of likely migration trends should be used to prepare for what the future holds, and to better inform planning and policy design in the EU and its Member States.

Like any forecasting exercise, this is no easy task. Forecasting future differences in migration stocks is particularly difficult as migration is conceptualised differently across countries, with data often incomplete and problematic. Furthermore, it is difficult to capture a comprehensive picture of all migration drivers4. Most demographic forecasting attempts thus treat migration as impossible to predict and, therefore, rely on scenarios that assume migration settles at some constant level compared to historical trends5. Of course, conflict-related migration and other forced movements are hardest to predict, and may warrant such a treatment. However, structural factors could help us predict the intensity, direction, and timing of other migration movements.

In this chapter we delve deeper into a specific subset of migration flows, namely net emigration from African countries to the EU. By analyzing past trends, we find that many of the correlates that appear to drive bilateral migration at the global level do not seem to apply in this case. Instead of representing a problem, we turn the problem on its head, and attempt to forecast future flows directly. In an effort to be as fine-grained as possible, we provide country-specific forecasts of net emigration to the EU from 56 African countries and other territories identified by United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) between 2020 and 2040.

We find that while future migration from the African continent to Europe should remain robust, it is not expected to reach unprecedented levels even as the African population doubles. What is more, African migration to the EU is not even expected to rise linearly in tandem with the growth of African population, but to rather settle to pretty stable levels.

Our forecasts show that while migration from Africa to Europe will continue to pose a challenge to EU policy makers, this will not be an unprecedented challenge. As such, it will be crucial to prepare for potentially robust migration flows from the African continent, but this is a challenge that the EU as a whole can certainly manage.

Historical Trends of African Migration to Europe

In order to forecast future migration trends from Africa, we first need to understand what they look like today and how they have evolved in the recent past. To do so, we combine data on decadal migrant stocks between 1960 and 2000 from the World Bank6 with data on five-year migrant stocks between 1990 and 2019 from the UN7. For the time span where they overlap, the two datasets do not report the same levels of migrant stocks. We merge them by calculating a country-specific multiplier that we then use to fit World Bank (WB) data to the UN’s. We calculate this multiplier as the ratio of migrant stocks reported by the UN in 1990 to the migrant stocks reported by the WB in the same year, for each African country. Finally, given that WB data is decadal, while UN data is provided on a five-year basis, we interpolate stock and population data for the years 1965, 1975 and 1985.

Today around 3.1% of Africans live abroad, compared to a world average of 3.5% international migrants per inhabitant. This share stands out as even smaller if compared with Europe, which is the first region in terms of how many of its citizens live abroad compared to its own population, with 8.2% of its population living outside their country of birth, and Latin America, where 6.2% of the population has crossed an international border and now lives abroad.

Figure 1.1 shows Africa’s international migrant stock as a share of the continent’s population, as it varies with time (dotted line). If we separate sub-Saharan African (SSA) migrants from Northern African (NA) migrants, we notice that up to very recently the share of population living outside their country of birth followed two opposite trends8. Before 1970-1980, the share of sub-Saharan Africans abroad was actually greater than that of North Africans. However, over the years, whilst an increasing percentage of Northern Africans migrated, the share of SSA migrants slowly decreased and came to a stall. Since 2010, this trend reverted, but there still remains a substantial difference between the percentage of NA and SSA migrants, as today the share of Northern Africans abroad is almost double that of sub-Saharan Africans.

Fig. 1.1 - Stock of African emigrants /
total population of origin

Source: authors’ elaborations on UN DESA and WB data

We now turn to African migration to the EU. To frame this focus, we take a step back to the 3.1% of Africans who have migrated and consider that approximately half of them have left the continent. Of those who have left the region, an even smaller percentage has reached the European Union: overall, today, only 26% of all African migrants are in the EU.

Even so, as Figure 1.2 shows, the stock of African migrants living in the EU in 2019 is almost ten times the stock of migrants sixty years ago, in 1960. If we look back at the last thirty years, between 1990 and 2019, the number of African migrants in the EU has more than doubled, from 4.6 million to 10.3 million. This increase concerns both migrants from SSA and those from NA countries. Given NA’s geographical proximity to EU countries, however, the share of migrants from this area living in the EU has constantly been higher than the share of SSA migrants. However, while in 1960 SSA migrants made up only 22% of all Africans living in the EU; this share has slowly increased over time, reaching 36% in 1990 and 46% in 2019.

Notwithstanding the latest 2013-2017 “migration crisis”, Africans living in the EU still comprise only 2.0% of the bloc’s overall population. This share has indeed doubled from 1.0% in 1990, but mostly between the late 1990s and early 2000s, not today. Also interesting to note is that, while several EU countries have tightened regular channels for African migrants, migration from the continent has not abated, but has mostly shifted towards irregular routes9. This is evidence that underlying structural factors of migration tend to be stronger than policies aimed at restricting access, making flows hard to stop.

Fig. 1.2 - African migrants in the EU28

Source: authors’ elaborations on UN DESA and WB data

What Shapes African Migration to Europe

The observation that it is hard to “stop” migration, as African migration to the EU has mostly followed an upward trend irrespective of policies within the European continent, brings up the question of what are the structural drivers that actually shape migration from Africa to the EU. Below, we focus on net emigration, which implicitly accounts for return migration from the EU to African countries. Evidence shows that, apart from very few and recent cases such as the return of Angolan nationals, return migration from the EU to African countries has been minimal so far10.

Focusing on African net emigration to the EU has two major benefits. First, it allows us to ignore movements within the African continent, insofar as they do not generate major movements outside the continent. Migration within the African continent is much less predictable because it includes almost all continental forced migration. As is well known, forced migrants overwhelmingly remain closer to their previous homes than international migrants. For instance, in 2018 two-thirds of forced migrants in the world had left their homes but not their country (they are internally displaced persons, or IDPs), while of those who did cross an international border, 85% had moved to neighbouring countries or other countries within the same region11. Forced migration is the least predictable of migration flows: both in time, as it is affected by sudden changes in political and social conditions in the countries of origin; and in intensity, as the number of forced migrants that eventually decide to cross an international border can depend on a large number of factors in the country of origin that are difficult to measure (e.g., the precise places affected by conflict, the targeted populations and their propensity to migrate, and the presence or absence of factors that make a person or group of persons involuntarily immobile). By focusing on African net emigration to Europe, much of the forced migration flows can be disregarded, making forecasts much more feasible.

Second, focusing on net emigration to the EU as a whole, rather than to each Member State, allows us to investigate the determinants of migration towards a macro-region, eliminating idiosyncrasies at the country level that might hide deeper trends, while adding precision to our forecasts (as we do not need to estimate the exact destination of African migrants within Europe). Our focus on the whole of the EU also accounts for the high rate of (both regular and irregular) mobility of non-EU nationals within the EU12.

Our estimates of five-year migration flows are based on a simple subtraction between five-year stocks (i.e., stock differencing). We are aware that there are other, more elaborate ways to estimate migration flows13: however, we rely on this raw measure as a first approximation on which other researchers may want to build upon in the future. There are a number of reasons why stock differencing might be both overestimating and underestimating net migration rates. It tends to overestimate emigration: (1) because children born from foreigners in EU countries are counted as migrants from the origin country as long as they do not acquire the host country’s citizenship (which can take a considerable time, given that no EU country has a pure ius soli law); and (2) because it is blind to levels of return migration, which are negligible today, but can be expected to be higher in the future14. It may also underestimate net African emigration to the EU: (1) when African nationals living in the EU acquire the citizenship of the host country / change citizenship within any five-year period; and (2) when African nationals living in the EU die. Despite these caveats, we think stock differencing offers a good approximation of net migration, and leave attempts at refining our estimates to future research.

To investigate covariates of African migration to the EU, we start from the findings of classic gravitational models15. In particular, we want to check whether income levels, the presence of larger cohorts of young populations, the presence of diasporas in the destination region, or the end of the Cold War have had an effect on the likelihood of Africans to migrate to the EU. To do so, we first calculate net emigration rates (emigration flows per 1,000 inhabitants of the origin country at the start of the 5-year period), set all negative emigration rates at (very close to) zero and take the natural logarithm of the resulting variable16. We then rely on UN data for total population and age composition, and on WB data for average GDP per capita (at constant dollars). We estimate our regressions on 5-year data spanning more than five decades, from 1965 to 2019, for 53 African countries17. Table 1.1 reports our results, according to three different model specifications.

Tab. 1.1 - Drivers of net emigration rates: Results of a multivariate panel regression

Model 1 shows the results of a classic multivariate linear regression. It recovers strong significance for both previous net emigration flows and the role of diasporas (“migrant stock / population”). It also recovers slight significance for economic development, albeit only in a linear way (the quadratic term is not significant). However, a correct estimation in a panel setting should always include fixed effects: by only looking at within-country variation, fixed effects models avoid misinterpreting those effects recovered at the “systemic” level that then disappear when looking at the country level (in other words, they prevent some ecological fallacies). Moreover, fixed effects have the crucial additional benefit that they can account for factors that are known to drive migration but do not vary with time, such as geographical distance, former colonial ties, or a common language.

Models 2 and 3 report results after including fixed effects. As can be seen, very few covariates appear to drive net migration from African countries to the EU. First, strikingly, the role of diasporas in attracting further emigration from African countries to the EU is reversed. This is all the more surprising, given that family reunification is one of the main channels allowing for African migration to many EU countries. Second, even as past research has shown that the 15-34 year-old cohorts are more likely to migrate, changes in their importance relative to each African country’s total population between 1960 and today do not appear to have had a significant effect in driving migration from the continent to the EU.

Third, even the role of economic development appears to be muted. Past research has found that net emigration tends to follow a “hump-shaped” curve as a country develops18: as a country moves up from low income levels, net emigration rates tend to increase as well – until the country’s GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) reaches approximately 5,000 international dollars. Only after that threshold, as average incomes rise, the (net) number of people emigrating starts to fall, as people are more capable to migrate but also less willing to do so. Given that the average GDP per capita of sub-Saharan African countries today is less than 4,000 international dollars at PPP, or well under the peak of the so-called “migration hump”, we should expect net emigration to increase as countries develop.

However, Model 3 shows that this does not appear to be the case for African migration into the EU over the past five decades: variation in economic development appears to have no significant effect on migration flows, and the non-significance of the quadratic term suggests there is no “humped” relation. In order to delve deeper into these results, we used our dataset to replicate the findings of past research19. When looking at all net emigration rates from all countries in the world, we manage to replicate the “migration hump”; however, when we restrict our analysis to the subset of sub-Saharan African countries, we find that the trend changes markedly20. Figure 1.3 does not show a “hump”, but what could be named a “migration plateau”: net emigration rates from every African country to all countries in the world do not exhibit the typical inverted-U shape, but rather remain at similar rates at most levels of economic development. Even when restricting our analysis to flows from Africa to the EU28, the shape of the curve remains more similar to a plateau than a hump21.

Fig. 1.3 - Relationship between GDP per capita and net emigration rates

Source: authors’ elaborations on UN DESA and WB data.
Solid lines represent moving averages (period 30).

Going back to our models, we also do not find strong evidence of a rising trend in net emigration rates from Africa to the EU28 as time goes by: when testing for a post-Cold War effect (on flows from 1990-1995 onwards), only Model 2 recovers a significant effect. On the opposite, yearly controls recover a significant acceleration during the 2000-2005 period, which dampens in 2005-2015, and then picks up again in the final period of our series (2015-2019).

Most importantly, our models appear to show that a strongly significant predictor of future net emigration of Africans to the EU28 is past net emigration. It should then be possible to forecast future African migration into the EU without having to account for the future evolution of many classic covariates, but by only looking at past emigration rates. However, as the role of diasporas appears to have an unexpected moderating effect on future flows, forecasts based only on past emigration flows could overestimate future flows as the diasporas in Europe grow.

There might be an even better alternative. The strong autocorrelation in time of emigration flows recovered by our models urges us to look at stocks directly (or better, at the share of migrant stocks over the total population of a country). Clearly, if past emigration from African countries to the EU strongly predicts current emigration, then trends in migrants stocks should be even more closely related, and thus easier to forecast. This appears to be the case: by inspecting the evolution in the stocks of African migrants living in the EU, we find that they exhibit a very high degree of stability, with a 0.97 correlation between migrant stocks and their 5-year lags22.

A potential worry could be based on the fact that, as the African population is set to double between 2010 and 2040 from 1 to 2 billion people, even a very resilient trend in the recent past could not help us forecast future flows. However, such worries should be assuaged precisely in light of past evidence. The African population has already doubled twice between the 1950s and today, moving from less than 250 million to over 500 million (1950-1985), and then doubling again to 1 billion by 2010. Yet, the ratio of migrant stocks over the population has followed a much steadier, and thus more predictable trend. Take Nigeria: just like the overall African trend, the country’s population has doubled twice, from 45 million in 1960 to over 100 million in 1995, and then to 200 million in 2019. Yet, Figure 1.4 shows that the migrant stock ratio has followed a highly predictable trend.

Fig. 1.4 - Nigeria: total population and migrant stock ratio to the EU28

Source: authors’ elaborations on UN DESA and WB data

What the Future Holds: Forecasting Emigration from Africa to the EU

In the previous section, we established that net emigration rates from African countries are not significantly correlated with most of their classic determinants23. To forecast future African migration to the EU, we therefore directly rely on the evolutions in the ratio between the stocks of African emigrants to EU countries and the total population of each African country at the start of each 5-year period, between 1960 and 2019.

Our sample is composed of 56 of the 58 African countries and other territories identified by UN DESA, leaving aside only those for which data on migrant stocks is missing (i.e., South Sudan and Mayotte). We forecast the share of future migration stocks both to the EU28 and to the EU27 (all Member States minus the United Kingdom)24. We then rely on the low, medium, and high variants of population projections produced by UN DESA (2019) to calculate the absolute stock of African citizens living in the EU between 2025 and 2040. Finally, we estimate future net emigration flows via stock differencing (see above).

To obtain our forecasts of the share of future migration stocks of African citizens living in EU countries we estimate univariate, country-specific ARIMA (autoregressive integrated moving average) models. In order to choose between different specifications of the ARIMA models, we rely on the methods proposed by Hyndman and Athanasopoulos (2018)25. We then inspect the forecasts manually and correct for a few notable countries for which the selected forecasting method returns clearly unreasonable results. Namely, we correct for four out of 56 African countries in the EU27 forecast (Djibouti, Eritrea, Morocco and Tunisia) and for six countries in the EU28 forecast (the previous four, plus Somalia and Zimbabwe)26.

Figure 1.5 reports the result of our forecasts. As shown, emigration from Africa to the EU28 is expected to remain robust, but not increase to unprecedented levels. Indeed, while Africa’s population is meant to double between 2010 and 2040, migration flows from Africa to the EU are expected to stabilise, remaining well within the range of past fluctuations. Specifically, our forecasts expect that between 220,000 and 300,000 Africans will reach the EU28 every year between 2020 and 2040, with a central forecast of 260,000 persons. Of these, 200,000 per year are expected to reach EU27 countries, with the remainder going to the UK.

Fig. 1.5 - Past realisations and forecasts of net yearly emigration from Africa

Source: authors’ elaborations and forecasts on UN DESA and WB data

Cumulatively, this means that the number of African citizens living in the EU28 (and who have not acquired EU citizenship) is expected to increase from 10.3 million in 2019 to between 14.9 and 16.6 million by 2040. Compared to the total EU28 population, which the UN estimates at 513 million in 2019, very slowly declining to 507 million in 2040, this is equivalent to a rise from 2% today to between 2.9% and 3.3% by 2040, with a central estimate of 3.1%.

Despite evidence that the shifting age composition of Africans did not significantly affect net emigration from the continent to the EU in the past, it could be interesting to see whether our univariate models pick up any difference for the near future. We therefore re-estimated our forecasts by employing the stock of emigrants over the share of population in each African country aged between 15 and 34 years, which according to research is the set of demographic cohorts most likely to migrate27. Figure 1.6 shows five-year migration flows to the EU27, reporting our central forecasts and the aggregate of country-specific forecasts with data on the population aged 15-34. Migration estimates differ more prominently in the first decade after 2020, and then converge towards 200,000 per year by 2040. Overall, yearly migration is forecast to be slightly lower at around 190,000, compared to around 210,000 when using total population.

If we break down our results between NA and SSA countries, we notice that the regional composition of migration flows to the EU is expected to change as well. Compared with the recent past, we expect the increasing role of the sub-Saharan African (SSA) component to expand over time compared to the Northern African (NA) one. While, as recalled above, NA is comprised of just five countries making up just over 15% of the whole African population in 2019, between 1975 and 2005 total emigration to Europe averaged around 75,000 per year from both NA and SSA regions. This shows the importance of geographic distance to determine migration flows.

Fig. 1.6 - Comparison of forecasts of migration to the EU27,
using total population or cohorts aged 15-34

Source: authors’ elaborations and forecasts on UN DESA and WB data

From 2005-2010 onwards, migration flows to the EU included more SSA migrants than NA migrants, the former making up around 60% of total flows. Our forecasts expect this share to increase over the next two decades, reaching 77% of flows from Africa in 2040. This will slowly affect the composition in the stock of African citizens living in the EU28 (see Figure 1.7): in 1975, around 70% of Africans living in EU28 countries came from the five Northern African countries. By 2020, this share had already shrunk to 54%. Our central forecast expects SSA emigrants to overtake NA ones by 2030, and to climb to 55% of the total by 2040.

Finally, the fact that we employ country-specific forecasts allows us to rank countries by expected yearly migration flows to the EU27 over the next two decades. Figure 1.8 shows both our forecast’s central estimate, which builds upon the total population of each country, and the estimate that relies on the share of population aged 15-34.

Fig. 1.7 - Regional composition of the total African population living in the EU28

Source: authors’ elaborations and forecasts on UN DESA and WB data

The first thing to note is that our central forecast expects Morocco and Algeria to remain the top senders of migrants from Africa to the EU27 over the next twenty years, followed by Senegal, Nigeria, and Somalia. According to UN projections, in 2040 Nigeria will be the most populous African country by far: its population (329 million inhabitants) could be more than twice that of the second most populous country, Ethiopia (175 million). And yet, in terms of migration to the EU, Nigeria is expected to be only in fourth place. The reason for this is, simply put, that the citizens of some countries have a higher likelihood to migrate than others, and Nigerians and Ethiopians have a markedly lower tendency to leave their countries than, say, Algerians or Gambians.

Worth noting is the huge variability in the forecasts of migration from Morocco to the EU27 when we employ the two different methods. This is very different from all other African countries, for which central estimates remain remarkably stable (at least in absolute terms). The reason for this is that Morocco’s is one of the few populations in Africa whose demographic cohorts between 15 and 34 years old are poised not to increase markedly over the forecast window, stabilising at around 12 million people in 2040 versus 11.6 million today. It remains to be seen whether this will bring about a slowdown in net emigration to the EU, as expected from migration models based on all the world’s countries, or whether Morocco will remain in line with other African countries, with shifts in age composition having little to no significant impact on future migration flows.

Fig. 1.8 - Country-level forecasts of net emigration to EU28

Source: authors’ elaborations and forecasts on UN DESA and WB data

We do not regard these country-specific forecasts to be as robust as those referring to the entire African continent, and therefore we expect them to need more frequent revisions over the coming years. Nonetheless, they may serve as a good reference point for EU and African policy makers. In particular, they show which country or sets of countries should be expected to contribute the most to net emigration flows towards the EU over the next two decades, allowing for better targeting of migration-related policies by all stakeholders involved.

Conclusion

Recent attempts at bringing down seaborne irregular migration to Europe have proved very effective. But these reductions have been achieved through disputable bilateral deals that “externalised” migration control to transit countries. Additionally, their practical sustainability over the longer term is questionable, especially if the incentives to migrate remain as structurally lopsided as they have been in the past few decades.

In this chapter, we have shown that the belief that demographic pressures will make migration from Africa to Europe impossible to manage are highly exaggerated. Our forecasts show that, while migration from Africa to Europe will continue to pose a challenge to EU policy makers, this will not be an unprecedented challenge. As such, it will be crucial to prepare for potentially robust migration flows from the African continent, but this is a challenge that the EU as a whole can certainly manage, especially if Member States plan in advance, show solidarity with each other, and work towards an improved international migration governance system.

We expect net migration flows from Africa to Europe to settle at more than double the 1960-2000 yearly average (+116%), but to increase by just 7% compared to 2000-2020. This is evidence that the trend had already changed markedly in the past two decades, and is not expected to increase disproportionately in the near future. More in detail, we foresee net emigration from Africa to Europe to stabilize at around 260,000 per year between 2020 and 2040. Cumulatively, this means that the number of African citizens living in the EU28 should increase from 10.3 million in 2019 to between 14.9 and 16.6 million by 2040. Relative to the EU28 population, this is equivalent to a rise from 2% today to between 2.9% and 3.3% by 2040 (with a central estimate of 3.1%).

In addition to contributing to assuage fears, improved modelling of expected migration flows from specific African countries can inform current and future action by EU policy makers. Knowing with a sufficient degree of precision which African countries will account for the largest share of future migration flows to Europe over the next two decades could allow better targeting of development assistance and diplomatic engagement.

Our findings point to the need to acknowledge that the policy toolbox available to European policymakers might be more limited than currently believed. For instance, the “migration plateau” suggests that emigration from African countries will not change much even as they develop economically. At the same time, as African economies continue to grow, the extent to which the EU can effectively rely on carrot-and-stick policies to induce cooperation from reluctant partners will be increasingly limited, as every euro spent in the continent will be worth incrementally less.

On the other hand, many other policy tools remain available to better manage future migration flows. Tailoring legal migration channels (especially for labour migrants) to expected migration flows from specific countries can help the EU avoid the human suffering and economic losses caused by forcing migrants to move through irregular channels instead. Enhanced regular channels could be combined more strongly with programmes to educate and train potential migrants who are still in origin countries, bringing down costs while bolstering their chances to integrate once in Europe. Finally, investing in integration policies that are suitable for those who are expected to reach Europe in the near future can also help to cut costs and to focus on those policies that actually work, such as language courses, or vocational training in specific sectors.

In conclusion, forecasting future migration flows is crucial for moving towards an approach to migration governance that is led by pragmatism, rather than baseless fears and false myths. Some Africans will migrate to Europe no matter what. Whether everyone can make the most out of it will depend on how governments choose to face this inevitable phenomenon.

1 M. Helbling and D. Leblang, “Controlling Immigration? How Regulations Affect Migration Flows”, European Journal of Political Research, vol. 58, 2019, pp. 248-269.

2 M. Czaika and H. de Haas, “The effect of visas on migration processes”, International Migration Review, vol. 51, no. 4, 2017, pp.893-926; M. Barslund, M. Di Salvo, and L. Ludolph, Can regular replace irregular migration across the Mediterranean?, CEPS MEDAM Policy Paper, 27 June 2019; M. Hooghe, A. Trappers, B. Meuleman, and T. Reeskens, “Migration to European Countries: A Structural Explanation of Patterns, 1980-2004”, International Migration Review, vol. 42, no. 2, 2008, pp. 476-504.

3 D. Scalea, Come l’immigrazione sta cambiando la demografia italiana (The way migration is changing Italian demography) Machiavelli Centro Studi Politici e Strategici, no. 2, 2017.

4 J. Bijak, “Migration forecasting: beyond the limits of uncertainty”, International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) Data Briefing Series, no. 6, 2016.

5 For instance, “zero migration”, “historical migration” or “double historical migration”; see United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), World Population Prospects 2019, 2019, or W. Lutz et al. (eds.), Demographic and human capital scenarios in the 21st Century: 2018 Assessment for 201 Countries, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, 2018.

6 Ç.Özden, C.R. Parsons, M. Schiff, and T.L. Walmsley, “Where on Earth is Everybody? The Evolution of Global Bilateral Migration 1960-2000”, The World Bank Economic Review, vol. 25, no. 1, 2011, pp. 12-56.

7 UN DESA (2019).

8 Note that NA is comprised of just five countries (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia), with a population of 195 million in 2019, or just over 15% of the whole African continent.

9 European Commission, Many more to come? Migration from and within Africa, Joint Research Centre, Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union, 2018; M. Barslund, M. Di Salvo, and L. Ludolph (2019).

10 S. Migali, F. Natale, T. Tintori et al., International Migration Drivers: A Quantitative Assessment of the Structural Factors Shaping Migration, Joint Research Centre, JRC Science for Policy Report, Luxembourg Publications Office of the European Union, 2018.

11 UNHCR, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018, June 2019; S. Fransen and H. de Haas, The Volume and Geography of Forced Migration, IMI Working Paper, no. 156, 2019.

12 European Migration Network (EMN), Intra-EU Mobility of Third Country Nationals, EMN Study, 2013; European Commission (2018).

13 (Abel 2019)

14 J.J. Azose and A.E. Raftery, “Estimation of emigration, return migration, and transit migration between all pairs of countries”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), vol. 116, no. 1, 2019, pp. 116-122.

15 European Commission (2018).

16 M. Beine, F. Docquier, Ç. Özden, “Diasporas”, Journal of Development Economics, vol. 95, no. 1, 2011, pp. 30-41; and S. Bertoli, J. Fernández-Huertas Moraga, “The Size of the Cliff at the Border”, Regional Science and Urban Economics, vol. 51, pp. 1-6. In our dataset, 8.2% of all emigration rates from African countries to the EU are negative, 0.4% are already zeroes, and 91.4% are positive.

17 We use 2019 data to proxy for 2020, rebasing the change in net emigration stocks between 2015 and 2019 over five years instead of four. Results do not change significantly if, instead of using the logarithm of emigration rates, we employ two different specifications for the dependent variable: (1) absolute emigration flows; (2) absolute emigration flows, but setting negative values to zero.

18 M.A. Clemens, Does Development Reduce Migration?, CGD Working Paper 359, Center for Global Development, Washington D.C., 18 March 2014; see also chapter 3 of this Report.

19 We approximate the relationship between economic development and migration relying on period averages (1960-1970, 1970-1980, 1990-1995, 1995-2000, 2000-2005, 2005-2010, 2010-2015) for population and GDP per capita (at constant dollars).

20 Findings do not vary significantly over time: when computing seven separate moving averages for each time period, we obtain curves that are similar to those portrayed in Figure 1.3.

21 Even when looking at subsets for the various time periods, between 1960 and 2015, the relationship between the level of economic development and emigration rates from the African continent (to the world or to the EU) does not appear to change significantly over time.

22 Pearson’s correlation coefficient varies between -1 (perfect negative correlation) and 1 (perfect positive correlation).

23 Recall that, differently from classic findings of determinants of net emigration (which generally look at all or most countries in the world), the estimated role of the presence of diasporas in the EU28 in determining future emigration rates from African countries is significantly negative. This means that our forecasts will likely be an overestimate of actual future realisations. In other words, emigration from Africa could be expected to be somewhat lower in the future than what our forecasts predict.

24 Clearly, EU27 forecasts do not take into account the effect that the UK not being a member of the EU would have on the propensity to migrate to the EU. Similarly, also past migration trends used to compute migration forecasts do not consider the effect of the UK not being an EU member on the propensity to migrate.

25 More precisely, we use the “auto.arima” function included in the “forecast” package developed for R, in its latest version released on 5 December 2019. Essentially, the methods choose an ARIMA (p,q,s) specification by minimising the corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc), which corrects for small-sample bias. R.J. Hyndman and G. Athanasopoulos, Forecasting: principles and practice, 2nd edition, OTexts, Melbourne, Australia, 2018.

26 In the case of forecasts to the EU27, corrections are as follow. (1) Djibouti. The model forecasts a constantly declining stock of emigrants over the country’s population, from 0.7% in 2025 to 0.2% in 2040. We impute the last known value in 2019, i.e. 1.0%, to the whole forecast window; (2) Eritrea. The model sees the ratio of the stock to the population rising from 4.1% in 2019 to 13.0% in 2040. This is clearly implausible, as the forecast is strongly affected by a rise in forced migrants that reached the EU in 2015-2020. Therefore, we impute the first point forecast for 2025 (6.3%) to all remaining five-year periods. This is still a substantial rise from the abovementioned value of 4.1% in 2019; (3) Morocco. The model forecasts a constant rise, from 7.5% in 2019 to 9.5% in 2040. This runs counter to the considerable stability in the series between 2005 (7.1%) and 2019 (7.5%). Therefore, we impute the peak levels reached in 2010 (i.e. 7.8%) to the whole forecast window; (4) Tunisia. Opposite from Morocco, the model expects Tunisian emigrant stock/population ratio to shrink from 5.3% in 2019 to 4.8% in 2040. We consider this to be a reversal that is not supported by trends in the past fifteen years (from 5.0% in 2005 to 5.3% in 2019) and therefore impute the last value of 5.3% to the remainder of the series. Despite all corrections, we preserve the recovered uncertainty around these estimates in order to incorporate it in our forecasts.

27 European Commission (2018).

2. Migration, Development and the 2030 Agenda28

Marta Foresti, Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Helen Dempster, Christopher Smart

Migration is one of the defining features of the XXI century. While people have always moved and always will, there is no doubt that the so-called “crisis” of 2015 has brought migration to the attention of the international community, and there is no doubt that migration is now a major political priority in different countries. Importantly, while much attention is paid to the increasing flows between low-income and high-income countries, for example between Africa and Europe or between South/Central and North America, most migrants move either within countries or between neighbouring countries. In other words, migration is mainly a regional phenomenon that affects rich and poor countries alike.

International migration poses both challenges and opportunities for the achievement of economic and social development everywhere. While the level of economic growth, development opportunities, security and political instability can be drivers of migration from some countries, migration journeys are likely to be affected by key challenges facing nations and peoples everywhere, such as resource scarcity and climate breakdown, gender and wealth inequality, quality livelihoods, the eradication of poverty, and the right to healthy and fulfilling lives in sustainable societies.

This chapter will address the interaction of migration and the 2030 Agenda, its implications for development in different countries, and the key policy areas related to the 2030 Agenda which will affect the future of migration to Europe. It will draw out key questions and themes and indicate areas for policy responses which will play a role in migration trends to Europe in coming decades and surmise their implications on the future form and intensity of migration to Europe in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Migration and the 2030 Agenda

Migration contributes significantly to all aspects of economic and social development everywhere, and as such will be key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although the relationship between migration and development is increasingly recognised, it remains underexplored. We know that a lack of opportunities and investment in origin countries can drive migration. But we also know that migration can improve development and investment in origin countries, fill labour gaps and foster innovation in host countries, and can contribute to development along the journey (or, in “transit countries”). It is an effective poverty reduction tool – not just for migrants themselves, but also for their families and their wider communities.

Migration can contribute to positive development outcomes and, ultimately, to realising the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the “2030 Agenda”). To do this, we need to understand the impact of migration on the achievement of all SDGs, and – equally – the impact this achievement will have on future migration patterns. As Member States and International Institutions are starting to discuss how to implement the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), it is more important than ever to understand these links and their implications for policy.

The 2030 Agenda is well placed to reflect and exploit the links between migration and development for three reasons. First, the 2030 Agenda is the first international development framework to include and recognise migration as a dimension of development. The Agenda includes migration-related targets and recognises its important contribution to sustainable development, while acknowledging the specific vulnerabilities migrants may face29.

Second, migration interacts with all dimensions of development. The multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral nature of the 2030 Agenda is a useful platform to assess the impact of migration and human mobility on a range of development issues30. This is not just important in terms of problem analysis but also offers opportunities for finding policy solutions.

Finally, and crucially, the 2030 Agenda is supported by the necessary political “traction” in different Member States and in the multilateral system. The impacts of migration can be felt at all stages of the journey – notably in both origin and host countries – and as such it interacts with different sectors, requiring coordination between multiple actors and enhanced coherence across policies. This kind of coordination is only possible with high-level buy-in, something the SDGs have already secured. Furthermore, the SDGs’ multi-disciplinary nature increases the potential for multi-stakeholder collaboration31.

The 2030 Agenda includes a number of targets which recognise the economic value of migrants including SDGs 4, 5, 8, 10, 16 and 17 (Table 2.1). In particular, target 10.7 – the cornerstone of migration in the 2030 Agenda – calls for the facilitation of “safe, regular and responsible migration” and the implementation of “well-managed migration policies”.

Outside these targets, however, the Agenda is silent on the broader contribution of migration to development outcomes. These omitted and ‘indirect’ links between migration and development are the focus of our work. If countries are to achieve the SDGs, they need to consider the impact of migration at all levels and on all outcomes, beyond the targets in “ to be solved (as is the subtext of SDG 10.7), but a mechanism or a strategy that can contribute to the achievement of many of the goals32. To do this, governments and other actors need to identify the multiple linkages between migration and different goals and targets (Table 2), while at the same time also recognising that migrants can also be vulnerable and should be considered under the general principle of “leaving no one behind”.

Tab. 2.1 - The targets that mention migration (UN 2015)

4.b

By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries in particular LDCs, SIDS and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and ICT, technical, engineering and scientific programmes in developed countries and other developing countries

5.2

Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls

in the public and private spheres, including trafficking

and sexual and other types of exploitation

8.7

Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour,

end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition

and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms

8.8

Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working

environments for all workers, including migrant workers,

in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment

10.7

Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and

mobility of people, including through the implementation

of planned and well-managed migration policies

10.c

By 2030, reduce to less than 3% the transaction costs of migrant remittances and eliminate remittance corridors

with costs higher than 5%

16.2

End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children

17.18

By 2020, enhance capacity building support to developing countries,

including for Least Developed Countries (LCDs) and

Small Island Developing States (SIDS), to increase significantly

the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data

disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory

status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics

relevant in national contexts

Poverty Reduction and Migration in the 2030 Agenda

Migration is a powerful poverty reduction tool, which can contribute to the achievement of all SDGs.

Labour migration can reduce poverty for migrants themselves, their families, and their origin and host countries. Migrants and their families benefit from increased income and knowledge, which allows them to spend more on basic needs, more reliable and modern energy services, access education and health services, and make investments (SDGs 1, 3, 4 and 7). For female migrants, increased economic resources can improve their autonomy and socioeconomic status (SDG 5). In origin countries, migration can lead to increased wages and greater economic growth through higher incomes, spending, knowledge and technology transfers, and investments of migrant households (SDGs 8 and 9). In host countries, migrants can fill labour gaps, contribute to services, and increase government budget through taxes and social security contributions (SDGs 1, 8 and 9).

However, migration does not always achieve its full potential. Our analysis on migration and sustainable cities finds that poor urban migrants often work in the informal sector where the rewards of migration are lower33. Likewise, the ability of low- and semi-skilled labour migrants to access decent work is highly constrained34. In relation to poverty, our research reveals that the high costs involved in different stages of the migration process reduce financial payoffs, and that restrictions on mobility prevent those who would benefit the most from migrating in a regular and orderly way35. More predictable, inclusive, and orderly migration processes would allow migrants, their families, and host areas to better reap the benefits of migration. A key example of how migration can be engaged to reduce poverty can be seen in New Zealand’s recognised seasonal employer programme identified in the ODI paper “Poverty migration and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development” and reproduced with permission below.

CASE STUDY: THE NEW ZEALAND RECOGNISED SEASONAL EMPLOYER SCHEME*

The Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) programme began in 2007, aiming to ease labour shortages in New Zealand’s horticulture and viticulture industries by admitting up to 5,000 seasonal workers (in the first instance), giving preference to those from Pacific countries. Promoting development in the Pacific Islands is an explicit goal of RSE. It is considered a success; a rigorous multi-year evaluation showed it had a significant and multidimensional impact on poverty reduction for participating migrants and their households in Tonga and Vanuatu. In both countries, per-capita income of households with an RSE migrant rose by over 30% relative to non-migrant households, and in Tonga, households doubled their savings. Over two years, households in Vanuatu who reported having a bank account rose from 55% to 74% (ibid.), which is thought to reflect more formal savings practices. Subjective economic welfare increased significantly for households in both countries. Participating households in both countries purchased more durable assets, and in Tonga they were almost twice as likely as non-RSE households to make a home improvement. Moreover, school attendance rates increased by 20%
for 16- to18-year-olds in Tonga**.

* J. Hagen-Zanker, H. Postel, and E. Mosler Vidal, Poverty, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2017.

** Ibid.

Jobs, Stable Livelihoods, and Migration in the 2030 Agenda

The desire for decent work is likely to underpin much of the future migration trends to Europe as the share of informal and vulnerable employment continues to grow in low-income countries, where it dwarfs unemployment. ILO (International Labour Organization) figures suggest that the number of those who work in “vulnerable employment” excees unemployment by some margin36. Vulnerable employment here refers to high levels of precariousness in work, a greater likelihood of informal employment and a lower likelihood of job security, social protections or regular incomes37. In 2017 the number of people in these categories was estimated at 1.4 billion, with a further growth of 17 million in 201838. Around 300 million globally are working in extreme poverty and living on less that US$1.90 per day (ibid). The desire for decent work is likely to shape much of the migration to richer countries. Figure 2.1 demonstrates the scale of vulnerable employment globally, a share that is likely to drive people to seek decent work through migration, often to high income countries. The dual role of push factors including insecure livelihoods and poverty and the interaction of pull factors of higher wages, and real or imagined better social protections are key to driving migration for decent work39. “Transit countries” hosting migrants who are still looking to move elsewhere have the opportunity to engage migrant populations in work and boost their own development, as has been seen in the case of the Jordanian and Ethiopian compact approach to refugee employment40.

Fig 2.1 - Share of the global labour supply in paid employment, vulnerable employment and unemployment

Source: R. Mallett, Decent work, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, 2018

Education, Health and Migration in the 2030 Agenda

Migrants contribute to better service provision and make vital contributions to host countries as workers and consumers. These potential benefits are stifled when access to basic services is denied or limited, undercutting the potential positive benefits of migrant contributions.

Granting access to healthcare and health services is crucial to ensure the health of migrants and their contributions as workers. But it also has important benefits for the general population in host countries. For instance, the entire population benefits from a reduced risk of communicable diseases when migrant children are vaccinated. Importantly, migrants often directly contribute to providing health and care services, which in many countries are increasingly reliable on migrant labour41. This also concerns social protection, where migrants can make important contributions to the fiscal balance of host countries, as the contributions they make in terms of taxes and other payments outweigh the benefits and services they receive42.

Yet, granting migrants access to such services is not without challenges – particularly when migration is unexpected or not accounted for. Large and unexpected migration flows can disrupt education systems, disadvantage migrant and refugee children, and create tensions in host communities43.

Importantly, the challenges to overcoming barriers to migrants’ access to basic services are not technical and often not even financial: for instance, the challenge in extending water and sanitation access to migrants is often one of effective governance44.

SDG 4 on education (see Table 2.2) is key to managing migration by offering opportunities in sending countries and contributing to development outcomes through training and learning for migrants who are then better able to contribute to societies they move to. Research demonstrates that levels of education contribute to more stable and democratic societies45 and that investment in this area produces strong returns for countries46. Large immigration flows can have negative implications on education systems if they are overloaded suddenly, as seen in Jordan and Lebanon. where overcrowding as a result of rapid refugee influxes put a strain on school systems47. However, when managed well migration can have a positive impact on education by revitalising schools with low populations, and is linked in some instances with improvements in student performance48. The importance of quality education is crucial for integration and the building of societies enriched by migration and also crucial for development outcomes. Figure 2.2 shows how quality education for second-generation migrants can expand the speaking levels of destination country languages and in doing so, contribute more to the development outcomes of both migrants and countries through education.

Fig. 2.2 - Percentage of immigrant students who do not speak the language of assessment at home

Source: S. Nicolai, J. Wales and E. Aiazzi, Education, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. ODI Briefing Note, 2017

Education, providing lifelong learning for all (SDG4), is crucial to engaging migrant populations and enabling them to live fulfilling and productive lives. Ensuring that people are able to access the education they need and are not forced to migrate as a result of a lack of opportunities is also crucial for development outcomes. By providing them with access to education and training, migrants and their children will be better equipped to help fill labour market needs, increasing their local market contribution, their earning potential, and the remittances they send home. More broadly, access to education helps achieve economic and social benefits such as improved livelihoods, better health outcomes, reductions in gender inequities, and enhanced political participation, helping to achieve a broad range of SDGs49.

Water, Energy, and Migration in the 2030 Agenda

Access to fundamental services such energy and water might not be primary reasons for migration, but lack of access to either is likely to worsen livelihoods, creating regional disparities that can lead to greater migration from low-access areas and countries to those which have better and reliable access to these services.

Lack of access to water and sanitation is not always a driver of migration, but the provision of these services can support safe and successful migration. However, the barriers migrants face to access them will make achieving the SDGs more challenging50. SDG 6; to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” (see Table 2.2), is particularly difficult to address for populations in transit and for people with insecure immigration status whose access to these services might be curtailed as a result51. Access to water and sanitation might be factors in decisions to migrate, but common assumptions about lack of water being a major push factor are not always accurate52. Lack of access to water is perhaps as likely to initiate a shift in economic activities, away from water intensive agriculture to service work, as it might be to induce migration53. While there are instances where migration might be an adaptive strategy in the face of declining water supply or poor sanitation, the role of water is likely to be an indirect factor that is difficult to tease apart from other factors such as land degradation or declining economic opportunities54.

Access to energy is a fundamental prerequisite for development, and good livelihoods and strong development rely upon a reliable energy supply55. Not only is it essential in the provision of food, sanitation and quality of life, but it also allows for the provision of services that contribute to social and economic development56. SDG7 aims to ensure access to affordable and reliable energy for all (see Table 2.2) but the majority of those currently without access live in rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Energy access has considerable impact on livelihoods, and decisions to migrate for a better future are likely to be influenced in part by access to energy in sending versus destination regions. Figure 2.3 shows the disparity in access to electricity in destination versus sending countries. The difference is evidence of a level of high quality livelihoods and access to consumption needs and opportunities for productive activities in destination countries, which act as a driver of migration; these factors are reliant upon access to good quality energy. Though it might not be the case that low energy access is a primary factor in migration decisions, lower access to the opportunities offered by secure and reliable energy can often be a contributing factor.

Fig. 2.3 - Distribution of migrants by level of education

Source: A. Scott, L. Worrall, and S. Pickard, Energy, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, 2018

Climate Change, Migration and the 2030 Agenda

Climate change is likely to affect regions such as Africa and the MENA countries negatively, putting pressure on resources, agricultural production and water supplies as well as creating higher levels of insecurity and potential conflict. While there is no universal definition of climate-induced migration, this concept was sketched out by Wilkinson et al., (2016)57. Disaster-induced migration has been a long-term issue particularly within countries; between 2008 and 2015, 25.4 million people per year on average were displaced by disasters within and across borders; 85% of these disasters were climate induced58. Perhaps of more significance to the future of migration to Europe are the long-term changes to climate in regions and the instability this will bring. As short-term climate-induced migration becomes more common and contributes to long-term changes to the climate of regions, areas of the global south – particularly in Africa and the MENA countries – will become increasingly inhospitable, reducing quality of life and affecting migration choices59. In the even longer term, existential threats to communities like sea level rise will contribute to the eradication of coastal communities and low-lying areas. Importantly, much of the world’s most fertile arable land is concentrated in low-lying areas, placing further long-term risks to food supplies. The many impacts of climate change at various time scales makes climate-induced migration hard to define and to identify, as migration might be forced by a disaster or be chosen as a survival strategy in the face of more gradual climate change60. The result of these changes will mean high levels of displacement61, with projections varying widely between 25 and 300 million by 205062. Figure 2.4 demonstrates the recent trends in migration from countries vulnerable to climate change, though it is important to consider that climate-induced migration is unlikely to be the primary reason for an individual’s migration, as opposed to being a catalyst exacerbating common push factors which lead people to migrate. There is an international need to recognise migration as an adaptive strategy in the face of climate breakdown (ODI brief). Decision makers will increasingly have to decide between increasing resilience in areas under threat and facilitating migration from those areas63. Much of the necessary steps to facilitate resilience against and migration from climate change will require actions from developed states to ensure they meet the 2030 Agenda and “leave no one behind”. Building resilience for all is key to this64, and helping achieve such reliance will better mitigate the destructive forces of climate breakdown and its implications for migration to Europe in the XXI century.

Integrating Migration in the 2030 Agenda

Development policies and programmes can be part of a comprehensive strategy to better manage migration and make the most of its economic and social benefits. To do this, migration must be better integrated in the delivery of the 2030 Agenda across all its objectives. In order to “mainstream” migration into the 2030 Agenda, the links, opportunities and challenges related to migration under specific goals and targets need to be identified and highlighted (as we do in our briefings) and considered in policy processes.

Fig. 2.4 - Migration flows from countries vulnerable
to climate change

Source: E. Wilkinson, L. Schipper, C. Simonet, and Z. Kubik,
Climate change, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, 2016

Here, it is important that the role of migration is considered in Member States’ voluntary national reviews (VNRs). Member States are already making progress on this: in 2017, 29 out of 43 included the terms “migration”/“migrant”, “refugee”, “human trafficking”/“traffic in”, “internally displaced persons (IDPs)” and/ or “remittances” (CDP Subgroup on Voluntary National Reviews, 2018). At the same time, we need to consider that migrants may have specific vulnerabilities and can have specific needs, which should be taken into account to achieve the principle of leaving no one behind. In 2017, only 25 of 43 VNRs mentioned migrants and refugees as a “left behind” group, though not always with specific actions or strategies attached65.

Furthermore, policy-makers need to consider, measure and take account of migration to harness its positive benefits and reduce potential challenges. Migration should be part of regional, national and local level development planning and strategies, from initial context assessments, strategic goal-setting and planning, right through to monitoring and evaluation. A growing number of countries are doing this: for example, Bangladesh’s 7th five-year plan includes “migration for development” within its development strategy66. Beyond state level involvement, the multiple facets of the relationship between migration and development offer concrete and sector-specific policy entry points. For instance, the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) decent work agenda is highly relevant to migration. Any programming as part of this agenda should consider the specific vulnerabilities of migrants in the workplace67 and the barriers migrants face in accessing work-place social protection schemes68.

Conclusion: The Global Compact for Migration and Making Migration and Development Work

The links between migration and development also have implications for migration policy and practice, particularly for the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM). To date, we have seen little contact and collaboration between the migration and global development policy and practice communities. The GCM – an effort by states to work towards a common approach to address global migration, recognising its impact on development – represents an opportunity to correct this and make real progress69. The text of the GCM states that it:

Is rooted in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and builds upon its recognition that migration is a multidimensional reality of major relevance for the sustainable development of countries of origin, transit and destination, which requires coherent and comprehensive responses70.

The text also goes beyond the specific migration targets set out in Table 2.1, stating that the GCM “aims to leverage the potential of migration for the achievement of all Sustainable Development Goals”. Furthermore, in Objective 23, Member States commit to aligning the implementation of the GCM, the 2030 Agenda and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, recognising that migration and sustainable development are multidimensional and interdependent.

From January 2019, Member States will work on implementing this Compact, and herein lies the potential for real change. While the framework and aspirations are global, actions need to be locally led and rooted in specific contexts, countries, regions, and markets where particular development opportunities and challenges exist71. These actions must be carried out by a broad range of stakeholders, working together in unique coalitions. In addition to Member States and the UN system, businesses will need to play a more central role (given their intrinsic interest in labour mobility), together with city leaders, academics, journalists, and others who can help discover and test new ideas. Strategies should be flexible, and modalities of intervention should adapt to specific needs and opportunities. It will be important to avoid “blueprint” approaches and unrealistic promises if we are to make the most of bringing these two interlinked agendas together for concrete change.

Finally, from an implementation perspective, how to do development is as important as what to do. There is the risk that viewing migration through a development lens may reinforce or replicate unhelpful dichotomies of donor and recipient or origin and host country. For example, the fact that in some host countries (especially in Europe) development aid is being used as part of a broader strategy to deter migration raises many concerns; not only it is ineffectual (there is no evidence that aid can affect migration patterns) but it also risks misinforming the public about the positive relationship between development and migration. Instead, the SDGs are an opportunity to frame migration and development relationships between countries as reciprocal and mutual, under a global framework.

Tab. 2.2 - The impact of migration on different SDGs and targets

Goal

Target

Briefing

Link with migration

1.a

Poverty

Remittances and other forms of diaspora financing can be mobilised to improve infrastructure, services and development in origin countries.

1.a

Social

protection

Labour migrants present an opportunity to increase the tax base, and a greater number of contributors to social insurance-type schemes leads to better risk pooling and financial sustainability.

1.b

Poverty

Migration is a key poverty reduction strategy and can be included in policy frameworks.

1.1,

1.2

Poverty

Migration is a powerful poverty reduction strategy, for migrants themselves and their families in origin countries.

1.1

Education

If migrants have access to education, it can lead to higher incomes.

1.1

Urbanisation

Rural to urban migration contributes to economic development in origin countries and poverty

reduction for migrants themselves.

1.3

Citizenship

Migrants lacking permanent residency and/or citizenship status may not be able to access social protection.

1.3

Social

protection

Labour migrants can be a particularly poor and vulnerable group, but often lack eligibility for legal social protection and/or are not effectively covered.

1.3

Urbanisation

Due to lack of formal registration in the city, many (poor) internal migrants cannot access social

protection systems.

1.4

Poverty

Migration can help families in origin countries improve their wellbeing through increased income, consumption and resilience.

1.4

Water

Managing water resources sustainably, and providing water, sanitation and hygiene services, can enable successful migration, playing an important role in reducing poverty for migrants.

1.5

Climate

change

The poor are the most vulnerable to climate change, and are also the people who will find it hardest to migrate.

2.2

Health

Migrants are a particularly vulnerable group but may not be reached by assistance programmes aimed at improving nutrition.

3

Education

Education, particularly female education, has a strong impact on the future health outcomes of migrant students and their families.

3

Poverty

Migration improves healthcare access and health outcomes for families in origin countries.

3.1

Health

Migrants are vulnerable to poor health outcomes, yet find it difficult to access health-care services in transit and host countries; the services they can access are often sub-standard.

3.3

Water

In origin countries, poor water, sanitation and hygiene services can contribute to health shocks that inhibit successful migration.

3.8

Citizenship

Eligibility for health access is often tied to residency and/or citizenship status, with only some countries opening up (emergency) health care to all.

3.8

Health

Internal migrants often work in the informal sector and aren’t covered by insurance, including universal health coverage.

3.8

Urbanisation

Internal migrants often end up in a city’s informal sector and therefore invisible to universal health

coverage programmes.

4

Poverty

Migration helps improve education access and outcomes for families in origin countries, helping to reduce poverty.

4.1

Citizenship

Eligibility for education is often tied to residency and/or citizenship status, which means that migrant children can be excluded.

4.1,

4.3

Decent work

Primary, secondary and higher education is necessary for the attainment of decent work later in life - particularly that which demands highly skilled individuals.

4.4

Urbanisation

Internal migrants often lack the skills and training required to access decent jobs in the city and as a result end up working in low-productivity jobs in the informal sector.

4,

4.1,

4.2,

4.5,

4.7

Education

While migration helps improve both education access and quality for families in origin countries,

migrant children in host countries are often excluded from quality education.

5.2

Decent work

Foreign domestic work is a key area of employment for female labour migrants, but also one of the least protected in terms of exploitation and violation of rights.

5.2

Gender

Migrant and refugee women and girls can experience violence at all stages of the migration process,

especially during transit (e.g. at refugee camps) or in their host country (e.g. by an employer).

5.3

Education

If migrant children are enrolled in education, they are better able to resist child, early and forced

marriage and female genital mutilation, and host-country governments can more easily intervene.

5.3

Gender

Girls facing harmful practices such as female genital mutilation or forced marriage may use migration as a means of escape.

5.4

Social

protection

Migrant women often lack regularised status or access to social insurance through their employer.

5.4

Urbanisation

Many migrant domestic workers in cities are female. Actions that increase the value of domestic work would enhance the well-being, dignity and status of migrant workers.

6.1

6.2

Health

Large-scale movements of people can increase stress on fragile water supply systems in origin and host countries. This can lead to adverse health effects such as disease.

6.1

6.2

Water

Migrants can face significant barriers in accessing water, sanitation and hygiene services, particularly when they are in transit or undocumented.

7

Energy

By moving, migrants can improve their access to affordable, reliable, renewable modern energy services.

8

Poverty

Migration and remittances can lead to economic growth, a reduction in unemployment and increased wages in origin countries.

8

Social

protection

Migration can be an important contribution to economic development in origin countries through remittances, investment and knowledge exchange.

8.1

Decent work

Migration can contribute to economic growth across different ‘migration spaces’ (at host, in transit and at origin).

8.1

Education

The extent of education access and quality are important drivers of economic growth and differences in growth rates between regions.

8.2

Technology

High-skilled migrants contribute to innovation and increase productivity by conducting research and development, creating new products and improving existing products.

8.5

Decent work

In host countries, high-skilled migration can create new jobs for natives through new businesses, but low-skilled migration can have a ‘crowding out’ effect.

8.5

Gender

Female refugees and migrants may be prevented from working, experience de-skilling, or be confined to ‘feminine’ jobs which are often paid or valued less than other work.

8.7

Gender

Female migrants (particularly irregular migrants and children) are at risk of forced labour, trafficking, and exploitation and abuse.

8.8

Decent work

Labour migrants are disproportionately affected by violations of employment rights. Efforts must clearly establish whose responsibility it is to protect those rights, and ensure proper enforcement.

8.5

8.8

Urbanisation

Low-skilled rural to urban migrants seeking better job opportunities in the city often end up working in precarious occupations in the informal economy.

9

Poverty

Migration can foster innovation in host countries through greater diversity, and in origin countries through social remittances, skills transfers and return migration.

9.5

Technology

Migration can enhance the technological capabilities of natives in host countries who work directly with high-skilled migrants, and of those in origin countries working with diaspora networks.

10

Poverty

Migration can reduce global inequalities, among countries and people, as people migrate from low- to high-income countries, and send remittances back home.

10.c

Urbanisation

Internal remittances to poor households are often sent through informal channels as poor internal

migrants do not have access to bank accounts. Such services can be riskier and more expensive.

10.1

Education

Access to education can reduce inequality through raising incomes and reducing poverty for migrants, and boosting growth rates and government revenues in host countries.

10.2

Education

Education can improve the social, economic and political inclusion of migrant children, particularly if they are able to speak the majority language.

10.4

Social

protection

Labour migrants are often not eligible for social protection, nor do they take it up. If vulnerable groups are unable to participate in social protection, inequalities widen.

10.7

Energy

To ensure safe and responsible migration, especially in transit, migrants need access to modern energy services.

10.7

Technology

Digital apps and mobile technologies can facilitate migration and integration into host countries.

10.7

Urbanisation

Some countries discourage internal migration for work, having a direct impact on migrants’ well-being and on the host city and country economies.

11.1

Water

Providing water, sanitation and hygiene services to slums and informal areas can help reduce inequalities and strengthen social cohesion.

11.1,

11.2

Education

Improving housing and infrastructure would assist refugee and migrant children in accessing education services and achieve strong learning outcomes.

11.3

Urbanisation

If host countries are to maximise the benefits of migration, they must take into account the needs of poor internal migrants and enhance their well-being.

13

Climate change

Migration is an adaptation strategy to climate change – both extreme and slow-onset changes. Policies and financial planning need to take these patterns into account.

16

Citizenship

Lack of citizenship/permanent residency can prevent migrants from being full members of society and can lead to tensions and conflict.

16

Gender

Irregular and young migrants, particularly girls, are at greater risk of violence, trafficking and sexual exploitation.

16.1,

16.9

Health

Many migrants lack legal identity, yet such an identity is important to effectively plan and establish health support systems.

16.2

Education

Providing financial support to families in an attempt to eliminate child labour, exploitation

and trafficking will most likely boost education for migrant children.

16.3

Citizenship

When migrants cannot obtain residency and/or citizenship status, they may struggle to get

equal treatment within the justice system or access legal aid.

17

Education

Data pertaining to migration background and education level is not collected together. This information should be used to support vulnerable groups, and not for reporting to security-related institutions.

17

Health

There are no international standardised approaches for monitoring the health of migrants. Such data would help understand migrant health needs.

17.6

Technology

Enhancing technological sharing, transfer, dissemination and education between host

and origin countries would ensure migration contributes to economic transformation.

17.8

Urbanisation

There is only limited data on internal migration. Improving the evidence base would enable us to better understand the scale and impact of internal migration, and design better policies.

28 This new chapter builds on a series of briefings on Migration and the 2030 Agenda created by the Overseas Development Institute between 2016 and 2018. Full details of the original series can be found in the bibliography and all are available on the ODI website.

29 United Nations (UN), Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, New York, 2015.

30 L. Lönnback, Integrating migration into the post-2015 United Nations Development Agenda, Bangkok and Washington D.C., International Organization for Migration and Migration Policy Institute, September 2014.

31 E. Mosler Vidal, “The Sustainable Development Goals and labour mobility: a case study of Armenia”, in G. Appave and N. Sinha (eds.) Migration in the 2030 Agenda, Geneva, International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2017, pp. 72-84.

32 M. Foresti and J. Hagen-Zanker, Migration and development: How human mobility can help achieve the sustainable development goals, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2018.

33 P. Lucci, D. Mansour-Ille, E. Easton-Calabria, and C. Cummings, Sustainable cities: internal migration, jobs and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2016.

34 R. Mallett, Decent work, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2018.

35 J. Hagen-Zanker, H. Postel, and E. Mosler Vidal, Poverty, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2017.

36 ILO, World employment and social outlook: trends 2018, Geneva, International Labour Organization (ILO), 2018

37 Ibid.

38 R. Mallett (2018).

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 T. O’Neil, A. Fleury, and M. Foresti, Women on the move: migration, gender equality and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note. London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2016; O. Tulloch, F. Machingura, and C. Melamed, Health, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2016.

42 M. Foresti and J. Hagen-Zanker (2018).

43 S. Nicolai, J. Wales, and E. Aiazzi, Education, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2017.

44 Ibid

45 UNESCO, Education for people and planet: creating sustainable futures for all, Global Education Monitoring Report, 2016.

46 S. Nicolai et al. (2017).

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Long et al., 2017; S. Nicolai et al. (2017).

50 G. Jobbins, I. Langdown, and G. Bernard, Water and sanitation, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2018.

51 Ibid.

52 E. Wilkinson, L. Schipper, C. Simonet, and Z. Kubik, Climate change, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2016.

53 G. Jobbins et al. (2018).

54 R. Reuveny, “Climate change-induced migration and violent conflict”, Political Geography, vol. 26, no. 6, 2007, pp. 656-673.

55 A. Scott, L. Worrall, and S. Pickard, Energy, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2018.

56 Ibid.

57 E. Wilkinson et al. (2016).

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 E. Wilkinson et al. (2016).

61 A. Milan, G. Gioli, and T. Afifi, “Migration and global environmental change: methodological lessons from mountain areas of the global south”, Earth System Dynamics, European Geosciences Union, vol. 6, 2015, pp. 375-388.

62 F. Gemenne, “Why the numbers don’t add up: A review of estimates and predictions of people displaced by environmental changes”, Global Environmental Change, vol. 21, 2011, S41-S49.

63 E. Wilkinson et al. (2016).

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid.

66 Planning Commission, “Seventh five-year plan FY2016 – FY2020: accelerating growth, empowering citizens”, General Economics Division, Planning Commission, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, 2015.

67 P. Lucci et al. (2016).

68 J. Hagen-Zanker, E. Mosler Vidal, and G. Sturge, Social protection, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2017.

69 M. Foresti, “Summary remarks”, Fourth Thematic Consultation on Global Compact for Migration, 2017.

70 United Nations (UN), Global Compact for Migration. New York, 2018.

71 M. Foresti (2017).

3. The Future of Legal Migration: Labour Migration Pathways Between Europe and Africa

Michael Clemens, Helen Dempster, Kate Gough

Will economic development in poor countries cause less migration, or more? This is a difficult question to answer. Certainly, the rhetoric of many policymakers throughout Europe shows that they believe that providing aid, or addressing the “root causes” of emigration, will reduce movement. The theory is that people are moving due to a lack of economic opportunity, conflict, or climate change, and that the impact of all of these things can be reduced through targeted aid investments. This chapter will argue that this view is too simplistic. Yes, European policymakers should be targeting aid investment at employment creation and economic development, and they should be putting in place robust border enforcement. But without promoting new kinds of legal labour migration pathways they will not be able to manage this movement in the longer term, or take advantage of the potentially positive impact it could have on European labour markets.

The Relationship Between Migration and Development

The relationship between migration and development is complex, but there is a wealth of evidence that shows that development can increase migration (see figure 3.1)72. The evidence shows a clear inverted-U relationship between emigration and economic development. Contrary to the rhetoric of policymakers, economic development and emigration actually go hand in hand up to a point. This is what we call the “mobility transition”, with the “hump” occurring at approximately US$7,000-$8,000 PPP, or an upper-middle income country. At current growth rates, many poor countries are going to take generations to get over the “hump”, despite increased aid and economic investment.

Fig. 3.1 - To a point, development and emigration
go hand in hand

Source: World Bank data quoted in M. Clemens, Does Development Reduce Migration?, CGD Working Paper 359, 2014

In applying this US$7,000-$8,000 PPP threshold to sub-Saharan Africa, we see the majority of countries fall on the left-hand side of the inverted-U (see Figure 3.2). The countries in yellow are those that fall above the US$7,000 PPP threshold, but the majority of countries fall below that level. Therefore, it is likely that we will see an increase in emigration from these countries in the years to come.

Fig. 3.2 - Most sub-Saharan African countries will experience more migration in the decades to come

Source: World Bank, GDP per capita at PPP (current international $)

This relationship between economic development and emigration is an inexact science. There are many reasons why a country wouldn’t follow this pattern – conflict and climate change being the largest factors. However, there are six main reasons why we see countries following this pattern which appear to hold constant in all countries analysed in Figure 3.2.

Demographics. At early stages of development, rising incomes cause child mortality to fall quicker than fertility. That means a rise in the youth population. Not only does this mean there are normally too many people for the number of jobs, but young people are also more likely to move.

Credit constraints. Migration is expensive – paying for recruitment fees, insurance, transportation, education, visa fees and passports. Eventually, migrants will earn more money by moving, but these benefits accrue in the future. As a country develops, people gain more and more money, they gain access to loans and other financial markets, and they are more likely to know other people who have moved, who send money home in the form of remittances. This money allows new people to afford the journey.

Information. Once a few people have moved, they provide information to those people back home – about job searching, earning potential, cost of living, marriage partners, legal formalities, and ways to move. This reduces the risk of moving ‘blind’.

Structural change. As a country develops, some sectors increase, and others decline. This is why we see so much rural-to-urban migration. But some of those people may want to move abroad rather than adapting to this new reality.

Inequality. As we all know, economic development doesn’t benefit all people equally. Some people may feel like they’re not benefiting from the growth of their country, and feel that they could do better in a different one.

Immigration barriers abroad. Up to this point, we’ve just talked about changes in the demand for migration, but the supply of opportunities matters too. As a country gets richer, they’re more likely to produce higher-educated and skilled people, who are more in demand abroad.

And migration can contribute to development. In moving, migrants increase their income and knowledge, allowing them to spend more on meeting their basic needs and making future investments. In countries of origin, migration can lead to increased wages and greater economic growth through higher incomes, increased remittances, spending, knowledge and technology transfers, and investment by migrant households. In countries of destination, migrants can fill labour gaps and contribute to services, taxes, and social security systems73. In this way, migration and development are inherently linked – increased emigration can reflect, and be a vehicle for, increased development. And in a stable context over time, development will create enough economic growth to push the community past the curve to the point where migration pressures decrease74.

A Challenge and an Opportunity

What do we know about how this applies to sub-Saharan Africa? The working-age population in sub-Saharan Africa is booming. This results from a significant development achievement: the reduction in the under-five mortality rate75. But it also creates a challenge. Last year, the International Monetary Fund found that sub-Saharan Africa will need to create 20 million new jobs every year to keep pace with population growth76. And these jobs need to be in higher value-added and higher-skilled occupations. At current growth levels, it is going to be difficult for local labour markets to satisfy this demand. Given these demographic trends, and the presence of the other five factors within the region, we are likely to see an increase in migration from sub-Saharan Africa in the decades to come. Of course, most people will elect to move regionally, and the number of those moving regionally is increasing faster than the number moving internationally77. But others will seek work elsewhere, in places such as Europe, to pursue fulfilling livelihoods and send remittances back home.

This presents a significant opportunity for Europe. Europe is experiencing significant demographic shifts. By 2100, its working-age population is projected to decline by almost 30 per cent from 2015 levels (see Figure 3.3) owing to a combination of low birth rates and increased longevity. The impact of this shift is already being felt as the private sector in many countries demands an increase in the number of workers available and the types of skills they possess. If Europe is to continue to grow and sustain its current social programmes, it will need a substantial increase in the number and type of potential workers78.

So if Europe wants to harness the development potential of migration, both within its own shores and within sub-Saharan Africa, it needs to do three things:

Enact robust border enforcement which includes a humane and effective security system, and managed returns and reintegration efforts with countries of origin;

Target aid and development efforts in countries of origin, particularly those aimed at employment creation and general economic growth; and

Promote new kinds of legal labour migration pathways to manage migration in a mutually beneficial way.

Only by pursuing all three of these routes in tandem can Europe manage this demographic pressure in the years to come.

Fig. 3.3 - Europe’s working-age population will continue to decline

Note: This projection uses the “medium-variant”, which assumes a continuation of recent levels of net migration (the difference between the number of immigrants and the number of emigrants for a given country or group of countries).
For more information, see United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), “World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision, Key Findings and Advance Tables”, 2017; and UN DESA, “Population Facts”, 2017.

Source: UN DESA, “Population Division World Population Prospects”, 2017.

The European Union’s Added Value and Its Progress to Date

In May 2015, the European Commission presented the comprehensive European Agenda on Migration79. It was designed to immediately respond to the 2015 refugee “crisis” through four pillars, aimed at better managing migration over the medium- and long-term. Under these pillars, the Commission has achieved much – increasing refugee resettlement numbers, supporting Member States with border management, financing integration projects, combating smuggling networks, fighting trafficking, and working broadly on development and security efforts in countries of origin through the European Union Trust Funds80. In so doing, the Commission has achieved numerous successes, including reducing the level of irregular arrivals (see Figure 3.4).

Fig 3.4 - The number of irregular border crossings into Europe has fallen since 2015

Source: FRONTEX (European Border and Coast Guard Agency), updated September 2019 at https://frontex.europa.eu/along-eu-borders/migratory-map/

However, given the demographic projections detailed above and other forces beyond the Commission’s control – foreign wars, displacement, and climate change, among others – future success is not guaranteed. Furthermore, the Commission’s successes to date largely depend on the cooperation of third states, which may not be assured moving forward. And with no broad European consensus on how to best manage migration, European states too often depend on ad hoc solutions.

The Commission has acknowledged that while both development and border controls are necessary, they are insufficient to curb irregular migration. To reduce the incentives for irregular migration, attract the right set of talent and skills to Europe, and enable admissions to be tailored to the needs of the labour market, Europe needs new kinds of legal pathways for migrants81. Without these pathways, the EU’s economic growth will suffer. Accordingly, promoting new legal pathways is the fourth pillar of the European Agenda on Migration. These pathways take three forms: attracting new talent, the Blue Card Directive82, and European-coordinated pilot projects. These measures reflect the Commission’s limited room to manoeuvre as Member States retain the right to determine volumes of admission for people coming from third countries to seek work.

The Commission launched the idea of legal migration pilot projects in 2017 in order to “replace irregular migratory flows with safe, orderly and well-managed legal migration pathways; and to incentivise cooperation on issues such as prevention of irregular migration, readmission and return of irregular migrants”83. The following year, the Commission published the “Concept Note on the Pilot Projects on Legal Migration”84. It listed the target countries, described the application process, and identified the funding streams85. One such stream was the Mobility Partnerships Facility (MPF), a flexible and quick-reaction mechanism funded by the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs86.

Four Member States applied to the MPF for funding, including the Belgian Development Agency, Enabel. Its “Pilot Project Addressing Labour Shortages Through Innovative Labour Migration Models” is directly applying the Global Skill Partnership model, training information and communications technology (ICT) workers for employment in Morocco and Flanders87. While it is too early to evaluate the pilot’s impact, all actors involved have reiterated the need for such a project to meet demand on both sides. All pilot projects funded by the MPF are investing in skills and human capacity (the latter, for example, through training or internship programmes delivered in European Member States).

The Case for a Global Skill Partnership

Decisions about the number and type of labour migrants admitted across national borders are the exclusive competence of Member States. The Commission cannot propose a “common migration policy” along the lines of its Common European Asylum System. However, it does have an important role to play in promoting, facilitating, and supporting the creation of new kinds of legal labour migration pathways across Europe.

A Global Skill Partnership is such a pathway88. It is a bilateral agreement between equal partners. The country of destination agrees to provide technology and finance to train potential migrants with targeted skills in the country of origin, prior to migration, and receives migrants with precisely the skills they need to integrate and contribute best upon arrival. The country of origin agrees to provide that training and gets support for the training of non-migrants, too – increasing rather than draining human capital.

For example, both Morocco and the Flanders region of Belgium have identified a shortage of trained ICT workers. Belgium has agreed to finance and support the training of ICT workers in Morocco, some of whom will stay and contribute to the Moroccan labour market. Others will move to Flanders to take up contracts with Belgian companies. This latter group will also receive language and integration training and be connected to local diaspora networks once they arrive.

Six traits distinguish Global Skill Partnerships from existing related policies. Global Skill Partnerships:

Manage future migration pressure, addressing many legitimate concerns about migration in countries of destination (such as integration and fiscal impact) and in countries of origin (such as skills drain).

Directly involve employers in the country of destination to identify and train for specific skills they need that can be learned relatively quickly.

Form a public-private partnership for semi-skilled work – jobs that take between several months and three years to learn and do not require a university degree.

Create skills before migration, with cost savings to the country of destination and spillover benefits from training centres in the country of origin.

Promote development by bundling training for migrants with training for non-migrants in the country of origin, according to the differing needs of each. Such training occurs in two tracks: a “home” track for non-migrants, and an “away” track for migrants. Trainees can pick which track to go down – those who choose to migrate could also receive additional training in soft skills, for example in different languages or other facets of integration.

Are highly flexible. Any agreement can, and must, be adapted to the specific country needs in both destination and origin.

Who benefits from such a model? Effectively, everyone involved. Europe, in containing countries of destination, receives migrants with the skills to contribute to the maximum extent and integrate quickly, without being a net drain on fiscal or human resources. They can regulate how migration happens, and on what terms, choosing those migrants who fit a specific skills profile and who can contribute and integrate quickly. Countries of destination therefore benefit in four ways: (1) addressing their own demographic change, (2) accomplishing development objectives, (3) increasing migrant integration, and (4) contributing to deterring irregular flows.

The country of origin gets new technology and training facilities, an increase in human capital from those who stay, the prospect of remittances from those who leave, and a reduction in pressure to absorb new labour market entrants.

Those who are trained can migrate regularly and safely or stay and enter the local labour market with better skills. All have their earning potential increased, with flow-on benefits.

And everyone else benefits from having skills gaps filled, including those with secondary jobs who rely on those roles being occupied, and those who will occupy new jobs created by those who move and stay.

Creating new kinds of legal labour migration pathways is, of course, a difficult task in today’s political climate. A growing number of politicians advocate for closing national borders and reducing immigrant populations. However, we believe that the Global Skill Partnership model is likely to gain traction among even the more conservative Member States for the following reasons:

The number of migrants admitted is small and therefore unlikely to attract much political attention;

Migrants have been selected and brought to the country of destination to meet specific skills needs that locals are unable to meet, and have already been provided with language and integration training;

The potential migrants will be screened and vetted before they enter the country of destination and easily tracked after they arrive, thereby satisfying security concerns;

The model meets the desire among countries of destination to participate in the “development” of countries of origin; and

It provides countries of destination with a practical and pragmatic way to control some migration flows and shift irregular flows into regular pathways, thereby satisfying voter demand for a “managed” immigration policy.

Policy Recommendations for the European Union

The scale of the demographic shifts highlighted above means Europe cannot wait until migration flows visibly increase to implement a Global Skill Partnership. This tool should be tested now, in a period of relative manageability, before the scale and pace of migration makes innovation difficult. We therefore believe this is a perfect time for the new Commission to expand the scale and scope of such legal labour migration pilots, testing new ways to ensure that migration benefits all involved.

Thankfully, the new President of the European Union Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and her team acknowledge the need for a more comprehensive approach to migration, including partnering with both countries of origin and countries of transit to create legal pathways to attract the skills Europe desperately needs. In September 2019, President-elect von der Leyen issued mission letters to all Commissioner-Designates, assigning their individual portfolios, priorities and institutional responsibilities for the period 2019-2024. She also revealed how these individual portfolios fit together to achieve the new Commission’s political guidelines. Three, Ylva Johansson (Home Affairs), Margaritis Schinas (Protecting our European Way of Life), and Jutta Urpilainen (International Partnerships) will all have some responsibility for managing migration within – and to – the European Union, with input from Josep Borrell, the European Union’s “chief diplomat”89.

Commissioner Johansson, in charge of the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME), will oversee the biggest share of the migration portfolio. Von der Leyen has tasked her with developing a “New Pact on Migration and Asylum”. She will also have to reform the asylum system, promote sustainable search and rescue efforts, fight trafficking and smuggling, increase Frontex operations, and implement the Schengen Area rules around free movement. In addition, her mission letter contains two interesting sub-points:

You should focus on ensuring there are genuine legal pathways to the European Union, both through the resettlement of those in need of international protection and through employment opportunities for skilled workers. I want you to work closely with the High Representative/Vice-President and other Commissioners to develop stronger cooperation with countries of origin and transit. You should work closely with Member States to step up efforts to develop a more robust system of readmission and return. [their emphasis]

Clearly, the incoming European Commission-President has recognised the need to strengthen legal migration pathways to Europe, and that a successful migration policy framework requires close collaboration with partner countries.

Commissioner Johansson’s portfolio will be overseen by Commissioner Schinas, the new Vice-President responsible for “Protecting our European Way of Life”. The media has criticised this title for co-opting the way that the far right discusses migration and suggesting that there is indeed a European way of life. In response, Commissioner Schinas made clear during his hearing that he sees the “European way” as a commitment to inclusion, solidarity, and diversity. His mission will be to help implement the “New Pact on Migration and Asylum”, and to focus on:

creating pathways to legal migration to help us bring in people with the skills and talents our economy and labour market need.

And finally, to complement these efforts, Commissioner Urpilainen, in charge of “institutional partnerships” and the Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO), will support the EC’s efforts on migration through trying:

to reach comprehensive partnerships with countries of migration origin and transit, bringing together all instruments, tools and leverage. You should therefore be ready to adapt bilateral funding to achieve our objectives on migration management. [their emphasis]

While all three portfolios retain an emphasis on border enforcement and security, these statements are a welcome shift towards a migration management approach that is more pragmatic and potentially beneficial for countries of origin, transit, and destination. It is especially interesting to see the expansion of legal pathways presented as a “carrot” alongside the “stick” of increased returns and re-admission agreements.

Yet there are also worrying signs of conditionality, potentially using “all instruments, tools and leverage” to secure such agreements while offering little in return. It is telling that the mandate letter for Commissioner Urpilainen does not stress the importance of legal pathways for economic development in countries of origin, transit, and destination, and the centrality of promoting these for decades to come. If the new Commissioners are to effectively carry out their mandates, they are going to need to invest funding and energy in both enforcement and new legal labour migration pathways.

While both increased development efforts and border controls are necessary, they are insufficient to curb irregular migration – a fact which has been acknowledged by the outgoing Commission. To reduce incentives for irregular migration, attract the right set of talent and skills to Europe, and enable admissions to be tailored to the needs of the labour market, Europe needs new kinds of legal pathways for migrants. Accordingly, promoting new legal pathways is the fourth pillar of the European Agenda on Migration.

To date, the funding and attention paid to this fourth pillar has been massively outweighed by the focus on enforcement and border security. However, as demonstrated above, legal pathways are prominently mentioned in the incoming Commissioner’s mission letters. How can President von der Leyen and her team implement those? Our “Roadmap for the New European Leadership”90 provides four ways that the European Commission can create new partnerships to manage migration in a mutually beneficial way.

Create and promote new kinds of legal labour migration pathways with more tangible benefits to countries of origin and destination. Such efforts can complement existing development and security efforts within sub-Saharan and North Africa, reducing demand for irregular pathways and putting more control in the hands of Member States. The Commission has already established the building blocks for such efforts. The fourth pillar of the European Agenda on Migration provides a framework under which to create and promote new kinds of legal pathways, and existing trade relationships with sub-Saharan Africa provide mechanisms upon which to base discussions. The Commission can support Member States by providing them with the tools, coordination mechanisms, and guidance to implement new kinds of legal pathways. We echo the findings of the recent “Legal Migration Fitness Check”, which calls on the Commission to harmonise conditions, procedures, and rights to overcome fragmentation within the system91.

Pilot and scale Global Skill Partnership projects between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. A Global Skill Partnership is a tool to manage migration, displace irregular migration flows, shape the terms on which migration happens, and ensure migrants arrive with precisely the skills European destinations need. It is also a development tool in the country of origin, building sustainable institutions that create human capital and build capacity. As discussed above, the Commission is already supporting similar projects and should continue to do so by expanding and diversifying the financing and support available to the MPF and by promoting the opportunity to Member States based on their current and emerging needs and priorities. The Commission should also learn from the experiences of similar projects, such as that being implemented between Germany and Kosovo in the construction industry92.

Pilot Global Skill Partnership projects within Africa. Many sub-Saharan Africans will not want to travel to Europe, preferring instead to seek work within their region. The Commission can finance partnerships between a country of origin (say, a developing sub-Saharan African country such as Niger) and a country of destination (say, a more developed North African country such as Tunisia). Such a partnership could build necessary institutions and complementary skill sets among native and foreign workers in the country of destination, such as basic construction skills among Nigeriens and middle-management skills among Tunisians. This creates a complementary workforce that helps alleviate pressures on both countries.

Be a positive voice for migration within Europe. Such efforts will require an increase in financing, in coordination, in partnerships, and – most importantly – in leadership. We highlight here the many benefits that migration can bring if properly managed, and propose a model to realise these benefits. However, such efforts will require political will and commitment on the part of Member States and a supportive public narrative across Europe. It is imperative that the Commission remain an outspoken advocate for labour migration (and its necessity given the demographic shifts already underway) and showcase positive outcomes from the pilot projects. We have a real opportunity to facilitate new types of migration, but only if the Commission spearheads these efforts.

72 M. Clemens, Does Development Reduce Migration?, CGD Working Paper 359, Center for Global Development, Washington D.C., 2014.

73 M. Foresti, J. Hagen-Zanker, and H. Dempster, Migration and Development: How Human Mobility Can Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, ODI Briefing Note, London, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2018.

74 M. Clemens and K. Gough, K. (2019) “Unpacking the Relationship between Migration and Development to Help Policymakers Address Africa-Europe Migration”, CGD blog, Center for Global Development, Washington D.C., 2019.

75 UNICEF for every child, “Under-Five Mortality Rate Data”, 2018.

76 A. Abdychev, “The future of work in sub-Saharan Africa”, International Monetary Fund (IMF), African Department, no. 18, 2018.

77 M. McAuliffe and A. Kitimbo, “African Migration: What the Numbers Really Tell Us”, World Economic Forum blog, 7 June 2018.

78 L. Pritchett, “Europe’s Refugee Crisis Hides a Bigger Problem”, CGD blog, Center for Global Development, Washington, D.C., 2015.

79 European Commission, Migration and Home Affairs, “European Agenda on Migration”, 2015.

80 European Commission, “Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council: Progress Report on the Implementation of the European Agenda on Migration”, Brussels, COM(2019) 126 final, 6 March 2019.

81 K. Luyten and S. González Diaz, “Legal Migration to the EU”, European Parliamentary Research Service Briefing, 2019.

82 The Blue Card Directive governs the conditions for entry and residence of highly qualified third-country workers in the European Union. Due to low take-up, reforms to the Directive were proposed in 2016 but have not yet been enacted.

83 European Commission, “Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council: Managing migration in all its aspects: progress under the European Agenda on Migration”, Brussels, 4 December 2018.

84 International Center for Migration Policy Development, “Concept Note: Pilot Projects Legal Migration”, 2018.

85 The EU Trust Fund for Africa, North Africa Window, provides funding for a regional project in North Africa, carried out by GIZ, the International Organization for Migration, and the International Labour Organization.

86 The MPF is coordinated by the International Center for Migration Policy Development under the leadership of the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME). The Steering Committee also includes representatives from the Directorates-General Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) and International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO) and the European External Action Service (EEAS). It was originally provided €5.5 million for 35 months (from January 2016). New funding was then granted to rapidly support the pilot projects. The MPF now has another €12.5 million for 36 months (from January 2018). A new phase will start in autumn 2019. Funding comes from the Asylum, Migration, and Integration Fund; the Internal Security Fund for Police Cooperation; and the Internal Security Fund for Borders and Visa.

87 For more information, see the Pilot Project Addressing Labour Shortages Through Innovative Labour Migration Models page on the Enabel website: www.enabel.be/content/europees-proefproject-palim-linkt-it-ontwikkeling-marokko-aan-knelpuntberoepen-vlaanderen-0

88 The Global Skill Partnership idea is backed by peer-reviewed academic research including M. Clemens, “Global Skill Partnerships: A Proposal for Technical Training in a Mobile World”, IZA Journal of Labor Policy, vol. 4, no. 2, 2015; and M. Clemens and K. Gough, “A Tool to Implement the Global Compact for Migration: Ten Key Steps for Building Global Skill Partnerships,” Center for Global Development, CGD Brief, Center for Global Development, Washington D.C., December 2018. For more information, see www.cgdev.org/gsp.

89 H. Dempster and A. Käppeli, “Commissioners Johansson, Schinas, and Urpilainen: Here’s How You Can Use Legal Pathways to “Manage Migration”, CGD blog, Center for Global Development, Washington D.C., 2019.

90 A. Käppeli, et al., “Building an EU-Africa Partnership of Equals: A Roadmap for the New European Leadership”, CGD Report, Center for Global Development, Washington D.C., 2019.

91 European Commission, Migration and Home Affairs, “Commission Staff Working Document: Executive Summary of the Fitness Check on EU Legislation on Legal Migration”, 2019.

92 M. Clemens, H. Dempster, and K. Gough, “Maximizing the Shared Benefits of Legal Migration Pathways: Lessons from Germany’s Skills Partnerships”, CGD Policy Paper 150, Center for Global Development, Washington D.C., 15 July 2019.

4. Safe and Legal Pathways for Refugees: Can Europe Takes Global Leadership?

Daniele Albanese, Matthieu Tardis

The global population of forcibly displaced persons increased by 2.3 million people in 2018 to 70.8 million as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. The refugee crisis’s geography shows that, contrary to European media narratives, the large majority of refugees (85%) are hosted in low- and middle-income countries93 and in Europe refugees comprise only about 0.4% of the overall population, while non-EU migrants comprise just 4%94.

Protracted refugee situations across the globe now last an estimated 26 years on average95 due to a lack of durable solutions96. As a result, a growing number of refugees have embarked on dangerous journeys, albeit irregularly, often at the mercy of human smugglers and traffickers, paying exorbitant amounts and facing detention and treacherous conditions in transit countries97, especially in Libya98. While safe, orderly and regular migration is documented as valuable to all parties involved, the European response – has so far mainly stressed external migration management and border control99, restrictive search and rescue operations, and strict visa policies100. Not surprisingly, several commentators agree that this shift from regular entry to irregular migration may be the result of more restrictive visa and external frontiers policies101. Europe could certainly learn from studies carried out over the last sixty years in the USA that show how the rigorous application of border restrictions has led to a reduction in irregular migration flows only when it has been accompanied by a significant, durable and credible increase in visa opportunities and regular journeys102.

Nevertheless, over the past few years, in Europe the issue of safe and legal channels to obtain protection has gained momentum. This renewed interest has been influenced by various factors, including the need to protect Syrian refugees, a growing willingness to share responsibility, the determination to address the dangerous central Mediterranean route, as well as mounting pressure from large portions of European society.

The international refugee protection regime is at a crossroads. While most countries from the Global North are implementing strict border controls, which affect the opportunities of refugees to access their territories, others are experimenting with safe and legal pathways, which might become the main channels to protection in Europe and North America103. This article asks whether and how the EU is developing safe and legal pathways for refugees. It will first review the global challenges related to safe and legal pathways and then question the rationale behind the rise of resettlement and complementary pathways to Europe. Finally, it will use the cases of France and Italy to argue that citizen mobilisation can become the future of refugee protection in Europe.

Resettlement and Complementary Pathways: A Toolkit for Refugee Protection

Safe and legal pathways are not a recent development. In fact, the global protection regime has always given the international community tools to provide solidarity with countries most affected by large influxes of people in need of protection. Resettlement and complementary pathways have been used for long. Considering the current global challenges related to the refugee situation, these tools are more needed than ever.

Resettlement

Resettlement104 “involves the selection and transfer of refugees from a State in which they have sought protection to a third State which has agreed to admit them – as refugees – and grant them permanent residence status” and is the primary solution adopted worldwide. According to UNHCR estimates, in 2019 the need for resettlement will affect around 1.4 million people (about 8% of the refugee population) globally. This figure is almost unchanged compared to 2017, but has increased by 50% compared to 2012.

In the face of growing needs, the response of the international community has been decidedly insufficient, even if resettlement is a tool with remarkable potential for integration105. Until 2016, the quotas available globally increased steadily to a record 126,000 departures, while 2017 saw a sharp downturn, with only 65,000 people allowed to resettle106.

Complementary pathways

Admission programmes offering a mechanism for protection have become known as “complementary pathways”107. They include non-humanitarian means, such as procedures for family reunification, education (student visas) and labour mobility, which can serve to enhance refugee self-reliance by helping them to attain a durable solution, or humanitarian admission programmes, such as community sponsorship programmes, in addition to resettlement.

Family reunification108 is an essential tool to create socio-cultural stability and represents one of the main avenues for legal migration to the EU. In 2018, 359,724 people obtained a residence permit for family reasons, a number that accounts for approximately one-third of all arrivals109. However, the procedure presents several complexities which make access difficult for applicants who are beneficiaries of international protection110.

Access to student visas111 and work permits for refugees, while encouraged by several recent research studies112, remains marginal not only in the EU but in all OECD countries (0.4% for student visas and 0.1% for work permits among the main asylum-seeking nationalities).

Private or Community sponsorship originates in Canada where they have been available since 1978113. Canada is a case of great interest because in addition to carrying out government resettlement programs (GAR), it has for some decades now initiated private sponsorship initiatives, including in response to humanitarian crises of significant proportions, such as that which occurred in Indochina in the 1970s. Since then, several other private sponsorship programs (PSRs – Private Sponsorship for Refugees Programs) have been implemented over the years, both in favour of particular nationalities, such as Afghans, Iraqis, or more recently Syrians, and through a system of quotas made available for this type of intervention that has progressively grown. In fact, in recent years, around 46% of all refugees resettled in Canada have been privately sponsored.

Private sponsorship allows refugees to enter through three types of sponsors:

accredited organisations (the c.d. Sponsorship Agreement Holders, SAHs) that have formal agreements with the National Government Agency (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada - IRCC), to assist more refugees each year. Most of these organisations (SAH) are religious, ethnic, community or humanitarian, with previous sponsorship experience;

groups composed of a minimum of five Canadian citizens or permanent residents over the age of 18 who can sponsor a person’s entry to establish them in their local community or a recognised refugee. Through this modality the numbers of beneficiaries are more contained;

community groups (Community Sponsors - CS), i.e. organisations and associations that operate in the same community where the refugees will settle.

In 2013, a new semi-private sponsorship programme was launched, the BVOR (Blended Visa Office Referred), which is characterised by closer cooperation between public institutions and private sponsors, as will be seen in the next paragraph. The combined action between the aforementioned mixed model and the private sponsorship resulted in a 125% increase in admissions in Canada.

TALENT BEYOND BOUNDARIES*

Talent Beyond Boundaries, an international NGO, establishes partnerships with companies around the world who are interested in recruiting from the Talent Catalog (an online database that allows refugees to share information about their work experience, professional qualifications, and skills that counts over 15,000 displaced individuals registered) trying to linking them with skilled refugees and thus supporting a solution to the refugee crisis.

UNI-CO-RE**: University Corridors for Refugees (Ethiopia-Unibo 2019-21)

A good example of student visa access for refugees is Project UNI-CO-RE, which was created to allow refugee students from Ethiopia to continue their academic careers at the University of Bologna. Beneficiaries of the UNI CO-RE project enjoy support in:

pre-enrolling at the Italian Embassy in Ethiopia and carrying out immigration procedures;

applying for admission to second-cycle degree programmes of the University of Bologna;

integrating in the local student life and community.

And they will receive a financial benefit in order to cover the costs of studying and integration.

* https://talentbeyondboundaries.org/index.html

** UNI-CO-RE: University Corridors for Refugees (Ethiopia-Unibo 2019-21), Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna.

The future of safe and legal channels for refugees

The future of safe and legal channels for refugees worldwide depends on a number of steps taken by the international community during the last years.

Indeed, in the attempt to address this sensitive issue at global level, the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants endorsed the development and expansion of Resettlement and Complementary pathways114. Building on this commitment, the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR)115 recognised that creating adequate instruments for the admission of refugees can facilitate access to protection, and also serves to express solidarity towards host countries and communities where immigrant numbers are higher. The signatory states agreed to develop a system which aims at making opportunities available to refugees on a more systematic, organised and sustainable basis, and to adopt appropriate protection safeguards.

With the strengthening of the GCR and in the spirit of the Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement (ATCR), a multi-stakeholder forum that brings together UNHCR, states, civil society, private sector and academia, a strategy has been devised which comprises a roadmap for expansion of safe and legal channels over the next three years (2019-2021), and a blueprint for the further development of third-country solutions over the next 10 years (2019-2028) through an ambitious vision116 that will continue to be relevant to achieving the goals of the GCR in the longer term.

This vision states that third-country solutions for refugees will expand so that by the end of 2028, 3 million refugees will benefit from effective protection and solutions through resettlement in 50 resettlement countries (1 million) and complementary pathways (2 million).

The Strategy’s vision, which implies the involvement of more actors, the availability of more places and the improving of quality and protection safeguards, has three distinct yet inter-related goals and objectives:

Grow resettlement numbers with more countries initiating successful resettlement programmes. This means an increase in numbers of places in existing programmes, an expansion in the number of countries undertaking resettlement, but also an increase in the protection impact, efficiency and sustainability of programmes. The goal is supposed to be achieved through 60,000 annual resettlement departures in 2019 followed by an incremental increase of 10,000 departures per year to end with 150,000 in 2028, together with an expansion in the number of resettlement countries. In 2018, 29 countries were involved in resettlement, and through an incremental increase of 2-3 new resettlement countries per year it is estimated that 50 countries will receive resettled refugees in 2028.

Advance complementary pathways, improving access and developing more opportunities. The UNHCR-OECD study on complementary pathways finds a ratio of 2:1 when comparing first residence permits gained by foreigners with resettlement quotas. Using this ratio, the strategy states that by the end of 2028, 2 million refugees can be admitted to third countries through complementary pathways, based on the forecast for increasing complementary pathway numbers incrementally by 20,000 persons per year over a ten-year period, starting in 2019117.

Build the foundation to promote welcoming and inclusive societies. The GCR is entirely non-political in nature but seeks to achieve its objectives through the mobilisation of political will, a broadened base of support, and arrangements that facilitate more equitable, sustained and predictable contributions among states and other relevant stakeholders. It is based on the fundamental principle of international solidarity, which can only be achieved if endorsed as a global public good by third countries receiving refugees. An environment that promotes solidarity, diversity and openness is essential for resettlement and complementary pathways to grow sustainably. Moreover, the arrival of refugees can trigger positive social and economic changes, transform civic culture and local institutions, and promote social cohesion, particularly when local communities are engaged in welcoming them.

UN Member States thus recognise firstly that a multi-stakeholder and partnership approach is the best way to expand the availability of safe and legal channels and secondly that this might become a sustainable policy approach that would not require new measures to be designed from scratch for each crisis. It would function instead as an ongoing programme that will, over time, strengthen the international refugee protection regime. In the near future, we will see whether these declarations of intent remain a dead letter or find the adequate support to generate a real change in the management of refugee crises at a global level.

Safe and Legal Pathways to Europe: Protection or Migration Management Tools?

Since 2015, refugee resettlement schemes have grown significantly in the European Union to the point of becoming a key component of the European asylum strategy. The history of refugee protection in Europe is paved with many paradoxes. Resettlement is one of them. Europeans were the first beneficiaries of this solution right after World War II. Western European countries were major actors of resettlement during the 1970s to address the plight of South Asian refugees. But with the exception of Scandinavian countries, resettlement ended up in the limbo of protection tools available to European countries, while security concerns became the main drivers of asylum policies during the 1980s. Despite a timid surge during the mid-2000s118, European governments are only taking resettlement seriously in the post-2015 context. In light of the changing fortunes of resettlement in Europe during the last 70 years, we can question whether the current trends are going to be sustainable. In other words, whether resettlement will become an “ordinary” pathway to international protection to the EU is still uncertain. The sudden suspension of the Danish programme in 2017119, one of the oldest in Europe, emphasises that no resettlement programme can be taken for granted. Likewise, not all EU Member States have committed to resettling refugees120. The weakness of the EU’s recent resettlement efforts is measured against a background of increasing suspicion among Europeans towards migration and a rise in populist identity parties.

Resettlement vs. irregular arrivals

The latest wave of European resettlement emerged in a context of crisis when the EU was eager to control unexpected and large arrivals of refugees and migrants on the southern shores of the continent. Resettlement is one of the tools promoted by the EU in a package of policies aiming to address the so-called migration crisis, together with the hotspots in Greece and Italy, the relocation scheme, and border controls and partnerships with third countries121. Therefore, one may read the rise of resettlement in Europe as a migration management tool rather than a durable solution for refugees in keeping with UNHCR doctrine.

Resettlement is part of a narrative. First, orderly and legal arrivals of refugees prevent dangerous irregular arrivals. Second, resettlement is a sign that the EU is not completely closed to refugees despite attempts to seal the borders. Third, resettlement is among the commitments of the EU when engaging in negotiations with third countries on the management of migration flows. The aim of this article is not to discuss these assertions, but they hint at the fact that resettlement is a piece of the architecture of the new European asylum and immigration policy, with the prevention of irregular arrivals as one of its goals.

The cases of the EU-Turkey declaration in March 2016, commonly called the EU-Turkey deal, and the increasing cooperation with the Libyan coast guard are examples of how resettlement is used for purposes other than refugee protection. In the first case, resettlement is a guarantee for Turkish cooperation sweetened with 6 billion euros, visa facilitation and reopening of EU membership talks. Regarding the central Mediterranean route, disembarkations in Libya should be followed by evacuations of refugees to Niger – and since October 2019 to Rwanda – and then resettlement in the EU122.

Does it matter? What lies behind the rise of resettlement programmes should not prevent us from acknowledging that more refugees are given the opportunities to make a fresh start in Europe. After all, NGOs and UNHCR have long advocated for further efforts from European governments. However, by restricting resettlement to a European issue, EU Member States not to set the foundations for long-term programmes that will be implemented beyond the crisis still being felt in Europe.

In this area, figures count as much if not more than intentions. 24,800 refugees were resettled in the EU as part of EU programmes between 2015 and 2017, and 39,000 between September 2017 and October 2019 as part of the European Commission’s call to receive 50,000 refugees from the Middle East and the central Mediterranean route123. It is the highest number in Europe since the South-East Asian refugee crisis in the late 1970s. But as mentioned above, resettlement needs have never been greater. Statistics show that Europe’s contribution to global resettlement has been modest and represents less than 6% of the total needs. And the growing involvement of Europeans has not been able to compensate for the withdrawal of the United States, where arrivals have decreased four-fold since 2017.

Furthermore, European priorities do not extend to populations who, although less present in irregular arrivals to European shores (and hence who draw less attention to themselves) still have substantial needs, such as nationals from the Democratic Republic of Congo or South Sudan. The challenge of resettlement is also a global issue but in Europe tends to reflect the intra European debate, sometimes losing sight of global priorities.

Private sponsorship: an increasing pathway to Europe

In Europe, private sponsorship is a flexible concept124 and three main approaches seem to have developed. The first is the extended family reunification-based approach in Germany, Ireland and France mainly for Syrian and Iraqi families; the second is the Humanitarian Corridors approach in Italy125, France, and Belgium, which relies on agreements with receiving States to issue a specific number of humanitarian visas; and the third is the Resettlement-based approach, consisting of welcoming refugees who are identified and referred by UNHCR to the UK, and more recently Germany and Ireland126.

The feasibility study commissioned by the European Commission127 analyses the legal and operational feasibility and added value of EU support to sponsorship programmes. The study explores four scenarios, ranging from capacity building and financial support to new EU legislation and puts forward recommendations for the European Commission to support the spread of private sponsorship schemes by increasing funding opportunities for states and civil society organisations and by developing capacity-building tools.

The moment is thus ripe to adopt resettlement and complementary pathways that have been demonstrated in practice to be effective refugee protection tools, and that European states can further develop and expand. In this regard, well-designed community sponsorship schemes and a resettlement framework can contribute to a considerable increase in the regular admission of refugees and ensure better integration outcomes and more tolerant and welcoming societies. For that to happen, EU and national policy makers must seize this opportunity and tap into increasing citizens’ desires to proactively contribute to refugee protection and integration.

Citizen Mobilisation in France and Italy: The Future of Refugee Protection?

The developing private sponsorship initiatives in Europe are evidence that European citizens can adopt a more protection-sensitive stance that counterbalances widespread fears. In light of the numbers of resettlement and alternative pathways, they are not yet a solution, but citizen mobilisation for refugees is also a sign that they might substantially increase as a way to protect refugees and not merely provide opportunities for them to arrive in Europe. Numbers matter, of course, but in addition to saving lives, legal-channel pathways programmes can initiate a positive and constructive dynamic that can benefit all refugees and, eventually, host communities alike.

Resettlement in rural areas in France: A success story128

Resettlement schemes are often assessed in terms of refugee integration. Whatever scope is assigned to the concept of integration, its political impact is important because governments are worried about how the population may perceive the presence of refugees in society. Yet, although states have full control over selection and transfer procedures, integration is a complex process which involves a host of decision-making levels and actors, including the refugees themselves and the local population, since a major driver of integration takes place at the local level. Insofar as resettlement involves an inflow of refugees which is planned in advance, it is possible to pre-empt problems such as accommodation, health, education and training opportunities. This also means that resettlement can be a testing ground for new forms of cooperation between the various institutional, civil and economic components of society.

This is what is happening right now with the implementation of resettlement programmes in France. Although it has a long history in France129, resettlement has only become a key component of French asylum policy since 2015. In the wake of the EU Council’s decision of 20 July 2015 and the EU-Turkey “deal”, France committed to receive 10,000 refugees from the Middle East130. The government formed after the spring 2017 elections renewed France’s commitment. In October 2017, President Macron announced the resettlement of 10,000 refugees by autumn 2019 as part of the European Commission’s new call in September 2017131. The targets were split between Syrian refugees from the Middle East (7,000 people) and refugees coming via the central Mediterranean route (3,000 people). This programme has led to the arrivals of 9,233 refugees as of 31 October 2019. France has become the largest resettlement country in Europe and is planning to launch a new resettlement programme for 2020-2021.

The expansion of resettlement in France has encouraged the authorities to provide a placement policy for refugees. Tensions regarding the reception of migrant populations in large cities made it necessary to rethink and improve distribution across France. This is how small towns have gradually become reception areas for refugees.

This trend finds its roots in the dispersal of migrants living in camps in Calais and Paris. In 2015, the government decided to hastily open around a hundred temporary accommodation centres that played a key part in the final dismantling of the Calais camp that had housed nearly 10,000 people in October 2016. These centres mainly opened in small towns and rural areas where cheap accommodation and free buildings were available. Although some signs of hostility and political opposition emerged, they were generally limited. Conversely, a strong show of support was observed from the population mobilised to help these migrants. These groups of volunteers are still active. They paved the way for resettled refugees. The government figured out that small towns and rural areas would become safe haven for refugees in France and put in place a dispersal mechanism to address the high flows of arrivals of resettled refugees.

Refugees are facing specific challenges in these areas. Although housing is widely available and suitable for large families, refugees can suffer of isolation and lack of transportation, fewer healthcare services and a lack of French classes for adults and adolescents. Nevertheless, for each of these aspects, the lack of specific programmes has been overcome by mobilising local communities and the existence of solidarity networks. In that respect, the visibility of refugees has proved to be a positive asset for their local integration. It has also belied the assumption that small towns and rural areas are suspicious of ethnic diversity, conservative, and opposed to globalisation, of which immigrants are portrayed as a symptom.

This strong citizen solidarity, along with better communication among local stakeholders compared to urban areas, emphasises that rural areas are lands of opportunities for refugees. Indeed, they are a powerful driver for integration. For example, access to work is facilitated by strong social networks. Volunteers are often making the connection between refugees and employers in dire need of a labour force in areas where the local population is ageing and outsiders are difficult to attract. Thus, refugees avoid ordinary recruitment processes, which can be disadvantageous or discriminatory for them.

Moreover, refugees quickly become members of the local communities despite cultural, religious and language differences. Because volunteers are very present in the refugees’ lives, they help transfer the cultural and social codes of French society which make integration possible, i.e. “these little things” cannot be taught in a classroom in the framework of any reception and integration programme. Local communities help refugees to build a sense of belonging to their new host society and pave the way to long-term integration in France.

Humanitarian corridors in Italy: An effective civil mobilisation

“Humanitarian Corridors” is the recipient of the 2019 Nansen Refugee Award, awarded by the UNCHCR to individuals or organisations which distinguish themselves by the support they provide to the world’s refugees. Behind the “Corridors”, which have enabled more than 2,600 people to be brought safely and legally to Italy, lies a huge amount of work by local communities engaged in welcoming migrants. Integration is achieved at the local level, and according to research conducted by Caritas Italiana132 there are three main factors that play a role in its success: the presence of a host community, families and volunteers around the beneficiaries to facilitate social integration, housing and work placement (an average of 12 people for each reception and 60% presence of tutor families are active alongside the beneficiaries within the Caritas network for Humanitarian Corridors).

The second point are the beneficiaries themselves, who are mostly families, reflecting the composition of the vast majority of the refugee population worldwide. As such, they are more in harmony with the local communities and help dismantle the media stereotype on arrivals by sea, where single men are prevalent due to the hardships of the journey. Even if beneficiaries of humanitarian corridors are predominantly vulnerable people, as it is a criterion of the protocol with the Government for their inclusion, the opportunity of enjoying a personalised model of reception offers them a way to eventually emancipate themselves.

Finally, the accompaniment that the national organisations carry out with tutorship and economic support is fundamental for the success of local projects.

Four elements of the Italian experience are good practices that can be scaled up:

Pre-departure preparation of the beneficiaries, which is provided directly by the organisations engaged in reception, and which helps level expectations; and pre-arrival orientation of the local communities who will host refugees.

Communities that are willing to help can be activated if awareness-raising work is done before arrival, and this action normally results in solidarity and understanding. As regards the Caritas network involved in humanitarian corridors, training meetings were held before the arrival of the beneficiaries in over 85% of the areas involved.

The Italian experience took care to find good matches between the beneficiaries of the programme and their host communities. Although the project in which beneficiaries are placed is the same throughout Italy and follows the same criteria, local peculiarities must be taken into account for a better integration. It is necessary to find the right match between the opportunities provided by the host community and the needs of the beneficiaries, and let the parties involved know the destination before departure.

NGOs, public institutions and local organisations work closely together to select beneficiaries, sharing information and dividing responsibilities. This increases the complexity of the process, but in addition to ensuring its transparency, it allows the organisations that will be in charge of hosting the beneficiaries to be well aware of the contexts of the refugees’ origin and to carry out a selection based the objective criteria of vulnerability and the possibility of reception. In this way the process as a whole acquires sustainability.

What Can We Learn from Citizen Mobilisation?

Many citizens have demonstrated the ability to grasp the inherent limits of restrictive immigration policies and the potential associated with regular migration. Citizen and local community involvement should characterise every selection process in order to arrive at a new governance of the phenomenon.

There is in fact a lot to learn from the experiences of rural areas in France and humanitarian corridors in Italy. Citizen involvement in integrating refugees has proved to be an effective model. It can mark a turning point in how European states receive and include refugees into their societies. Since the 1990s, and with the increasing complexity of asylum and social policies, receiving and assisting asylum seekers and refugees has progressively become the exclusive province of civil servants, professional social workers, and lawyers. Citizens and local communities provide additional value that should be taken into account in shaping policies and scaling-up safe and legal channels in the future. Together with the private sector, they are creating the pathway for successful long-term integration. Citizen participation also provides an opportunity for a more open and welcoming society. In France, for example, concerns regarding religion, and more specifically, the Islamic veil, which often exist before the arrival of the refugees, very quickly disappear after their arrival. These concerns give way to a curiosity about the newcomers’ culture and, sometimes, to a willingness to learn the refugees’ languages.

Citizen mobilisation might be an attractive model for governments. At first sight, it can be perceived as an opportunity for authorities to lower costs by outsourcing the reception and integration of newcomers to volunteers and willing citizens. But governments should think twice before embarking on this path. Participation means that citizens are more aware of the realities of migrants and thus, of the paradoxes of current asylum and immigration policies in Europe. Hospitality will not be targeted only to resettled or sponsored refugees. Supporting hospitality might be at odds with the growing attacks on civil society members helping migrants at sea or at the borders.

Finally, the reception of resettled refugees in rural areas questions how challenges by refugees and to a larger extent by migrants are framed. Many of the obstacles to refugee integration in small towns and rural areas affect local populations as well. Mobility and access to health and social services are also concerns for French and Italian nationals living in these areas. Likewise, access to housing is a common challenge for most inhabitants of large cities. Notwithstanding the specific needs and vulnerabilities of refugees, many of these issues should not be perceived solely as “immigration problems”. Instead, they present an opportunity to depart from the “us” versus “them” paradigm. And they also present a challenge to policy makers that might find it less complex to promote restrictive reception policies and polarisation of public opinion rather than addressing the social inequalities within European societies.

93 UNHCR, Global trends. Forced displacement in 2018, June 2019.

94 International Rescue Committee, Forging a common path: A European approach to the integration of refugees and asylum-seekers, July 2018.

95 https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/events/coordination/15/documents/papers/ 14_UNHCR_nd.pdf

96 Local integration, voluntary repatriation or Resettlement. https://www.unhcr.org/solutions.html

97 On the connection between regular and irregular migration see: Exploring the Links Between Enhancing Regular Pathways and Discouraging Irregular Migration: A discussion paper to inform future policy deliberations, International Organization for Migration (IOM) UN Agency, 2018.

98 UNHCR, “Desperate Journeys. Refugees and migrants arriving in Europe and at Europe’s borders”, January-December 2018.

99 “The dangerous link between migration, development and security for the externalisation of borders in Africa”, Analysis document, Arci Italia, 31 July 2018.

100 International Organization for Migration (IOM), Flow Monitoring Europe and Missing Migrants Project.

101 M. Czaika and M. Hobolth, “Do Restrictive Asylum and Visa Policies Increase Irregular Migration into Europe?”, European Union Politics, vol. 17, no. 3, 2016, pp. 345-365.

102 M. Clemens and K. Gough, Can Regular Migration Channels Reduce Irregular Migration? Lessons for Europe from the United States, CGD Brief, Center for Global Development, Washington, D.C., February 2018.

103 It should be noted that the EU has drawn up a list of visa-liberalised countries (VLC) whose citizens are exempt from having a visa for crossing EU external borders. In 2018, 115,000 applications were submitted (almost 20% of all asylum applications) by nationals from these countries. It marks a 30% increase over 2017 and by far the highest in recent years. Specifically the major increase comes from nationals from Colombia (+210%), Venezuela (+88%) and Georgia (+72%). See European Asylum Support Office (EASO), “EU+ Asylum Trends – 2018 Overview”, 13 February 2019.

104 UNHCR, Resettlement Handbook, July 2011.

105 D. Kerwin, “The US Refugee Resettlement Program – A Return to First Principles: How Refugees Help to Define, Strengthen, and Revitalize the United States”, Center for Migration Studies, Journal on Migration and Human Security, vol. 6, no. 3, 2018, pp. 205-225.

106 UNHCR, UNHCR Projected 2019, global resettlement needs, Geneva, 25-26 June 2018.

107 “Complementary pathways for admission of refugees to third countries – Key consideration”, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Division of International Protection (DIP), April 2019.

108 Directive 2003/86/EC on Family reunification.

109 Based on EUROSTAT data 2017-2018 (extracted in October 2019). There is a general lack of comprehensive data on family reunification, particularly at national level, and there is no separation between migrants and refugees.

110 Realizing the right to family reunification of refugees in Europe, Issue paper published by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, 2017.

111 Global enrolment rates referred to 2014 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics) and refugee enrolments rates refer to 2015 (UNHCR) refers that while 34% of the world’s population has access to higher education level, just 1% of refugees attend university.

112 OECD-UNHCR Study on third country solutions for refugees: family reunification, study programmes and labour mobility (2018).

113 In Canada the Private Sponsorship of Refugees programme (PSR) has been ongoing since 1978. Guide to the private sponsorship of Refugees Program: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/guide-private-sponsorship-refugees-program.html and Government of Canada, Evaluation of the Resettlement Programs, 2016 (GAR, PSR, BVOR and RAP), 7 July 2016, http:/www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/evaluation/resettlement.asp

114 UN General Assembly, “Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 19 September 2016”, 3 October 2016.

115 Adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2018, Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global compact on refugees, 2018.

116 UNHCR, “The Three-Year (2019-2021) Strategy on Resettlement and Complementary Pathways”, June 2019.

117 In order to monitor the implementation of the growing complementary pathways admission a more data-based evidence would be needed in future because there are insufficient and incomplete data on the availability and use of complementary pathways.

118 For example, the United Kingdom adopted a resettlement scheme in 2005 and France in 2008. The International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) Europe, Welcome to Europe: A Comprehensive Guide to Resettlement, July 2013.

119 J.A. Thomsen, “Denmark no longer to automatically accept UN refugee quota”, Reuters, 20 December 2017. The programme has been resumed in 2019 after the latest general elections in Denmark.

120 Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia did not pledge to resettle refugees under the scheme.

121 For a more exhaustive descriptions of measures and policies adopted after 2011, see E. Collet and C. Le Coz, After the Storm: Learning from the EU Response to the Migration Crisis, Migration Policy Institute, June 2018.

122 Between November 2017 and July 2019, 4,400 refugees were evacuated from Libya, including 2,900 to Niger. Among the latter, only half of them were then resettled outside of Niger.

123 European Commission, “Recommendation on enhancing legal pathways for persons in need of international protection”, C(2017) 6504, 27 September 2017.

124 Defined as “a public-private partnership between governments, who facilitate legal admission for refugees, and private actors, who provide financial, social and/or emotional support to admit, receive and settle refugees into the community”, see International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC), International Organization for Migration (IOM), UNHCR (eds.), Private Sponsorship in Europe. Expanding complementary pathways for refugee resettlement, ERN+ Scoping Paper, European Resettlement Network, September 2017.

125 “‘Beyond the sea’, first report on Humanitarian Corridor and other safe and legal pathways in Italy” Caritas Italiana, 2019.

126 To have an analytical perspective on the issue “Fostering Community Sponsorship across Europe”, International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) Europe and Caritas Europa, 2019.

127 “Feasibility study on sponsorship schemes as a possible pathway to safe channels for admission to the EU”, European Commission - Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs Directorate Migration and Protection, 2018.

128 This section is based on a research carried out in France for International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) Europe in the framework of the SHARE INTEGRATION project. See M. Tardis, Another Story from the ‘Refugee Crisis’. Resettlement in Small Towns and Rural Areas in France, Études de l’Ifri, July 2019.

129 From the Hungarians in 1956 to South-East Asian refugees in the 1970s and 1980s, France has contributed to international efforts to share responsibility. But resettlement vanished in the 1980s. In 2008, a framework agreement was signed between the French government and UNHCR including a commitment to about 100 resettlement cases per year.

130 Of which only 1,965 arrived according to the European Commission figures.

131 Le Monde, “Macron s’engage à accueillir 10,000 réfugiés d’ici à 2019”, 9 October 2017.

132 Caritas Italiana (2019).

5. The Future of Irregular Migration to Europe

Eugenio Cusumano

Attempts to develop predictive models of large-scale population mobility can be found since the beginning of migration studies. Scholars have attempted to forecast the size of migratory flows by conceptualising large-scale human mobility as the combination of negative factors prompting people to leave their homeland (economic hardship, conflict, human rights violations, etc.) and positive incentives to choose a specific destination. These are usually referred to as the “push” and “pull” factors of migration133. More recent studies, however, have contested the very possibility to predict migration through deterministic models, criticising the dichotomy between push and pull factors as overly simplistic134.

These warnings are especially applicable to the study of migration across the Mediterranean. Over the last decades, seaborne human mobility between Africa and Southern Europe has consisted of both economic migrants and refugees coming from sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, and the Middle East. The complexity of these mixed flows does not only challenge the dichotomy between economic migration and forced displacement, magnifying the difficulties and dilemmas attached to European policy responses. The complex patchwork of motivations, origins, and legal status of seaborne migrants, combined with the geopolitical and socioeconomic complexity of the wider Mediterranean region, belies any attempt to accurately forecast the future of irregular seaborne migration to Europe.

These caveats notwithstanding, this chapter will attempt to unravel some key trends in irregular maritime migration across the Mediterranean Sea, focusing on the Central Mediterranean route connecting Libya and Tunisia to Italy. Although a precise forecast of the future of seaborne migration is ultimately impossible, a survey of the existing literature and a historical examination of migratory flows across the Mediterranean over the last thirty years may nevertheless help identify some plausible future prospects. To this end, this chapter is divided as follows. The first section provides an overview of seaborne migration across the Mediterranean Sea, thereby identifying some of the key dynamics that have shaped irregular maritime in the past decades. The second section zooms into seaborne migration in the wake of the Arab uprisings, conducting a more in-depth examination of the Central Mediterranean corridor in the period between 2013 and 2019. The last section end ensuing conclusions will take stock of the evidence sketched out in the previous two sections to identify some future trends that may affect migration across the Mediterranean.

Irregular Seaborne Migration to Italy: An Overview

Maritime human mobility is inextricably linked with the history of the Mediterranean region. Since at least the mid-XX century, population flows across the Mediterranean basin were far from solely northbound, as epitomised by Spanish, French and Italian settlements in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya135. Irregular maritime mobility from North Africa and the Middle East only started to become significant since the 1970s, as tightening visa restrictions significantly reduced the possibility of legal entry for temporary migrant workers136. Up until 2001, the largest irregular migration corridor to Italy was the Adriatic Sea. Seaborne mobility across the Otranto Channel reached dramatic proportions in 1991 and 1997-98, when the collapse of the Communist regime and a new wave of unrest in Albania and Kosovo prompted tens of thousands to migrate to Italy. On 7 March 1991, over 27,000 landed in a single day, prompting Italian authorities to launch a naval blockade to intercept the ships carrying irregular migrants. Towards the end of the 1990s, the Southern coast of Sicily became the largest destination of seaborne migrants, who largely crossed the strait of Sicily from Tunisia. As Tunis started criminalising illegal exit, Libya also became a transit as well as a destination country. Between 1997 and 2008, seaborne migration from Libya and Tunisia oscillated between around 30,000 and 15,000 every year137.

Italy attempted to reduce irregular crossings through readmission and border control cooperation with both North African countries. Tripoli’s abysmal human rights record and democratic credentials make externalisation agreements with Libya especially contentious. Notwithstanding ethical dilemmas and legal constraints, then Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi and Libya’s autocratic leader Muammar Gaddafi signed the 2008 Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation. In the attempt to foster cooperation between the two countries, Italy agreed to pay up to five billion euros and contribute to building Libyan infrastructure. Cooperation in managing irregular migration features especially prominently in the Treaty, where the two parties committed to patrolling Libyan shores through boats provided by Italy and manned by joint crews138. While problematic on humanitarian grounds, Rome’s collaboration with Gaddafi played a significant role in reducing irregular departures, and remained in place until the start of Libya’s civil war in 2011, when Italy joined the bandwagon of NATO partners who supported the rebels through the aerial bombing mission Unified Protector139.

Fig. 5.1 - Irregular sea arrivals in Italy, 1998-2010

Source: International Organization for Migration
and the Italian Ministry of the Interior

Irregular Seaborne Migration After the Arab Uprisings

Policy-makers and scholars working on migration across the Mediterranean have identified three main avenues to Europe: the Eastern Mediterranean route connecting Turkey to Greece and Cyprus, the Central Mediterranean route leading from Libya and Tunisia to Italy, and the Western Mediterranean route from Morocco to Spain. Although alternative avenues like the Eastern Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands or longer journeys across the Mediterranean leading directly from Algeria to Sardinia and the Balearic islands and from Turkey and Egypt to Southern Italy have sometimes been used, the majority of crossings have occurred along the three above-mentioned corridors140.

As illustrated by Figure 5.2 above, Italy did not always serve as the main entry point to Europe. In 2015, the Eastern Mediterranean route became the largest irregular migratory avenue by far. This sudden spike of irregular arrivals across the Aegean was dictated by a sudden increase in the magnitude of the flow caused by the civil war in Syria, but also by the establishment of tighter controls and a border fence at the land border between Turkey and Greece, which prompted migrants and smuggling organisations to opt for irregular seaborne crossings. As a result of the March 2016 agreement between the European Union and Turkey, however, crossings from Turkey to Greece decreased drastically, but did not cease altogether.

Fig. 5.2 - Migrant arrivals along the Western, Central and Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Routes
after the Arab Uprisings

Source: International Organization for Migration

Contrary to predictions, the near-closure of the Eastern route did not trigger a meaningful increase in irregular migration from Libya. Since the summer of 2017, as Libyan militias started to detain migrants for longer rather than sending them at sea, the Central Mediterranean too lost part of its significance as an irregular migratory avenue, eventually becoming less travelled than both the Eastern and Western routes. The Central Mediterranean corridor, however, has remained the deadliest of migratory avenues to European and worldwide. Between 2014 and 2019, over 15,000 reported casualties occurred off the coast of Libya. Although casualties decreased significantly since the 2016 peak, when over 4,500 deaths occurred, the deadliness of the crossing has only further increased, reaching a ratio of 1 casualty every 5 departures. As of 25 November 2019, 740 reported deaths have occurred off the coast of Libya141.

Fig. 5.3 - Casualties along the Western, Central and Eastern Mediterranean Routes

Source: International Organization for Migration Missing Migrants Project

Irregular Seaborne Migration Along the Central Mediterranean Route, 2013-2019

Although Gaddafi attempted to deter Italy and other NATO countries from intervening by threatening to “turn Europe black”)142, irregular migrant crossings across the Central Mediterranean did not skyrocket immediately in the wake of the uprisings and NATO’s military intervention. While a first, smaller spike in irregular departures already occurred in 2011, when 62,000 reached Italy by sea from both Libya and Tunisia, irregular departures increased dramatically only in late 2013. Owing to the collapse of state institutions in the midst of the civil war, Libya became an ideal hub for human smugglers and irregular migration to Europe143.

In the meantime, the border enforcement practices devised by Italy to deter irregular migration had not only been nullified by the collapse of Gaddafi’s regime, but also challenged on legal grounds by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In the seminal 2012 Hirsi decision, the ECHR found Italian Navy personnel guilty of returning Eritrean asylum seekers rescued at sea in 2009 to Libya. This pushback amounted to a violation of the non-refoulement principle, which forbids the pushing back refugees to countries where their fundamental rights would be threatened144.

The Italian government then decided to review its border control policies by disembarking all the migrants rescued at sea on its territory. In late 2013, in the wake of two widely publicised shipwrecks off the island of Lampedusa, Italy launched operation Mare Nostrum, which involved 34 Navy warships operating off the coast of Libya on a rotation basis145. Frustrated by the costs of the operation, Italy hoped to leverage on the upcoming European Council presidency to obtain burden sharing from the rest of the European Union. Far from backing Italy, however, other EU Member States criticised the Italian Navy operation as a pull factor of irregular migration and “a bridge to Europe”146. The compromise reached by the European Council led to a suspension of Mare Nostrum, to be followed by a smaller-scale mission conducted by Frontex, named Triton. Accordingly, Triton was conceived as a border control rather than a rescue mission, initially patrolling a much smaller area than Mare Nostrum147. In the spring of 2015, another EU military mission – the EUNAVFOR MED operation “Sophia” – was launched under the framework of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). EUNAVFOR MED too, focused on “disrupting smugglers” networks’, does not explicitly mention the conduct of maritime search and rescue operations in its mandate. As illustrated by Figure 5.3, Triton and EUNAVFOR MED’s personnel duly complied with the moral and legal obligation to rescue, assisting over 138,000 people in total. The fear of becoming a pull factor, however, limited European assets’ involvement in rescue operations, creating a gap in SAR capabilities that was bridged by civil society organisations.

Started in the summer of 2014 with the creation of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station, non-governmental rescue operations gained momentum over the following years. In both 2016 and 2017, a total of 10 different NGOs operated in the Central Mediterranean, deploying between 12 and 14 ships off the Libyan coast. Despite the limited capabilities of most charities, NGOs became the largest provider of maritime rescue, assisting over 115,000 migrants in total148.

Fig. 5.4 - Rescues in the Central Mediterranean per organisation in absolute terms, 2014-2018

Source: author’s elaborations on Italian Coast Guard and UNHCR data.

Since early 2017, however, NGOs’ activities have faced mounting criticism. Frontex’s accusation that NGOs were acting as a pull factor was tapped into by Italian politicians and prosecutors. First asked to sign a Code of Conduct limiting their activities in 2017, NGOs were explicitly prohibited from disembarking rescued migrants in Italian ports in 2018149. In addition, a 2019 security decree allows for prescribing large fines and the confiscation of ships entering Italian territorial waters without authorisation150. Throughout the same period, various NGOs were investigated by Italian courts, which apprehended three ships.

In late 2019, the formation of a new government and the tentative agreement on the redistribution of migrants rescued at sea reached in Valletta between Italy, Malta, France and Germany slightly softened Rome’s stance. However, Italy and other European governments’ approach to NGOs did not change significantly. The willingness to facilitate the activities of the Libyan Coast Guard and the concerns that SAR operations acted as a pull factor has translated into a persisting willingness to restrain NGOs’ activities. Indeed, the draft of the September 2017 Valletta summit conclusions restates the limitations on NGOs activities enacted by the 2017 Code of Conduct, implicitly reiterating the critique that unregulated rescue operations incentivize departures151.

Due to this ongoing criminalisation process, NGOs’ involvement in SAR has shrunk drastically. At the moment of writing, the only charities operating off the coast of Libya are MSF and SOS-Méditerranée, operating jointly aboard the Ocean Viking, and the two Spanish charities Open Arms and Aita Mari. Critics have used the rough overlap between plummeting departures from Libya, the decreasing number of casualties, and NGOs’ reduced presence to illustrate the alleged effectiveness of policies aimed at disincentivising maritime rescue. Recent research, however, shows that the activities of NGOs did not significantly affect migratory flows from 2014 until November 2019. Far from being influenced by the pull effect of NGOs and other rescue assets’ presence, migratory flows from Libya were mainly affected by weather conditions and developments on land152.

Libyan institutions and tribes’ renewed efforts to curb illegal departures played an especially crucial role. In 2017, then Interior Minister Marco Minniti launched a new approach to migration management, offering financial support to Libyan tribes and militias in exchange for cooperation in containing irregular departures across the Mediterranean. Since 2016, the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) Navy and Coast Guard, trained by Operation Sofia and Italian Navy and Coast Guard personnel, has also started to conduct its own rescue operations, intercepting migrant boats and taking them back to Libya. From 2016 to November 2019, over 50,000 migrants were brought back to Libya. However, the ill-preparedness of this newly-formed force and the unwillingness of many migrants to be taken back resulted into several incidents, ranging from the intimidation of NGOs to the use of violence against and the abandonment at sea of migrants in the course of rescue operations153.

Future Prospects on Irregular Seaborne Migration to Europe

While the multiplicity of drivers, enablers and obstacles to human mobility across the Mediterranean precludes the possibility of accurately forecasting irregular migration to Europe, some crucial future trends can nevertheless be identified.

First, demographic, geopolitical and environmental factors suggest that migration across the Mediterranean is going to continue and may inevitably increase in absolute numbers due to population growth in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Overly pessimistic predictions of a large increase in migrant departures, however, are unwarranted. Contrary to common wisdom, migratory flows primarily occur along South-South rather than northbound corridors, and a large majority of migrants and refugees tend to remain in neighbouring countries. Such dynamics will continue to affect population mobility across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East in the foreseeable future, indirectly contributing to reducing migratory flows to Europe.

While human mobility to Europe may increase in absolute numbers in the long term, the large-scale flows that occurred in the wake of the Arab uprisings in 2011 are likely to remain unmatched in the short to medium term. Since 2017, irregular migration has steadily reduced, decreasing by 27% in 2018. Although small increases in arrivals have been reported along the main migratory routes in the second half of 2019, these have not reversed the downwards trend. As of 21 November 2019, 90,744 people crossed the Mediterranean compared to the 108,146 irregular entries that occurred in the first 11 months of 2018. Such trajectories are unlikely to significantly change in the short term. Future unrest in countries of departure and, to a lesser extent, transit states currently cooperating with the EU in stopping migratory flows, may nevertheless trigger new spikes in northbound migration.

Relatedly, the seaborne migratory flow from Libya to Italy is likely to remain much smaller than during the 2013-2017 peak for various reasons. As amply demonstrated by academic research, the majority of migrants do not travel to Libya with the goal of reaching Europe. A strong currency and a large availability of low-skilled jobs continues to make Libya an attractive destination country154. This situation is unlikely to change, and may further consolidate if the country grows more stable. To be sure, as epitomised by the small increase in crossings in the wake of general Haftar’s offensive against Tripoli in April 2019, new outbreaks in hostilities may prompt migrants to escape Libya, thereby affecting irregular departures. Higher local instability in combination with EU initiatives at Mali and Niger’s borders, may simultaneously act as a restraint on the number of migrants who travel to Libya in the first place. Indeed, irregular border crossings from Niger to Libya appear to have shrunk drastically in 2018 and 2019155. Lastly, as shown by the persistent drop in irregular crossings since July 2017, concerted action by the EU has succeeded in curbing crossings and is unlikely to face any major overhaul despite mounting evidence of widespread human rights violations. Over the next few years, short of any currently unforeseeable developments like a major outbreak in hostilities or a collapse of Tripoli’s GNA, the combined effects of reduced arrivals and Libyan authorities heavy-handed collaboration in stemming the flow will keep irregular crossings lower than in 2014-2017.

Migration across the Mediterranean will continue to be shaped primarily by push rather than pull factors. Existing research has already downplayed the influence of pull factors, forcefully showing that the factors compelling migrants to leave their homeland play a much more important role than the benefits endowed by destination countries156 or the alleged incentive provided by NGOs’ maritime rescue operations157. This is especially true for mobility to Europe, which will continue to consist of a mixed flow spanning the dichotomy between economic and forced migration, posing new challenges to European asylum and humanitarian protection policies. Extreme poverty, conflict and unrest in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, as well as population growth and environmental degradation in most countries in these regions, will remain the main driving force underlying northbound population flows. As acknowledged by European authorities, climate change in particular is set to dwarf all other drivers of migration158. The asylum and border control policies devised by Italy and other European countries, on the other hand, are only likely to have a minor and ultimately negligible impact on the magnitude of the flow.

The only activities that will continue to play a significant role in curbing the flow along a specific route are containment measures physically preventing migrants from reaching European shores. As epitomised by the above-mentioned Hirsi decision, however, international law prevents European security forces from pushing back asylum seekers to most countries at the Southern end of the Mediterranean basin. Public demands to curb irregular migration will continue to prompt European governments to rely on externalisation policies in order to circumvent such legal constraints, using bilateral agreements and European instruments like the European Neighbourhood and European development policy to co-opt transit countries into stopping migrants from reaching the EU’s external borders. Such arrangements are likely to prove resilient to major human rights concerns. Externalisation policies, however, are hardly a silver bullet. Besides being ethically problematic and vulnerable to judicial review by the European Court of Human Rights, these measures are also weakened by institutional fragility and widespread corruption in countries of transit and departure, which may suddenly make local authorities unwilling or unable to cooperate. Moreover, the EU’s growing willingness to curb migratory flows is likely to be exploited by countries in its Southern Neighbourhood, which will use their ability to hinder or enable migratory flows as a bargaining chip in order to obtain financial aid and other concessions. Repatriation agreements facilitating the expulsion of illegal migrants to countries of departure will also be stepped up. The effectiveness of these measures, however, is bound to remain modest due to both legal and practical constraints as well as the limited willingness to cooperate displayed by countries of return, which often find in migrants’ remittances a larger source of revenues than development aid. Arrangements allowing for the immediate, forcible repatriation of migrants upon arrival, like Italian and European partnerships with Tunisia, have played and will keep playing a more significant role. As epitomised by the recent increase in crossings from Tunisia to Italy in 2018 and 2019, however, such measures too face limitations, and may not suffice to deter irregular departures when unrest in countries of origin grows.

European maritime border control policies will continue to juggle between the moral and legal imperative to rescue lives and the fear of facilitating illegal crossings. While recent research has called into question the extent to which rescue operations are a pull factors, such policy narratives tend to be extremely resilient even when not corroborated by existing evidence159. Accordingly, state-led rescue missions are unlikely to be launched again in the near future. While not playing a significant role in affecting the magnitude of migratory flows, maritime border enforcement and rescue missions like Mare Nostrum can both rescue lives and funnel migratory flows, thereby detecting irregular arrivals at risk of criminal and terrorist infiltration. Nevertheless, the fear of causing a pull factor and being perceived by public opinion as “soft” on migration is likely to continue to discourage EU governments from launching border control missions with a significant maritime rescue component. Although occasional, widely publicised news of migrant drownings may cause outrage and prompt demand for action, European maritime border control policies will continue to suffer from the uneasy coexistence of humanitarian imperatives and deterrence strategies. In the period between 2014 and 2017, civil society has at least partly bridged the gap arising from the disengagement of EU military assets from the Southern Mediterranean, thereby contributing to mitigating the loss of life at sea. Although NGOs have proven resilient to criminalisation, their involvement in maritime rescue is set to remain more limited than in previous years. As I showed in my previous research, the proliferation of NGOs off the coast of Libya that occurred in 2014-2016 stemmed from the convergence of a number of enabling conditions, including the perceived legitimacy, feasibility and financial viability of non-governmental migrant rescue160. These conditions are unlikely to obtain in the foreseeable future. Even if the charges of abetting illegal immigration pressed against several organisations are likely to be waived in light of NGOs’ humanitarian motives, this criminalisation campaign has largely compromised the perceived legitimacy of these organisations in public opinion, causing a drop in donations and strong media opposition. Higher risk of being prosecuted for abetting illegal immigration, delays in providing NGOs with a place of disembarkation, the fact that the Italian MRCC no longer serves as a source of situational awareness, and the tense relationship with Libyan coast guards – which has frequently threatened violence against humanitarian workers – have inevitably hindered the feasibility and effectiveness of NGO rescue operations. Despite criticism, the EU is likely to both refrain from directly conducting proactive rescue missions in international waters and discourage civil society conducting these tasks. Indeed, rescue operations will continue to be delegated to third countries’ security forces like the GNA Coast Guard and Navy, which can merge rescue and interdiction by taking migrants back to Southern Mediterranean shores.

Without systematic efforts to tackle the root causes of migration, externalisation measures and immediate repatriation will also continue to be at risk of incentivising human smugglers and traffickers to redirect flows towards riskier routes and strategies in order to avoid detection. As shown by variations in migrant crossings along the main Mediterranean routes over the previous years, migratory routes to Europe are only indirectly connected to each other. As a result, sudden variations in the porousness of some specific European borders will not determine sudden, large-scale rerouting across the Western, Central, and Eastern routes. However, migratory flows along specific routes will remain adaptive to specific externalisation and border control measures. The reshuffling of Eastern Mediterranean flows from land to sea – as well as migrants’ attempt to reach Spain through longer routes leading to farther locations including the Canary and Balearic islands – are a case in point.

Relatedly, externalisation policies will continue to have severe humanitarian side effects. This is especially true for the Central Mediterranean. The ill-preparedness of Libyan maritime forces, the fragility of the state institutions to which they are accountable, and the very nature of their operations – more akin to interception than rescue and thus often resisted by migrants – is set to keep causing severe humanitarian externalities. Consequently, casualties at the Southern maritime borders of the EU will continue to occur in significant numbers. The disengagement of European law enforcement assets, the criminalisation of NGOs, and an excessive reliance on the Libyan Coast Guard have all contributed to causing an increase in the deadliness of irregular border crossings. As none of these processes is likely to be reversed in the near future, the Central Mediterranean route will continue to record a significant death toll. As the absolute number of crossings is likely to remain lower than in previous years, casualties at sea will not reach the 2016 peak. The relative deadliness of the route, however, is unlikely to significantly decrease in the near future.

Future burden-sharing arrangements ensuring the redistribution of migrants rescued at sea might partly overcome Italy and other Southern European countries’ migration crisis fatigue, reducing their current wariness to engage in proactive rescue operations. The perceived lack of solidarity from the rest of the EU has played a key role in pitting Italian authorities against rescue operations and those providing them, as epitomised by Rome’s increasing tendency to allow for the disembarkation of NGO ships rescuing migrants only after a relocation agreement with other European partners has been reached. Such arrangements, however, are difficult to reach and unlikely to be effectively implemented. The September 2019 Valletta summit, where only France and Germany committed to share the relocation of part of the migrants rescued off the coast of Libya with Italy and Malta, is a case in point. Ultimately, effective migrant redistribution would require a complete overhaul of the Dublin regulations, which makes countries of first entry responsible for processing asylum applications. Although the Von der Leyen commission pledged to revise the European asylum system, sufficient consensus among EU Member States is unlikely to emerge.

Conclusion

The very diverse origins, motivation and legal status of seaborne migrants heading to Europe, the geopolitical complexities of the Mediterranean region, and the fragility of the current border externalisation arrangements devised by the EU and its Member States belie any accurate forecast of migration across the Mediterranean. Keeping these limitations in mind, this paper surveyed irregular migration across the Central Mediterranean route over the last twenty years to identify some enduring dynamics and plausible future scenarios.

The demographic and the socioeconomic outlook of sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East suggest that northbound irregular migratory flows to Europe are inevitably set to continue. In the short term, however, the large-scale mobility flows triggered by the Arab uprisings will remain unmatched short of any major regional turmoil. Notwithstanding legal and ethical concerns, policies of onshore containment aimed at physically stopping migrants from reaching European borders will remain key instruments in the European Union and Italian migration governance toolkit. The combination of persisting migratory flows and containment policies will continue to cause casualties at sea, marring the Southern maritime borders of the EU with significant humanitarian externalities.

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157 E. Cusumano and M. Villa (2019).

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159 L. Mayblin (2016).

160 E. Cusumano, “Straightjacketing Migrant Rescuers? The Code of Conduct on Maritime NGOs”, Mediterranean Politics, vol. 24, no. 4, 2017, pp. 106-114.

6. The Future of Integration: New Technologies for a Migrant-Centric Approach

Enrico Coletta, Giulia Baistrocchi, Giuseppe Ciarliero, Luigi Limone

Migrant* Integration in Europe: Background

The integration of migrants and refugees in Europe is currently a complex and demanding challenge.
A few numbers help achieve a general understanding of the scale of the challenge ahead…

As of 1 January 2018, the number of extra-EU nationals legally residing in an EU Member State was 22.3 million, representing 4.4% of the total EU-28 population. Of these, 55% were residing in only three countries: Germany, Italy and France. These same three countries also accounted for almost 70% (~230,000) of asylum requests granted in the EU in 2018161. To give a sense of the composition of non-national citizens per country, the Figure 6.1 shows that in 2018 and in most EU Member States the majority of non-nationals were extra-EU citizens162.

Fig. 6.1 - Composition of non-national citizens per country

This figure give us a general understanding of the scale and complexity of the challenge ahead: migrant integration. Integration has been a hotly debated topic within the field of migration. Although the term has been generally referred to the adaptation process of immigrants, scholars have yet to agree on a consensual understanding of the definition, nature, and goals of integration. What is commonly accepted though, is that successful integration enables people to reduce inequalities in income, education, and health i as well as to improve access to services. According to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, the most problematic form of inequality is the one he defines as “inequality of opportunity”163. It occurs when people living in the same society do not have access to the same opportunities. It becomes apparent then, that a successful management of the integration process is paramount to minimise such inequalities, underpin social cohesion, and maximise the political, social and economic benefits that integration can bring to the overall development of the EU.

It is beyond the purpose of this essay to provide a literature review on the conceptualisation of the migrant and refugee integration process. What is important to know is that integration is a multi-dimensional process that encompasses various domains. To have a holistic understanding of the integration process, all factors that are known to contribute to the integration of migrants and refugees should be identified and thoroughly understood. Integration can also be defined as being a multi-actor process. This means that integration requires the involvement of a wide variety of actors, from the government to the private sector and civil society. No single actor, however capable, can take on the challenge of migrant integration on its own. As stated in the EU Common Basic Principles for the Immigrant document, integration is a two-way process of mutual accommodation by all migrants and by residents of the EU Member States.

State-level integration policies have resulted in a “variable geometry” Europe…

Each country has its own specificities and the quality of national integration policies varies widely across European States. At the same time, migrants are not all the same. Beneficiaries of international protection, for example, face obstacles to lasting integration in their new countries that other migrants don’t ever have to be confronted with. As a consequence, it is not surprising that each country must tailor its own integration process to its specific context. The European Migration Network has recently conducted a study on the state of play of national integration measures in EU Member States and Norway in 2018164. As illustrated in the map on the left, a total of 18 Member States and Norway adopted measures related to the enhancement of language skills targeted at third-country nationals; 19 Member States and Norway implemented legislative measures, policies and practices to foster labour market integration of third-country nationals; while 15 Member States and Norway reported new developments regarding improving access to social security, social assistance, healthcare, housing, and other basic services.

…while the European Union has only been able to provide guidelines and common basic principles…

As stated earlier, in the European Union’s immigrant integration policies are a national competence. Nonetheless, since the 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam, the EU has periodically set priorities and guidelines for the EU Member States in this area, as shown by the Tampere Programme, which highlighted the need to define common goals towards a more vigorous integration policy for third-country nationals living in the EU. The 2004 “Common basic principles” document represents another stepping stone, as they have guided and continue to guide most EU actions in the area of integration. With the signature of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, the EU and its institutions have received the official mandate to provide incentives and support to EU Member States with a view to promoting the integration of third-country nationals. The latest development in this area is the 2016 EU Action Plan on the Integration of Third-Country Nationals165 that sets out key policy priorities and specific tools to help Member States develop and strengthen their integration policies. The revised integration strategy defined in recent years comes as a response to the need to intensify long-term responses and consolidate the efforts of all stakeholders involved. An important element of the revised approach is the use of technology for integration purposes. The Commission stated that the innovative use of technology, social media and the internet needs to be fostered at all stages of the integration process.

Information and communication technologies are considered to be the key to a better management of the integration process, but are European countries ready for this?

The use of technology constitutes a new dimension in the study of migration and integration processes. The impact of technology on migration is undeniable, as it facilitates the process of migration in all aspects of the journey, from the pre-migratory phase to integration in the host country. Personal computers, mobile phones, the Internet and social media have become everyday tools for migrants. One notable development has been the advent of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Blockchain, together with financial technology institutions (“Fintech”) using phone-based apps instead of costly physical infrastructures. The potential of these new technologies to disrupt the sector is only beginning to be recognised and exploited. While such technologies have been permeating most sectors of developed country economies since the mid-2010s, they are only recently starting to come into their own in the field of migrant and refugee integration. Considering the substantial impact of ICT tools on every aspect of the migration process, digital technologies are seen by the EU as a game changer for migration and the integration process.

At the same time though, the use and application of technology is not evenly spread across EU countries. As a matter of fact, the 2019 Digital Economy and Society Index166 (DESI), in this paper used as a proxy for technological readiness and thus as an indicator of integration service quality, shows that several EU countries score quite poorly. The Index measures Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU Member States in digital competitiveness across five dimensions. What emerges is that the speed at which EU countries have improved their digital performance over the years is not homogenous. While Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark (“Top performers” cluster in the graph below) scored the highest ratings in DESI 2019 and are amongst the global leaders in digitalisation, other countries lag behind considerably in this domain.

Among the countries that display shares of non-EU citizens to total population between 4% and 8% we also find the clusters of “Good performers” and “Urgent intervention needed”. This latter cluster includes countries such as Italy and Greece, which have high shares of non-EU citizens and a low DESI score. Italy, for example, which in 2018 was the second-highest country in the EU for number of non-EU28 citizens, is in the bottom five DESI scores. We claim that the level of digital readiness should be at least close to the current average in countries that display high shares of extra-EU citizens (“Urgent intervention needed” cluster). Countries in the “Intervention needed” cluster have lower shares of extra-EU citizens, but appear to be well below average in terms of digital performance, and thus of the quality of services connected to the integration of migrants and refugees.

If we take these results together with the latest (2017167) data of the European Quality of Government Index (EQI), one of the few measures of institutional quality available at the regional level in the European Union, we see a great disparity in the quality of national government services. In this context, institutional quality is defined as a multi-dimensional concept consisting of high impartiality and quality of public service delivery, along with low corruption168. According to the EQI, while most regions in Northern Europe have remained among the top performers in quality of government (e.g. Finland and the Netherlands), recent years have seen steps backwards in numerous southern regions, particularly in Italy (which is ranked second-worst), Greece and Spain.

While it is true that new technologies may be the key enabler for designing and implementing better integration strategies, countries must also be well-equipped to take advantage of what digital innovation can offer. For this to be possible, better policies are crucial. Currently, there appears to be a plethora of EU-level initiatives that although successful, cannot be coherently linked with one another in an integrated fashion. This could be the result of an ineffective policy framework that prevents governments and the wider society from consistently cooperating towards a common goal. It appears, therefore, that the EU as a whole needs improvement not only to be able to compete on the global stage of digital competitiveness, but also to tackle more efficiently and effectively its migration and integration challenges: issues that are undermining the very essence of the European Union project. Moreover, since services targeting migrants are often universal services which support citizenship, a general improvement of public policies improving migrant citizenship would surely produce positive externalities for the community as a whole.

How Technologies Can Improve Integration of Migrants and Refugees

The application of ICTs to the process of integration is not homogenous across Europe…

Despite the lack of a specific policy framework, several bottom-up initiatives have spread across Europe to tackle the integration issue, especially during and after the 2014-2015 refugee crisis. In order to evaluate the state of the art of the current migrant integration process, we have selected 60 of these initiatives that use technology to various degrees to address the challenges and specificities presented by each different domain of the integration process.

…there exist several domains of the integration process of migrants and refugees that must be addressed…

As anticipated in earlier sections, the integration of migrants and refugees is a multi-dimensional process that covers several domains. One way to look at it is through the framework developed by Strang and Ager (2010)169, which has proven to be a good theorisation of what the criteria, processes, and contexts of integration are. The framework is structured around four main key areas: Means and markers, Social connections networks, Facilitators, and Foundation.

The indicators within the first area of Means and Markers include the domains of Employment, Education, Housing, and Health. These four domains refer to the “public sphere” of integration170. These domains are considered to be “markers” because success in these categories is an indication of positive integration outcomes; and “means” because success in these domains is likely to positively influence and contribute to the wider integration process. These four domains both demonstrate progress towards integration and support to achievements in other areas.

The second area of Social connections networks emphasises the importance of relationships in the process of migrant and refugee integration. These domains refer to the more “private sphere” of integration171. The framework identifies three main different forms of relationships that are important to the integration process: social bonds, social bridges, and social links. “Social bonds” refers to connections with others with a shared sense of identity; “social bridges” refers to connections with people of different backgrounds; and “social links” refers to connections with institutions, including local and central government services. “Bonds” and “bridges” describe relationships between individuals within a society and can be understood as ‘horizontal’ relationships. Social links refer to the “vertical” relationships between people and the institutions of the society in which they live.

The third area of Facilitators includes the competences that are required for individuals to effectively integrate into the wider community. According to the Strang and Ager (2010)172 framework these are “Language”, “Cultural knowledge”, and “Safety and security”. Knowledge of the local language and culture are crucial indicators of integration. It is interesting to note that cultural knowledge refers to migrants and refugees obtaining knowledge of the dominant local culture as well as locals acquiring knowledge of the circumstances and culture of migrants.

Fig. 6.2 - The integration process framework

The domain of “Safety and security” deals with issues of racial harassment and fear of crime. Research confirms the importance of a sense of personal safety and security in allowing people to engage with services and with other people in order to establish their lives and to integrate. It is important to include a fourth indicator in this category: “Digital skills”. The addition of digital skills, not originally present in the model, reflects the significant developments in new ICTs that have taken place since the original indicators were published. This reflects the fact that nowadays access to people, services, and rights is often facilitated by or dependent on technology.

The fourth area of Foundation assesses the degree to which migrants and refugees are provided with the basis for full and equal engagement within their host society173. Ideas of citizenship and nationality – and their associated rights – fundamentally shape what counts as integration in a specific context. The acquisition of citizenship and exercise of the rights and actions this entails (such as voting) in itself provides an important bedrock to the integration of any individual in a society.

…and there are hundreds of stand-alone bottom-up
initiatives that set out to address the challenges of integration by integrating ICTs in their business models…

On the basis of the framework we analysed in the previous paragraph, we will identify some of the most interesting initiatives that address the challenges of the integration of migrants and refugees by leveraging the synergies created by the application of information and communication technologies.

We were able to map 60 bottom-up initiatives, which are shown in Index I. Initiatives were identified across all domains included in the integration framework presented in earlier paragraphs. What emerges is a quite diversified environment. While there are projects that try to cover several domains of the integration process (e.g. initiatives 3 and 11), other focus on just one (e.g. initiatives 5 and 6). For what concerns implemented digital tools, there appears to be a greater diffusion of solutions that mostly use “apps and web-based platforms” as well as “websites and social media”. Across our sample only a handful of projects implemented more advanced digital tools such as AI, Blockchain, Fintech, and Big Data, and mainly to address the areas of Means and Markers and Facilitators. For what concerns the “most addressed domains”, it appears that a good number of mapped initiatives are trying to tackle the challenges posed by “Employment (1a)”, “Social Bridges (2b)” and “Education (1b)” through the use of social media, apps and web-based platforms.

Through desk research and interviews with experts, a short-list of 12 projects that are considered to be examples of best practices in the integration of migrants and refugees in Europe was compiled and is presented below. Each initiative focuses on one or more domains of the integration process and has a distinctive way of addressing the challenge at hand.

Some initiatives use Artificial Intelligence to identify the ideal country of relocation…

As highlighted by our research, one of the biggest challenges in the integration process of migrants and refugees is access to the job market. We mapped two initiatives that developed a software that uses big data and machine learning to identify the country of relocation in which a migrant would have the best chances of finding a job, thus facilitating integration. The IPL algorithm (Initiative 5), developed by the Immigration Policy Lab (Stanford and Zurich Universities), is an algorithm that accurately predicts where a migrant has more possibilities to find a job. The algorithm has been tested in the United States and in Switzerland and it led to a significant increase in the employment prospects of migrants and refugees in both countries. The second project (Initiative 6), named after Annie Moore, a famous Irish immigrant to the United States, is an artificial Intelligence-powered software, developed by the universities of Oxford and Lind, which is able to match refugees to specific locations by using data such as their needs, skills, and the number of available country resources and opportunities.

…or to match migrants and refugees to opportunities that will accelerate their integration.

Rafiqi (Initiative 13) is a multi-awarded online platform that leverages artificial intelligence to match migrants and refugees to opportunities that will accelerate their integration. The creator, an immigrant from the Middle East who moved to Europe 10 years ago and relocated to the UK, identified some of the challenges that are currently hindering the realisation of refugee integration prospects. These include, “firstly, the fact that a single platform where newcomers can navigate the range of opportunities available to them, and where NGOs, universities, employers and volunteering mentors can access and filter refugee talent, appears to be missing”. Secondly, that newcomers’ unawareness of the right opportunities results in them being unemployed or being overqualified for what they are doing and thirdly, while there are significant efforts by governments and NGOs to match refugees to opportunities in countries like Germany and the Netherlands, scaling these efforts cannot be done manually given the number and diversity of both refugee profiles and available opportunities. Therefore, the Rafiqi platform sets out to address these challenges by allowing users to discover and navigate government services themselves and to be matched in real-time and in a customised fashion to the services that better suit their profiles and needs. The product is currently being pilot-tested among a selected group of refugees in London and Berlin with services including access to jobs, job coaching programmes, technical training, language/cultural training, access to mentors, accredited certifications, and university degrees.

Others rely on face-to-face interaction by matching young migrants with experienced local mentors
to find a job…

DUO for a JOB (Initiative 20) is a non-profit association that was created on the basis of a two-fold observation: on the one hand, Belgium has one of the weakest activity rates in Europe for people over 50 years of age and on the other hand, young people with a migrant background are faced with common issues when accessing the labour market. Since 2013, DUO for a JOB has been addressing this twofold challenge by putting these two groups of people in touch through the use of a software that matches young migrants to experienced mentors. The association offers a cultural and intergenerational mentoring programme by creating duos: young job seekers with a migrant background (the mentees) are paired with people over the age of 50 (mentors), ideally from the same professional sector so that the mentors can support and guide their mentee in the job hunting. With offices in Brussels, Liège and Ghent, DUO for a JOB has formed over 2,200 duos thanks to more than 750 mentors. According to Advocacy Director Julie Bodson, 73% of mentees have enjoyed a positive outcome (short-term permanent contract, traineeship, training programmes) within the 12 months following their coaching. The objective of the association is to eliminate inequalities in access to the labour market for migrants and to combat discrimination by re-creating social cohesion, understanding and local solidarity.

…and some others support them in preparing personalised skills profile.

Skilllab (Initiative 1) is a skill assessment tool to identify and document the professional skills of job seekers quickly and in any language. As stated by its Managing Director Ulrich Scharf,

our experience is mostly in the areas of employment and adult education since we specifically work with organisations to support refugees and migrants find pathways to sustainable careers. We believe that in the long-term, employment itself is perhaps the most important domain of the integration process because of its outsized impact on other domains.

Skilllab uses Artificial intelligence to interview users (in their native language) about the skills and knowledge that they acquired over the course of their lives. A mobile application enables users to capture past experiences of any kind and perform a skill assessment for all those past experiences. The resulting skill profiles are automatically generated and professionally translated into the language of the user’s choice, producing detailed, professionally formatted documentation to be used with career counselling services and employment and education providers. Scharf continues by stating that although employment of migrants does receive much attention from the public sector, many authorities with significant migrant and refugee populations are focusing on a

one-size-fits all approach to service provision that, by failing to provide highly personalised services to the individual, is at best ineffective and at worst counter-productive, leading to longer unemployment periods, and the shoe-horning of migrants into low-skilled, low-wage positions that neither provide the migrant with growth opportunity, nor take advantage of their skills on the labour market.

Some focus on providing relevant and high-quality information to migrants and refugees…

Refugee.Info (Initiative 11) is a digital and interactive platform which leverages social media and social networks to communicate directly with refugees and people seeking asylum in Italy. The main goal of the project is to help refugees and asylum seekers access accurate information concerning their rights and safety, including asylum procedures, enrolling in school, and accessing health care and the labour market. Refugee.Info (RI) is the European instance of Signpost, a joint initiative launched by the International Rescue Committee and Mercy Corps in 2015 at the height of the European refugee crisis. This initiative was designed to respond directly to the needs of refugees arriving in Greece with “nothing but their cell phones”. “Since then” states RI Project Officer Elena Caracciolo, “we have expanded our activities across Europe and we have already reached almost 1.4 million refugees and asylum seekers in Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Serbia”. Thanks to its partners, free Wi-Fi stations have been installed in areas of high concentration of refugees (Ventimiglia, Como, Rome, Foggia, and Milan), to ensure internet connection and allow users to access the platform. According to Caracciolo “refugees and asylum seekers use social media outlets as their primary source of information. The use of social media helps us dialogue in real time with people and provide a personalised support. For example, between March 2018 and October 2019, we’ve received ~30.000 messages on Messenger from over 4.000 unique users and we were able to achieve a within-15h 96% response rate (Facebook Analytics)”. The Project Officers continues by sharing some findings of the recently conducted internal impact report by stating that “76% of respondents believe that they are better informed after using Refugee.Info and that the information provided is trustworthy. This is particularly significant when considering that the target population is distrustful of information on social media when it does not come from peers”.

…while others help them simplify complex bureaucracy, improve their digital skills…

Bureaucrazy (Initiative 2) is an app designed by two Syrian asylum seekers that are on a mission to simplify German bureaucracy not just for all the people who have sought asylum there since 2013 but also ordinary migrants. The app combines three basic functions: a translation service that renders German official documents into Arabic and English, a multiple-choice decision tree for frequently encountered problems, and a mapping service that sends applicants to the right council office. The hope of the founders is that their product could “guide those arriving in Germany through everything from opening their own bank account, renting a flat, applying for a university course or registering at a job centre”. The app has been developed at ReDI School (Initiative 56), a Berlin non-profit “school for digital integration” that teaches technology and how to code to asylum seekers and newcomers in Germany. It offers quality training and the chance to collaborate with the German start-up and digital industry. The aim is to provide students with valuable digital skills and a strong network of tech leaders, students and alumni to help create new opportunities for all. Since its foundation the School has expanded to Munich and Copenhagen and is also able to offer free online courses thanks to its partners Microsoft and Cisco Networking Academy.

…or learn the language and local culture.

According to Co-founder & CMO @SPEAK, Mariana Brilhante, the greatest challenges migrants face in the integration process in their new countries are language barriers, being away from friends and family, ethnic and religious discrimination, and complex bureaucratic processes. These are the domains of the integration process that SPEAK, a Portuguese startup (Initiative 17), focuses on. SPEAK brings together newcomers and locals living in the same city through community-led language groups and cultural exchange events. Through these experiences, participants learn from each other, explore common interests and make new friends, breaking down barriers and tackling prejudice in their cities along the way. As people learn new languages together, they are also breaking down barriers and creating strong and meaningful relationships. Participants rely on these new relationships to seek help to solve various problems, such as translating a CV, babysitting, renting a house or even finding a job. Relationships that are formed and experienced face-to-face have a much more profound impact on people’s lives compared to relationships formed online. SPEAK uses an Online2Offline model to deliver its experience. Most of its processes are managed online through an platform developed in-house to ensure greater efficiency, minimisation of fixed costs, and greater scalability. The learning and sharing experiences happen face to face, allowing participants to establish a close and meaningful relationship with one another. The project appears to be particularly interesting also for its scalability. Over the past five years, SPEAK has become a community of over 30,000 people from 160 different nationalities who are spread over 30 cities globally.

Finally, some others do not create solutions directly but rather act as aggregators of experts and entrepreneurs…

Aware of the importance of technology as a tool to tackle the migrant integration issue, Techfugees (Initiative 3) is an international non-profit organisation that acts as a global platform to find solutions to the migrant crisis. The organisation defines itself “not as a platform that creates solutions directly but rather one that creates bridges and links between experts in order to implement high-tech solutions to the migrant-crisis and help displaced people to meet their needs in terms of access to rights information, access to employment, access to education, health and social inclusion”. To do so, Techfugees organizes meetups and hackathons and it now counts a community of almost 18,000 innovators from across the world. Among the initiatives that were supported by Techfugees there are Integreat (Initiative 10), one of the largest local information apps for newcomers in Germany, and Antura and the Letters (Initiative 60), a free and open source smartphone game designed in Germany to help refugee Syrian children learn reading, no matter where they are and with no need for Internet connection.

These few examples show us that there are numerous unconnected initiatives with a strong know-how, high potential and innovative ideas that if taken together and embedded in a coherent and holistic policy framework could be applied on a larger scale and benefit the entire European continent.

The Increased Role of the State in the Digital Era

Technology is essential, but why is it so hard for governments to use it? What should they do?

As shown in the previous section, there are plenty of interesting initiatives and solutions developed to support the integration of migrants through digital and innovative tools. Despite all the excellent impacts on the community that such bottom-up experiences can bring, there is still an urgent need for the State to drive and encourage these developments. As a matter of fact, the digital revolution has changed the world in unprecedented ways, impacting significantly the way public and social services are delivered to citizens. In addition to that, digitalisation is expected to play a key role in leveraging the transformation of the public sector at large, given its potential to increase productivity and inclusiveness of service production and delivery in public welfare areas. Moreover, e-Services reduce the time spent in public administrations and this encourages people to use them174.

Fig. 6.3 - e-Government users between 2013 and 2018
(% of total EU citizens)

In this respect, over the past year all EU countries improved their digital performance. For example, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark scored the highest ratings in DESI 2019 and are among the global leaders in digitalisation. Some other countries however still have a long way to go, and the EU as a whole needs improvement to be able to compete on the global stage.

The Figure 6.4 below shows that while digital technologies have made remarkable advances, the understanding of digital transformation in the public sector in some countries has not.

Fig. 6.4 – The Digital Economy and Society Index (2019)

The low rate of digital innovation in some countries suggests that there are deeper structural barriers and challenges to face, which are also related to the conservative and risk-averse traditions of the public sector, as also demonstrated by an INSEAD/EY study analysing the black box of digital transformation in governments175. Together with the frequent absence of sound policy logic and the complexities in introducing cutting-edge technologies, the black box in technology implementation is deeply linked with the public service culture, which can be a major barrier to digital innovation as it rarely involves innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking.

The above demonstrates that, when faced with the challenges of creating the digitally enabled public sector of the future, governments have some critical aspects to consider. Firstly, technologies have the potential to help governments create a safer environment for all their citizens, while keeping relevant and strategic interests safe. Finding a balance between the necessary values and rights for democratic functioning of the society and the protection of personal privacy is crucial. Strengthening surveillance on citizens through Big Data applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning introduces significant restrictions on private life and the protection of personal data. This could particularly be the case for third-country nationals living in a host country, as technologies can be used to better identify them for security reasons, register them into specific databases, and exercise control on their movements and personal lives.

Secondly, governments should take into consideration that many of today’s most fundamental challenges can be tackled more efficiently through the exploitation of smart infrastructures, as they offer a way to harness the latest technologies to obtain maximum value and find more sustainable solutions to global challenges, such as urbanisation, climate change, and migration management. As regards in particular the integration of third-country nationals, smart infrastructures can reduce the distance between migrants and service providers, promote the creation of innovative models for diversity management, and improve management of resources through smarter spending and investment in targeted programs and services for long-term, sustainable inclusion. In this respect, smart cities projects become key. They apply technologies to find vision-driven, community-based solutions to the most urgent challenges posed by globalisation. Through a technologically-focused vision, the cities of the future will contribute to reforming governments to successfully implement their economic vision, while also establishing stronger participatory networks and improved communication tools for more inclusive societies.

Thirdly, the public sector should improve capabilities in the public sector and re-imagine work in order to achieve better efficiency, elevate customer focus, and strengthen diversity and inclusion. This means that governments should invest more time and resources in strengthening the digital skills of their citizens. Accelerating citizens’ upskilling or reskilling towards the needs introduced by the digital revolution is therefore crucial. In this respect, third-country nationals and citizens can be introduced together into education pathways to develop and improve digital skills and create high-quality training networks for the creation of new opportunities for all.

While technologies can sometimes have some drawbacks, such as restrictions on personal data and private life, they offer many opportunities to the public sector and their role is becoming crucial in our everyday life. As a result, governments should consider the possibilities of harnessing ICTs to rethink the way in which their services are delivered to the public, with the aim of putting citizens at the core of their actions as well as strengthening citizen engagement through the creation of inclusive models and platforms.

The answer is: Rethinking integration through migrant-centricity

With regard to the integration of third-country nationals, results taken from Section 2 show that bottom-up approaches offer great examples of how technologies can be implemented to foster different aspects of the migrant integration process, from facilitating access to rights and information, education and the labour market to language facilitation and the promotion of social connections and links. However, bottom-up initiatives are not sufficient to promote migrant integration by themselves and they should therefore be supported by the States through well-structured policy strategies. Taking into consideration the needs deriving from the challenges posed by migrant integration, EU governments and public administrations are increasingly mandated to support bottom-up initiatives not only through the creation of platforms and ecosystems - where resources, means and good practices can be exchanged - but also through the creation of a policy framework capable of nurturing innovation and digitalisation.

Within the context of a renovated and digitally enabled public sector, citizens – as well as third country nationals – might be viewed as customers and be incorporated in decision-making processes, programmes and services that involve and affect everyone. To renew their focus on citizen engagement, governments are therefore required to empower their citizens to acquire digital skills and engage in a meaningful dialogue to promote new practices aiming to better serve their citizens while also maximising the profits deriving from the implementation of citizen-friendly solutions. Fully engaged citizens can make significant contributions to policies and programs related to every aspect of city life and government services, as well as fostering innovative approaches to tackle public policy challenges in a more efficient way.

As regards migrant integration, multi-stakeholder approaches through digital innovation have the potential to put migrants and their needs at the core of public policy strategies. Migrants will therefore have the opportunity to show their preferences, advance their needs and interests, and choose the best solutions in terms of opportunities for social inclusion, as regards for example access to the labour market, language facilitation, co-housing, financial support, welfare, and healthcare systems. Within this new framework, EU governments and public administrations are mandated to facilitate access to public and social services by developing specific support tools and platforms for integration which will have the capacity to embed the good practices demonstrated by bottom-up initiatives across Europe.

Conclusion

What should migrant integration in Europe look like in the future?

The integration of migrants and refugees across the EU remains a challenge for both public authorities and local communities. As we have seen above, to date there is no uniform, holistic approach to migrant integration and so far, Member States have implemented approaches focusing on different aspects of the integration process. In order to support the implementation of well-structured and efficient integration policies, EU public administrations will have to take into consideration the key role which can be played by technology. While facilitating the management of integration actions as well as improving autonomy and inclusion and, consequently, the lives of migrants, these tools may also help alleviate the tasks of public administrations and local authorities.

Technology constitutes an important resource for the employability and integration of immigrants. ICTs can be used by immigrants to look for a job, get their qualifications recognised, learn the language and culture of the host country, create social bonds, develop new skills, and access information about available education, health or other services or about legislative and administrative information on the host country. Given ICT’s potential in designing better integration strategies, EU Member States must be well-equipped to take advantage of what digital innovation can offer. In this respect, EU governments and administrations are required to make new efforts to understand how digitalisation is changing the way social services should be organised and delivered, thus focusing their attention on putting citizens at the core of their actions and finding practical solutions to social challenges.

Ensuring a migrant-centric approach is key to promote the sustainability of policy actions in the so-called digital era. By allowing citizens to participate in the definition of contents and strategies, EU governments and public administrations can re-appropriate their power to deliver efficient services to face complex problems, such as the integration of migrants. To do so, they should be able to implement a multi-stakeholder approach involving public and private actors as well as third-sector organisations and harness ICT’s potential in fostering social inclusion. Specifically, EU governments must ensure that solutions are designed by taking into consideration the needs of the people who face the challenges, i.e. migrants and refugees who should be at the heart of the actions. Furthermore, EU public actors may elaborate strategies which are scalable from the national to the local level, transferable to other areas geographically, and adaptable to the changing needs of today’s society.

In conclusion, digital solutions can lead the way towards better customised services which can benefit both third-country nationals and EU societies and promote the implementation of concrete action plans to ensure the long-term sustainability of migrant integration processes, with public actors setting standards and guidelines while keeping migrants at the centre of their policy strategy.

Annex I: Mapping of Bottom-Up Initiatives Across the Integration Framework

161* Here, the term “migrants” refers to extra-EU citizens that have migrated to the European Union, including people who have been granted asylum in one of the Member States.

Refers to total positive first instance and final decisions (Eurostat data).

162 Eurostat data.

163 A.K. Sen, Development as freedom, Anchor Books, 1999.

164 European Migration Network (EMN), Annual Report on Migration and Asylum 2018, May 2019.

165 European Commission, “Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, Action Plan on the Integration of Third-Country Nationals”, COM (2016) 377 final, 7 June 2016.

166 The DESI is a composite index that summarises relevant indicators on Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU Member States in digital competitiveness.

167 N. Charron, V. Lapuent, and P. Annoni, “Measuring Quality of Government in EU Regions Across Space and Time”, Papers in Regional Science, DOI: 10.1111/pirs.12437, 2019.

168 European Quality of Government, Index 2017.

169 A. Strang and A. Ager,” Refugee integration: Emerging trends and remaining agendas”, Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 23, 2010, pp. 589-607.

170 S. Lomba, “Legal status and refugee integration: A UK perspective”, Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 23, 2010, pp. 415-436.

171 A. Ager and A. Strang, “Understanding integration: A conceptual framework”, Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 21, 2008, pp. 166-191.

172 A. Strang, and A. Ager (2010).

173 A. Ager and A. Strang (2008).

174 European Commission, Digital Public Services: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/digital-public-services-scoreboard

175 Inside the black box - Journey mapping digital innovation in government: https://centres.insead.edu/innovation-policy/documents/InsidetheBlackBox.pdf

The Authors

Daniele Albanese is Migration policies and International protection Officer in Caritas Italiana. Coordinator of implementing and advocating at EU level of Humanitarian Corridors and other safe and legal pathways from Africa and Middle East countries to Italy/Europe (Humanitarian Evacuation, Family Reunification, Resettlement, etc). Migration Expert in Mobility Program for West Africa and Europe. Board of Consorzio Communitas (Italian national consortium of territorial Caritas), in charge of European projects, social planning and integration area. International Area and Migration Office Coordinator in Caritas Biella. Migration and development project responsible in Caritas Piedmont-Valle D’Aosta. Experiences in reception, social and labour market integration projects for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees (SPRAR/SIPROIMI, CAS, Counselling, legal advisory, Emergency etc).

Giulia Baistrocchi is a Senior Consultant at EY Italy in the Government & Public Sector Team. Currently she assists the Department of Civil Liberties and Immigration of the Italian Ministry of the Interior as a researcher and is also involved in projects on the evaluation and impact assessment of EU policies. She has a multi-year cross-industry previous experience in strategy consulting. Giulia’s educational background includes a MSc in Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a MSc in International Management from the CEMS Programme – HEC Paris and a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Business from LUISS University.

Giuseppe Ciarliero is a Manager at EY in the Government & Public Sector Team. He is a policy analyst with a track record of different projects delivered for several institutions - at the national and international level - with a focus on digital and social innovation. Giuseppe is currently assisting the Italian Ministry of Interior for the governance and management of migration funds and collaborates on a European project aiming at improving the policy-making in the migration, asylum and integration fields. He holds a MA in International Relations and a BA in Political Science and has studied abroad at The Hague University (The Netherlands) and at the LSE (UK).

Michael Clemens is director of migration, displacement, and humanitarian policy and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he studies the economic effects and causes of migration around the world. He has published on migration, development, economic history, and impact evaluation, in peer-reviewed academic journals including the American Economic Review, and his research has been awarded the Royal Economic Society Prize. He also serves as a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics and World Development. He is the author of the book The Walls of Nations, forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Previously, Clemens has been an Affiliated Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a visiting scholar at New York University, and a consultant for the World Bank, Bain & Co., the Environmental Defense Fund, and the United Nations Development Program. He has lived and worked in Colombia, Brazil, and Turkey. He received his PhD from the Department of Economics at Harvard University, specializing in economic development, public finance, and economic history.

Enrico Coletta is Senior Manager in EY Government and Public Sector, EMPA candidate at the London School of Economics. He has 15 years of experience in managing large scale projects around three policy areas, migration, social inclusion and innovation. He has been supporting EU and Home Affairs Ministries through transformation project linked to a better management of funds and technology. Integration, Asylum, Return and Resettlement and how innovation could improve these policy areas is his main area of interest.

Elena Corradi is a Research Assistant in the Migration Programme at ISPI. Her research focuses on migration from Africa to Europe, in particular on today’s flows and their projections in the medium-run, European migration governance and integration policies. Furthermore, she is data co-supervisor for the 2019 and 2020 ISPI/Treccani Geopolitical Atlas.

Eugenio Cusumano is Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) Migration Policy Centre and assistant professor in International Relations at the University of Leiden. He holds a PhD from the EUI and was previously a Fulbright Scholar at the Korbel School of International Studies in Denver. His research, focusing non-state actors and military organizations’ involvement in crisis management on land and at sea, was publishing in leading academic journals including the Journal of Strategic Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, Mediterranean Politics, International Relations, as well as publishers like Oxford and Stanford University Press. He has been frequently cited by media outlets like the Guardian, Repubblica, Euronews, Liberation, the Parisien, Die Zeit, and others.

Helen Dempster is the Assistant Director and Senior Associate for policy outreach for the Migration, Displacement, and Humanitarian Policy Program at the Center for Global Development. Prior to joining CGD, she worked for five years in research communications at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the International Growth Centre (IGC). Dempster holds a MicroMasters in Data, Economics and Development Policy from MIT, a master’s in Africa and International Development from the University of Edinburgh, and undergraduate degrees in Law, Public Policy and International Relations from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Marta Foresti is the Director of ODI’s Human Mobility Initiative, leading the institute engagement on migration at global, regional and local level. She is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs and the London School of Economics and she is acting as senior policy advisor for the consultation of the Global Compact For Migration and to the IOM’s Research Syndicate. She is a member of the Advisory Board of Refugeesdeeply.com, of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Migration Policy and Practice as well as of the Board of PorCausa.org. She holds a master degrees in logic and philosophy of science from the London School of Economics and from Milan State University.

Kate Gough was a Research Associate at Center for Global Development for the program on Migration, Displacement, and Humanitarian Development, where she supported the migration and refugee teams and worked on the Global Skill Partnerships research.

Jessica Hagen-Zanker coordinates ODI’s migration research and leads our contributions to two five-year projects on migration and development, MIGNEX (EC funded) and the GCRF UKRI South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub. Her research focuses on understanding how migration and economic and social policies affect migrant decision-making, impacts of migration on migrants and their families, the interlinkages between migration and social protection, covering a diverse range of countries, including Albania, Ethiopia and Nepal. Jessica also has extensive experience in the design and analysis of household surveys, conducting systematic literature reviews and the analysis of social protection programmes and policies. She holds a PhD in Public Policy from Maastricht University.

Luigi Limone is a Junior Consultant at EY Government & Public Sector. He has been providing policy advisory and technical assistance to the Department on Civil Liberties and Immigration of the Italian Ministry of the Interior. He has experience in managing projects on Asylum, Migration and Social Inclusion, with a specific focus on Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration. Before joining EY, he was a Research Trainee at ISPI and, previously, he worked for the Secretariat of the Unit on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs at the European Parliament in Brussels. Refugee protection, migrant integration and social innovation policies are among his main areas of interest.

Christopher Smart is a reader of Migration, Mobility and Development (MSc) at SOAS, University of London. Professionally he specialises in refugee and migrant education, working with UK universities to develop scholarships and access pathways to support these groups. Christopher also works with ODI’s Human Mobility Institute in a research capacity.

Matthieu Tardis is a researcher at Ifri’s Centre for Migration and Citizenship. He graduated from the Institute of Higher European Studies in Strasbourg and worked for a French refugee assistance organisation before joining Ifri in 2015. His research focuses on European asylum and migration policies. He has mainly published on the right to seek asylum in Europe and on partnerships between the European Union and African countries on migration issues. Since September 2018, he has been co-ordinating Ifri’s Observatory of Migration and Asylum which aims to provide French migration actors with a forum for exchange and expertise.

Matteo Villa, P.hD., is Research Fellow at the Migration Programme and the Europe and Global Governance Centre at ISPI. His work focusses on international migration flows, European migration policies, and the quantitative aspects of migration to Europe. He is a member of the T20 Task Force on Forced Migration, which provides policy recommendations to the G20. Over the years, he has also provided research and evidence to the European Parliament, the Italian Parliament, the UK House of Commons, and the Municipality of Milan.