How Do States Manage Migration?

Today, state migration policies are often contracted to, and formulated by, international organizations like the UNHCR. However, its effectiveness is commonly debated in academic circles. To begin, I wish to discuss the judicial limitations of organizations like the UNHCR and IOM. As mentioned by Ashutosh and Mountz (2009), the power of the IOM lies not in juridical and legislative design as many would think, but in its operations within legal loopholes in the crossroads between domestic and international law; capitalizing on what seems like faulty legislation on the state’s part (p. 28). The IOM also imposes its will through discursive and technocratic means such as by legitimizing their policy actions on humanitarian grounds. Similarly, an interesting point raised by Koch (2014) in relation to this is that the UNHCR too works under legitimizing rather than operational pretexts to maintain its mechanisms of authority (p. 918). This is incredibly shocking to me because it illustrates just how little supranational powers over governments these otherwise huge organizations have that they need to resort to using seemingly “illegitimate” methods to preserve their political clout and influence. The lack of a powerful juridical architecture, that is quintessential in controlling state behaviour, is a key problematic here.

Admittedly, humanitarian organizations like the UNHCR seems to be losing the confidence of its benefactors in recent times; leaving them no choice but to constrain their array of humanitarian operations. I believe this is one of the reasons why the UNHCR and IOM are constantly mired in controversies; in particular, the bias albeit sensational media claims for their “lack of action” which should really be “lack of money for action”. In the 2018 Standing Committee Meeting, the UNHCR in April received only $2.3 billion, highlighting a staggering funding gap from the $8.2 billion they need to maintain operations (Clements, 2018). This issue is further compounded by the lack of support from their most important contributor, the United States, who have since limited the scope of the American refugee program by decreasing the refugees it would accept from 111,000 during Obama’s administration to just 18,000 in the Trump administration (Shear & Kanno-Youngs, 2019). With the rise of right-wing nationalist groups throughout the European Union in recent years, the BBC reports that the UNHCR will not be able to turn to them for support as well (2019). Evidently, the UNHCR lacks not only the financial funding they need to carry out their humanitarian commitments but also the political leverage that is paramount in advancing international migratory policies.  

Moving on, I will discuss migration policies as a result of domestic and regional policymaking. According to Cheung (2012), there are various ways in which states manage migration. Thailand’s immigration bureau, for example, is handled by its police force who enforces the immigration acts stipulated by the Ministry of the Interior (p. 56). Resettlement schemes seem to be Thailand’s de facto solution to handling refugees based in camps. Additionally, Thailand places strong emphasis on punishment for undocumented persons (p. 59). This is in-line with the author’s claim that migration policies pursued by ASEAN countries are usually punitive rather than durable; short-term rather than long-term (p. 51). The reality is indeed very grim. In an article by The Diplomat, ASEAN members are using the policy of non-interference to avoid dealing with the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar despite the charter’s guarantee for human rights (Piromya, 2020). Furthermore, UNHCR documentations not being formally recognized by the bulk of ASEAN countries, and that refugees are only granted protection under the discretion of the state adds insult to injury.

Insofar as migration is the study of the movement of people, the most important insight I gathered from reading these articles is how discussions on migration and migration policies can be applied almost seamlessly with the psychological sciences. The book Behave (2017) by Dr Robert Sapolsky argues that our brains form  “Us” vs “Them” dichotomies that compels us to favour one group, usually our own, over another; so enthralling of a fact this is that fifty milliseconds is all it takes to activate the amygdala, or the region responsible for threat detection, after seeing a foreign face (p. 387). In this light, I believe xenophobia has its origins in “Us” vs “Them” in that local people of a society often fail to accept a foreign migrant because they are different from them. This dichotomy is relevant in explaining how states manage migration because political leaders themselves have certain biases that predisposes them to certain decisions on policymaking. Emerging populist leaders like Donald Trump in the West often endorse an “authoritarian” narrative against immigrants based on the notion that; 1) instability requires more security, 2) the need to preserve traditions through group conformity, and 3) support for leaders is paramount in protecting group interests (Edsall, 2019). This is equivalent to hate speech and racism and is just one example of how partisan identities will undoubtedly affect state migration policies; this can happen in any country regardless of political leaning.

            In spite of the UNHCR and the IOM being not as effective as one might wish they would be, they are nonetheless the lone martyrs in advocating a humanistic approach to migration that is so needed in a rapidly developing and globalized world. By looking at different academic avenues, we can see how states manage migration as well as the psychologies that define them.