Editorial

As I write this editorial, concern amongst migration observers is at a high mark owing to the disastrous situations involving migrant smuggling and trafficking, particularly in the Mediterranean and MENA regions, in South East Asia, and in Central America and Mexico. The conditions endured by many migrants in these regions have galvanized public attention and have produced high profile calls for action from leaders of the international migration community. To a significant extent, these calls for action have been well-received by governments in some of these regions and actions are being taken and planned. The recent losses of life from capsizing boats and cruelties inflicted upon migrants by their smugglers and traffickers are tragic and sobering signals that these businesses are growing in response to a demand to migrate that is not being met by the willingness of preferred destination countries to issue residency or work visas in these numbers. The smugglers and traffickers, as a result, move in to satisfy this otherwise unmet demand. Many see only an increase in smuggling in the future. This is simply because demand to migrate will grow as more and more countries witness per capita GDP increases that allow more people to afford migration. This “migration hump” effect arises not only from growth in incomes but also from growth in education and with it elevated hopes and expectations for employment that are all too often frustrated in the migrants’ homelands. Not only is the smuggling industry growing in size, but it is becoming increasingly sophisticated as migrants demand safer means of passage than aboard unsafe boats. In the midst of the smuggling are human trafficking operations as well, operations that produce their own miseries, carry great including long-term risks to migrants, and pose severe challenges to governments at all stages of the operations. We are pleased to be able to include in this issue of International Migration a special section, “Developing Frameworks for the Protection of Trafficked Persons”, which has been edited by Professor Susan Kneebone of the Faculty of Law at Monash University in Melbourne. This special collection of articles looks at the state of protection for those who are trafficked in the border region of Thailand and Burma (Meyer), The Netherlands (Galloway), Mexico (Rietig), and Vietnam (Hoang). Each analysis offers perspectives that we can bring to bear on how we understand those specific situations as well as the many others that the world sadly offers up. In the rest of the issue, we highlight the integration of migrants in their societies of destination, a constant and long-term interest of migration researchers, an interest that over time has produced, not predictability, but a divergence of approaches and understandings of the very concept, ‘integration’. Not only do researchers use the term in different ways, but differences also arise in political and public spheres around the world. Once one gets past the fundamental point that integration is about a relation between a migrant and a destination society, one enters a realm of differences that reflect destination cultures, attitudes towards migrants, as well as global phenomena such as transnationalism and multiple migration that affect how migrants regard their positions in destination societies. In some contexts, integration expresses an attitude of caring for the well-being of migrants and is often manifest in programs intended to help them adjust smoothly and successfully to their new home, while, in others, integration expresses more of a demand that migrants behave if not believe in certain ways, conform to established norms. Put simply, in some contexts integration is to serve the migrants while in others it is to protect the host, with all manner of variants along the spectrum. The issue of integration has gained visibility over the past few years as a result of the rise of xenophobia in some European countries and the widespread turn against immigration in many societies, not only in Europe but elsewhere throughout the world and in all its continents. Our authors in this issue take us through analyses of gendered discourses and their effects on our understanding of immigrant integration, including of the growing dominance of considerations of culture over class (Kofman). Afonso takes us to Switzerland to examine the dynamics of Portuguese integration and the impact of the “enduring ideology of return migration” on how they integrate into Swiss society. In another study of a particular group, Andersson compares the integration outcomes of Latin Americans in Sweden measured in terms of their education, employment, income, and housing in contrast to outcomes for others in Sweden. Sharaby analyses a fascinating example of the “two-way street” of integration, the result of which was the conversion of a minority to a national holiday in Israel. Canada features in two articles, one in which Somerville demonstrates how migrant networks function, sometimes to create a cadre of “migrant pioneers” who establish new communities for others in the network to join. And Patil carefully analyses the literature on refugee health in Canada and shows us where emphases have been skewed disproportionately in certain directions to the detriment not only of the research but to health policy and practice. Bharadwaj takes us back to the partition of India, the consequent re-location of millions of citizens, and the extraordinary impact this has had on literacy, occupation, and even gender. Finally, rounding out this topic, Caselli shows us how one Italian think tank has dealt with the elusive matter of defining and measuring immigrant integration.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.