Analysis: the simple narratives used to explain migration rarely align with the complicated truth and messiness of human beings
By Keire Murphy, TCD
Migration is a part of our everyday lives. Maybe you've moved abroad yourself for a few years, or a loved one has. Maybe you work with people who have moved country. Maybe you are just affected by the outcomes of migration, by things that people learned abroad and brought back to Ireland or things that people brought here when they arrived. Maybe some asylum applicants or refugees are housed in your town and you volunteer to support them - or you’ve seen the protests and media coverage.
But most of us don’t think too much more about it. The more you do, though, the more interesting and puzzling it becomes. Why, with the lowest unemployment rate in our history, are many Irish people still emigrating? Why do so many Brazilians live in Ireland?
Why did some villages in Lebanon migrate en masse to Venezuela and others to Nigeria when conflict broke out? Why do so many people not migrate when they could benefit economically from it? Why does economic development in a country sometimes increase emigration?
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Countrywide, Della Kilroy meets the Sanctuary Swimmers, an initiative which uses sport to bring together migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and Irish residents
We often hear two opposing stories about migration: in one, migrants are rational robots making calculations about where they can make the most money and then automatically moving there. In the other, migrants are victims pulled around by global forces with no choices.
We see these narratives in the opposing opinions about asylum seekers. While they get a lot of media coverage, they are usually the smallest category of migrants in Ireland and in most other countries, dwarfed by people migrating to study and to work. The rational robot story has asylum seekers researching job opportunities and social welfare systems; the victim story has them ending up in any country they can reach, having made no decisions along the way.
The truth is more complicated than either of these stories. While we often talk about forced and voluntary migration (i.e. migrating to flee war versus migrating for work or a better quality of life), a more useful way to think about migration is not as strict categories but instead a spectrum of choices.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Australian ambassador to Ireland Gary Gray on how the number of Irish people emigrating to Australia has hit record highs
On one end, choices are more limited and sometimes terrible, but there are still choices about whether to leave (many who would otherwise be classified as 'forced' migrants choose to stay), when to leave (even in a war, a personal threat or trigger is often needed for someone to make the decision to leave), who to leave with, where to go, and how to get there. Simple stories and categories cannot capture the complexity of human decisions.
At the other end of the spectrum, even the most privileged forms of migration have limits to choice: how much savings someone has, visa limits, where to find work, family and caring obligations that people might return home or stay for. Along this spectrum are people who flee both political persecution and economic hardship, people who flee starvation, people who want a better life for their children, people who have dreams that they cannot realise in their own countries, and people who want a better quality of life or to be able to buy a home.
Researchers have developed a framework for thinking about migration that seems to get closer to the truth. In the aspirations-capabilities theory, people migrate when they both want to (aspirations) and can (capability). Most of the world do not want to migrate even though they can.
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On the other hand, some people want to migrate but cannot. Migration is often very expensive, administratively difficult, sometimes dangerous, and very risky. Even the most privileged type of migration means leaving your support networks, culture, and your economic safety net. Structural factors such as visa regimes and closed or open borders hugely affect this capability. Migration therefore only happens when aspirations meet capability.
If we use this theory to look at the common idea that poverty creates migration, we can see why it might not be true in reality. While poverty may increase aspirations to migrate, it also reduces people’s capability to do so. This is one of the reasons there is little migration from the poorest countries. It is also why the idea that economic development will prevent migration is misguided. Development may eventually reduce aspirations to migrate, but it increases capabilities to migrate and can therefore increase emigration in the short-term.
This idea also helps us to understand one of the most powerful factors in migration decisions: social networks. Previous ESRI research found that social networks and the number of people already from that country were one of the most important determinants of where asylum applicants went. This makes intuitive sense: social networks can increase both aspirations and capabilities.
One of the most powerful factors in migration decisions is social networks
Knowing people abroad makes it easier for to learn about opportunities elsewhere (increasing aspirations) and also makes it easier to migrate. Knowing somebody who can give advice, act as a guide, introduce you to people, give you a place to stay while you’re looking for a home, and maybe even help you with a job makes migration a much less daunting and expensive prospect.
By thinking about the complicated decisions behind the migration statistics and headlines, we can begin to move past the simple narratives that rarely align with the truth and messiness of human beings. This understanding could help us to have better conversations about how migration works, and – hopefully – to govern migration.
Keire Murphy is a Policy Officer with the European Migration Network Ireland, based in the Economic and Social Research Institute. She is a Visiting Research Assistant at Trinity College Dublin.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
