{"id":9466,"date":"2021-11-30T11:20:09","date_gmt":"2021-11-30T10:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/?p=9466"},"modified":"2022-06-17T15:51:22","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T13:51:22","slug":"post-pandemic-paradigms-covid-19-and-the-future-of-human-migration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/articles\/post-pandemic-paradigms-covid-19-and-the-future-of-human-migration\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-pandemic paradigms: Covid-19 and the future of human migration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><b>The following essay was originally compiled for the \u202f<\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/resource\/mixed-migration-review-2021\/\"><b>Mixed Migration Review 2021<\/b><\/a><b> and has been reproduced here for wider access through this website\u2019s readership.<\/b>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><i><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The essay\u2019s author Alan Gamlen is Associate Professor of Geography, Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and a longstanding Research Associate at Oxford University&#8217;s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society. Alan&#8217;s most recent book, \u201cHuman Geopolitics: States, Emigrants and the Rise of Diaspora Institutions\u201d (OUP 2019), won the Distinguished Book Award for Best Book on Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration from the International Studies Association.<\/span><\/i><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The essay\u2019s author Bram Frouws is the Director of the Mixed Migration Centre.<\/span><\/i><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The extent to which the coronavirus pandemic influences mixed migration dynamics in the years to come will vary according to a range of factors, including the skills of those who might move, the growth of automation, and shifts in the dependency ratios and other development geometries in countries of departure and destination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Introduction: the end of an age?<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The past 70 years of world history have often been called an Age of Migration because of the growing geographical extent and complexity of population movements.<\/span><span data-contrast=\"auto\">1<\/span><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> In the past 30 years alone, migrant stocks have grown by 150 percent in absolute terms and by 40 percent in terms of their share of the total world population, to reach around <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/development\/desa\/population\/migration\/publications\/migrationreport\/docs\/InternationalMigration2019_Report.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">3.5 percent<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">. International tourism grew 56-fold, from 25 million arrivals in 1950 to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/tourism\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">1.4 billion arrivals<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> in 2018. Apart from growing regular migration and mobility, mixed and irregular migration involving millions of refugees and migrants has also gained salience\u2014its political and media prominence far exceeding its actual size in terms of numbers involved as a proportion of overall mobility.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Could the coronavirus pandemic bring this age of migration to an end? By October 2021 almost 237 million people globally had been diagnosed with Covid-19, and almost <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/covid19.who.int\/\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">five million<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> had reportedly died from it. To slow the spread of the disease, almost all governments have periodically frozen almost all forms of both internal and international human mobility\u2014from flying to visit another city, to commuting by car for work, to walking around the local shops. Since the World Health Organization declared the pandemic in March 2020, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bsg.ox.ac.uk\/research\/research-projects\/covid-19-government-response-tracker\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">most<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> human beings have lived with public transport closures, restrictions on internal movement, international travel controls, stay-at-home orders, and quarantines.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Never before in history have so many humans stopped moving all at once or been caught up in unplanned reverse migration\u2014returning to their places of origin. The nadir of the crisis came in the second quarter of 2020, when lockdowns began to bite. From India to the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Brazil\u2014the world\u2019s five largest countries for which Google collects <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/covid-google-mobility-trends\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">mobility data<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u2014visits to places of retail and recreation, transit stations, and workplaces more than halved on average, and as of October 2021 such visits still remain 7-15 percent lower than 2019 levels (except in Pakistan). Two-thirds of the world\u2019s commercial air transport fleet was grounded, and the airline industry closed half of all flight routes, halved flights on the remaining routes, shed over a million jobs, and booked <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iata.org\/contentassets\/a686ff624550453e8bf0c9b3f7f0ab26\/wats-2021-mediakit.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">over $126 billion<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> in losses. International migration flows to OECD countries fell by <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.migrationdataportal.org\/themes\/migration-data-relevant-covid-19-pandemic\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">46 percent<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> in the first half of 2020, and by the middle of the year, the number of international migrants globally was <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/development\/desa\/pd\/sites\/www.un.org.development.desa.pd\/files\/undesa_pd_2020_international_migration_highlights.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">27 percent lower<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> than the United Nations had expected. Global refugee resettlements fell by almost <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.unhcr.org\/flagship-reports\/globaltrends\/?web=1&amp;wdLOR=cDC377A59-D72F-4E2C-96C0-F51E2F504EBB\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">70 percent<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #009999;\">New forces and frictions in migrant decision-making<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Where data on post-pandemic migration and mobility patterns is not yet available, previous research can guide expectations about future trends. Generally, high-skilled professionals have more migration options, and migration policies are often developed to attract them. However, the pandemic has made it harder for these people to move, but simultaneously also easier for them to work remotely from anywhere. It seems likely that high-skilled migrants, who have the option to delay or abandon their migration plans, will do so until the pandemic falls behind the rear-view mirror. The pandemic has also accelerated the trend of an increasing disconnect between work and physical location, but this is only true for high-skilled jobs that can be done remotely. It is highly likely the pandemic will have a long-lasting impact, reducing the international mobility of highly skilled people and impacting their settlement patterns, with more people settling further away from urban centres where offices are located.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">At the same time, the pandemic showed the extent to which many economic sectors in traditional destination countries rely on migrant labour as essential workers. Many of these jobs are classified as low-skilled, and these are jobs in which remote work is not an option. It is, however, too soon to speculate how the pandemic will impact on low-skilled labour migration. On the one hand, it may speed up automation, reducing the need for labour migrants. On the other, destination countries may want to avoid any serious shortages in their labour force that might arise in the absence of migrant labour\u2014a fear that prompted many states to regularise existing irregular migrant populations\u2014and actually\u00a0 invest\u00a0 in the creation and expansion of regular labour migration channels. For example, one innovative way of expanding regular migration would be to create temporary labour migration schemes for health workers that enable a surge in hospital capacity during the traditional winter flu seasons in Europe and the US, when the number of Covid infections may seasonally rise.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The pandemic is also amplifying the economic and political drivers of migration. The public health crisis itself has hit worst in countries without developed health systems. The economic fallout also affects them most: developed countries have sophisticated insurance and credit markets to cushion shocks, but many developing countries do not. In short, with economies in many countries hard-hit by Covid-19, prospective migrants\u2019 aspirations or needs to migrate may increase. However, their capability to do so might be severely curtailed, due both to restrictions on mobility imposed to contain the spread of the pandemic and to a lack of requisite resources resulting from income losses incurred by pandemic-related recession. This combination of how the pandemic affects aspirations and capability plays out differently in different contexts and regions and is already leading to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/154_covid_thematic_update_drivers_and_outlook.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">changes in migration trends and dynamics<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">, with increased\u00a0 movements along certain mixed migration corridors and decreased movements along others. For example, the movements between Tunisia and Italy across the Mediterranean Sea increased substantially, while those of Ethiopians (and to a lesser extent Somalis) between the Horn of Africa and Yemen\u2014once the world\u2019s busiest maritime mixed migration route\u2014decreased massively.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #009999;\">New patterns of supply and demand for migrant labour<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Migration is driven not just by migrant aspirations but also by employer demand in destination countries, which itself reflects local unemployment levels. The pandemic has major implications for employer demand because it has led to historic rises in unemployment. According to the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ilo.org\/wcmsp5\/groups\/public\/---dgreports\/---dcomm\/documents\/briefingnote\/wcms_767028.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">International Labour Organization<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> (ILO), in 2020 the pandemic drove a nine percent decline in global working hours compared to the last quarter of 2019, equal to the loss of 255 million jobs\u2014four times more than occurred during the global financial crisis. Worker income fell by more than eight percent, or US$3.7 trillion, equal to 4.4 percent of global GDP. Even after a rebound during 2021, there are now 144 million fewer full-time jobs than there would have been without the pandemic. The pain is not over: in early 2021, 93 percent of workers worldwide were living in countries with workplace closures, which affected 77 percent of workers, down from a peak of 85 percent in mid-2020. As ILO notes, the International Monetary Fund has projected an ongoing loss of between 36 million and 130 million jobs in 2021, compared to the end of 2019. As the ILO further points out, job losses are concentrated in sectors such as hospitality, tourism, arts and culture, construction, and retail, while employment has actually grown in sectors such as information technology and finance. Developing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Southern Europe, and Southern Asia have been particularly hard hit. The broad trend is clear: the economic fallout of the pandemic dwarfs that of the global financial crisis, which had already dented global demand for immigrant labour.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 aria-level=\"3\"><strong>Automation and AI\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">High unemployment is known to decrease employer demand for migrant labour while increasing political pressures\u00a0 on\u00a0 employers\u00a0 to\u00a0 give\u00a0 preference\u00a0\u00a0 to native workers over immigrant counterparts. High unemployment creates a larger local recruitment pool, increasing firms\u2019 hiring power, prompting unions to demand that employers hire locally, and leading to labour- market testing regulations that make it hard to recruit immigrant workers. As mentioned above, the inability to recruit international migrants during the pandemic has also led to an acceleration of automation that was already happening in many areas of employment. This too might reduce overall demand for immigrant labour. Many of the unskilled jobs being automated\u2014such as those in healthcare, with the introduction of precision diagnostics\u2014have long been performed by migrants. Automation has expanded into skilled labour, for example through the introduction of artificial intelligence in areas like accountancy and paralegal work. During the pandemic, firms faced with higher labour\u00a0 costs have\u00a0 had\u00a0 to\u00a0 innovate\u00a0 and\u00a0 invest\u00a0 in\u00a0 technologies that will permanently\u00a0 replace\u00a0 some\u00a0 pre-pandemic jobs. Short-term demand for immigrant labour may, however, surge as lockdowns ease\u2014especially with the realisation in many countries of the extent to which they depend on migrant labour in crucial sectors struggling to fill vacancies now that economies are recovering. But for many countries, the mid- to long-term net result of a shrinking pool of more highly automated employers will be an economy less dependent on importing foreign labour. However, this does not necessarily need to work out badly for prospective migrants. More automation could also mean that, increasingly, work travels to the people instead of the other way around, with the result that opportunities for income-generating\u00a0 activities reach prospective migrants without them needing to physically migrate.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #009999;\">New geometries of global development<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">It is important to recognise that the mobility and migration changes connected with the Covid-19 pandemic are taking place against a backdrop of a major long-term shift in global power from West to East, involving a wide range of disruptive social transformations. In line with August Comte\u2019s dictum that \u201cdemography is destiny\u201d, a fundamental element of this shift is the contrast between a wealthy and ageing Western world and a young and emerging Eastern one. While most Western countries face a growing share of dependent elderly people relative to their working populations, many developing countries are entering the phase of a \u201cdemographic dividend\u201d, where lower birth rates shrink the ratio of the dependent elderly population to the youth population, allowing an outsized actively working population to make rapid economic gains.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Such a demographic dynamic helps explain China\u2019s phenomenal economic rise, sustained by\u00a0 average annual GDP growth of almost 10 percent between 1979 and 2018. The early stages of this growth involved a phenomenal rise of internal labour migration from lower-income rural areas in China\u2019s western and interior provinces towards its higher-income and more urbanised provinces along the country\u2019s eastern coast\u2014a shift that, in terms of numbers, dwarfs the 19th century transformation of Europe through what the geographer Wilbur Zelinsky once called a \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1177\/030913259301700205\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">great shaking loose of population<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u201d from the rural countryside. The next phase of China\u2019s rise\u2014beginning around the turn of the 21st century\u2014involved a massive surge of emigration around the world. Moreover, China is not the only power on the rise. India is just now entering its demographic dividend and will soon overtake China to become the world\u2019s most populous country by the end of the current decade. Africa\u2019s population is still expanding fast, so its turn will come later\u2014but it too will experience a spurt of economic growth after fertility rates fall.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Such long-term shifts in global development geometry have substantial implications for post-pandemic human migration. For example, high-income countries, used to reliably large inflows of immigrants from what has until now been thought of as the \u201cdeveloping\u201d world\u2014often to fill labour shortages and skill gaps\u2014might no longer be able to rely on these movements. Once the pandemic recedes, many of the \u201csending\u201d countries may no longer be at the same point in their own migration transitions. For example, China is likely almost over its migration hump\u2014the period in which its rapid socio-economic development drives high rates\u00a0 of\u00a0 emigration\u2014as people acquire the means to escape their predicament domestically. As China\u2019s economic and political rise continues, the incentives to emigrate will lessen for many people, and it will likely next become\u2014like other major global economic centres\u2014a major destination for inward international migrants.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Most wealthy immigrant destination\u00a0 countries\u00a0 went into the Covid-19 pandemic with immigration systems geared towards receiving large net inflows from Asia. By the time Covid-19 is behind us, they may find these net inflows have dried up, forcing them to look elsewhere to fill their skill and labour shortages, most likely to the African continent where economic and job growth is in the short term unlikely to keep up with the increasing numbers of young people entering the labour force.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #009999;\">The evolution of migration governance<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">In the face of the significant changes to global migration patterns that have prevailed for more than half a century, questions about the future of migration governance loom large. It has long been the case that decisions regarding exit and entry are made by nation states while those about settlement and service-provision are made by cities. However, in the past 20 years a global regime of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rsc.ox.ac.uk\/publications\/the-history-of-global-migration-governance\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">migration governance<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> has begun to take shape, propelled by events such as the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in 1994, the UN Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants in 2016, and the landmark adoption in 2018 of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM) and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR).<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">As populists increasingly take the helm of national governments and assert stricter migration controls, what will happen to this emerging global migration regime? Will the shock of the Covid-19 crisis be met with more international cooperation over migration, or less? In the past, shocks and crises have been a major driver for the creation of new global migration governance structures. The most recent example is the 2015\/16 so-called migration and refugee crisis, which saw large mixed migration flows of refugees and migrants arriving irregularly in Europe, often assisted by smugglers. This fuelled the organisation of the 2016 New York summit, the starting point for the development of the two global compacts.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>New shock, new context\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Will the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic be different? So far, Covid is not like previous shocks. Past shocks have occurred against a background of growing globalisation and the softening of national sovereignties, expressed for example in a proliferation of regional integration schemes modelled on the European Union. Covid-19 has spread in a very different global climate, in the wake of a global financial crisis which had already shattered the neoliberal consensus and led to growing go-it-alone national strategies, epitomised in the slogans of the UK\u2019s Brexiteers and the followers of Donald Trump in the US: \u201cTake Back Control\u201d, and \u201cBuild the Wall\u201d.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The pandemic and related health, economic, and protection crises have underscored the\u00a0 need\u00a0 for and\u00a0 relevance\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 GCM.\u00a0 While\u00a0 not\u00a0 always directly referencing the compact, many states have undertaken actions that are included in the GCM, such as regularisation, releasing migrants from detention, and providing access to services and healthcare for migrants, proving the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/132_covid_and_the_global_compact_for_migration.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">GCM\u2019s relevance<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> in times of crisis.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 aria-level=\"2\"><strong>Restrictions, smugglers, and risks\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">However, at the same time, a global health crisis with a virus travelling across borders understandably leads to far more restrictive approaches. Governments are seizing back control of migration through lockdown measures and opening up largely through bilateral and regional negotiations outside of UN-led multilateral forums. The way global mobility came to a sudden standstill at the height of the pandemic may have shown some that in fact mobility can be halted and that borders can be closed. This may have created an appetite among those in favour of less migration and more restrictive approaches to keep at least some of the measures in place, so as to keep suppressing unwanted global mobility in the longer term. This could potentially lead to more irregular migration, because demand for migrant labour and aspirations to migrate will not disappear; they will only become more difficult to satisfy, forcing more people to take irregular routes.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">This in turn is likely to have an impact on human smuggling. For example, data collected directly from thousands of refugees and migrants during 2020 by MMC\u2019s 4Mi programme showed that, generally speaking, there was more demand for, yet less access to, people smugglers, whose fees tended to rise accordingly. This increased dependency subsequently <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/131_covid_thematic_update_smuggling.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">increases risks and vulnerability<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> to protection incidents. Similarly, the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.unodc.org\/documents\/data-and-analysis\/covid\/Covid-related-impact-on-SoM-TiP-web3.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">UN Office on Drugs and Crime<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> also concluded that the Covid-19 crisis will make refugees and migrants more dependent on smugglers and that smugglers will opt for more dangerous routes and modes of transport, which will make journeys more risky and more expensive.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 aria-level=\"2\"><strong>Public opinion\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The pandemic is also likely to affect public attitudes towards refugees and migrants, and foreigners in general, which in turn might affect future migration policies, although the impact is not yet clear. On the one hand, a global pandemic could exacerbate people\u2019s fear of outsiders or the fear that migration contributes to the spread of the disease. On the other, as mentioned above, the pandemic has also highlighted the disproportional importance of migrant workers, which could lead to more favourable attitudes. Research findings so far indicate that there has been little systematic change in the longer trend of relatively stable immigration preferences in Europe and the United States, and no country-level correlation between observed changes and the severity of the outbreak. Instead, the perceived importance of immigration among the general public has consistently and significantly <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3884912\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">decreased<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> since the start of the pandemic. It has been argued that this can lead to a period of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.semanticscholar.org\/paper\/Why-COVID-19-does-not-necessarily-mean-that-towards-Dennison-Geddes\/f75e81cd7e2746110644542e76ca8b41e3961b9a\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">quieter immigration politics<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">, creating space for innovations.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">However, there have been many reports about widespread racist and xenophobic incidents against\u00a0 foreigners linked to the pandemic, such as verbal and physical assaults, social exclusion, denial of access to goods and services, boycotting of businesses, discriminatory movement restrictions and quarantine policies, as well as xenophobic rhetoric from politicians, other public figures, and the media. The UN Secretary General even referred to a \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iom.int\/news\/combatting-xenophobia-key-effective-covid-19-recovery\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">tsunami of hate and xenophobia<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">.\u201d Moreover, whether as a reflection of the general public\u2019s attitudes or not, politicians may use a fear of foreigners linked to the pandemic for political gain and to argue for more restrictive approaches to migration. It is too soon to say how the pandemic will affect acceptance of foreigners, their integration processes and, by extension, migration policies, but it is clear that such a world-changing event as a global pandemic will have a longer lasting impact, but it is likely to differ from one country, community, or context to another.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 aria-level=\"2\"><strong>Vaccine inequality\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Another way in which the pandemic may have a lasting impact on mobility, at least for the next few years, is through vaccine access. Access to international migration options was already unequally divided among the world\u2019s population, where people from the developed world can more or less legally access any country in the world, while those in the rest of the world cannot. The starkly\u00a0 unequal\u00a0 access\u00a0 to\u00a0 Covid-19\u00a0 vaccination\u2014as of October 2021, 62 percent of the population in high income countries has been vaccinated, against <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/data.undp.org\/vaccine-equity\/\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">under 4\u00a0 percent<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0 in\u00a0 low-income\u00a0 countries\u2014and\u00a0 the\u00a0 need to have proof of vaccination in order to travel, might become a measure of de facto immigration control, used by destination countries to keep populations from lower income countries out. This again could increase the need to migrate through irregular means.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Vaccine inequality will not only limit people\u2019s ability to travel and migrate; it will also act as a driver of migration. Vaccine inequality will, according to the UN, also have a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2021\/09\/1100192\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">lasting impact on socio-economic recovery<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> in low- and low-to-middle-income countries and set back progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. It will deepen the socio-economic divide between countries and slow the economic recovery of many countries with less access to vaccines. Inequality is a major <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sussex.ac.uk\/Units\/SCMR\/drc\/publications\/briefing_papers\/BP7.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">driver of migration<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">, with millions of workers and their families moving each year across borders and continents seeking to reduce what they see as the gap between their own position and that of people in other, wealthier, places.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The pandemic will continue to affect the situation of forcibly displaced people around the world. While the number of Covid infections among refugees has been lower than initially feared\u2014with many living in cramped conditions\u2014as already mentioned above, access to resettlement pathways has been severely reduced.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 aria-level=\"2\"><strong>Drivers and funding\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The impact of the crisis is exacerbating the drivers of mass displacement and eroding the capacity of refugee- hosting countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. First, in countries of origin, a global recession will lead to increases in conflict, authoritarianism, and state fragility, all key drivers of forced displacement. Second, a recession stretches the capacity of states hosting the majority of the refugees in the world. Third, the pandemic <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.oup.com\/2021\/04\/the-coming-refugee-crisis-how-covid-19-exacerbates-forced-displacement\/\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">undermines the survival strategies<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> that refugees rely on in camps and cities around the world, undercutting aid, remittances, and informal sector jobs. Many who relied on informal labour for their incomes lost their jobs. The Norwegian Refugee Council estimated that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.oup.com\/2021\/04\/the-coming-refugee-crisis-how-covid-19-exacerbates-forced-displacement\/\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">three quarters of displaced and conflict-affected people<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> lost income since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. As such, increasing numbers of refugees might be stuck in refugee camps and urban centres, without access to any solutions, which may increase the likelihood of onward movements.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Furthermore, in the longer term, humanitarian funding and foreign aid, including for refugee situations, might decrease\u2014although in 2020 foreign aid from official donors actually reached an all-time high, up 3.5 percent compared to 2019, boosted\u00a0 by\u00a0 additional\u00a0 spending to help developing counties respond to the Covid-19 crisis. However, to put things in perspective, the world\u2019s total overseas development assistance amounted to around just <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oecd.org\/newsroom\/covid-19-spending-helped-to-lift-foreign-aid-to-an-all-time-high-in-2020-but-more-effort-needed.htm#%3A~%3Atext%3D13%2F04%2F2021%20%2D%20Foreign%2Cdata%20collected%20by%20the%20OECD\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">one percent<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> of the 16 trillion dollars spent by governments on domestic Covid stimulus measures. These massive recovery investments will have to be recouped at some point, and it is likely that an increasing number of major donor countries will cut foreign aid in the near future. Some have already done so: in 2021, it was reported that bilateral donors already made <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/aidspan.org\/en\/c\/article\/5562\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">cuts\u00a0 to humanitarian sectors<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">.<\/span> <span data-contrast=\"auto\">Further cuts in humanitarian funding could worsen the situation of refugees in urban\u00a0 centres and in camps, leading to either an increase in onward movement (for those who can afford it) or more involuntary immobility.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #009999;\">Conclusion: will Covid-19 be a game-changer?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Much may change after the current pandemic, but not everything: there is an inertia in infrastructure and in institutions which mitigates against major long-term changes spurred by temporary shocks. A major question going forward is whether Covid-19 will result in lasting changes to prevailing patterns of human migration and of the institutions governing them.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Migration itself may shift significantly, in the many ways discussed above. It seems very likely that higher levels of unemployment will reduce overall demand for migrant labour, and that the risky international environment will depress migration aspirations. It is also all but certain that the travel industry will emerge from this crisis with less passenger capacity, higher regulatory standards surrounding emissions, and lower demand for business travel as a result of accelerated remote working trends. Meanwhile, the\u00a0 pandemic\u00a0 has\u00a0 fuelled\u00a0 a\u00a0 resurgence of anti-immigrant sentiment\u00a0 in\u00a0 mainstream\u00a0 political life around the world and strengthened the hands of autocrats, enabling them to crack down harshly on migration. The pandemic may thus lead to a sustained period of more stringent restrictions on human mobility, even after travel restrictions and quarantines subside.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Different and rapidly changing dynamics make it difficult to predict the longer lasting impact of the pandemic on mixed migration. With some of the drivers of migration\u2014especially economic ones\u2014set to intensify over the coming months or possibly even years, but with more people likely to lack the resources to afford often expensive irregular migration journeys, prospective migrants may look closer to home. This could lead to even larger migration movements within regions and towards cities, not least as anthropogenic climate change and other environmental stressors deepen their impact and make certain locations unliveable. Or people may become stuck, either at home or in transit\u2014with their migration aspirations unfulfilled\u2014or in destination states, unable or unwilling to return home. Others may undertake riskier journeys as alternatives are blocked, which is likely to have an impact on smuggling dynamics and on the numbers that join <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/154_covid_thematic_update_drivers_and_outlook.pdf\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">mixed migratory flows<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> in response to the rapid- and slow-onset crises that prompt them to move. A continuing absence of sufficient regular channels and the potential impact of Covid and other factors mentioned above on future access to regular channels will continue to drive irregular migration along many well-known and lesser known mixed migration routes.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The future of migration governance at the global level is a more open question. A global migration regime has been evolving over the past few decades, but rather than being a smooth, linear process, this has lurched forward amid a series of shocks, each of which has forced policymakers to institutionalise liberal approaches to migration. However, as major cracks appear in the liberal world order of the post-World War II period, the future of cooperation over migration\u2014along with that in other areas of globalisation such as trade and finance\u2014seems less certain.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:160,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following essay was originally compiled for the \u202fMixed Migration Review 2021 and has been reproduced here for wider access through this website\u2019s readership.\u00a0 The essay\u2019s author Alan Gamlen is Associate Professor of Geography, Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and a longstanding Research Associate at Oxford University&#8217;s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society. Alan&#8217;s most&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9471,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232,83,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-19","category-migration-management","category-trends-in-migration","region-global","writer-alan-gamlen","writer-frouws"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9466"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9474,"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9466\/revisions\/9474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.maisoninteractive.com\/mixedmigrationcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}