University of North Texas Root Causes of Migration Discussion

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enwvituvzver12

Humanities

University of North Texas

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What do we mean by “root causes” of migration? Drawing on the lesson content and the readings, how might the consideration of root causes influence or shift the ways that immigration law and policy are formed and implemented?


Introduction: Root Causes

Why do people leave their communities or countries? Why do they leave their possessions, their families, their cultural protection for the uncertainty of a new life and culture? Although it seems very simple, the answers to why people become displaced can be, as we’ve seen, very complex.

Nonetheless, it is important to address the difference between acute and anticipatory movements. Acute movements occur when an individual must leave their residence immediately with little or no preparation time. This term is often applied to refugees. Anticipatory movements occur when an individual has more time to prepare and is often applied to migrants. Whether people leave because they have perceptions that their ethnic, cultural or religious identity is threatened or they leave for economic reasons, national and international factors have a direct impact on motivations for leaving.

In this lesson, we introduce the major contributing national and international factors, or root causes, of migration and displacement. These root causes include: politics and economics, environment, nationalism, colonial influence and government policies of control and wars and violence.

Root Causes: Politics and Economics

One of the major contributing national and international factors or root causes of migration and displacement relates to politics and economics. Developing countries often have weak infrastructures and may invest in economic programs or focus on the political structure. There is little investment in social programs, education, or assistance for the poor. If the new economy weakens, the impact is exponentially more devastating on the poor.

You may have heard of international organizations like The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Organizations like these offer foreign assistance programs in the form of loans to developing countries so they can invest money, generate profits, and repay the loan. Yet, the loans are often spent on extracting natural resources, attracting foreign investors, and generating rapid profits. Wages tend not to increase for the actual workers, while simultaneously social programs are terminated, thus debt and poverty do not decline. Indeed, many scholars and activists argue that Structural Adjustment Programs by groups like the IMF and World Bank typically create an elite majority and a destitute majority.

Read the following article to learn more about structural adjustment programs and their relation to poverty and wealth: Structural Adjustment—a Major Cause of Poverty (Links to an external site.)

In unstable or nascent economies, efforts to urbanize cities are exhausted and fail because of lack of infrastructure and monetary costs. Ultimately, poverty eventually forces rural-urban migrants to migrate internationally. As countries develop, this economic mismanagement can lead to significant amounts of inflation accompanied by a economic recession. If these conditions are sustained for prolonged periods, the economy can be decimated.

ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE: FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN KENYA

Children play in Nairobi's vast Korogocho slum, or informal settlement, located on the banks of the Nairobi River. Korogocho is one of the city's largest slums, with 150,000-200,000 people living within a 1.5 square KM space. Kenyan authorities have begun a massive slum clearance program in an effort to clean up the river's heavily polluted waters. Their efforts could force more than 125,000 people to lose their homes, according to Amnesty International.

Read this statement from the UN Human Rights Council (Links to an external site.) about ongoing efforts to evict people from their homes, even in times of COVID-19.


Image of a young girl walking through Korogocho

Ethnographic Case: Land Reform in Zimbabwe

As new countries emerge in the global economy, they must produce profitable goods. Through political or economic force, viable land is used for growing cash crops-like tobacco, which usually depletes the soil nutrients- instead of growing food crops. The shift from subsistence to production is risky, highly competitive, and may not generate enough income.

In the early 2000s, Zimbabwe’s inflation rate reached over 100,000,000% under then-President Robert Mugabe’s land reform policies. At one point it was rumored that a roll of toilet paper cost the equivalent of nearly $1000!

Land reform in Zimbabwe officially began in 1979 as an effort to more equitably distribute land between the historically disenfranchised blacks and the minority-whites who ruled Zimbabwe from 1890 to 1979. By the early 2000s, Mugabe had given much of the farmland in the country to his supporters who do not know how to farm. Due to this lack of knowledge, there was a significant drop in total farm output, which was devastating and produced widespread starvation and famine. Cash crops have similarly suffered. According to some estimates, total food production fell by more than 60%. As a result, Zimbabwe faced widespread hunger, economic collapse, and wasted fertile land.

Follow the link to view a before and after satellite images of land use in Zimbabwe (Links to an external site.). In the "Before" photo below, the dry communal lands on the left are sharply delineated from the green private farms dotted with lakes and ponds on the right--so sharply that soil quality and rainfall are unlikely to explain the difference. Now click the arrow to see what happened after land reform.

Resources:

Hammond, Alexander and Marian Tupy. 2018. "Why Mugabe's Land Reforms Were So Dangerous" accessed on 8/13/2020 at https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-mugabes-land-reforms-were-so-disastrous (Links to an external site.)

Root Causes: Environment

Some examples of environmental causes of migration might include:

Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis, landslides, etc. can force populations to leave. These disasters are worsened by human augmentation of the natural environment. Deforestation, irrigation, dams, etc. alter the natural protective barriers in the environment.

Climate change is also affecting the intensity of seasons around the world. Harsh winters cause fuel and food shortages. Intense summers can cause drought and food shortages; or severe rain can cause flooding and disease. Evaporating bodies of water, desertification, and other problems are caused by global warming.

Environmental Injustice is also a cause of migration. Environmental injustice points to the ways in which environmental hazards disproportionately impact communities of color (environmental racism) and other marginalized communities.

ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE: BURMA

In this image a woman carries her child through floodwaters in Burma's Irawaddy Delta, an area hit particularly hard by a cyclone in 2008. Usually a fertile area for rice cultivation and fishing, the cyclone displaced some 1.5 million Burmese, on top of the perhaps 100,000 who died as a result of the storm. Burma's government, one of the world's most repressive, was widely criticized for its slow and inadequate response to the cyclone and prevented international assistance from reaching the most vulnerable.

ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE: ETHIOPIA

Drought is one of many problems that continually afflict the northern African country of Ethiopia. Lack of water not only kills crops, meaning starvation, but also causes violent conflicts over scarce vital resources. Inadequate sanitation has made water-borne diseases the No. 1 cause of infant deaths in the country -- where 300,000 children under age 5 die every year.

Toxic chemicals, air pollution, water contamination, and other harmful pollutants can force people to leave because of health hazards, unusable land, or forced evacuation. Factories produce harmful byproducts that have domino effects on the environment.

ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE: LA CÔTE D'IVOIRE (IVORY COAST)

In this image, a woman and her daughter carry food near a toxic waste site in the Ivory Coast. Tens of thousands of people fell ill after a massive amount of toxic waste was dumped in the country in 2006."[A] ship unloaded 500 tons of petrochemical waste into a number of trucks which then dumped it in at least 15 sites around Abidjan," the United Nations said. The offending company has since agreed to pay $198 million in reparations for the country's government, but the health effects resulting from the mess will not disappear so easily.

Root Causes: Nationalism and Colonialism

Nationalism and colonial legacies are root causes of migration and displacement.

Nationalism: Nationalists use cultural traditions to support claims to legitimate power and to suppress rival ethnic, religious, or cultural groups. In Europe, discrimination and repression of ethnic minorities was an essential ingredient in the process of nation-state formation. In colonial contexts, national boundaries (which were often set by colonial rulers) did not correspond to lines of ethnic population distribution.

Colonial Processes: During colonial encounters, colonial powers maintained control by establishing centralized governments and denying the legitimacy of competing ethnic claims to power. Newly independent countries often follow colonial patterns to structure their nation and therefore perpetuate colonial hierarchies.

ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE STUDY: RWANDA


Skulls and bones from the Rwandan genocide

The roots of much of the ethnic genocide that happened in 1994 in Rwanda lie in the European colonialization of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1884 the Berlin Conference formalized western Europe’s “scramble for Africa” as it divided up the continent into colonial possessions. Germany, France, England, Portugal, Italy, and King Leopold from the Congo came together and partitioned lands without attention to existing ethnic and tribal affiliations/discords. The goal was for the colonial powers (and Congo) to gain control of populations and natural resources throughout the continent. This conference legitimized and formalized ongoing colonial processes.

Rwanda was a colony of Belgium. There are two dominant ethnic groups in Rwanda, called the Hutu (majority of the population) and the Tutsi. In the colonial period, Belgian colonial administrators favored the Tutsi, which contributed to existing ethnic tensions between the groups. Belgium granted independence to Rwanda in 1962, and ultimately the Hutus came to power. The Hutu government engaged in ethnically motivated violence against the Tutsi. This came to a head in 1990 when Tutsi refugees from Uganda invaded Rwanda. The Hutu government believed that Tutsi residents of Rwanda had been a part of the invasion, and arrested and/or killed people they believed to be Tutsi sympathizers. In August 1993, the Hutu president at the time signed an agreement to transition the government to include the Tutsi political party. This angered his party, and in April 1994, the President's plane was shot down with no survivors. Immediately Hutus began consolidating power and they took to the streets, establishing barricades and checkpoints that they used to capture and kill Tutsi members of the population, as well as moderate or sympathetic Hutu.

It has been estimated that as many as 800,000-1,000,0000 people were killed during the genocide, most of them ethnic Tutsi.

If you want to learn more about the genocide, in addition to a plethora of scholarly sources, I highly recommend a non-fiction book called "I Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with our Families" by journalist Philip Gourevitch.

Two Rwandan men sitting in a graveyard after the genocide

Root Causes: Wars and State Violence

In some instances, violence may be made more brutal by foreign intervention or by international arms trading/sales. Some have argued that violence and human rights violations are a part of the process of state formations and political change, asserting that societal change can only come about through violent bloody revolution. Like the economic, political, and other factors we have already discussed, war or violence may also be an immediate cause of displacement.

At the beginning of 1991, there were 48 ongoing wars in the third world, involving 39 countries. Approximately 5 million people died in these civil wars. About two thirds of these wars have lasted for over one decade.

In 2018, there were 52 state-based armed conflicts happening around the world, although notably there are fewer fatalities than in previous years.

You can check out this Global Conflict Tracker (Links to an external site.) to learn more about the conflicts happening in the world today. There are also multiple resources on the web if you want to find more information about any of these conflicts.

Modern weapons used by governments and insurgency forces have had a direct impact on displacement and migration. Major opposition warfare strategies such as mass bombing, use of terror, and relocation have altered the modern battlefield.

Further, the nature of warfare is changing as governments turn to more sophisticated counter-insurgency strategies which deliberately target civilian populations as a way to confronting guerrilla forces. Government counter-insurgency campaigns increase the prevalence of death squads and disappearances.

ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE: MYANMAR


Rohingya women and children in Myanmar

In Myanmar (formerly Burma), there resides an ethnic group called the Rohingya. They are predominately Muslim, and have their own distinct language and culture. However, the government of Myanmar, a largely Buddhist state, denies the Rohingya citizenship and alleges that they are "illegal" immigrants from Bangladesh. In August 2017, ethnic and religious tensions came to a head when a group of Rohingyas attacked police posts across the country. The government responded by burning Rohingya villages, and attacking and often killing civilians. In May 2020, a village called Let Kar, a Rohingya settlement, was burned to the ground. According to Human Rights Watch, what happened at Let Kar village closely resembles a pattern of arson attacks on Rohingya villages by the Myanmar army.

The violence the Rohingya experience at the hands of the Myanmar government have caused widespread displacement, including approximately 700,000 people who fled to neighboring Bangladesh.

(Links to an external site.)

Resources:

Strand, Håvard, Siri Aas Rustad, Henrik Urdal, and Håvard Mokleiv Nygård. 2019. "Trends in Armed Conflict, 1946-2018." Peace Research Institute Oslo, report accessed on 8/14/2020 at https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Strand%2C%20Rustad%2C%20Urdal%2C%20Nygård%20-%20Trends%20in%20Armed%20Conflict%2C%201946–2018%2C%20Conflict%20Trends%203-2019.pdf (Links to an external site.)

Human Rights Watch. 2020. "Myanmar: Imagery Shows 200 Buildings Burned" accessed on 8/14/2020 at https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/26/myanmar-imagery-shows-200-buildings-burned (Links to an external site.)


RESPONSE FOR BELOW FRIEND'S:

Root causes are the things that “push” migrants out in relation to the Push-And-Pull Theory. This is what draws people away from one country to the next in search of a better life. Root causes can be political, environmental, and economical. People are forced to move due to health hazards, working conditions, or anything else that they label as insufficient for living.

When I first read the second question I immediately considered ways countries might have aided immigrants, not the many ways countries have neglected and turned away immigrants.

In “Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Policy: Explaining the Post-1965 Surge from Latin America” by Douglas S Massey, America was picky in determining which immigrants to help when battling these concerns. This has been done before as mentioned in a previous required reading, “The Humanitarian Condition”, when America had a generous admittance policy to people who were fleeing the Balkan Wars while not letting in any Africans in the 1990s (69).

Though these root causes were crises for immigrants, the United States labeled immigration as its own crisis between the 1970s and 1990s. One American immigration official even referred to the increase of illegal immigration as the potential of becoming a natural disaster. Latino immigration was depicted as an invasion and they were viewed as the enemy. This was in response to the illegal immigration rates in the United States increasing due to the nation putting a cap on the acceptance of Latino immigration. Shifts in the US immigration policy were made between the late 1950s and 1970s which greatly limited the amount of guest worker visas and annual resident visas. As illegal immigration increased, laws and policies became increasingly strict and narratives were switched to paint a negative picture of the immigrants.

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Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Running head: ROOT CAUSES OF MIGRATION

Root Causes of Migration
Student Name
Institution
Date

1

ROOT CAUSES OF MIGRATION

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Root Causes of Migration
Root causes of migration are the real causes; the real embedded reasons people opt to
move from one place to another. The root cause of migration is a reason born mainly out of
necessity instead of a desire. Many countries have been recipients of individuals who migrated
from their homes, leaving behind everything they have for a new life. ...


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I was having a hard time with this subject, and this was a great help.

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