Migration is typically caused by a variety of factors, both ‘push’ and ‘pull’. People might decide to move because of a range of factors, be it employment, security, opportunities, education, even love, unavailable to them in their home country and ‘pulling’ them elsewhere. On the other hand, there can be compelling drivers of displacement such as conflict, persecution, natural disasters and other immediate threats, that push them to migrate. In this post we focus on the latter – push factors related to forced migration.

---

Table of content:

• Conflict
• Corruption
• Poverty and marginalization
• Land rights
• Climate change
• Urbanization
• Intersectional discrimination in migration processes

---

All sorts of factors, from the global to the local, from megatrends to personal challenges, influence the decision of people around the world to migrate. Besides positive motivations such as looking for better jobs or education opportunities, there are also a variety of drivers which relate to the phenomenon of forced migration. In practice, though the latter is often contrasted with ‘voluntary’ migration, people may decide to move for a combination of reasons that may defy simplistic categorization.

Conflict.

Violent conflict is one of the primary forces displacing people in the world at present. A large percentage of current refugees are fleeing the war in Syria, for example. 

The majority of people displaced by conflict remain within the country – they are internally displaced.  But many do flee to other countries, either immediately or after a period of internal displacement.

Conflict, in particular, creates radical and protracted uncertainty for those who experience it. People’s knowledge of the situation they have fled is usually incomplete, and they cannot predict what the future will hold. During their flight and exile, refugees and internally displaced persons have to develop strategies to navigate this uncertainty.

People who have fled conflict to other countries are often particularly likely to engage transnationally with their country of origin. They might:

• send remittances to support peace or war efforts;
• vote or create political parties;
• lobby the authorities in their countries of residence for foreign policy initiatives to tackle the conflict that displaced them.

Even though conflicts usually influence all segments of society (to varying degrees), minorities are usually among those affected most acutely. At the same time, they often face a long process of exclusion and persecution which can actually culminate in violence or conflict, triggering mass displacement.

Perhaps the most extreme form of exclusion is the removal or denial of citizenship rights – often affecting minorities, leading to statelessness. For example, the Rohingya people in Myanmar experienced a steady attrition of their rights as citizens for years. They were then targeted by the country’s security forces and most of them have been uprooted to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Corruption.

Corruption can be a key driver of migration. In countries where corruption is endemic, people – especially members of minority groups – can find it very difficult to access opportunities and make a decent life for themselves. This often prompts people to move to countries where corruption is less widespread. 

And it is just one side of the coin. Corruption also plays a part throughout the migration experience:

• When people choose to return – or are returned against their will – corruption in their source countries can make it harder for them to reintegrate.
• Corruption makes people’s journeys much more dangerous, allowing migration to take place in irregular, unregulated ways, putting people at risk of death and exploitation.
• It is particularly dangerous for women and children (especially girls), who risk sexual abuse at the hands of smugglers and border guards – an example of intersectional discrimination.
• But the reality is that many migrants – including refugees – have no choice but to travel  by obtaining documents, or crossing borders, through bribes.

Poverty and marginalization.

People often move to escape poverty and seek a better life. This may be especially the case for members of minorities, indigenous peoples and other discrimination groups, as they are disproportionately likely to face deprivation and exclusion.

When people escape poverty by becoming migrant labourers, they can face additional challenges if they are targeted as a minority in their new country of residence.

Land rights.

In Africa, Asia and the Americas in particular, governments, businesses and other groups continue to dispossess land from communities – driving mass displacement. 

Following conflict, authorities often fail to restore homes and property to uprooted communities. This is a barrier to lasting peace, and can lay the foundation for further displacement in the future.

We could therefore reduce involuntary migration and displacement by:

• supporting a more secure and equitable environment for all communities;
• enforcing minority and indigenous rights.

Expulsions of whole households and communities from land they have subsisted on for centuries, even  millennia (especially in the case of indigenous communities) have increased in the last few decades. There are a variety of reasons for this: climate change, food crises, the biofuels boom (originally supported by the EU, which later changed its mind).

These processes manifest how globalization and its associated challenges pervade sectors which were previously dominated by national economies. It forces local communities to adjust to these developments socially, economically but also culturally – and one of the ways to adjust is their (forced) decision to migrate.

Of course, we can look at the issue from a ‘top down’ macroeconomic perspective. From that viewpoint, it can bring benefits (higher productivity, higher yields, higher economic growth, higher exports) for the country as a whole as well as respective regions within those countries. 

However, whether this apparent developmental gain is experienced by those households and communities who previously depended on the expropriated land is another matter.

Climate change.

Climate change is already displacing many people from their homes, and driving many more to migrate voluntarily in search of a better life. Even other causes of migration often have their roots in climate change, which is one of the leading social and economic stressors of today. 

An increasing number of conflicts are motivated by access to water and other resources. But the links are not always direct or clear, and human agency is still the most important factor. For example, in Syria, poor harvests caused by once-in-a-millennium droughts which displaced people into cities and in the process disrupted their pre-existing social structure have been identified by some analysts as contributing to the outbreak of the civil war – but that conflict is still driven by people.

Urbanization.

It is commonly assumed that indigenous peoples in particular live in rural and remote areas, when in fact they often have a significant urban presence in many countries – and are increasingly being displaced from their ancestral lands into cities as a result of land grabbing or violence. 

Within cities, ‘gentrification’ of urban areas often drives out the existing residents (usually people on lower incomes) or excludes them from the benefits of redevelopment. Though often criticized, it is not usually recognized as an example of racism or discrimination. But minority and indigenous residents often live in precisely the kind of communities which are affected by gentrification – causing further displacement.

Intersectional discrimination in migration.

As we have seen many times, people from minority and indigenous groups are especially sensitive to push factors related to migration. At the same time they often face discrimination only from one perspective, but multiple discrimination because of other aspects of their identity. 

And this continues through every aspect of the migration experience. For example:

• Women and children are especially likely to be internally displaced by conflict.
• LGBTQ+ people are often affected by the kind of persecution and attrition of rights that eventually turns into conflict and causes displacement.
• Urbanization can marginalize minority women and children particularly strongly, by isolating them from their social networks and communities.