Philippines, 7th July 2020.
A panel discussion was jointly conducted by Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism [GRFDT], Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) and Cross Regional Center for Refugees and Migrants (CCRM), on the topic ‘Global and Regional Migration Governance During COVID- 19’ seeing the rapid changing dynamics of migration governance across the world.
Mr. William Gois, the Regional Coordinator of the Migrant Forum in Asia has been at the forefront of international advocacy efforts engaging and influencing international and multilateral organisations to promote equitable and fair migration and development policies for the last twenty years.
In this webinar, as an eminent panellist, he spoke about the “fault line” between the global and the regional migration governance. He pointed out that there is little transmission of ideas between the global and the regional levels. He observed that politicization of migration is a problem plaguing the world today and often “The prevalent migration discourse gets unreal from a migrant’s perspective.” He further spoke on the issue of human rights deficit by pointing out that a priority has been placed more on migration management than on migrant’s rights. Thus, he said, “Migration for the political leaders is not a popular topic. It’s not a vote winner and that’s why a politician speaking on the issues of migration from a rights-based perspective is actually not going to be very popular with the major populous.” He thus pushes the need to move this agenda both at the global and regional level.
Moreover, in these precarious times, we have seen such vast polarization of migrants not only across borders but also internally in countries. Hence, Mr Gois called for integration and inclusion especially at the regional level to enhance migration governance. He further stressed on the fact that we must think about what difference are our meetings going to makein the lives of the common migrants and in what capacity are we coming together to address migration governance.
Way forward-
Mr Goisstressed on the need for an efficient political leadership who would generate a “a new kind of political will”. He said- “COVID-19 has shown us how fragile our communities are and a new sense of solidarity is needed. A new perspective where migrants are not the other, migrants are not the alien”. This is so because COVID-19 has led to a further marginalisation of migrants leading them to be completely externalised. The fear of the pandemic has left returning migrants unable to come back home as their own communities have prevented their transit.
Hence, Mr Gois called for an honest assessment of what has happened to migrants in these troubled times. Not only in terms of rights but largely in terms of the treatment the migrants have received and how it is leading to common people losing a sense of human dignity in the process. He said-“There is an urgent need to dig deeper than the legal framework of rights and understand common humanity”in dealing with migration governance.
In the regional policy perspective of Asia, Mr Gois concluded by saying that we must keep the politics aside and think aboutwhat brings us together as a region. The notion of interdependency needs to be revitalised and we need to see each other as neighbours and not individual States to tackle the migration issue and improve its governance globally.
Writer Details- Ujjwala Lakhanpal is a final year student of International relations and economics at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gandhinagar. Her areas of interest include Conflict Studies, Asian geopolitics, International migrations and the Middle East. Twitter Id- UjjwalaLakhanpal @UjjwalaLp