Rethinking Migration and Refuge
“Workers in Canada have the Charter right to move around within the country, from Montreal to Toronto to Calgary—wherever there’s work available. EU citizens now are able to seek jobs throughout most of the continent. Why not allow such mobility on a global scale? ‘Migrants are not stupid. They go where the jobs are available.'”
More than ever today we hear about the refugee crisis in Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia, and elsewhere. For a well mapped out overview of the crisis, see here.
François Crépeau, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants and Professor of Law at McGill University has proposed a radically new way of thinking about international mobility that would have consequences for how we think about the international refugee regime. Crépeau’s ideas involve facilitating, rather than monitoring or preventing, the transportation of migrants to labour markets in more stable countries, such as those in the West. He makes a case that these countries are in need of low-skilled labour and have low or negative population growth rates and thus, by addressing these shortages and reversing these trends, such an arrangement has the potential to be mutually beneficial. For an overview of this idea, and a fascinating interview with Crépeau on the challenges an idea like this one faces, see below.
