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Migrant rights: The pot calling the kettle black
In my previous blogpost, I expressed skepticism on the question whether the upcoming High Level Dialogue (HLD) on Migration and Development will yield any concrete result, mainly because governments of...
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Smuggling is a reaction to border controls, not the cause of migration
The disaster of the sinking of a boat on 3 October off the coast of Lampedusa, which cost the life to hundreds of refugees and migrants, has already led to calls for a 'smuggling crackdown' among...
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Lampedusa: Only the dead can stay
While the hundreds of people who died off the coast of Lampedusa are granted post mortem Italian citizenship, public prosecutors are planning to charge the survivors with ‘illegal migration’. In an...
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What drives human migration?
Why do people migrate? This question is both simple and difficult. On the one hand, it seems reasonable to assume that most people migrate hoping to find better conditions or opportunities elsewhere,...
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In Rotterdam we speak Dutch
Tomorrow, the Dutch will vote in municipal elections. In Rotterdam, the VVD (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy), the right-wing liberal party of Prime Minister Rutte, is campaigning with an...
View ArticleDutch racism
Geert Wilders, the popular leader of the Dutch PVV (Freedom) Party, is well known for his anti-Islam and anti-immigrant viewpoints. Dutch Moroccans are his favourite target, who are systematically put...
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Visas reduce immigration ... and return!
The effectiveness of immigration policies is highly contested. While politicians often claim that visas and border controls are necessary to prevent uncontrolled immigration, many researchers argue...
View ArticleHuman Migration: Myths, Hysteria and Facts
Migration is a hotly debated but poorly understood issue. Much conventional thinking about migration is based on myths rather than facts. Migration policies often fail because they are based on those...
View ArticleFeigning immigration control
The current attempts by UK politicians to outbid each other in being 'tough' on immigration reminds me of the comment by the well-known migration researcher Douglas Massey and his co-authors that...
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Borders beyond control?
In my previous blogpost, I argued that politicians are often busy with feigning immigration control while in reality they often can or want to do little about it. Does that mean that borders are beyond...
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Let their people drown: How EU politicians have become tragic actors in a...
In recent months, a record number of refugees and migrants have drowned in their attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea. According to recent UN estimates, in 2014 almost 220,000 migrants crossed the...
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The myth of invasion
Many people believe that migration is at an all-time high and accelerating fast. Images of people crossing the Mediterranean in ramshackle boats and rising political panic about immigration all...
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Will a 'Brexit' curb immigration?
Leaders of anti-immigration parties such as Nigel Farage of the UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) and Geert Wilders' of the Dutch Freedom Party have often stated that getting out of the EU is...
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Expats
Of course 'expats' are just emigrants. They only don't like to be called that way. These days, in Western Europe, the term 'migrant' is more and more associated to supposedly low-skilled people from...
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How much do we really learn from history?
"German Jews Pouring into This Country". This is what the The Daily Mail, a British tabloid newspaper, had to say about German Jews seeking refuge from Nazi brutality in 1938. The article quotes a...
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Europe's disgrace
A general sense of panic is dominating media coverage of what has come to know as Europe's 'refugee crisis'. It conveys the image of a massive exodus going on from the Middle East and Africa to Europe,...
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Don't blame the smugglers: the real migration industry
The billions spent on the militarisation of border controls over the past years have been a waste of taxpayers' money. As we are able to witness during the current 'refugee crisis', increasing border...
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Refugees: A small and relatively stable proportion of world migration
The recent news coverage about migration, and particularly the 'refugee crisis', often gives the impression that border crossings by asylum seekers and refugees are an important or even the main source...
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The case for border controls
Sovereign states have good reasons for controlling their borders. States are political communities with a need to define who is member, and who not. This is important to determine who is eligible to...
View ArticleMigration Matters
While migration has become a political 'hot topic', public debates about migration have often remained remarkably fact-less. Thanks to the increase in migration research and availability of data, we...
View ArticleThere is no 'silver bullet' migration policy
By Katharina Natter Intensified border controls and development cooperation have become the pillars of European immigration policy over the last decades. Yet, the consequences of these policies are...
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Myths of migration: Much of what we think we know is wrong
The debate over migration is plagued by a variety of inaccuracies and misunderstandings - on both the right and the left. Here is what the research really shows.Migration was the issue of the year in...
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Climate refugees: The fabrication of a migration threat
In recent years, it has become popular to argue that climate change will lead to massive North-South movements of ‘climate refugees’. Concerns about climate change-induced migration have emerged in the...
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Why development will not stop migration
Among the many myths perpetuated about migration, one of the most common is that ‘South–North’ migration is essentially driven by poverty and underdevelopment. Consequently, it is often argued that...
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Politicians need to come clean about immigration
We seem to be living in times of unprecedented mass migration. Images of people from Africa crammed into unseaworthy boats desperately trying to cross the Mediterranean, asylum seekers crossing the...
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