The International E-Conference on ‘Migration, Diasporas and Sustainable Development: Perspectives, Policies, Opportunities and Challenges’, jointly organized by the Migrant Forum in Asia(MFA), the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism (GRFDT) and theCenter for Research on North America (CISAN), was inaugurated on November 2nd, 2020.
The inauguration of the event took place on November 2nd, 2020, with Ms. Paddy Siyanga Knudsen as Master of Ceremonies. The Welcome Address was conducted by Professor William Gois, from the Migrant Forum in Asia, who officially opened the event acknowledging the organizers’ efforts for making the conference possible despite the worldwide COVID-19 Pandemic. He also highlighted that the Conference was an important effort in face of times of disruption such as our present days.
Professor Camelia Tigau from the Center for Research on North America at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, welcomed all participants and attendees. She also explained the dynamics of the conference, which represents a unique international effort to gather panelists from over 70 countries and five different languages.
A world on the move, but moving through a perfect storm
The Inaugural speaker was Ambassador William Swing, Former Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Ambassador Swing address looked at three fundamental points regarding migration: factual, analytical and challenges towards public policy recommendations. He explained how migration is a human inevitable reality, part of our DNA, and in fact, highly desirable if right policies are in place. Even though the proportion of migrants worldwide has remained stable at 3% of the worldwide population, there has never been a time in human history where migration has been as numerous. There are around 300 million international migrants, and 750 million domestic migrants.
As Ambassador Swing explained, this is due to a number of conditions, such as demographics, economic disparities between the Global North and South, the persistence of armed conflicts, climate change, and human or natural disasters, and moreover, the aging population and the consequent demand of labor in the North and the unemployed youthful Global South. Furthermore, other elements add up to what Ambassador Swing described as a “a storm”. As a prime example of this storm, he elaborated on what is now the greatest flow of forced migration since World War II, which includes 25 million refugees, 43 million persons internally displaced, amongst other figures. Moreover, there is an unprecedented anti migrant sentiment amongst political leaders and voters, that disregard migrants’ key contributions to development. International organizations have failed to face these new challenges, which ultimately leads to a serious questioning of their moral authority.
Given this complex scenario, Ambassador Swing gave a series of key elements that we should focus our recommendations on.
“There are numerous ways in which we can contribute to direct management of International Migration. First of all, we can deliver compelling evidence and arguments to demonstrate that migrants and the diaspora are of international interest and are contributing, and in fact always have, to development. For instance, although migrants constitute 3% of the world’s population, they produce 9% of global GDP, and this would no have been the case if they had stayed at home”
Secondly, we must intensify all efforts to educate and inform what migrants will mean to a recipient country. And finally, all stereotypes must be destroyed, as not only do they put migrants’ lives in danger, but they also enhance hate-speech and discrimination based on false perceptions and misinformation.
Complexifying Complex Diasporas
The keynote address was made by Professor Steven Vertovec, Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, at the University of Göttingen in Germany. The purpose of his presentation was to give a general theoretical framework on migration, diasporas and transnationalism to provide a common ground for the following panels. He first elaborated on the concept of complexity and how it can be applied to our phenomena. There are two notions of complexifying: one that looks at how the phenomena itself is getting more complex; and another one that seeks to develop new understandings, methods and analytics to better grasp the phenomena in study.
Professor Vertovec also highlighted the differences between diaspora and transnationalism.
“There are two key concepts that the conference will be dealing with: diasporas and transnationalism…Diaspora has two immediate senses. One is a kind of demographic sense, simply talking about dispersed social formations of people around the world purporting to have a common origin. The other sense of diaspora is people’s own subjective sense of being part of a globally dispersed community, based on various grounds…whereas transnationalism entails actual exchanges across borders that can either refer to social, economic, political, cultural or religious aspects.”
While all transnationalism demands for a certain notion of diaspora, not all aspects of diasporas include transnationalism. This is why we must apply both concepts carefully.
Migration is a process with increasing complexity, due to an increase in the number of agents, but also an evolving differentiation of characteristics (such as gender, education, legal statuses or occupation) and stronger interdependencies. As new patterns of migration are forming, there is much higher contingency, unstable paths and unpredictable trajectories. Due to this new scenario, Professor Vertovec suggests the concept of complex diasporas and superdiversity. The first one rejects any notion of homogenization and instead, it looks at internal complexities such as different languages, ethnicities, generations or faiths. Superdiversity, on the other hand, speaks about fluctuating and divergent combinations of nationality, gender, age, skills, amongst others, that constitute migration.
Having those two concepts in mind, we can further look at new and emergent aspects of migration, such as digital diasporas and transnational care. Furthermore, superdiversity allows us to visualize how social positions and inequalities are reproduced within specific diasporas. He concluded emphasizing the need to complexify our understanding of migration, diasporas and transnationalism to better grasp and tackle current and future inequalities, which is more important than ever in light of the pandemic, the economic recession, and the climate crisis.
To round up the session, Dr.M. Mahalingam, President of the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism, thanked all panelists for their valuable participation.
Melissa H. Jasso has collaborated with CISAN and the University of Toronto researching Mexican high-skilled migration in North America. She is currently completing her studies at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Twitter: (@jotadoblesse)