Essay Example on EU Migrant Crisis: A Search for Hope and a Better Future

Introduction

Migration is a contentious issue in contemporary politics across the world. Particularly, Europe is facing an alarming increase of migrants, leading to strong tensions within European nations on how the issue of economic migrants, asylum seekers and the flow of refugees can be dealt with. Most migrants consider the European Union to be a Promised Land and their conviction, determination, and persistence that they would have a better future together with their children when they enter European nations mirror the precariousness and despair of life in their countries. The International Organization of migration shows that there was about 148% increase of migrants in 2017 when compared to 2014. Besides, the number of deaths was estimated to be approximately 1870 in 2017, showing an increase that does not seem to reduce. The major points of migrant’s arrival include the port of Calais between the UK and France, the Hungarian border with Serbia, and the Greek border in the Aegean Sea. Most migrants come by train through the Balkans, foot cross Sahara, packed on tiny dinghies, overloaded boats, and through hidden vehicles across the English Channel. The European Union has no physical borders, which can prevent individuals who are ready to risk their lives. Only lack of alternatives and utter despair can force people to take an uncertain journey with the unforeseeable outcome. The illegal migrations create divisions, unsettle political stability among EU member states and causes social polarization between the migrants and the impossibility to integrate them in EU nations. This crisis has affected the French Dreyfus affair that has left a long-lasting mark and polarized the European society. Thus, the EU challenge is the main problem facing the European Union, laying open the limits of open border principles and European integration. This paper attempts to disentangle the institutional, legal and political aspects for of immigration, and if it can be controlled at both the national and supranational level.

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Immigration cannot be controlled

The migration question reached the urgency level in 2015 when a boat with overloaded migrants capsized outside the territorial water of Libya leaving about 700 people missing and dead. At the time, the number of refugees entering the European Union had increased, and Europe was struggling to cope with the issue of refugees regardless of the actions and policies that were already in place. Some reasons cause the current refugee crisis in the European nations:

The political turmoil in Africa and civil wars in the Middle East has led to failed, torn and barely functioning states, which cannot provide prosperity and security for its people. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the first wave of refugees, and most of them migrated to the neighboring countries. During this period, most European nations accepted particular Iraqis refugees. However, today, most countries such as Jordan and Lebanon have taken in some refugees from Palestinian-Israeli conflicts. These countries are already in the capacity as the high influx of refugees have stretched them, and the new wave of refugees in Syria and Iraq threatens their security, internal peace, and social capacities. The 2011 Arab Spring and a large number of dictators in Arab countries also triggered the impetus to the migration movement. The increasing war in Syria that had developed to become more protracted and complex prompted a massive displacement of people outside and within Syria. The case of Libya at the time was even more problematic. These countries had no mechanism or capacity to cope with the new political developments and the environment they had. The International community also failed to understand the depth of religious and ethnic divisions in these countries. The future of the youths, lack of economic opportunities, and the undemocratic regimes also triggered the revolution. Most countries had lawlessness, chaos, insecurity, and oppression leading to a large number of asylum seekers and refugees who fled both their nations and the rising influence of ISIS.

Most migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa originate from Eritrea, Somalia, Senegal, and Nigeria. These migrants flee from dictatorships, dysfunctional institutions, lack of freedom, repression, and struggling economies. With the emergence of the Islamic State and the rise of Islamist extremism, migrants have experienced a new dimension of unbelievable horror. Such changes have rippled courtiers in the region’s leading to mass migration. According to Boswell and Geddes (2011), before the 2013 Arab Spring, most migrants were from the West and Sub-Saharan Africa running away from lack of employment opportunities, poverty, and dictatorship. However, the flow of migration reduced or stopped at the border in Northern Africa because migrants were able to find employment in transit countries, and Gaddafi, the former Libyan president in support of European governments, was committed to stopping the flow of illegal migrants into Europe or Italy.

The EU and European governments have been unable to anticipate and grasp the impact of migration. It had been challenging and difficult for European policy that struggled to develop new external actions and the political issues that came with the signing of the Lisbon treaty. Thus, the approach of the European Union to the migration issues has ever been reactive rather than being proactive.

Rethinking Border Cities

Migrants have faced many challenges including their restricted rights, the many racisms encountered on the street, their discriminations in the housing and labour market, and their constrained access to public and welfare services. The experience of the migrants in the city include their maltreatment by the settled and the powerful, exclusion from the resources, and a spiral of debt and deprivation (Hall and Burdett, 2017). The development of slums, informal settlements, streets, and poor neighborhoods also shows the fragility of the urban poor and life of the migrants. The prejudices experienced by migrants also spill over causing petty xenophobes, vigilantes, and bureaucrats, and absence of legal and civic rights. However, migrants also benefit from the culture of indifference and grasp opportunities in the ‘kinetic’ cities such as improvising in its under-regulated spaces, learning to read its many possibilities, sacrificing for subsequent generations who fare better, and finding ways to turn its characteristic excess into opportunities (Hall and Burdett, 2017). According to Solomon Benjamin, (2014), in a porous bureaucracy, the poor can develop the politics of stealth and make opportunities such as improved general well-being through suitable housing, infrastructural, and welfare reforms. Enhancing the positive effect of migration should include the development of formalization’s structures and informality’s creativities, market freedoms, and a strong sense of the civic future shared by both the migrants and settled members alike.

As urbanization become more globalized and reorganized, border cities and areas, which were considered remote become regions where urbanization is picking up scope and speed. Isolated and small cities have become urbanized due to targeted state policies, improved connectivity of transport network. The rapid growth of smaller border cities has exerted more influence, which has reshaped the mobility of people across the borderlands. The shift of the power of the national; and local states have shaped the economic influence of borderlands. This alter the triangular relationship between the citizens, state and the city, which in turn reshapes the mobility of people across the border and develop new patterns of uneven development.

In the past, border cities had particular characteristics such as cross-border conflicts, less developed transport infrastructure, insufficient support from national governments, small populations and markets, and marginal locations. Other constrain for the advantageous opportunities for border cities to thrive include convenient exposure to cross-border mobility, strategic locations as customs checkpoints, migration circuits, historical connections, and ethnic ties. However, the advent of globalization such as the local and regional penetration circumvent the levels of border control and national territorial regulation. The influence of globalization has opened border cities to build up their infrastructure, cross-border tourism, foreign investment, and open up border cities to more trade to improve their economic flows. This has led to de-bordering that has helped to bridge the remote and marginal border cities into networked and dynamic centers. The push and pull of re-bordering, and de-bordering caused by market-driven and state-directed globalization has have strengthened and intensified cross-border mobility that allow allows greater and denser flows of people, services, and goods across the borderland.

The international division of labor has led to the development of migration routes for the mobility of labor and capital. Migration of workers have led to the development of labor circuits through multiple specialized or particular migrations. Globalization has also developed the demand for labor supplies especially in global cities that demand low wage workers and transformational professionals. The mix of circuits for labor supply and the impact of globalization has led to the development of new labor circuits and that support cross border markets and money flows. The labor migrants are micro level part of economic restructuring of developing border cities.

For example, Shenzhen is a small border town in China and migration played a critical role in transforming the small border town. The town has about 70% of migrants and migration played a critical role in it’s the expansion and urbanization of the city. China had a low level of urbanization in the early 1980s. However, rural urban migration allowed Shenzhen to expand through factories, industrial workshops, and processing plants. The increase in foreign direct investment further attracted migrants from the rural areas. The rural migrants were treated differently from other local urban residents as they were not allowed to buy commercial housing or rent public housing. With the developing of Shenzhen as an important economic zone, the government acquired land to develop more migrant villages and major public buildings were erected in public lands. Roads and other projects were started but it became hard to offer job opportunities. However, as urban development increased, more traditional villages were turned to urban villages. In 2005, Shenzhen had about 241 urban villages and more villages outside the city experienced the same growth and development. Today, Shenzhen urban villages have become special business zones and economic enterprises through urbanization.

Shenzhen played a critical role in Chinas process of urbanization and provided space for migrants to adapt to the social and economic condition of the country. Large agricultural lands occupied by wealthy and middle class individuals can change to become housing estates, commercial buildings, and modern offices. Although the integration of low income people and traditional rural settlement is a slow process, the combination and dynamic interface explain the fast aspect of rapid urbanization. Villagers must learn new skills and start simple jobs which develop into commercial businesses. The progressive stages of village transformation and cycles of change leads to commercial and economic development of border cities.

Feasibility of Immigration Control

The EU has never been competence in the issue of Migration and asylum. The agreement in the 1999 Tampere European Counci...