REGIONAL TRENDS IN INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

Tamaz Zubiashvili, PhD

International migration and its study always attracted a great attention, but the interest in its study has been growing in recent years and the reason is the growth of its scales.

The massive and uncontrolled movement of population involving millions of people has become a salient and worrying feature of the whole world. Against a background of political instability, economic disorder and ethnic conflicts, the vast and diverse regions of the world have been experiencing the largest migratory flows since Second World War II. The scale and complexity of existing and potential problems of international migration have serious and far reaching implications for both migrants-sending and migrants-receiving countries and for the international community generally. Because of the increasing numbers of immigrants, immigration has become the top issue of the policy agenda in many developed countries of the world.
By 2007 about 190 million people lived outside their country of birth or citizenship. The intensity of international migration is characterized by the tendency of rapid growth. If until the 90s of the last century the number of international migrants grew by 2 million, now annually they are expanding by nearly 4 million and they account for about 3 percent of the world’s population. Enumeration of international migration is too difficult and complicated process. Many countries are unable to enumerate migratory flows and give their own estimation based on separate surveys and census data which are frequently less reliable.
The growth of international migration along with other factors was conditioned by the known political developments taking place in the world in the 90s of the last centuries when the new independent states emerged on the territories of Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union. The formation of new independent states created new state borders and this in turn increased the number of people who cross these borders.
The world migrant population is not spread evenly throughout the globe; it is concentrated in relatively few countries. 60% of the world’s migrants live in developed countries and 40% in the develop­ing world, particularly in those developing countries which are rich in oil, diamonds, and other natural re­sources, or with expanding manufac­turing industries. Foreign workers form the majority of the labor force in several Middle Eastern countries.
Ethnic and civil conflicts, wars, persecution, economic disorder and political instability impel people from their home countries to seek safe havens elsewhere. Every world region hosts some political refugees, but Africa and western Asia contain over the half of world refugees. Total number of refugees and displaced persons is 27 million. Today the main migrant receiving countries are: United States, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Japan, and Canada. Because of low birth rates, newly arriving immigrants account for a large proportion of population growth in these countries: for example, all the growth of population in Germany comes from immigration, and about one-third of the annual growth in the United States.
There is no end in the current wave of international mi­grants. Uneven population growth and disparities in job opportunities among countries, in addition to ethnic and civil conflicts and persecution, are likely to produce international migrants and refugees for the foreseeable future. Well in the 21st century, interna­tional migration will pose major challenges for the countries that receive and send migrants.
The migration challenge in the world’s migrant-receiving countries is that they must balance the need for foreign labor and protect their rights; they must help immigrants to achieve desirable economic opportunities and political freedom. The challenge is that these countries must help immigrants and their children to obtain citizenship and make clear their future at all.
Many residents of the migrant-receiving countries want immigration reduced. This attitude is demon­strated in many forms— There are many incidents of attacks on foreigners’ homes in Germany; political parties and newly elected President Sarkozi in France made the commitment to stop­ immigration in the country; every year the US increases spending on border controls in the country. Singapore imposed strict restrictions on employers and migrant workers, female migrants are subject to pregnancy tests, and sent home if they are pregnant. Even marriage to a Singapore citizen does not guarantee the right to live in the country; the government of Argentina adopted a law forbidding the children of illegal immigrants to study in public schools.
The expanding economic and trade links between countries bolster the contemporary international migration. Advances in commu­nications and transportation have made it easier for potential employers and employees in different countries to find one another and less expensive to move. Yet most people stay in their country of birth. Mexico and the Philippines are two of the world’s major migrant-sending countries, for example, about 10 million migrants left Mexico and 7.6 million migrants left Philippines.
Despite the economic benefits derived from it, immigration is often described as a threat to the host country’s economy. It is considered one of the factors in rising unemployment (particularly for unskilled workers) and is sometimes perceived as a danger to social stability.
Some countries already began to implement policies to control immi­gration. 1993 Germany passed the asylum reforms and reduced the number of asylum appli­cants in that country by 70% and avoided the increase in illegal immigration. New asylum policies introduced in the United States in 1995 cut the number of asylum applicants by half in one year. But many experts are skeptical about the long-term success of such control measures.
Controlling immigration may eventually lead to militarization of borders, which may have an impact on the political system in the country of destination. There is a fear that militarization of state borders also may even­tually lead to the militarization of society. I think that a com­plete control is nearly impossible under conditions of the Western democracies today, and considering the political costs of militarization and policing borders. On the other hand it seems impossible due to the fact that the labor market in itself represents a “pull” factor in many countries. Besides, it seems difficult to stern immigration without discouraging tourism, as a significant number of illegal immigrants today legally enter the country as tourists.
In order to reduce the pressure, migrants-receiving countries instead of building higher walls to keep migrants out, must help high intensity emigration countries with economic growth and avoiding wars and settling ethnic conflicts, with protection of human rights, so that people will not want, or need, to cross international borders and seek their fortune in other countries.
It is the right of every nation State to decide who can enter and stay in its territory and under what conditions. Such right, however, should be exercised taking care to avoid racist or xenophobic actions and policies.
Humans have always been wanderers. The most ancient myths and stories include tales of individuals setting out to explore new lands and unfamiliar peoples. Massive population move­ments to escape natural disasters or political persecution are recorded in the histories of many ethnic groups.
International migration—which refers to the movement of people from one country to another is a phenomenon the 20th century when the system of nation-states, passports, and visas developed to regulate the flow of people across national borders.
Today 185 countries are members of the United Nations. Nearly all have passports to distinguish citizens from foreigners, controls to regulate movement across borders, and policies and procedures for allowing foreigners to reside within their borders.
People officially become interna­tional migrants, or immigrants, when they transfer their regular place of residence across national borders and are recognized as foreign residents in their host country. But immigrants are sometimes created when borders move across people, as it happened after the break up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In these cases, a person could become a “foreigner” in a new country’ without actually moving.
Most of the world’s people never cross a national border. But why people migrate, why are they forced to leave their native countries and live abroad, what is the reason? There are countless reasons an individual may decide to move, but most reasons for crossing international borders for temporary or permanent settlement may be classified as fundamentally economic or noneconomic. In addition, poten­tial migrants are influenced by network factors. Economic reasons are unemployment or underemployment and less income. Noneconomic reasons are: wars, ethnic and civil conflicts, political and religious persecution, families’ reunification and also the desire of separate individuals to life abroad.
The most important elements of networks are friends and family members abroad who can provide credible information about jobs, incomes, trip, living conditions and other opportunities, and they often offer them shelter after arrival.
Population emigration has both a positive along with negative sides. The positive side is that emigrants raise their countries national income by remittances. For example, annually emigrants send 4 billion US dollars to Portugal, 2 billion to Turkey, 1 billion to Jordan, 1 billion to Bangladesh, 500 million to Columbia. It should be noted that after the economic fall in Georgia in the 1990s remittances sent by Georgian emigrants played an important and decisive role in physical survival of Georgia’s population. According to the National bank of Georgia, in 2006 the remittances sent to Georgia amounted to 546 million US dollars, but by some estimation this amount is more and varies between 700 -800 million dollars.
One of the reasons of the growth of international migration is uneven population growth in the regions and countries of the world. Population is growing faster in developing countries than in developed countries. The developing countries share made up 82% of world population in 2007.
Fertility rates are declining in many developed countries, which is helping to slow population growth rates. A few countries have fallen into natural decrease because deaths outnumber births each year. The populations are aging because of low fertility and mortality. About 15 percent of developed-country resi­dents were age 65 or over in 2007, compared with 5 percent age 65 or over in the developing world. These demographic trends can produce labor shortages in some industrial countries, and encourage the recruitment of international migrant labor.
One of the factors of the growth of international migration is also the industrialization of agriculture in developing countries. Every year more and more workers are laid off from agriculture. In the middle of the last century 80% of the population of developing countries was employed in agriculture sector, and at present this rate is less than 40%. The share of labor force in agriculture is expected to drop further during the 21st century. The excess of population in rural areas frequently become the reason of emigration.
Not all migration push factors are economic. Thousands of people leave their home countries to escape possible violence and persecution. Some become refugees. Under international law, refugees are persons outside their country of citizenship who are unwilling or unable to return to their country because of “a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
Persons seeking refuge sometimes enter another country and then request asylum. They are generally called asylees rather than refugees, but they have the same rights as refugees under international law.
What are the main trends in international migration?
At he beginning of the 21 century, the largest immigration flows are from Latin America and Asia into North America, and from eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and North Africa into northern and western Europe. The Middle East draws migrants from Africa and Asia, and hosts millions of refugees from within the region. There is consider­able migration within Asia, Africa, and Latin America as well.
At present there are four major types of migrant flows: 1) labor migration (which may be permanent or tempo­rary), 2) family reunification, 3) refugee and asylee flows, and 4) illegal migration.
The United States and Canada are two of the world’s strongest magnets for international migrants. They attracted about one-half of the world’s migrant flow in the 1990s, although these two countries population is only about 5 percent of world population. Among migrants-receiving countries the US ranks first. By 2005 more than 30 million migrants were in this country. This is about 10 percent of the national population. Net migrant flow into the United States is about 1 million per year.
Canada has been an immigra­tion country for a long time. In the 1990s Canada admitted on average about 220,000 immigrants per year. Most of Canada’s immigrants are from Asia. Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. Unlike the United States, Canada is officially a bilingual, multicultural society. The government subsidizes associations that preserve immigrants’ culture and language. But many of the recent immigrants speak neither French nor English, the two official languages. Multiculturalism has come under attack, and recent polls suggest that Canadians want to reduce immigration.
Europe traditionally had been a source of immi­grants and not destination for many years. Over 50 million Europeans emigrated to North and South America, Australia, and other regions between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s. Since the 1960s, the situation has reversed—millions of immigrants have flowed into the countries of northern and western Europe. In the first half of the 1990s, Europe received about 2 million newcomers annually, more than the United States. Most were asylum-seekers from former commu­nist countries, or refugees from former Yugoslavia. According to the International Organiza­tion for Migration, the number of illegal entrants into the European Union is approximately 500,000 a year. Immigration has become a top domestic priority in most northern and western European countries.
Many European countries are not accustomed to the integration of large communities of foreign nationals. The term foreigner, in fact, has a different meaning in many European countries than it does in the United States and some other countries. In the United States, a foreigner is someone born in another country to non-American parents. Immigrants in the United States may apply for citizenship after five years of legal residence. The child of a foreigner who was born in the US, under the constitution, is a U.S. citizen.
In much of Europe, a foreigner is not defined by ethnicity or ancestry. In Germany, “foreigner” is a persons who is not German citizen, who are not of German ancestry. The children of immigrants are considered foreigners, even if they were born and raised in Germany, while the children and grandchildren of Germans who immigrated from Russia are considered German citizens when they return to Germany even though they may not speak German. Obtaining- citizenship is generally more difficult in Europe than in North America.
Most of migrants (60%) in Europe are in France and Germany. Nearly 10% of the population of France, Germany, Austria and Belgium are immigrants. In such small countries, like Luxemburg and Switzerland, immigrants account for 36% and 19% respectively.
During the communist regime, emigration from Eastern Europe and the USSR was generally prohibited. As communist regimes fell from power In the 1990s, about 4 million ethnic Germans living in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union countries had a constitutional right to return to Germany as citizens.
Asia is the home to 60 percent of the world’s population. There are three major types of international migration in Asia. The first is the significant emigration from Asia to North America and Australia. The second largest emigration occurred in Afghanistan when an esti­mated 5 million Afghanis left their home country and took refuge in Pakistan and Iran after the military intervention by the Soviet Union in 1979. The third type of flow is labor migration within the region. South Korea which was an exporter country of labor force in the 1980 during 10 years turned into the importer of labor force but in recent years South Korea and Japan try to limit the number of immigrants and prevent the permanent settlement of unskilled foreign workers.
Africa contains only 12 percent of the world’s population. There are two types of migration; These are labor and forced migration. The largest flow of labor migrants is towards South Africa, which by the World bank is called an “upper middle income developing country.” Africa contains about one-third of the world’s refugees. In some cases, neighboring countries host refugees from each other.
Latin America and the Caribbean countries were traditional destinations for European immigrants between the 17th and early 20th centuries. In the 1980s and 1990s, the largest migration flows are out of the re­gion—especially from Central America and the Caribbean to the United States. Within the region there is also a temporary labor migration which is of seasonal nature and is connected to agricultural works. The main migrants-receiving country in South America is Argentina.
Georgia is a small country with population of 4.4 million people and in this small country there are all kinds of population migration: labor migration, forced migration, migration of ethnic minorities, internally displaced persons, human trafficking and so on. Historically Georgian always lived in Georgia. In 1959 only about 90 thousand ethnic Georgians lived outside Georgia.
Profound economic crisis developed in post-Soviet Georgia in the 1990s, ethno-political conflicts and political chaos at the initial stage dramatically increased the intensity of migration processes. The directions and effectiveness of migration streams have changed. Namely,
– in the conditions of economic collapse it has emerged massive stationary and labor emigration; urbanization process is constrained. Labor pendulum migration and organized migration practically have stopped. In the Georgian historical provinces of Abkhazia and Samachablo the ethnic minority was able to carry out ethnic cleansing with the aid of foreign mercenaries and military experts. Only 20-25 percent of the previous population remains in the conflict region.
– due to the external migration processes the population of Georgia in the noted period decreased by one fourth (it means that more than one million people left the country); demographic aging of population has accelerated; ethno-demographic structure has noticeably changed entirely in the country and in its separate regions as well. A large number of emigrants were of child bearing age and the birth rate in Georgia decreased sharply, that in turn caused depopulation process in the country.
In spite of certain stabilization of the economy, effective employment of labor resources has not been reached yet. Nor migration policy is efficient, and its perfection can be achieved in the first place by in-depth study of migration processes.
Although the intensity of stationary migration has slowed down in recent years, the level of illegal labor emigration is still high, internal migration processes are extremely irrational.
Because statistical data on population migration is poor and unreliable we periodically conduct sociological researches. Through our surveys it was found that migration streams from Georgia flow mainly towards the following 5 countries: Russian federation (65%), Germany (7%), US (10%), Greece (7%) and Turkey (1.4%). It should be noted that in recent years the share of migrants towards Turkey decreased significantly despite the fact that it is neighbor country; there no visa regime between two countries and trip is cheap. The reason is that Turkey has a high natural increase, the level of economic development is low with comparison to European countries, job are low paid, unemployment is rising and labour market is overwhelmed.
The high share of Georgian migrants in Russian Federation is caused by several factors; these are geographical proximity to this country, Georgian diaspora, long history of the population labor, migratory, economic and cultural links between two countries. It is presumable that immigrants will fill Russian labor resources markedly in the future decades despite the fact that there is political tension between two countries.
Superfluous politicization of the population migration policy between Russia and Georgia is totally groundless. This contributes to the elevation of migrantofobia and xenophobia that in turn accelerated redistribution processes of Georgian labor force from the Russian labor market to the western labor markets; besides more and more population prefer to master English language than Russian.
It is worth noting that in recent years Geography of Georgia’s emigration changed and now destination countries for Georgian migrants are new countries such as: Portugal, Spain, England, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Australia, Switzerland, Poland, Belgium), though the share of Georgian migrants is rather low so far in those countries.
Through our study it was found that in the international migration streams 45% was females. Probably 10 years ago nobody could imagine such a high share of women in international migratory streams. High share of women in migration processes is considered in western countries as a sign of high level of democracy and women rights, but we cannot say that this phenomenon in Georgia is a result of only democracy and women rights. First of all it is caused by economic hardship. Georgian women emigrated to make a living and to help their family members to survive.
At present the most pressing problem to be solved in Georgia is how to deal with the ethnic conflicts and eliminate their effects as smoothly as possible. Careful scientific assessment and thorough study of ethnic conflicts as phenomena will help to avoid their numerous adverse effects. In any country ethnic conflicts lead to intensive increase of migration processes. That creates abnormal political situation and forces the major part of its population to flee to more politically stable region or neighboring country in hope to maintain decent family life and continue economic and general work activities.
Georgia, as a newly sovereign state has neither the experience nor the institutions to manage this large-scale forced movement of people. From this point we are in need of study of the results of analogical studies for other countries as such phenomena – ethnic conflicts and forced migration didn’t take place in Georgia before and they have not been studied.
In conclusion it can be said that uneven political, economic and demographic development produces large scale migratory flows. They accompany world development processes. Political migrations can be reduced by efforts of international community, but reduction of migration caused by economic reasons is not expected in the foreseeable future. International migration is the reflex of the world development.