Borders & Belonging: Recent Episodes
Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy
What's the difference between human smuggling and human trafficking? Did migration myths drive the 2016 Brexit vote? Do border walls stop migration?
Maggie Perzyna wants to dispel migration myths: why people leave their homeland and the changes they bring in the societies they move to.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
In this bonus episode, Sandra Leitner and Michaela Potančoková unpack the logic behind labour force modelling and what it reveals about Europe's demographic and migration future.
Drawing on the Link4Skills Navigator, a tool built to map labour market data, skills partnerships, and demographic trends across countries, they discuss why migration is not a panacea for population aging, how Germany's long-declining fertility rates are quietly driving one of the EU's most urgent labour shortages, and why today's migrant-sending countries like Poland and Romania will soon confront shortages of their own. The conversation also turns to the gap between research and policy, and why long-term evidence so often struggles to keep pace with short-term political cycles.
Guests: Sandra Leitner, Senior Economist, Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies; Michaela Potančoková, Senior Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis; Justyna Szalanska, Manager, Skills Alliance Poland.
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From growing up in a changing Greece to becoming one of the leading voices in migration research, Anna Triandafyllidou reflects on how her work on migration governance, identity and belonging took shape. She is joined by Letizia Palumbo, whose work on labour and exploitation brings into focus how policies shape and often constrain the everyday realities of migrant life. Together, they discuss why migration policies often fail to reflect lived realities, and how labour systems and identity narratives shape that divide.
Guests: Anna Triandafyllidou, Scientific Director, Global Migration Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University; Letizia Palumbo, Researcher, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
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What happens when migration can no longer be understood within the borders of a single nation-state? Nina Glick Schiller reflects on the ideas and experiences that shaped her pioneering work on transnationalism and the power structures that shape mobility. She is joined by Karina Quintanilha, whose research explores how law, labour and inequality shape migrant lives across local and global scales.
Together, they discuss why migrants are never simply “between” places and how transnational ties are structured by power and inequality.
Guests: Nina Glick Schiller, Professor Emeritus, University of Manchester and University of New Hampshire; Karina Quintanilha, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of São Paulo.
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From dreaming of Olympic glory on the track to reshaping how migration studies thinks about space and knowledge, sociologist Andreas Pott reflects on the intellectual detours and shifting perspectives that led him to question the very categories migration researchers take for granted.
He is joined by Christine Lang, whose work on skilled migration in the health sector illustrates what it looks like to step back from dominant policy framings and study how migration and the spaces around it are socially produced in the first place.
Guests: Andreas Pott, Professor of Geography and Deputy Director, Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies, University of Osnabrück; Christine Lang, Researcher in Migration and Urban Studies, Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies, University of Osnabrück.
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What happens when a visa category becomes a verdict on your worth? Gracia Liu-Farrer reflects on the ideas and experiences that shaped her influential work on migration, labour markets and the social construction of skill. She is joined by Helena Hof, whose research examines how labels like "high-skilled" and "low-skilled" are assigned, contested and recognised across cities, institutions and borders.
Together, they discuss why skill is never simply what you know or what you can do, how power and place determine whose abilities get recognised, and what it would mean to think about talent as something cultivated rather than possessed.
Guests: Gracia Liu-Farrer, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Asian Migration, Waseda University; Helena Hof, Senior Research Fellow, University of Zurich.
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What happens when cultures meet in everyday life? John Berry reflects on the ideas and experiences that shaped his pioneering work on acculturation, integration and belonging. He is joined by Saba Safdar, whose research examines how power, discrimination, policy and even AI shape newcomers’ experiences of adaptation. Together, they discuss how acculturation theory has evolved in an era of super-diversity, why belonging is never neutral and what societies must do to create genuine inclusion.
Guests: John Berry, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Queen’s University; Saba Safdar, Professor of Psychology and Director, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, University of Guelph.
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Adrian Favell reflects on the ideas and experiences that shaped his work on mobility, free movement and Europe's so called borderless future.
He is joined by Sarah Kunz, whose research examines how privilege, race and postcolonial histories shape who gets to move and how migration labels such as migrant, expat and mobile professional reflect power and inequality. Together, they discuss why studying privileged migration matters, how European mobility has changed over time, and how movement is increasing even as access to it becomes more unequal.
Guests: Adrian Favell, Professor of Social and Political Theory and Founding Director of the Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork; Sarah Kunz, Lecturer in Migration Studies, University of Essex.
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Drawing on a childhood shaped by migration and multilingualism, migration scholar Irene Bloemraad reflects on the ideas and experiences behind her influential work on citizenship as claims-making and the contested nature of belonging. She is joined by Amanda Cheong, whose research on statelessness stems from discovering her own parents were stateless before immigrating to Canada. Together, they explore how citizenship extends beyond legal status into everyday acts of belonging, how birth registration systems can deliberately exclude populations, and where agency and exclusion intersect in the modern politics of membership.
Guests: Irene Bloemraad, Professor of Political Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Migration Studies, University of British Columbia; Amanda Cheong, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia.
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Drawing on a lifetime shaped by activism, art, and encounters with migration, leading migration scholar Nicholas De Genova reflects on the ideas and political commitments behind his influential work on the production of migrant “illegality” and the cyclical nature of asylum.
He is joined by Soledad Álvarez Velasco, whose research follows migrants across Latin America and draws on her own experiences migrating from Ecuador. Together, they explore how asylum systems reproduce illegality, how race and colonial legacies shape migration control, and where hope and solidarity emerge amid exclusion and enforcement.
Guests: Nicholas De Genova, Professor, Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Houston; Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of Illinois Chicago.
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Ayşe Çağlar shares how her experiences growing up in Turkey and living in multiple countries shaped her approach to using migrants as an entry point to explore how societies define themselves, draw boundaries, and govern communities. She is joined by Ana Ćuković, whose research looks at how displacement unfolds in cities, including Detroit through urban planning and policy, and how historical and economic contexts shape who is included or pushed out of cities.
Guests: Ayşe Çağlar, Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna; Ana Ćuković, Philanthropy Fellow, Council of Michigan Foundations and Hudson-Webber Foundation.
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From his notable research on migration aspirations and the factors that shape whether people move or stay, Jørgen Carling reflects on how his early experiences in Oslo and fieldwork in West Africa shaped his approach to understanding mobility. He is joined by Kerilyn Schewel, whose work examines why people remain in place and how life goals, family ties and social constraints influence those decisions.
Guests: Jørgen Carling, Professor in Migration and Transnationalism studies, Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO); Kerilyn Schewel, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina.
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From growing up in suburban Chicago to studying cultural encounters in Trinidad, influential migration studies scholar Steven Vertovec reflects on how those experiences shaped the concept of superdiversity and its enduring relevance nearly two decades later. He is joined by Maria Schiller, who draws on her own research inside European city governments to show how public officials interpret and manage diversity in practice, and why policy trends often struggle to keep pace with social realities.
Guests: Steven Vertovec, Founding Director, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity; Maria Schiller, Professor of Public Governance, Erasmus University Rotterdam
To find books, publications, and media mentioned in this episode please see the show notes.
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To kick off season 4 of Borders & Belonging, host Maggie Perzyna explores the concept of "demigranticization" in migration research with Janine Dahinden and Maissam Nimer. They discuss how the label "migrant" is not objective but rather a political construct rooted in nation-state logic that can reinforce harmful power structures and exclusion.
Both scholars argue that migration research should step back from treating migration as an isolated phenomenon and instead examine how societies create "others" to define themselves, connecting migrants' struggles with those of other marginalized groups. Despite the dark political climate and rise of populism, they find hope in growing critical voices within academia and emerging solidarities between migrantized and non-migrantized communities.
Guests: Janine Dahinden, Professor of Transnational Studies, University of Neuchâtel; and Maissam Nimer, Associate Professor of Sociology, Akdeniz University.
To find books, publications, and media mentioned in this episode please see the show notes.
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What happens when established voices in migration studies sit down with the rising scholars shaping the field's future? This season of Borders & Belonging explores reflexivity: the practice of turning research back on itself to examine how we know what we know.
Season 4 draws on the lived experiences of pioneering scholars whose work has transformed how we understand human movement across borders. We then ask each scholar to nominate an up-and-coming scholar they admire, whose research builds on, challenges, or complements their own.
What follows is a dialogue where mentor and mentee explore the evolution of ideas, the personal journeys behind the research, and the questions that keep them both up at night.
Join us as we trace the threads connecting scholarship across time, experience, and perspective.
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How are the Trump administration's cuts to foreign aid impacting global health and development, and what challenges or opportunities is it creating?
The third episode of In Conversation discusses how reduced aid is forcing countries to look inward, rethink policy frameworks, and reflects on the impacts on youth and migration, the role of corruption, and how the global focus on growth is overshadowing sustainable development.
Guests: Linda Oucho (Executive Director, African Migration and Development Policy Center), Andre Renzaho (Professor of Humanitarian and Development Studies, Western Sydney University), Sagar R. Sharma (Professor of Development Economics, Kathmandu University)
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In June 2025, the Canadian Government introduced Bill C-2 as a way to strengthen border security and modernize Canada’s asylum and immigration system. However, the bill is being criticized by legal experts and human rights advocates for introducing sweeping discretionary powers for officials and arbitrary measures, including a one-year deadline to apply for refugee status.
In the second episode of In Conversation, experts explain what the bill proposes, why these provisions raise serious concerns, and what’s at stake for refugees. They also explore the implications of expanded data sharing, the removal of access to independent hearings and how these changes could disproportionately impact the most vulnerable.
In Conversation is a series of the Borders & Belonging podcast where leading voices dive into urgent migration issues shaping Canada and the world.
Guests: Sharry Aiken (Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University and former President of the Canadian Council for Refugees), Claire Ellis (PhD candidate, Toronto Metropolitan University), and Anna Triandafyllidou (Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration, Toronto Metropolitan University)
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As the U.S. rolls back diversity initiatives and academic freedoms, could Canada become a magnet for top global talent – or will systemic blind spots hold us back? In the first episode of our In Conversation series, expert guests explore how Trump-era policies are rippling north, what Canada must do to stay competitive, and why it’s time to rethink how we talk about immigration, equity and inclusion.
In Conversation is the brand new segment of the Borders & Belonging podcast where leading voices dive into urgent migration issues shaping Canada and the world.
Guests: Wendy Cukier (Founder, Diversity Institute, TMU), Daniel Bernhard (CEO, Institute for Canadian Citizenship), and Naheed Nenshi (Leader, Alberta New Democratic Party, former Mayor of Calgary)
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Imagine this: at age three, your family relocates to a new country. You grow up normally—school, sports teams, friends. In Grade 12, you discover you lack immigration status, preventing university applications. Suddenly, you're not like your peers, and a life of hidden struggles and uncertainty unfolds. In the final episode of the season, Maggie Perzyna explores what it means to live with precarious immigration status. Researchers unpack the idea of “the violence of uncertainty”—how shifting policies, bureaucratic delays, and the threat of deportation disrupt migrants’ lives, from DACA recipients losing jobs to children denied mental health support.
Guests: Sarah Pole, Program Director of Childhood Arrival Support & Advocacy Program (CASA) at Justice for Children and Youth Legal Clinic; Patricia Landolt, Professor of Sociology at University of Toronto; and Benjamin Roth, Associate Dean at the College of Social Work, University of South Carolina.
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Not everything happens in big cities. This episode explores how small and mid-sized cities in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are attracting and retaining immigrants. Researchers unpack regional migration policies, what helps newcomers settle, and how to build communities that thrive beyond the skyline.
Guests: Sarah Wiseman, Canada Branch Director, Shapiro Foundation; Melissa Kelly, Senior Research Associate at CERC Migration, TMU; and Aude Bernard, Senior Lecturer at the School of the Environment, University of Queensland.
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AI, aging populations, and the energy transition: how are these forces reshaping the job market and global migration? In this episode, distinguished guests walk us through how automation is transforming industries, influencing hiring, and impacting migrant workers. Are we creating new opportunities or just making it harder for them to find decent jobs?
Guests: Mateusz Żydek, Communication Team Lead at Randstad Polska; Teseseltje De Lange, professor at Radboud University and principal investigator of the Global Strategy for Skills Migration and Development (GS4S) project; and Alexandra Przegalińska, professor at Kozminski University and member of the Link4Skills project.
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What shapes migration patterns across different regions? How do economic, social, and political factors drive movement in unique ways? The MEMO project seeks to untangle these complexities, mapping the connections between internal, intraregional, and intercontinental migration. In this episode, host Maggie Perzyna and her guest experts explore how bilateral agreements, regional policies, and power dynamics between origin and destination countries influence migration patterns across the globe.
Guests: Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Institute for Women in Migration, Mexico City, Claudia Masferrer, Assistant Professor, El Colegio de México, and Coordinator of the Regional Hub for the Americas, MEMO Project, and Richa Shivakoti, Research Lead on Migration Governance, CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University, and South Asia Hub Member, MEMO Project.
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In the premiere episode of Voices on the Move, a podcast by Migration Matters, experts delve into the complex relationship between climate change and migration. Scholars Dr. François Gemenne from the University of Liège, Dr. Nassim Majidi of Samuel Hall, and Dr. Yvonne Su from York University challenge common assumptions such as "one billion climate refugees" and explore how climate impacts habitability, mobility, and policy, offering fresh insights into this critical global issue.
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Decentring research means challenging Western paradigms, amplifying diverse perspectives, and rethinking power dynamics and knowledge production. This is easier said than done, especially in migration studies, where control, security, and economic views dominate the debate. But understanding the lived realities of migrants must be more than just a question—it's a critical shift we can no longer ignore.
Guests: Sharon Stein, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia, founder of Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective; Peggy Levitt, Chair of Sociology, Wellesley College; and Amin Moghadam, Research Lead, Cities and Migration, CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University.
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The rise in false narratives surrounding immigrants and refugees is often amplified by social media and manipulated for political gain. In this episode, host Maggie Perzyna unpacks the dangerous intersection between digital disinformation and immigration. Experts emphasize this critical area of study as social media networks increasingly shape public opinion and policy decisions, while false narratives about migration spread faster than ever.
Guests: Katie Paul, Director, Tech Transparency Project; Anatoliy Gruzd, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Privacy Preserving Digital Technologies, Toronto Metropolitan University; and Mattias Ekman, Associate Professor, Stockholm University.
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When exploring the big questions migration scholars are asking, irregular migration is impossible to ignore. In this episode, Maggie Perzyna engages with activists and scholars on the ground to gain deeper insights into this complex issue, the factors driving it, and the impact it has on both migrants and communities.
Guests: Brynn Campbell, founder of Aidez Nous à Aider; Ilse van Liempt, Associate Professor at Utrecht University and coordinator of Improving the Living and Labour Conditions of Irregular Migrant households in Europe (I-CLAIM); and Albert Kraler, Associate Professor at Danube University Krems at coordinator of Measuring Irregular Migration (MIrreM).
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This episode takes a closer look at the powerful intersection of art and migration studies. How can creative expression challenge dominant narratives and help reshape the way we think about migration? Maggie Perzyna learns about art-based and community-based projects that move the needle. We also hear about WhereWeStand, a powerful multimedia storytelling project that pairs Indigenous and newcomer voices to reimagine their relationships to the land some call Turtle Island and others know as Canada.
Guests: Izzeddin Hawamda, Palestinian teacher, writer and co-founder of the interfaith dialog group Bridge; Aaron McKay, Anishinaabemowin photographer and the founder of Giiwe platform; Cyrus Sundar Singh, Research Fellow, CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University, and an award-winning filmmaker, musician and storyteller; and Heather George, Executive Director, Woodland Cultural Center, curator, artist and educator.
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This episode explores how cities can become sanctuaries for migrants and refugees. Follow Maggie Perzyna as she discovers how grassroots efforts and city-level practices can create more inclusive urban environments. We also hear about the Soli*City project, an international initiative creating urban strategies that help migrants and refugees to integrate into their communities.
Guests: Véronique Lamontagne, Lawyers Without Borders Canada; Harald Bauder, Toronto Metropolitan University; and Mary Boatemaa Setrana, University of Ghana.
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Welcome back to Borders and Belonging! In the first episode of Season 3, host Maggie Perzyna explores the power of collective action and the importance of centering refugee voices. She is joined by three special guests to discuss how academics and policymakers can ensure that the experiences of those most affected by migration policies guide decision-making processes. What does the principle of “nothing about us without us” mean for refugee and migrant communities?
Guests: Mustafa Alio, Co-Managing Director of R-SEAT; Oroub El-Abed, Associate Professor at Birzeit University and Middle East Regional Research Coordinator for the LERRN project; and James Milner, Associate Professor and Director of the Migration and Diaspora Studies program at Carleton University, and Project Director of LERRN.
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In Season 3 of Borders & Belonging, host Maggie Perzyna continues her mission, zooming in on the key questions being asked by migration scholars. What is the potential of city-level sanctuary policies to inspire innovative solutions for migrant and refugee inclusion at the urban level? How can research address migrant agency and the drivers of migration? How is the research being conducted at universities moving the needle on theory, methods, as well as the socio-economic and cultural landscape?
With the help of leading academics and professionals working with migrants on the ground, join us as we connect the dots between academic inquiry and real-world impact.
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A controversial British government plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda has been central to the UK’s response to a recent sharp increase in the number of people making the dangerous journey across the English Channel in small boats. But if the Conservative party loses the general election in early July, the Rwanda plan is likely to be abandoned. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, two experts in UK immigration policy explain how the Rwanda plan became such a crucial part of the immigration debate in the UK. And how, whatever happens in the election, it’s already shifting the wider conversation in Europe about how to deal with migrants and asylum seekers.
Guests: Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham; Michaela Benson, Lancaster University; Avery Anapol, The Conversation. Hosted by: Gemma Ware, The Conversation.
In the Season 2 finale, host Maggie Perzyna asks her guests: What does it mean to live without a nationality? This episode of Borders & Belonging will dive into the complexities behind statelessness, its causes and social realities, and the far-reaching effects it has on individuals and communities.
Guests: Rintu Borah, PhD candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay; Noora Lori, Associate Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University; Allison Petrozziello, instructor at Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University.
Did you know that the Middle East holds the world's highest ratio of migrants to its national population? From historical ties to the oil economy to the burgeoning knowledge-based economies of today, host Maggie Perzyna explores how evolving economic landscapes in the Gulf are reshaping migration dynamics.
Guests: Deepak Unnikrishnan, Assistant Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi; Laure Assaf, Assistant Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi; Hélène Thiollet, Research Fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research at Sciences Po.
Land is a critical component of Pacific Island societies, and the impact of climate change on these populations is a growing global concern. Host Maggie Perzyna, along with esteemed guest researchers and a community consultant from one of the world's lowest lying countries, seeks to understand the regional implications of climate change and the role the international community needs to play in supporting adaptation strategies.
Guests: Robert Karoro, consultant from Kiribati; Tammy Tabe, Oceana Research Fellow at East West Center in Hawai'i; John Campbell, retired Associate Professor and Research Associate at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.
Itzel Eguiluz speaks with Alejandra Díaz de León about how the journey of Central American migrants walking north, through Mexico, is about much more than just having practical strategies to survive the journey.
Solidarity, trust and social bonds that are formed along the way, can also be valuable elements of the experience. We hear about what Alejandra calls “road families” and how during their journeys, migrants form communities around their common understanding and experiences of crossing Mexico. She details this in her book “Walking Together: Central Americans and Transit Migration through Mexico”, which was published in 2023.
Alejandra would like to acknowledge Dr. Yasemin Soysal and Dr Carlos Gigoux for their contribution/support. Also, Alejandra's research benefitted from funding through the CONACyT scholarship and SLAS.
Alejandra Díaz de León is an assistant professor of migration and violence at the Center for Sociological Studies at the Colegio de Mexico, in Mexico City. She holds a PhD in Sociology and an MA in Human Rights from the University of Texas. Her research focuses on human rights, solidarity, and the creation of bonds, trust, and cooperation among strangers during contexts of violence and uncertainty, like the transit of Central Americans through Mexico and to the United States.
Despite its historical reputation for social, political, and legal closure and a certain reluctance towards admitting immigrants, Japan is taking steps towards a more inclusive national immigration policy. In this episode, host Maggie Perzyna and her guests explore the evolving role of Japan as a migration state, shedding light on innovative policies and their potential to bring about transformative changes in Japanese society.
Guests: Nicholas A. R. Fraser, Senior Research Associate at CERC Migration; Nana Oishi, Associate Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Melbourne; Ito Peng, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, Director of the Centre for Global Social Policy, and Canada Research Chair in Global Social Policy at the University of Toronto.
While the Arctic has been home to Indigenous peoples for millennia, settlers in the past few centuries have been drawn to the region's remote wilderness, majestic landscapes and ample resources. More recently, global market forces and climate change are shaping migration to the Arctic in new and complex ways.
Guests: Malini Sengupta, coordinator at the Yellowknife Immigration Partnership; Roger Norum, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oulu; Timothy Heleniak, Senior Research Fellow at Nordregio.
A small but increasing number of today's knowledge workers are breaking free from traditional offices, using technology to craft a life that blends work, travel and freedom. In this episode, host Maggie Perzyna and her guests dive deep into the changing nature of work and the rise of digital nomads. What is driving this growing phenomenon, and how are countries around the world and local communities dealing with it?
Guests: Holly Vipond, former digital nomad; Anna Triandafyllidou, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University; Dave Cook, PhD researcher at University College London.
In the pursuit of controlling its external borders, the European Union has forged numerous bilateral agreements with African countries. These agreements are not just pieces of paper, they're instruments that wield immense influence over the movement of people between Europe and Africa. In this episode, host Maggie Perzyna seeks to understand how EU bilateral agreements are reshaping the migration dynamics on both continents.
Guests: Leander Kandilige, Senior Lecturer at the Center for Migration Studies, University of Ghana; Amanda Bisong, PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit and policy officer with the Center for Africa Europe Relations; Andrew Geddes, Chair in Migration Studies and Director of the Migration Policy Center at the European University Institute.
In contrast to the late Desmond Tutu's hopeful aspirations for the "rainbow nation" and his efforts to champion human rights, post-apartheid South Africa has been marked by xenophobic violence, adding insecurities for both citizens and foreign nationals. In this episode, host Maggie Perzyna asks why xenophobia has become so entrenched across the political spectrum, and connects the dots between apartheid, economic development and the scapegoating that’s directed toward the state.
Guests: Silindile Mlilo, PhD research fellow and Project Manager at Xenowatch, African Center for Migration and Society, University of Witwatersrand; Trevor Ngwane, Director of the Center for Sociological Research and Practice, University of Johannesburg; and Loren Landau, Professor, University of Oxford and University of Witwatersrand, African Center for Migration and Society.
The Darién Gap, also dubbed as “Hell on Earth”, has become a leading transit point for migrants in search of work and safety in North America since authorities have cracked down on other routes by air and sea. In this episode, host Maggie Perzyna investigates how global migration regimes push migrants to risk their lives for a chance at a better life.
Guests: Robert, Venezuelan migrant who crossed the Darién; Edwin Guillermo Viales Mora, Data and Research Assistant and Missing Migrants Project Focal Point, International Organization for Migration; Caitlyn Yates, PhD candidate, University of British Columbia.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of migrants from Central America and Mexico make their way to the US border, fleeing violence, environmental destruction, persecution, and displacement. Many of these migrants are from indigenous groups. In the first episode of Season 2, host Maggie Perzyna explores the historical roots of this migration, and how the echoes of colonialism are shaping the journey of Indigenous migrants.
Guests: Odilia Romero, Executive Director and Co-founder, Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (CIELO); Shannon Speed, Chickasaw Nation, Director, American Indian Studies Center and Professor of Gender Studies and Anthropology, UCLA; Asad L. Asad, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Stanford University and faculty affiliate, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
In Season 2 of Borders & Belonging, host Maggie Perzyna continues her mission to shed light on the voices and stories often overlooked. She takes listeners on a world tour, asking questions like “what fuels xenophobia in South Africa? Is Japan becoming a migration state? And “how is technology changing the places where people work and the countries trying to attract them?”
With the help of leading academics and professionals working with migrants on the ground, Borders & Belonging shares stories from around the world, spotlighting regional issues and uncovering the global forces that shape them.
Many countries are mining the Global South for one of its vital natural resources – its people. This creates a ‘brain drain’ of professionals and academics leaving the Global South in search of better opportunities abroad.
Why exactly is this happening, though, and what is the socio-economic harm done to the countries left behind? Is brain drain sapping the best and brightest from the Global South? Or is it just the effect of global mobility in an interconnected world?
First, we’ll hear from someone who is himself part of the brain drain, Kevin Njabo. He’s the Africa director and associate adjunct at the Center for Tropical Research, University of California, Los Angeles. The conservation biologist grew up in Cameroon but had to go to Nigeria to study and the US to pursue his academic career.
Host Maggie Perzyna then turns to two esteemed researchers delve into this topic: Ninna Sørensen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, and Manuel Orozco, director of the migration, remittances and development program at the Inter-American Dialogue and senior fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Development.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this podcast is Borders & Belonging. In it, Maggie talks to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notesBelow, you will find links to all the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Art and documentary‘Arts of war: Ukrainian artists confront Russia’, by Blair Ruble, Wilson Centre (2023)
Below, you find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Media‘37 of 55 countries facing health worker shortages in Africa: WHO‘, by Madhumita Paul, DownToEarth (16 March 2023)
‘Brain drain: Migrants are the lifeblood of the NHS, it’s time the UK paid for them‘, by Natalie Sharples, The Guardian (6 January 2015)
‘Does migration harm developing countries? - five-minute debate’, by Alex Andreou & Paul Collier, The Guardian (7 October 2013)
‘‘Helicopter research’: who benefits from international studies in Indonesia?‘, by Budiman Minasny & Dian Fiantis, The Conversation (29 August 2018)
‘How we can stop Africa’s scientific brain drain‘, by Kevin Njabo, TEDTalk (6 Feb 2018)‘Meaningful collaborations can end ‘helicopter research‘, by Fernanda Adame, Nature (29 June 2021)
‘Migration is inevitable. Progress drives migration‘, by Shirin Karsan, TEDxPhiladelphiaSalon (4 March 2019)
‘NHS hiring more doctors from outside UK and EEA than inside for first time‘, by Denis Campbell , The Guardian (8 June 2022)
‘Stop stealing doctors from developing countries‘, by Martin Skladany, Scientific American (2 September 2020)
‘The slow brain drain of Nigerian doctors‘, BBC News World Service (6 November 2022)
‘WHO raises alarm over increased healthcare worker migration to rich countries post pandemic‘, by Megha Kaveri, Health Policy Watch (14 March 2023)
Research projects and policy‘Brain gain: Providing healthcare workers with opportunities to migrate can increase education and supply of medical workers in origin countries‘, by Caroline Theoharides & Paolo Abarcar, World Bank Blogs (16 December 2021)
‘Code of Practice red and amber list of countries‘, NHS Employers (23 March 2023)
‘The Congo Basin Institute‘
‘The race for global talent‘, by Lucie Cerna, Population Europe (2016)
‘Same but different: Strategies in the global race for talent‘, by Marissa Weigle, International Centre for Migration Policy Devlopment (1 February 2023)
‘The global talent race heats up as countries and businesses compete for the best and brightest‘, by Ejaz Ghani, World Economic Forum (23 November 2018)
‘WHO health workforce support and safeguards list 2023‘, World Health Organization (14 March 2023)
BooksAzadi, P., Mesgaran, M. B., & Mirramezani, M. (2022). ’The struggle for development in Iran: the evolution of governance, economy, and society‘. Stanford University Press.
Boucher, A. (2016). ’Gender, migration and the global race for talent‘. Manchester University Press.
Brock, G., & Blake, M. (2014). ’Debating brain drain: May governments restrict emigration?‘. Oxford University Press.
Clemens, M. A. (2009). ‘Skill flow: A fundamental reconsideration of skilled-worker mobility and development‘. United Nations Development Programme.
Mpande, S. M. N. (2021). ’The diaspora’s role in Africa: Transculturalism, challenges, and development‘. Routledge.
Walton-Roberts, M. (2022). ’Global migration, gender, and health professional credentials: transnational value transfers and losses‘. University of Toronto Press.
World Bank. (2018). ’Moving for prosperity: global migration and labor markets‘. World Bank.
Academic worksBeine, M., Docquier, F., & Rapoport, H. (2008). ‘Brain drain and human capital formation in developing countries: winners and losers‘. The Economic Journal.
Docquier, F., & Rapoport, H. (2012). ‘Globalization, brain drain, and development‘. Journal of economic literature.
Orozco, M. (2002). ‘Globalization and migration: The impact of family remittances in Latin America‘. Latin American politics and society.
Orozco, M. (2004). ’Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean: Issues and perspectives on development‘. Organization of American States.
Selwyn, B., & Leyden, D. (2022). ‘Oligopoly-driven development: The World Bank’s Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains in perspective‘. Competition & Change
Sørensen, N. N. (2012). ‘Revisiting the migration–development nexus: From social networks and remittances to markets for migration control‘. International migration.
Sørensen, N. N., Van Hear, N., & Engberg-Pedersen, P. (2002). ‘The migration-development nexus: evidence and policy options‘. IOM Migration Research Series.
TranscriptMaggie Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration and aims to debunk myths about migration based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I’m Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Many countries are mining the global south for one of its vital natural resources, its people. The Global North has an ageing population and a declining birth rate. Many countries are anxiously trying to attract skilled labour to fill the gaps in their economies. It’s dubbed the ‘global race for talent’. Coupled with this is a phenomenon informally referred to as the ‘brain drain’. This happens when professionals and academics leave the Global South in search of better opportunities abroad. In a moment, we’ll speak with two esteemed researchers on the origins of this phenomenon and on the socio-economic impacts the drains have on the country’s left behind. But first, we’ll hear from someone who is part of the brain drain phenomenon, Kevin Njabo. He’s the Africa director and Associate Adjunct at UCLA’s Center for Tropical Research. He says, there’s one thing that most people can agree on as a motivating factor to stay in one’s home country.
Kevin Njabo
We always know our mothers cook the best food. So, we always want to stay home and eat what our mothers will cook for us. So that is general across the board.
Maggie Perzyna
Sadly, Njabo had to leave his mother’s home cooking far too early. The conservation biologist grew up in Cameroon, a country where French is the dominant language. Coming from an English-speaking family, Njabo’s options for higher education were limited. So, he decided to leave the country.
Kevin Njabo
So, I moved to Nigeria for a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in ecology and environmental biology. So, at the time, it was really difficult to practice my trade when I went back to Cameroon. So, I got a scholarship from Boston University, where I moved to the US, and I’ve since lived in the US since 2001 when I moved to Boston.
Maggie Perzyna
Njabo went on to pursue his PhD in the United States. And he quickly realized that many of his academic peers in the Global North would do what he terms, ‘helicopter research’ or ‘parachute science’.
Kevin Njabo
What you see is when issues arise in Africa, like we had an outbreak of Ebola, we send in the scientists and specialists from the West. They fly in get the samples, come back to New York or to Paris, or to Los Angeles, analyze the samples and send back those results. So, you see, Africa just becomes a continent of where people can fly in and get samples out.
Maggie Perzyna
So, when Njabo moved to California to pursue his postdoctoral studies, he sought to change that. And he met someone else who was thinking along the same lines. His boss and professor, Tom Smith. Smith had worked in Cameroon for over 35 years and came up with the idea of creating a permanent research center called the Congo Basin Institute. It’s a foreign affiliate of the University of California, dedicated to finding solutions to climate change, food and water security, and preserving biodiversity in the Congo Basin.
Kevin Njabo
So, we’re building capacity in Africa to make sure Africans can stay in Africa and be the solutions of issues that arise from the continent. So, we work in collaboration with the local people. We’ve built a school of indigenous and local knowledge, where we tap from the knowledge of these local people and build our curriculum. So, that even when we get students from the University of California who move into Africa, they’re being taught by the professors of the forest.
Maggie Perzyna
Njabo and his colleagues hope that by investing in local knowledge and research, more people will be inspired to stay in the region, and that those who have left will consider returning. Njabo himself now visits the Congo Basin approximately five times a year as part of his work.
Kevin Njabo
Once you start training people and you give them those different opportunities, they’re going to come back. And when they come back, they can really create that - they’re going to fill that void where the best and the brightest were taken out before. By bringing them back in to fill those voids, they could be able to now practice that trade and make sure you take those countries out of that cycle of poverty.
Maggie Perzyna
An example of a tangible change that could arise out of more local involvement and expertise, says Njabo, is a more profitable and better-informed cocoa production industry.
Kevin Njabo
For example, when you look at a trade in cocoa, we see that there is a huge imbalance of those that produce and work hard to get the raw materials and the final product. The cocoa industry, for example, is $100 billion. But the benefits that trickle back to the local people is about 6%. And when you look at Central and West Africa, they produce more than 75% of the raw materials for cocoa. How do you make sure that people who produce 75% of a product, they get 6% of the benefits? Because we have a lot of middlemen in between that value chain. So, once you train and make sure those people are empowered, and you cut out those middlemen, we put the consumers directly in connections, in contact with the producers. And then you can increase that value. But that value can only be increased if you know what they’re doing, the capacity is built and they understand that they have to, they need to have a say in our value chain in production systems. So that is what we’re trying to do. Empowerment.
Maggie Perzyna
Many thanks to Kevin Njabo for sharing his experience with us. Many of you might still be wondering, is brain drain sapping the best and brightest from the Global South? Or is it just the effect of global mobility in an interconnected world? Joining me to delve into this topic are Ninna Sørensen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, and Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, and senior fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Development. Welcome to you both. Thanks for joining me.
So what does brain drain look like in the Global South? Ninna let’s start with you.
Ninna Sørensen
Thank you. Well, I think it looks differently in different countries. I mean, we know that skilled migration, which is usually what we talk about when talking about brain drain seems to be rising more than other migration flows, especially when we talk about, sort of, regular migration - people traveling with permission to travel. But we also know that it might affect countries differently. When a brain drain is occurring, I think what it looks like is that that country lacks skilled persons that are important for development of that country. So, we will see that the fact that skilled persons migrate in high numbers from that country will lead to a lack of people who can participate in development, but it may not always be the case. So, we would have to look to each country, right, because brain drain can look in many ways and will not necessarily be a drain, it could also be ‘brain gain’ or...
Since February 2022, over 19m Ukrainians have fled their country. Almost half probably remain spread across the world, most of them in Europe. They are considered temporary refugees – but are they really temporary? Where are these people, and what challenges face their host countries?
First in this episode, we'll hear from Aleksandra and Michał Miszułowicz, a couple in Poland who helped resettled thousands of Ukrainian refugees as soon as the conflict began in 2022.
Host Maggie Perzyna then turns to two academic experts to explore the situation of Ukrainian refugees: Izabela Grabowska, professor of social sciences at Kozminski University in Poland, where she is also director of the Centre for Research on Social Change and Human Mobility (CRASH), and Yuliya Kosyakova, professor of migration research at the Otto Friedrich University Bamberg and head of the research department at the Research Institute of the Federal Employment Agency in Nuremberg, Germany.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this podcast is Borders & Belonging. In it, Maggie talks to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notesBelow, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Art and documentary‘Arts of war: Ukrainian artists confront Russia’, by Blair Ruble, Wilson Centre (2023)
‘Children caught up in the Ukraine War’, by DW Documentary (2023)
‘Defying Russian missiles and Soviet censors, Ukrainian art goes on show’, by Scott Rayburn, New York Times (23 November 2022)
‘How Ukrainian refugees in Poland are coping a year on from the war’, by BBC Newsnight (2023)
‘Ukrainian refugees in Russia’, by ARTE.tv Documentary (2022)
‘Uprooted’, by Andzej Gavriss, Creative Agency Don’t Panic, for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (2022)
Donate or get involved!Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
International Medical Corps
Razom for Ukraine
UNHCR
United Nations Population Fund
Women for Women International
Media‘Even once female Ukrainian refugees reach safety, they face new burdens as single heads of household’, by Dilek Cindoglu, The Conversation (25 February 2022)
‘Invisible’ migrants Ukrainian refugees in Poland brace themselves for a long war’, by Kristina Safonova, Meduza (9 March 2023)
‘Lessons from history for our response to Ukrainian refugees’, by Sascha Becker, VoxEU (29 March 2022)
‘One year after the Russian invasion, insecurity clouds return intentions of displaced Ukrainians’, by UNHCR (23 February 2023)
‘One year on, volunteers in Poland are still doing all they can for Ukrainian refugees’, by Rafał Kostrzyński, UNHCR (22 February 2023)
‘Poland’s hospitality is helping many Ukrainian refugees thrive – 5 takeaways’, by Patrice McMahon, The Conversation (2 March 2023)
‘Refugees from Ukraine face considerable uncertainty about their future’, by Christiane Keitel and Jutta Winters, IAB-Forum (2 March 2023)
‘'There is no time to grieve': Ukrainian refugees arriving in Warsaw focus on helping each other’, by Margo McDiarmid, CBC News (13 March 2022)
‘Ukraine exposes Europe’s double standards for refugees’, by Emily Venturi and Anna Iasmi Vallianatou, Chatham House (30 March 2022)
‘Ukrainian refugees need security. EU’s temporary protection can’t give it’, by Zeynep Şahin Mencütek, openDemocracy (11 March 2022)
‘Ukrainian women in Poland—an insecure sanctuary’, by Marta Kucharska, Social Europe (16 September 2022)
‘We understand what war means’: Poles rush to aid Ukraine’s refugees’, by Lorenzo Tondo and Weronika Strzyżyńska, The Guardian (5 March 2022)
Research projects and policy‘Canada launches new temporary residence pathway to welcome those fleeing the war in Ukraine’, by Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Government of Canada (17 March 2022)
‘Council Directive 2001/55/EC’, Eur-lex
‘How large will the Ukrainian refugee flow be, and which EU countries will they seek refuge in?’, by Mikael Elinder, Oscar Erixson and Olle Hammar, Delmi Policy Brief, 3 (2022)
‘Integrating refugees and asylum seekers into the German economy and society: empirical evidence and policy objectives’, by Herbert Brücker, Philipp Jaschke and Juliya Kosyakova, Migration Policy Institute (December 2019)
‘Lives on Hold: Intentions and Perspectives of Refugees from Ukraine #3’, by UNHCR and Ipsos (22 February 2023)
‘Operational data portal: Ukraine refugee situation’, by UNHCR
‘Poland’s civil society is caught between Russia and the West’, by Paweł Marczewski (30 November 2022)
‘Preliminary findings from an online survey of Ukrainian refugees in Germany and Poland’, by Steffen Pötzschke, Bernd Weiß, Anna Hebel, Joachim Piepenburgand Oleksandra Popek, LSE (12 May 2022)
‘Temporary protection’, Migration and Home Affairs, European Commission (2022)
‘Temporary protection for foreigners’, Office for Foreigners, Republic of Poland (2022)
‘War and migration: the recent influx from Ukraine into Poland and possible scenarios for the future’, by Maciej Diszczyk and Pawel Kaczmarczyk, CMR Spotlight, Centre of Migration Research (April 2022)
BooksJacoby, T. (2022). ‘Displaced: The Ukrainian refugee experience’. Talentos Press.
Kasińska-Metryka, A., & Pałka-Suchojad, K. (Eds.). (2023). ‘The Russia-Ukraine War of 2022: Faces of Modern Conflict’. Taylor & Francis.
Academic worksBajaj, S. S., & Stanford, F. C. (2022). ‘The Ukrainian refugee crisis and the pathology of racism’. BMJ.
De Coninck, D. (2022). ‘The refugee paradox during wartime in Europe: How Ukrainian and Afghan refugees are (not) alike’. International Migration Review,
Duszczyk, M., & Kaczmarczyk, P. (2022). ‘Poland and War refugees from Ukraine–Beyond pure Aid’. Institut-Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität München.
Grabowska, I. (2023). ‘Societal dangers of migrant crisis narratives with a special focus on Belarussian and Ukrainian borders with Poland’. Frontiers.
Kanas, A., & Kosyakova, Y. (2023). ‘Greater local supply of language courses improves refugees’ labor market integration’. European Societies.
Kosyakova, Y., Kristen, C., & Spörlein, C. (2022). ‘The dynamics of recent refugees’ language acquisition: how do their pathways compare to those of other new immigrants?’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.
Ociepa-Kicińska, E., & Gorzałczyńska-Koczkodaj, M. (2022). ‘Forms of aid provided to refugees of the 2022 Russia–Ukraine War: The case of Poland’. International journal of environmental research and public health.
Panchenko, T. (2022). ‘Prospects for Integration of Ukrainian Refugees into the German labor market: Results of the ifoOnline Survey’, Institut-Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität München.
Toruńczyk-Ruiz, S. (2014). ‘Neighbourhood ties and migrant networks: The case of circular Ukrainian migrants in Warsaw, Poland’. Central and Eastern European Migration Review.
TranscriptMaggie Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration, and aims to debunk myths about migration based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University.
It's been just over a year since Russia's most recent invasion of Ukraine. The war waged by Vladimir Putin has killed 1000s of innocent people and displaced millions more. Since February 2022, over 19 million Ukrainians have fled their country. While it is estimated that just over half have returned in the ensuing months, the rest remain spread across the world, particularly in Europe. As of March 2023, the UNHCR estimates over 8 million Ukrainians are living in other parts of Europe. The main narrative around these displaced Ukrainians suggest that they're temporary refugees who will have returned home when the war ends.
Today, we're going to delve into where these refugees settled, the unique challenges facing the countries providing refuge. And if the idea of 'temporary refugees' is a valid one. But first, we'll hear from a couple in Poland who helped resettled 1000s of Ukrainian refugees as soon as the conflict began in 2022. Aleksandra Miszułowicz will never forget the teen boy she met last June while volunteering at a welcome center for Ukrainian refugees in her hometown of Raszyn, located just outside of Warsaw.
Aleksandra Miszułowicz
We make some packages for children and there was a boy, a teenager, and he didn't want to take this present. And his face was you know, with no emotions. He was like a sheet of paper. His grandmother told you know, he just came from Mariupol. And he was really frozen. And we are near the airport here in Raszyn. And anytime the plane was starting children, little children four, three years old, were crying or hiding. And their families told, "you know you're safe here, you're safe here".
Maggie Perzyna
This boy was one of the thousands of Ukrainian refugees that Alexandra and her husband met since February 2022, when they banded together with their neighbors to support people fleeing the war. It was a cause they were committed to from the moment Russia announced the invasion.
Aleksandra Miszułowicz
We were looking at it very carefully because we are really near of this here in Poland. And the day before our president were in Ukraine and we all have hoped that Russian won't do it, but they did it. And it was the moment when we starting to think what we should do in this situation. And the next day and we started to prepare to help. Because we knew that many, many people will come here, and it was some thought that in 1939 nobody helped us and now we may fix something, and we will do it different in this situation.
Maggie Perzyna
Aleksandra curates art exhibitions for a living. Her husband Michał is a banker. Neither had prior experience resettling newcomers, but that didn't stop them. They dipped into their savings account, booked all their vacation days and jumped into 12-hour shifts preparing for their new neighbours. For the first few months, they operated at a sports center in town alongside 15 other volunteers in their community. Michał says contributions came in from individuals, local foundations, and even some generous donors in Hawaii.
Michał Miszułowicz
We put together, I don't know maybe 20, 20-something beds, sheets and blankets to be prepared for people coming. People were coming asking what needs to be brought? So, food, so clothes. There was a huge movement. People were volunteering to meet the refugees on the main train stations. And also, there were or lists to host those people in in...
As temperatures rise around the planet, floods, drought and deforestation are forcing people in the Global South from their homes and livelihoods. The media likes to call them climate refugees, but is that accurate? This episode will unpack the catchy phrase and guide us through some of the nuanced intersections between the environment and migration.
First, we'll hear from Daniela Paredes Grijalva. In 2019, she was on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, where, just months earlier, a strong earthquake had caused a tsunami and a rare phenomenon called soil liquefaction. The consequences for the islanders were absolutely devastating.
Here to help host Maggie Perzyna separate the myths from the facts surrounding climate-induced migration are Kathleen Hermans, head of the MigSoKo research group at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, and Robert McLeman, professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, and a policy adviser on the effects of climate change and global migration patterns.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this podcast is Borders & Belonging. In it, Maggie talks to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notes Below, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Art and documentary ‘Climate Refugees’, by Michael Nash, Multicom Entertainment Group (2010)
‘Fleeing Climate Change – The Real Environmental Disaster’, by Thomas Anders, DW Documentary (2019)
‘Planet SOS from Palau to Alaska: Where will climate refugees go when the tide rises?’, by Al Jazeera (2019)
‘The Age of Consequences’, by Jared P. Scott, STARZ Documentaries (2016)
Donate or get involved! ‘Hudara’: Standing with communities
‘Refugees International’
‘UNHCR’: Climate change and disaster displacement
Media ‘A new kind of climate refugee is emerging’, by Willem Marx, NPR (2 December 2022)
‘As the Planet Warms, Canada Faces an Influx of Climate Refugees’, by Hanna Hett, Wired (18 September 2022)
‘Beyond environmental refuge’, by Robert McLeman, TEDxUOttawa (18 October 2021)
‘Does climate change cause migration?’, by Daniela Paredes Grijalva, TEDxDonauinsel (21 July 2022)
‘How climate migration will reshape America’, by Abrahm Lustgarten, The New York Times (15 September 2020)
‘Human migration and global environmental change’, ‘MigSoKo project, YouTube (2 February, 2022)
‘Is the world ready for mass migration due to climate change?’, by Gaia Vince (17 November 2022)
‘The great climate migration has begun’, by Abrahm Lustgarten, New York Times (23 July 2020)
Research projects and policy ‘Internal Displacement Monitoring Center’, Geneva
‘MigSoKo’ Research Group, UFZ Leipzig, Germany
‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’, United Nations
‘Global Report on Internal Displacement 2022 (GRID): Children and youth in internal displacement’, Internal Displacement Monitoring Center
International agreements and conventions‘The 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol’, United Nations
‘Global Compact on Refugees’, United Nations (17 December, 2018)
‘Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration’ (GCM), United Nations 10 December 2018
‘Kampala Ministerial Declaration on Migration, Environment and Climate Change’, RCC Kampala, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Ministry of Water and Environment of Uganda (29 July 2022)
‘The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants’, United Nations (19 September 2016)
‘The Paris Agreement’, UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) (12 December 2015)
‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’, United Nations (1992)
Books Ginty, A. (2021). ‘Climate change solutions and environmental migration: The injustice of maladaptation and the gendered ‘silent offset’ economy’. Routledge.
McLeman, R. (2013). ‘Climate and human migration: Past experiences, future challenges’. Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges. Cambridge University Press.
Miller, T. (2017). ‘Storming the wall: Climate change, migration, and homeland security’. City Lights Books.
Behrman, S., & Kent, A. (eds) (2022). ‘Climate refugees: Global, local and critical approaches’. Cambridge University Press.
Rosignoli, F. (2022). ‘Environmental justice for climate refugees’. Routledge.
Academic works Ebi, K. L., & McLeman, R. (2022). ‘Climate related migration and displacement’. BMJ.
Groth, J., Ide, T., Sakdapolrak, P., Kassa, E., & Hermans, K. (2020). ‘Deciphering interwoven drivers of environment-related migration–A multisite case study from the Ethiopian highlands’. Global Environmental Change.
Groth, J., Hermans, K., Wiederkehr, C., Kassa, E., & Thober, J. (2021). ‘Investigating environment-related migration processes in Ethiopia–A participatory Bayesian network’. Ecosystems and People.
Hauer, M. E., Fussell, E., Mueller, V., Burkett, M., Call, M., Abel, K., ... & Wrathall, D. (2020). ‘Sea-level rise and human migration’. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
Hermans, K., & Garbe, L. (2019). ‘Droughts, livelihoods, and human migration in northern Ethiopia’. Regional Environmental Change.
Hermans, K., & Ide, T. (2019). ‘Advancing research on climate change, conflict and migration’. DIE ERDE: Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin.
Hermans, K., & McLeman, R. (2021). ‘Climate change, drought, land degradation and migration: exploring the linkages’. Current opinion in environmental sustainability.
Høeg, E., & Tulloch, C. D. (2019). ‘Sinking strangers: Media representations of climate refugees on the BBC and Al Jazeera’. Journal of Communication Inquiry.
McLeman, R., Wrathall, D., Gilmore, E., Thornton, P., Adams, H., & Gemenne, F. (2021). ‘Conceptual framing to link climate risk assessments and climate-migration scholarship’. Climatic Change.
McLeman, R. (2019). ‘International migration and climate adaptation in an era of hardening borders’. Nature Climate Change.
McLeman, R., Fontanella, F., Greig, C., Heath, G., & Robertson, C. (2022). ‘Population responses to the 1976 South Dakota drought: Insights for wider drought migration research’. Population, Space and Place.
Wiederkehr, C., Ide, T., Seppelt, R., & Hermans, K. (2022). ‘It’s all about politics: migration and resource conflicts in the global South’. World Development.
TranscriptMagdalena Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration, and aims to debunk myths about migration based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. As global temperatures rise, vulnerable areas around the world are facing environmental disruptions and extreme weather events. Challenges like floods, drought, and deforestation are causing a fundamental shift in the daily lives of many in the global South. These kinds of environmental shifts are forcing people from their homes and livelihoods, creating climate-related migration. Today, we're exploring the idea of a climate refugee. It's a popular term in the media. But is such terminology accurate? Two researchers will help us unpack the catchy phrase and guide us through some of the nuanced intersections between the environment and migration. But first, we'll hear from Daniela Paredes Grijalva. She's a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna, and a member of the Global (De)Center.
In 2019, Daniela was on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a place where just months earlier, a strong earthquake had caused a tsunami and a rare phenomenon called soil liquefaction. The consequences were absolutely devastating.
Daniela Paredes Grijalva
In February 2019, the death toll had been over 4000 and over 170,000 people were displaced. Financial losses, which are obviously also difficult to calculate, but they surpassed the $1 billion mark. The homes of 60,000 families were severely damaged or destroyed. Well, in short, it was a terrible time for the people of Sulawesi, especially central Sulawesi.
Magdalena Perzyna
Daniela wanted to learn about how these disasters impacted mobility on the island. She wondered, who left, who stayed, and why? So as part of her research, she interviewed a wide range of people.
Daniela Paredes Grijalva
I started talking to humanitarian and development workers in Indonesia that had been involved in the post disaster response. I was trying to understand the logics with which these organizations operated on the ground, to try to identify if this intersection of environment and human mobility was something that they were doing explicitly or not.
Magdalena Perzyna
The more Daniela spoke with different actors, the more she realized that many organizations had very specific ways of describing who their beneficiaries were. For example, some would refer to them as "disaster victims". But Daniela quickly learned that these kinds of terms did not always reflect how Sulawesi residents described their own experiences. So, she kept asking questions.
Daniela Paredes Grijalva
During one of my interviews, I kept on asking about, well, what about this term? And this is obviously a limitation, or more than a limitation. The angle with which I was coming, right from university. I want to have my categories clear, what words am I talking about? What concepts so I kept on asking, What about refugee? What about displaced person? What about internally displaced? What about international migrants? What words are you using in your work? And I did end up annoying the person on the other side [laughing]. And they got back to me saying regular people, just regular people.
Magdalena Perzyna
This response prompted Daniela to think more deeply about how environmental disasters are just one of many challenges people face. And it was an important reminder on how the environment intersects with other fundamental human rights.
Daniela Paredes Grijalva
These interactions, I heard of people who, those who hadn't registered births or marriages. And because of that reason could later not make any claims to disaster compensation or participate in relocation programs. That seems like a pretty basic or fundamental thing that also needs to be addressed. And I think that's a good reminder for those of us working in this field of environmental migration. Yes, it's a specialized field. At the same time, I guess the challenge is how do we connect it to basic human rights?
Magdalena Perzyna
Just as important a...
Nations in the global North are struggling with labour shortages dubbed in the media as ‘the great retirement' and ‘the great resignation'. Unemployment rates are running at near-record lows. As a result many nations are letting more temporary migrant labourers in to fill the gaps. Is this a good idea?
In this episode we'll hear from someone on the frontlines in the fight for migrant workers’ rights: Syed Hussan, executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, a group in Toronto, Canada, that comprises farmworkers, domestic workers and refugees, many of them are undocumented.
Then host Maggie Prezyna speaks with two experts will share insights on the complexity of the labour shortage and how the migrant labour piece fits into the economic puzzle. Armine Yalnizyan is an economist and Atkinson Foundation Fellow on the Future of Workers, a regular media contributor and adviser on economic policy to the Canadian government. And Martin Ruhs, is the Professor of Migration Studies and deputy director of the Migration Policy Center at the European University Institute in Florence. He is a migration policy advisor for various governments and international institutions.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notesBelow, you will find links to all the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Art and documentary‘El Contrato’, by Min Sook Lee, National Film Board (2003)
‘Migrant Dreams’, by Min Sook Lee, Cinema Politica (2016)
‘This is Evidence: Re-picturing South Asian migrant men in Greece’, exhibit curated by Reena Kukreja (2019)
Donate or get involved!Migrant Rights Alliance for Change
Media‘Canada and the U.S. both face labor shortages. One country is increasing immigration’, by Julia Ainsley, Joel Seidman and Didi Martinez, NBC News (7 January 2023)
‘Contending with the pandemic, wealthy nations wage global battle for migrants’, by Damien Cave and Christopher F. Schuetze, The New York Times (23 November 2021)
‘How the labour shortage got so bad’, by Armine Yalnizyan, Maclean’s (11 August 2022).
‘Immigrants could be the solution to Canada’s labour shortage, but they need to be supported’, by Rupa Banerjee, The Conversation (12 December 2022)
‘Nobody wants to work anymore’ and other falsehoods on Labour Day’, by Armine Yalnizyan, Toronto Star (5 September 2022)
‘The pandemic aggravated labour shortages in some sectors; the problem is now emerging in others’ by Eurofound (20 July 2021)
Research projects and policy‘COVID-19 and the demand for labour and skills in Europe’, by Terence Hogarth, MPI (February 2021)
‘Immigration as a source of labour supply’, Statistics Canada (22 June 2022)
‘Labour shortage trends in Canada’, Statistics Canada (18 November 2022)
‘Publications’, by Armine Yalnizyan, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
‘The post-COVID-19 rise in labour shortages’, by Orsetta Causa, Michael Abendschein, Nhung Luu, Emilia Soldani, Chiara Soriolo, OECD Economics Department Working Paper Series (7 July 2022)
BooksRuhs, M. (2013). ‘The price of rights: Regulating international labor migration’. Princeton University Press.
Ruhs, M. and B. Anderson eds. (2010). ‘Who needs migrant workers? Labour shortages, immigration and public policy’. Oxford University Press.
Ruhs, M., Tamas, T. & J. Palme eds. (2019). ‘Bridging the gaps: Linking research to public debates and policy-making on migration and integration’. Oxford University Press.
Ide, T.R, Yalnizyan, A. & A. Cordell. (1994). ‘Shifting time: Social policy and the future of work’. Between the Lines.
Academic worksAnderson, B., Poeschel, F. and M. Ruhs. (2021). “Rethinking labour migration: Covid-19, essential work, and systemic resilience”, Comparative Migration Studies.
Bauböck, R. & M. Ruhs. (2022). ‘The elusive triple win: Addressing temporary labour migration dilemmas through fair representation’. Migration Studies.
Martin, P. & M. Ruhs. (2019). ‘Labour market realism and the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees’. International Migration.
Ruhs, M. (2018). ‘Labor immigration policies in high-income countries: Variations across political regimes and varieties of capitalism’. Journal of Legal Studies.
Ruhs, M. (2017.) ‘Rethinking international legal standards for the protection of migrant workers: The case for a ‘core rights’ approach’. American Journal of International Law.
Ruhs, M. (2016). ‘The rights of migrant workers: Economics, politics and ethics’. International Labour Review.
TranscriptMaggie Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration, and aims to debunk myths about migration based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. Post pandemic, nations in the global North are struggling with labour shortages dubbed in the media as the 'great retirement' and the 'great resignation'. Unemployment rates are running at near record lows. Employers are clamoring for workers. Many nations are increasing the number of temporary migrant labourers allowed to work in their country to stem the tide. An outlier, Canada's looking to migrants on two fronts. On the one hand, by relaxing rules around which industries can employ temporary foreign workers. On the other hand, by raising immigration levels to unprecedented levels, Canada plans to welcome 500,000 immigrants a year by 2025. Today's episode will explore the question of whether migrant workers are the answer to the labour shortages we're hearing so much about. Two experts will share insights on the complexity surrounding the labour shortage and how the migrant labour piece fits into the economic puzzle. But first, we'll hear from someone on the frontlines in the fight for migrant workers’ rights.
Syed Hussan
When people speak up against bad wages or bad working conditions, if they're literally tied to their employer, as certain migrant workers are, then they can be made homeless. They're not allowed to work anywhere else. They're not able to get any EI (Employment Insurance) because the laws prohibit them from working for anyone else – the employer can literally deport them.
Maggie Perzyna
That's Syed Hussan. He's the executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change. The Toronto-based organization is made up of farmworkers, domestic workers, and refugees, among others, many of them are undocumented.
Syed Hussan
What we do is we support the self-organization of migrants. So, for migrants to gather with each other, based on where they live, where they work, potentially language or immigration status, in the specific sectors and support them to take collective action to win what they need.
Maggie Perzyna
Members of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change come from a wide range of places, including the Caribbean, the Philippines, Nigeria, and Mexico. And while their lived experiences may vary, Hussan says that there are some important common threads that unite them.
Syed Hussan
Whether it's migrant farmworkers and gig workers who hold up the food chain, or migrant healthcare workers and care workers who are holding up the care economy, migrants are at significant choke points of capitalism, as well as being exploited. All of our membership is racialized working class people taking collective action to win changes.
Maggie Perzyna
And their collective action is paying off. Take for example, how they responded to a recent crisis in New Brunswick's lobster and crab industries.
Syed Hussan
These large corporations are taking over from smaller businesses, setting the wages for the fishers. Many fishers from Canada have refused to sell to these [corporations] and have taken various kinds of strike actions in order to increase the pay that they're being given. Now, all of these fisheries that is actually collected is brought in to be processed by migrant workers.
Maggie Perzyna
The consequences of this were dire. But through organizing and advocacy, Hussan says the migrant workers were able to secure their rights.
Syed Hussan
They actually won a contract where the employer has now written a contract out to them to give them the power to get, you know, to be paid, even if they're not working. And so, you know, so this is a story where people were literally starving, using food banks. Not even being able to access food banks, not being able to work actually having to pay to live in the country, who through collective action, won a better, fairer 2-year contract in the future, which they are now traveling across the East Coast training other migrant workers like themselves to take similar kinds of action.
Maggie Perzyna
And while this recent win is encouraging, Hussan says the most important way that migrant workers can safely continue to do their work here is through permanent resident status. It's through documentation, he says, that the migrant workers will be able to access the rest of their rights, including health care and employment insurance. Many thanks to Syed Hussan for sharing his experiences with the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change. Joining me to discuss the use of migrant workers to combat labour shortages is Armine Yalnizyan, a Canadian economist and Atkinson Foundation Fellow on the Future of Workers. She is a regular media contributor and government adviser on economic policy. And Professor Martin Ruhs, Chair in Migration Studies and Deputy Director of the Migration Policy Center at the European University Institute in Florence. Martin is a migration policy advisor for various governments and international institutions. Thanks to you both for talking with me today.
Maggie Perzyna
Since the pandemic, it seems like every country in the global North is struggling with labour shortages. Why is this happening now?
Armine Yalnizyan
Every country that had a baby boom after the Second World War is seeing that generation of workers, the biggest cohort of people that entered the labour market, and the first cohort where women thought they were just as good as men. That cohort is aging out of the labour market, sometimes more rapidly because of the pandemic. And we certainly aren't through it yet, but the beginnings of this phenomenon have already raised warning signs to people. You know, demographics is the slowest moving train on the planet. We could see this coming literally 50 years off and have not planned for it. So, everybody's been taken aback. Add to that the pandemic and its effects on reducing migrant workers being able to travel and the pandemic making people more sick now, even when they went back to work. And of course, the pandemic’s effects on some marginal businesses that either failed to stay functioning during the pandemic's long period of reduced demand or are now collapsing under the weight of central banks raising rates in lockstep around the world. So, there's lots of different moving parts to this story. But the big story is demographic.
Maggie Perzyna
Martin, do you have anything to add?
Martin Ruhs
Yeah, I would agree that there's various explanations, but obviously, many OECD economies are rebounding strongly from the pandemic. Labour markets are tight and, you know, obviously, during the pandemic, there was quite strong government support for both companies and workers. And some workers who were supported have perhaps not yet returned to the to the labour market for various reasons, or at least not to employment in some jobs that they were previously in. And I suppose one big question is, and I think this is still being researched, is the extent to which workers' attitudes and preferences to certain jobs have changed. We've obviously had long standing shortages in sectors that offer low wages and poor working conditions, which is one of the reasons why we see migrants employed in those sectors. But the question now is whether citizens, local workers who use to work in those jobs, whether they are perhaps now less inclined to return to those jobs that are low pay, poor conditions, and maybe don't offer a good source of protection.
Maggie Perzyna
While many countries are reluctant to increase their immigration rates, Canada's an outlier. To address labour shortages, Canada's dramatically increasing immigration, while at the same time relaxing rules around the use of temporary foreign workers. Armine, what are the differences between those brought in through immigration versus temporary migrant workers?
Armine Yalnizyan
Maggie, I am so grateful that you include in migration, these two pieces because often people talk about migration as if what we're talking about is immigration. Immigration is about accepting people to come and live, as well as work, in your country.
From the way Western media and politicians talk about migration, you’d never guess that only 30% of refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants are heading for the Global North. Instead, most people on the move like this are travelling from one country in the Global South to another.
Why does this get so little coverage? What are the most popular destinations for migrants in the Global South? Do migrants moving South to South face the same problems as those headed North: harassment at border crossings, problems with documentation and discouragement from destination countries?
Hear from Vani Saraswathi, a journalist who has spent years documenting the experiences of migrants working in the Gulf states. Then host Maggie Prezyna speaks with experts Nicola Piper (University of Sydney) and Joseph Teye (University of Ghana) to explore the unique patterns and challenges of South-South migration.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notesBelow, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Donate or get involved!MIGRANT-RIGHTS.ORG
Kafala system, Human Rights Watch
Media‘Decolonising knowledge production on south-south migration’, by Mariama Awumbila, Leander Kandilige and Mary Setrana, MIDEQ (25 March 2022)
‘Q&A: South-South migration has long been overlooked. Why?’, by Eric Reidy, MIDEQ (8 July 2021)
‘New labour law ends Qatar’s exploitative kafala system’, by Pete Pattisson, The Guardian (1 September 2020).
‘What or where is the ‘Global South’? A social science perspective’, by Sebastian Haug, London School of Economics (28 September 2021)
Research projects and policy‘Africa regional fair recruitment report: The recruitment of migrant workers to, within and from Africa’, International Labour Organization (ILO)
‘The Future of African Migration and Mobility: Continent on the Move or Contained?’, by Mehari Taddele Maru, European Union Institute for Security Studies
‘GCRF South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub’, UK Research and Innovation
‘Migration Dynamics, Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons in Africa’, by Aderanti Adepoju, United Nations
‘Migration for Development and Equality’ (MIDEQ), UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)
South-South Migration, OECD
BooksCordell, D. D., Gregory, J. W., & Piché, V. (2020). ‘Hoe and Wage: A Social History of a Circular Migration System in West Africa’. Routledge.
Hujo, K., & Piper, N. (Eds.). (2010). South-South Migration: Implications for Social Policy and Development. Springer.
Kyei, R. K. O., Kadje, D. M., Kandilige, L., Abutima, T. K., Obour, P. B., Osiki, O. M., & Asante, R. K. (2017). ‘Migration and Development in Africa: Trends, Challenges, and Policy Implications’. Lexington Books.
Academic worksAwumbila, M., Teye, J. K., & Yaro, J. A. (2017). ‘Social networks, migration trajectories and livelihood strategies of migrant domestic and construction workers in Accra, Ghana’. Journal of Asian and African Studies.
Castles, S. (2009). ‘Development and migration--migration and development: what comes first? Global perspective and African experiences’. Theoria.
Foley, L., & Piper, N. (2021). ‘Returning home empty handed: Examining how COVID-19 exacerbates the non-payment of temporary migrant workers’ wages’. Global Social Policy.
Piper, N. (2009). ‘The complex interconnections of the migration–development nexus: A social perspective’. Population, Space and Place.
Piper, N. (2022). ‘Temporary labour migration in Asia: The transnationality‐precarity nexus’. International Migration.
Piper, N., Rosewarne, S., & Withers, M. (2017). Migrant precarity in Asia:‘Networks of labour activism’ for a rights‐based Governance of migration. Development and Change.
Piper, N., & Rother, S. (2022). ‘Governing regional migration from the ‘bottom-up’: a nodal approach to the role of transnational activist networks in Asia’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.
Teye, J. K. (2022). ‘Critical migration policy narratives from West Africa’. International Migration.
Teye, J. K., Awumbila, M., & Benneh, Y. (2015). ‘Intra-regional migration in the ECOWAS region: Trends and emerging challenges’ (p.96). In, Migration and Civil Society as Development Drivers-a Regional Perspective. Center for European Integration Studies.
Withers, M. & Piper, N. (2022). ‘Decent wages for decent work in Asia: Addressing the temporality-precarity nexus in South-South migration. In Global Labor Migration: New Directions. University of Illinois Press.
TranscriptMaggie Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration, and aims to debunk myths about migration, based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. Today's episode is about South to South migration. It's a phenomenon that describes the movement of people between countries outside of Europe and North America. It represents the most significant migratory movement of people, and yet, the issues surrounding it are largely ignored by the West. In fact, most of the coverage we see in the media about migration focuses on refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants trying to get to countries in North America and Western Europe. In this episode, two esteemed researchers will give us insights into some of the major trends behind South-South migration. But first, we'll hear from a journalist who has spent years documenting the experiences of migrants working in the Gulf states. Vani Saraswathi is the editor at large and Director of Projects for migrant-rights.org. It's an advocacy organization that aims to advance the rights of migrants working in the Gulf region around the Arabian Peninsula. Many migrants come from India, East Africa, and the Philippines.
Vani Saraswathi
They come with a plan to build a house, to put their kids through school or to get their sister married or daughter married. They have these plans for a better economic environment for their children for their families. And that can go wrong, terribly wrong. What they don't account for is a lack of social support. That when they come here, they're going to be working and living in absolute isolation. If you're a female migrant worker in the domestic work sector, you're going to be literally imprisoned in your employer's home.
Maggie Perzyna
Vani currently lives in India, the same country where she was born and raised. But she spent 17 years living and working in the Gulf, where she met dozens of migrants with a range of experiences. Some made the trip after hearing success stories from their home countries, like this one from India.
Vani Saraswathi
The southern state of Kerala has a very, very high rate of migration. And it's a wealthy state, you see that wealth. And you know that wealth came from remittances from the Gulf. That is a motivator for everyone else.
Maggie Perzyna
While the motivation may be a widespread phenomenon, the success rate is a lot less common. Vani says this is due in part to the fact that all migrants in the Gulf are employed under something called the Kafala system.
Vani Saraswathi
It's a network of laws and practices, basically, tying an individual or non-nationals, residents and work permits to one national entity. To either a citizen employer or a citizen-run business or a locally registered business. So, it gives the employer unmitigated powers over the worker, your work and residence is tied to the same entity. The government has just outsourced immigration policies to the individual.
Maggie Perzyna
This is particularly problematic for a region where the majority of the labour market is made up of migrant workers earning low wages in construction, agriculture, and domestic work. And throughout the nearly two decades that Vani lived in Qatar, she saw the consequences of this with our own eyes.
Vani Saraswathi
So, you saw violations like, of course, overworking, being housed in terrible conditions, not being paid properly or not being paid at all. But what has really stuck was the fact that there was no accountability. The government wasn't held accountable. And the businesses, the employers were not held accountable. So, you saw that you had like millions of workers across the Gulf. Women coming from the Global South, having no labour protection, no legal protection outside of the visa regime. Domestic workers laws in these countries are very recent, and they've always been excluded from labour laws. So, you started noticing this more, that not only were there violations, but there was a deliberate attempt to stop any kind of access to justice.
Maggie Perzyna
Through her work, Vani has heard some heart wrenching stories from migrants. Some former domestic workers spoke about being sexually abused by their employers. People in the fishing industry talked about being arrested by coast guards while on the job. And across the board, there seemed to be an overall disrespect for their basic rights as workers.
Vani Saraswathi
A small thing like not being paid on time, which will appear small, has a devastating impact on the families, children dropping out of schools, the elderly, not getting medicine. So, these are the kinds of things that we try to bring in, in our reporting.
Maggie Perzyna
Vani's main takeaway from all her time in the Gulf, as a migrant herself, and now as an editor who travels there often for work, is that any potential solutions to improving the rights of migrants in the region should focus primarily on labour laws.
Vani Saraswathi
What they really need to look at is not just safe migration, yes, there is a trafficking component that we need to look at. But what is more important is forced labour in destination. And that can be avoided. And that comes when you ensure your laws, and the enforcement of the laws, protect the rights of your workers - labour rights and other human rights. And this doesn't exist in the Gulf context. Freedom of association, freedom of speech, all of this doesn't exist.
Maggie Perzyna
Many thanks to Vani Saraswathi, for sharing her experiences reporting from the Gulf. To discuss the unique patterns and challenges of South-South migration, I have Nicola Piper, professor of international migration and founding director of the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Center at the University of Sydney, and Professor Joseph Teye, director of the Center for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana. Thanks to you both for joining me. In the Global North, we hear mainly about South to North migration, and not as much about South to South migration. Can you tell us what defines South to South migration?
Professor Joseph Teye
Yeah, so when we talk about South to South migration, we are talking about migration from one country in the Global South to another region or country in the Global South. So maybe if I move from Ghana to Sierra Leone, or you know, Ghana to Nigeria, then we call it South-South migration, or somebody is moving from Haiti to Ghana, that we also call South-South migration, which is different from movement from a Southern country to another country, which is the South-North migration. Unlike South-North migration, where mostly, the distance covered is quite high, the South-South migration sometimes can be within the same region. So, if you take West Africa, for instance, you have countries within the region, where people have been moving from one country to another for millennia. So, in the Western African region, for instance, people used to move from the Sahel region, we are talking about countries, such as Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso. These are countries that find themselves in areas that are a little bit dry, where the rainfall region is not very good for cultivation of crops. So, they tend to move towards the southern part of the West Africa. So, they move into Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, southern Nigeria, to farm. And then they go back during the rainy season to farm in their own lands, and they come back. So. in the South-South migration, normally it's happening intra-regionally. So, whereas we talk a lot about South-North migration, about 70% of mobility, globally happens within the region. And South-South migration is a dominant form of mobility for people within the Global South. If you are talking about Africa in general, we tend to hear about exodus from Africa to Europe. And that is how the media presents it. But about 70% of the people that are migrating from Africa, are moving within their region. Even so, those that are moving out of West Africa, some are going to Central Africa, some are going to Eastern Africa, some are going to Southern Africa, or some are moving to places in the Middle East, which is also still part of South-South migration. And that is why within South-South migration is very important. But it is not well covered in the literature, and it is not well covered in the media.
Maggie Perzyna
So, it seems as though the term is not being used just as a geographical locator but as a euphemism for a more complex narrative. Nicola, what do you think?
Professor Nicola Piper
Yeah, I suppose in answering this question, I think we need to first of all think about what the term or concept South-South refers to. You know, to think about the broader questions, where and what is the Global South? When did this term emerge? Who uses the term and why? One definition used, in particular within policy circles, is very much of descriptive nature. And in this sense it represents the most recent term in a long list of catch-all concepts used to identify, define, and cluster the poorer parts of the word. So Global South in this context replaces terminology deemed no longer appropriate in an area of independent nations, you know, post-colonialism. So, analysts, researchers and NGOs usually draw on the World Bank's classification of countries as low or middle-income located in Africa, Asia, Oceania, Latin...
For years, many students from China sought to further their studies in countries like the US or the UK. But in the past decade or so, China has itself become a hub for international students. In this episode, two leading researchers will shed light on this phenomenon, and help us understand how and why China has become such a popular destination for students globally.
Hear what it's like to be a foreign student in China from Aya, who fled the war in Syria with her family and sought refuge in China when she was only 13 years old. Then host Maggie Prezyna speaks with experts Obert Hodzi (University of Liverpool) and Ben Mulvey (University of Glasgow) about the advantages and challenges of studying in China.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notesBelow, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Donate or get involved!China International Student Union, Twitter.
Media‘China gears up for return of international students’, by Mimi Leung, University World News (24 August 2022).
‘Coronavirus forces foreign students in China to choose: Stay or go’, by Alexandra Stevenson, The New York Times (12 February 2020).
‘The discourse of international student mobility between China and Africa’, by Benjamin Mulvey, Youtube (16 February 2021).
‘The end of China’s non-intervention policy in Africa’, with guest Obert Hodzi on the China in Africa Podcast (28 October 2018).
‘Increasing number of Africans preferring to study in China’, by Zou Shuo, China Daily (10 November 2021).
‘Meet the Author - Interview with Ben Mulvey’, on Podcasts by Network for Research into Chinese Education Mobilities (May 2020).
‘What is China’s Belt and Road Initiative?’, by Lily Kuo and Niko Kommenda, The Guardian (30 July 2018).
‘What is FOCAC? Three historic stages in the China-Africa relationship’, by Shirley Ze Yu, London School of Economics (3 February 2022).
Research projects & policy‘China's Belt and Road Initiative in the Global Trade, Investment and Finance Landscape’, OECD (2018).
‘Forum on China Africa Cooperation’, Website.
‘Project 9: Mapping supranational higher education space’, The Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, with support from Research England (2020-2023).
BooksDervin, F., Du, X., & Härkönen, A. (Eds.). (2018). ‘International students in China: Education, student life and intercultural encounters’. Springer.
Hodzi, O. (2019). ‘The end of China's non-intervention policy in Africa’. Palgrave Macmillan.
Tian, M., Dervin, F., & Lu, G. (Eds.). (2020). ‘Academic experiences of international students in Chinese higher education’. Routledge.
Academic worksAmoah, P. A., Hodzi, O., & Castillo, R. (2020). ‘Africans in China and Chinese in Africa: inequalities, social identities, and wellbeing’. Asian Ethnicity.
Hodzi, O. (2020). ‘Bridging the asymmetries? African students’ mobility to China’. Asian Ethnicity.
Mulvey, B. (2021). ‘Conceptualizing the discourse of student mobility between “periphery” and “semi-periphery”: The case of Africa and China’. Higher Education.
Mulvey, B. (2021). ‘“Decentring” international student mobility: The case of African student migrants in China’. Population, Space and Place.
Mulvey, B. (2020). ‘International higher education and public diplomacy: A case study of Ugandan graduates from Chinese universities’. Higher Education Policy.
Mulvey, B., & Lo, W. Y. W. (2021). ‘Learning to ‘tell China's story well’: The constructions of international students in Chinese higher education policy’. Globalisation, Societies and Education.
TranscriptMagdalena Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration, and aims to debunk myths about migration, based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. Today's episode is about a new trend in international education. For years, many students from China sought to further their studies in countries like the US or the UK, but in the past decade or so, China has itself become a hub for international students. In this episode, two leading researchers will shed light on this phenomenon, and help us understand how and why China has become such a popular destination for students globally. But first, we'll speak to someone who has, herself, studied in China.
Being the new kid at school is hard. But being the new kid at school in a new country is just a little more challenging.
Aya
I was introduced into the classroom by my teacher. And everybody was like, shushing and like whispering and they were pointing at me [laughing], and, you know, it's like cool… [uneasy]!
Magdalena Perzyna
That's Aya. I will just be using her first name out of respect for her privacy. In 2012, she and her family fled the war in Syria and sought refuge in China. Aya was only 13 years old and like most kids, she just wanted to fit in. While the teachers at her public school went out of their way to help her feel welcome, Aya still found it challenging to settle into her new environment
Aya
It did hurt a bit when I didn't know any of the things the other kids were talking about or playing. And for me, the double struggle was that my parents were very proud of their own heritage. They didn't really want us to assimilate to Chinese culture either and while as a kid, all you want to do is to be a part of something, to be like the other kids. So that was definitely very hard. And that struggle would only be intensified by the years.
Magdalena Perzyna
Aya only spoke Arabic when she arrived in China. So, she worked diligently to become fluent in Mandarin. But she soon came to learn that even that wasn't enough.
Aya
There is an expectation that all foreigners speak English very well. So, if you are from a non-English speaking country and you don't speak English very well, that's very hard for you, because it's like, how do I communicate with the public? And that's actually one of the pressures that I faced because I didn't speak any English when I moved to China. And that's also why I put in a lot of work and taught myself English.
Magdalena Perzyna
The circumstances that led Aya to study in China are not typical of most international students in the country. But after studying with other newcomers in high school, Aya realized that she wasn't alone in a lot of her experiences. For one, she and the other international students found that academic expectations were much more intense in China, than they are in most parts of the world.
Aya
The schools will have mandatory evening self-study sessions, where teachers will give out extra assignments or tests for students to complete within that timeframe. Those usually end around 8 or 9pm. And if you're a specialized arts student, then on top of all of that you will have your sketching or art sessions until 11pm. Now that, you know, now you think that a student would just go home and sleep after all this, but they'd still have additional homework to complete on top of that. That's why most students are left with no choice but to stay up late at night.
Magdalena Perzyna
Aya was grateful to be able to commiserate about this, and about identity with her fellow international students.
Aya
You know, I found a home with these people. These people became family to me, and they still are family to me, because we supported each other, in you know, a foreign country and we listened to each other.
Magdalena Perzyna
And while Aya will perhaps never feel completely at home in China, there's no denying that having studied there will forever be a part of who she is and contribute to the new identity she is building in her new home.
Aya
I identify as Syrian, I identify as Chinese, I identify as Canadian now that I'm here because I've, I'm living here now, and this is where I'm trying to build a home for myself. So, of course, I will, you know, try my best to be a part of this place. And I think that will forever be the case wherever you go.
Magdalena Perzyna
Aya moved to Canada in 2021 to study at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is now in her second year of a Bachelor's in Sociology. Many thanks to her for sharing her story. Now we're going to look a little closer at China's growth as an international student hub. Joining me is Dr. Obert Hodzi, an international relations scholar focusing on international politics at the University of Liverpool, and Dr. Ben Mulvey, a lecturer in politics at the University of Glasgow. Thank you both for being here! Western countries often see China as a market to draw international students from, but now the country is becoming a hub for international students. Where is China attracting students from? Obert, let's start with you.
Dr. Obert Hodzi
China is getting most of its students from Asian countries, neighboring countries, countries like India, for instance, countries like Pakistan, countries like Vietnam. Those are countries where the majority of international students studying in China are coming from. But over the past maybe 4 or 5 years, or even more, more African students have been looking at China as a studying destination. So actually, China has overtaken the UK, the US to become the most preferred destination for African students. So, it's mostly from Asian countries. And then secondly, from African students, those are the biggest groups.
Magdalena Perzyna
What are the benefits of studying in China?
Dr. Obert Hodzi
The first benefit is obviously that it's much cheaper to study in China than it is to study in France or to study in the UK or in the US. So that's the first thing, the cost attracts many students, particularly from African countries. The second one is that it seems fairly easier to get the study visa to China than it is to other Western countries, Canada, Australia, the UK. So, it's much, much easier for people to get those visas to study in China. The third thing is that there are scholarships that are provided, the cost of living is much cheaper in China than it is in other countries. And students can study things that they wouldn't otherwise be able to study, let's say in Europe, because of competition for places. Things like engineering, things like pharmacy, or, medicine, for instance. So, students who may not be able to get those places in traditional places like the UK or the US, are beginning to see China as an alternative.
Magdalena Perzyna
And Ben, from your research, what do you see the benefits of studying in China as?
Dr. Ben Mulvey
Yeah, so as Obert said, obviously, the price is really the main one, combined with the fact that there's a wider availability of scholarships. So, although only about 11% of, students are receiving scholarships from the Chinese government, there's also other kinds of partial scholarships, things like that available. Then you have fewer hoops to jump through to get there as well, like Obert mentioned. There's no language test requirements. And the costs associated with that, the visa requirements aren't as stringent. And then also, I think, one thing that perhaps hasn't been mentioned, is it's an opportunity for people who probably wouldn't have the opportunity to study overseas in most other places in more established destinations like the UK, the US, Canada, so it's an opportunity for them to study abroad, and that means an opportunity to sidestep the education system in their home country. So, I think - my research has focused on Africa. So, a lot of countries across the continent have seriously oversubscribed higher education systems. So, it's an opportunity to opt out of that really intense competition for places and universities and universities there. Then one last quick thing is links with China. So, a lot of the countries that send most students, so again, countries across Africa, they tend to have closer bilateral relations with China. And there's lots of foreign direct investment from China, lots of Chinese companies operating in those countries. So, students see it as an opportunity to get skills and competencies that are associated with China in order to maybe go on to work for Chinese companies afterwards.
Magdalena Perzyna
China's investing money in scholarships and infrastructure to draw international students, what is it hoping to gain from this influx of student migrants?
Dr. Obert Hodzi
So, the first thing I guess, is that China wants to be seen as a producer of knowledge, which is something that Western countries have always claimed - that they produce knowledge that is consumed by the rest of the world. And for China as part of its national rejuvenation, trying to see itself as a great power as well, with massive influence abroad, providing scholarships to students is a way of showing that they can produce knowledge that can be consumed by the rest of the world. So, it has that that element. The second one is to have people that understand China. That have a positive image of China, that have a first-hand experience of China. It's pretty much like what other countries have always been doing. Like Germany, for instance, or the US taking people on scholarships, and then hoping that they have a good image. So, it's a way of enhancing its image by providing the scholarships and hoping that when these people go back to their countries, they will speak positively about China. So those are the two main points that I can see. And obviously, the third one is to be seen as a power that can give aid in some way. And there has been a link, or China trying to link scholarships, provision of scholarship, educational opportunities, with development. And that's something that other countries have not been doing. So, what it allows China to do, and countries that are sending students to China, is to some extent, tailor make programs for some students based on the needs that their countries have. So that link between providing education, but education that is tailored to meet the skills gaps, or development gaps that are in sending countries, is something that China is doing, indeed, has done that quite well.
Magdalena Perzyna
In the West students pay four, sometimes five times more than domestic students. How was China's strategy different?
Dr. Obert Hodzi
The reduced cost is obviously a big advantage, is obviously something that they would want. But for China, it's about learning, right? Learning, preparing institutions, to handle international students, which is a big challenge for many of the institutions that are to some...
Climate change and other disasters are displacing ever more people. Could artificial intelligence help predict impending crises and where humanitarian aid will be needed? Could algorithms be used to match refugees to regions where they will have the best chance of thriving? And what happens when you take human judgement out of the process, or if data is used to exclude some migrants unjustly?
Hilary Evans Cameron (Toronto Metropolitan University) starts off the discussion with a refugee case to show that human-decision making, itself, can be dangerously unreliable. Then host Maggie Prezyna speaks with experts Ana Beduschi (Exeter University) and Tuba Birca (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), who walk us through what AI is, how it works and what are its risks, pitfalls and potential for good.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notesBelow, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Media‘A helping hand from outer space: Doctors Without Borders utilise satellite data for humanitarian missions’, by Reliefweb (5 October 2020)
‘A Robot Lawyer Is Officially Assisting With Refugee Applications’ by Dom Galeon, Futurism (3 December 2017)
‘Germany to use voice recognition to identify migrant origins’ by BBC, (17 March 2017)
‘How artificial intelligence is changing asylum seekers’ lives for the worse’ by Nicholas Keung, Toronto Star (9 November 2020)
‘Jordan: Is the UN’s biometric registration for Syrian refugees a threat to their privacy?’ by Zoe H. Robbin, Middle East Eye (23 October 2022)
‘Racial discrimination in face recognition technology’ by Alex Najibi, Harvard University (24 October 2020)
‘Refugees in Jordan are buying groceries with eye scans’ by Euronews (04 December 2019)
‘Who is making sure the A.I. machines aren’t racist?’ by Cade Metz, New York Times (15 March 2021)
Research projects and policy‘AI-enabled identification management of the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF)’, Migration Data Portal
‘GeoMatch: Using artificial intelligence to improve refugee integration through data-driven assignments’, Migration Data Portal
‘Nadine Project’, European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
‘Project Jetson’, UNHCR
‘“Project Jetson”: An experiment for predicting movements of displaced people in Somalia using machine learning’, Migration Data Portal
‘The use of digitalisation and artificial intelligence in migration management’, European Migration Network
‘Latvia's free self-check e-tool for citizenship applicants’ by Jānis Reiniks, Republic of Latvia (2022)
‘How AI can help us better prepare for climate migration’ by Injy Elhabrouk, World Economic Forum (10 November 2022).
BooksAgrawal, A., Gans, J., & Goldfarb, A. (2018). ‘Prediction machines: the simple economics of artificial intelligence’. Harvard Business Press.
Salah, A.A., Korkmaz, E.E, Bircan, T. (Eds.). (Forthcoming 2022). ‘Data Science for Migration and Mobility Studies’, Oxford University Press.
Cameron, H. E. (2018). ‘Refugee law's fact-finding crisis: Truth, risk, and the wrong mistake. Cambridge University Press.
Earney, C., & Moreno Jimenez, R. (2019). ‘Pioneering predictive analytics for decision-making in forced displacement contexts’. In, Guide to mobile data analytics in refugee scenarios. Springer.
Academic worksBeduschi, A & McAuliffe, M. (2022). ‘Artificial Intelligence, migration and mobility: Implications for policy and practice’. World Migration Report.
Beduschi, A. (2019). ‘Digital identity: Contemporary challenges for data protection, privacy and non-discrimination rights’. Big Data & Society.
Beduschi, A (2022). ‘Harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence for humanitarian action: Opportunities and risks’. International Review of the Red Cross.
Beduschi, A. (2021). ‘International migration management in the age of artificial intelligence’. Migration Studies.
Beduschi, A. (2017). ‘The big data of international migration: Opportunities and challenges for states under international human rights law’. Georgetown Journal of International Law.
Bircan, T., & Korkmaz, E. E. (2021). ‘Big data for whose sake? Governing migration through artificial intelligence’. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
Cameron, H. E. (2008). ‘Risk theory and ‘subjective fear’: The role of risk perception, assessment, and management in refugee status determinations’. International Journal of Refugee Law.
Cameron, H. E., Goldfarb, A., & Morris, L. (2022). ‘Artificial intelligence for a reduction of false denials in refugee claims’. Journal of Refugee Studies.
TranscriptMaggie Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration and aims to debunk myths about migration based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. Today's episode explores the burgeoning use of artificial intelligence, or AI, as a tool in managing migration and asylum. Two leading researchers will help us understand the risks and opportunities posed by this emerging technology. They'll discuss how AI might affect the civil liberties of migrants, international data flows and more. But first, a former litigator will tell us about her experiences defending refugee claimants and how, theoretically, AI could be used as a force for good in asylum claims. In her 10 years of working as a litigator in Canada, there's one case that Professor Hilary Evans Cameron will never forget.
Hilary Evans Cameron
I had a young Colombian client in a hearing who'd received threatening letters from a guerilla group. And the board member was being really hard on her in the hearing because her response was, well I just try not to think about them. I sort of tried to carry on.
Maggie Perzyna
To professor Cameron, it was clear that the board member, in other words, a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), was not familiar with the cultural context that the claimant was coming from, nor was he familiar with current studies on risk response.
Hilary Evans Cameron
One of the key findings of studies of risk response is that the more familiar a risk is, the easier it is to push it to the back of your mind. Right, so we talk about car accident risk as a classic familiarized risk. So, everybody knows that car accidents are a thing that driving a car is dangerous, but it's not hard to put that thought to the back of your mind and get in a car. At the time of my clients hearing there were as many people kidnapped for ransom in Colombia in a given year as died in car crashes in Canada. So that risk of being kidnapped for Colombians at that time was background noise. It was just something that everyone knew someone or knew someone who knew someone that it had happened to. So, you push it to the back of your mind, and you try to keep going. This was essentially her testimony, [it] was yeah of course I was scared but you know, what are you going to do?
Maggie Perzyna
But the board member clearly did not understand the Colombian socio-political landscape enough to understand the claimant’s response. And as it turns out, he was not the only one to misinterpret a refugee claimant’s actions.
Hilary Evans Cameron
As a refugee lawyer, I was disturbed by some of the assumptions that I saw board members making. There were assumptions that I thought were probably, you know, not very solid in light of the social science. So, for example, board members would assume, you know, if you were really at risk, you would have fled as soon as the danger arose. And we have at this point, just decades worth of studies of people from, disaster areas, earthquake warnings, floods, fires, you know, all kinds of different dangers that come up. And what is it, why, how is it, that people say, "well, you know what, I think I can ride this out". Or "I'm gonna stay a little while longer and see if it gets better". But we have all kinds of - you know, a deeper understanding of what is it that might explain why somebody doesn't just up and flee at the first opportunity. So as a lawyer, I was pulling together some of this research and submitting it in my clients’ hearings and trying to convince board members to think about those assumptions.
Maggie Perzyna
Eventually, Professor Cameron realized that she wanted to go beyond trying to convince board members while on the job, so she got her PhD and began to deepen her research on the process of decision-making and some of the dangers that can come when decisions about refugees are made without enough information.
Hilary Evans Cameron
So, refugee hearings are this paradigm example of decision making under profound uncertainty. You know, these decision makers, not only are they interviewing somebody from a different culture with a very different sort of cultural context, you know, language issues, trauma. Claimants are often testifying through interpreters. I mean, there's just a whole mess of reasons why there's all kinds of potential here for miscommunication and misunderstanding. But in addition, and beyond that, at the end of the day, what the board member is being asked to do is really predict the future. I mean, they're being asked to say, when this person goes home, what's waiting for them there.
Maggie Perzyna
To come up with the optimal conditions, professor Cameron first has to lay out some of the problems with the current system. The first element is that decision-makers need to sift through a large package of information to help them understand the situation on the ground. This can be hundreds of pages.
Hilary Evans Cameron
And so, a board member doing that is going to bring their best resources to that game. And they may have plenty of good skills at their disposal, but they're still human. And that's still a very, very difficult task. And one thing we know about this kind of decision-making is that decision makers tend to be overly confident in the conclusions that they reach. And that the data in this case is often very poor data. So, a decision- maker is looking at this weak, sparse data and making a confident and likely poor prediction. What an AI would do is look at that same poor sparse data, be able to make a prediction but along with that prediction would come sort of an explicit statement of how unreliable it is. Because the AI is able to factor in the fact that this is not good data.
Maggie Perzyna
Professor Cameron is very clear to note that this is all theoretical, and that she doubts the proper legal systems would ever be in place to allow something like this to come to fruition. Still in theory, she and Goldfarb's ideas on how AI could be used in refugee claims does provide a bit of hope.
Hilary Evans Cameron
This will be a very helpful system, because in other words, at the heart of this refugee status decision-making process should be that idea that it is better by orders of magnitude to give protection to someone who doesn't need it, than to withhold protection from someone who does. And so, if a decision-maker has that legal framework, that normative ethical framework in place, and the AI tells them, look, this is really uncertain. In other words, the points that you're asking us to decide or points that we don't think you can reliably know, then that should allow more people who need protection to get it.
Maggie Perzyna
Hillary Evans Cameron is an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University's Lincoln Alexander School of Law. Many thanks to her for sharing her expertise with us. Now, let's take a deeper look at the role artificial intelligence plays in managing migration. Joining me is Ana Beduschi, professor of law at Exeter University in the UK, and Tuba Bircan, research professor at the department of sociology and research coordinator of the Interface Demography Research group at Vrije University in Brussels. Thanks to you both for joining me!
Maggie Perzyna
AI is often thought of as robots and self-driving cars. But the truth is it's embedded into our everyday lives. What exactly is AI?
Ana Beduschi
That's a very good question. And I would say there is no single straightforward answer to that because currently there is no internationally agreed definition of AI. But we could say that AI can be broadly understood as a collection of technologies that combine data algorithms and computing power. If we follow the definition that is given by the European Commission, for example, these technologies will consist of software, but also hardware systems that are designed by humans - and that's an important point, that they are designed by humans - and that if they're given a complex goal, they can act in the physical or in the digital dimension, perceive their environment through data acquisition, interpret the collected data that can be structured or unstructured and deriving from this data they will decide on best courses of actions to take to achieve a given goal. Broadly speaking, these are systems that are designed by humans, and these are technologies that we have in our daily lives. So, as I said, these are technologies that are embedded in smart assistants, in our mobile phones, or in our virtual home systems.
Maggie Perzyna
So, Tuba, just building on what Ana said, when we're talking about AI, are we talking about computers understanding?
Tuba Bircan
Very, very, very important...
Politicians sometimes talk about human smuggling and trafficking as if they were the same thing. It’s not always because of ignorance: they want to gain support for blocking the flows of all migrants and refugees.
In this episode we hear from Luca Stevenson of European Sex Workers Rights Alliance, who explains that, even with sex workers, we have to look at what drives them to the trade in the first place and recognise that laws to prevent trafficking can cause vulnerable women even more harm. Host Maggie Prezyna speaks with Kamala Kempadoo (York University) and Gabriella Sanchez (University of Massachusetts), who argue that we need to look deeper at the systemic injustices behind smuggling, at what drives people to risk everything for a chance of a better life.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notesBelow, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Donate or get involved!European Sex Workers Rights Alliance
Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network
Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción (DHIA)
Media‘OECS: Cuban medical brigade shouldn't be compared to human trafficking’ Dionne Baptiste, D. , Loop Carribean News (21 June 2020)
‘Trump Administration ups pressure on Cuban medical programmes’ by the Carribean Council (2022)
‘Cuba’s Shameful Trafficking of Its Doctors’ by Jonathan Cuneo & Samuel Dubbin, The Wall Street Journal (21 June 2020)
‘The violent, hopeful world of children who smuggle people’ by Gabriella Sanchez & Cameron Thibos, openDemocracy (3 May 2022)
‘
Despite the well-documented benefits of labour migration, much of the discussion before the referendum in the UK argued that it was a bad thing. Now, a few years on, are labour shortages painting a new picture or are migrants forever stigmatised?
Alex Bulat, a Romanian-born councillor on Cambridgeshire County Council, provides a voice from the ground. Bridget Anderson (Bristol University) and Aija Lulle (Loughborough University) join host Maggie Prezyna to talk about fear of migration and why they feel hope for the future of migrants in the UK.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Upcoming episodes investigate:
Human Smuggling or Human Trafficking? Why the Difference Matters Politicians sometimes talk about human smuggling and trafficking as if they were the same thing. It’s not always because of ignorance: they want to gain support for blocking the flows of all migrants and refugees.
In this episode we hear from Luca Stevenson of European Sex Workers Rights Alliance, who explains that, even with sex workers, we have to look at what drives them to the trade in the first place and recognise that laws to prevent trafficking can cause vulnerable women even more harm. Maggie speaks with Kamala Kempadoo (York University) and Gabriella Sanchez (University of Massachusetts) who argue that we need to look deeper at the systemic injustices behind smuggling, at what drives people to risk everything for a chance of a better life.
Show notesBelow, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Art & poetryArtists Respond To Brexit
Donate or get involved!the3million
Media‘An interview with Bridget Anderson’ by Maja Sager, Sociologisk Forskning (2018)
‘Beyond the politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’’ by Bridget Anderson, Social Europe (26 October 2022)
‘Imagining a world without borders’ by Bridget Anderson, TEDxEastEnd (22 September 2011)
‘Towards a new politics of migration with Bridget Anderson’ by Bridget Anderson, McMaster University (9 October 2019)
‘
Since the 1990s, the world has seen a spike in border wall construction. What is driving the increase? The episode begins with a reflection from journalist Todd Miller on the dangers facing undocumented migrants along the Mexican border. Maggie Perzyna (researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration and Integration program) is then joined by Douglas Massey (Princeton University) and Elisabeth Vallet (University of Quebec at Montreal). Borders & Belonging, produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy, considers both the individual experience – the difficult decisions and many challenges faced by migrants on their journey—plus the global processes – the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more – that affect the movement of people. Through interviews with leading experts from around the world, Borders & Belonging brings together the hard evidence with stories of the human experience to shift the common discourse and kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research. A group of top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & BelongingWhat's the difference between human smuggling and human trafficking? Did migration myths drive the 2016 Brexit vote? Do border walls stop migration? Maggie Perzyna wants to dispel migration myths: why people leave their homeland and the changes they bring in the societies they move to. Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys. She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more. Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research. Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed. Upcoming episodes investigate: Why We Build Border Walls: Since the 1990s, the world has seen a spike in border wall construction. What is driving the increase? The episode begins with a reflection from journalist Todd Miller on the dangers facing undocumented migrants along the US-Mexican border. Maggie is then joined by Douglas Massey (Princeton University) and Elisabeth Vallet (University of Quebec at Montreal). How has Brexit Changed the UK for Migrants? Despite the well-documented benefits of labour migration, much of the discussion before the referendum in the UK argued that it was a bad thing. Now, a few years on, are labour shortages painting a new picture or are migrants forever stigmatised? Alex Bulat, a Romanian-born councillor on Cambridgeshire County Council, provides a voice from the ground. Bridget Anderson (Bristol University) and Aija Lulle (Loughborough University) talk about fear of migration and why they feel hope for the future of migrants in the UK. Human Smuggling or Human Trafficking? Why the Difference Matters Politicians sometimes talk about human smuggling and trafficking as if they were the same thing. It’s not always because of ignorance: they want to gain support for blocking the flows of all migrants and refugees. In this episode we hear from Luca Stevenson of European Sex Workers Rights Alliance, who explains that, even with sex workers, we have to look at what drives them to the trade in the first place and recognise that laws to prevent trafficking can cause vulnerable women even more harm. Maggie speaks with Kamala Kempadoo (York University) and Gabriella Sanchez (University of Massachusetts) who argue that we need to look deeper at the systemic injustices behind smuggling, at what drives people to risk everything for a chance of a better life. Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.