Felipe Honorato
May 4, 2021
On May 4th, 2021, the webinar “Regular pathways and irregular migration” was organised jointly by Migrant Forum Asia (MFA), Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism (GRFDT), Civil Society Action Committee (CSAC), Alianza Americas, the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM)and the Climate Migration and Displacement Platforms (CMDP). Speakers for the webinar included: Michele LeVoy, director of the Plataform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM); Oscar A. Chacón, executive director of Alianza Americas; Patrick Taran, president of Global Migration Associates; and Rima Kalush, program director at Migrants-rights.org. The mediator was William Gois, regional coordinator at Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA).
Patrick Taran
Patrick highlighted the fact that 80 to 90% of the movements today happen through regular channels, but the regular migratory status of these persons depends on some very volatile factors like depending on keeping on a job for maintaining a work visa. So, for him, the greatest challenge nowadays is not irregular migration, but protecting people who fall into irregular status in their destination country and regularization.
Taran also talked about the need to have a more plural discussion about migration, not involving only policy makers, and how, in a globalized world as we live in, migration should be seen as something part of our global routine, granted by defined mechanisms to protect human rights.
“The point I want to underline, when We talk about pathways, pathways somehow limits, I think, the discussion at looking at bilateral arrangements, when really the challenge We have today is because of protection’s pressures, because of security approach, even some of those free circulation regimes are under pressure […]” – Patrick Taran
Michele Levoy
Michele LeVoy, looking specifically at the situation inside the European Union (EU) borders, said that since 1999, there is a comom migration and asylum policy for the region. As she had said, in the early years – from 1999 until a decade afterwards – the language used in this document was “combating illegal migration”; the language itself has changed now: the EU talks about “preventing irregular migration” – it seems to be a change of times. Michele mentions that, despite it, what we still see is a predominance of return and deportation: regularization is a taboo. To illustrate this situation, she showed, for example, some data that confirm the increase of power and budget of Fontex, the European border agency, in the past years. On the other hand, Michele LeVoy showed how different stakeholders in diverse instances are doing a great work to assist and try to integrate irregular migrants in the European society.
“ […] I think Oscar referred to four decades of dehumanization basically of migrants in the US context. And actually, after listening to two hours of colleagues from around the world, I think We can easily talk about of four hundred years plus of dehumanization of peoples” – Michele LeVoy
Oscar Chacón
Having as reference his experience with migratory flows in the so called Meso-American corridor, that links Central America, Mexico and the United States of America (USA or just US), Oscar Chacón discussed the major trends that led the political and public debate upon migrants arriving in the US to what we see today. He identified white supremacy as the first major trend in the debate: since the 1970’s, when Caribbeans and Latins migrants substituted European migrants as the biggest flows arriving in the country, it has been a discourse trying to demonize these migrants, seeing them as a disease that must be defeated. The demonization of these migrants works as a “permission” to take away their rights and, in some cases, to explore their vulnerability – Oscar Chacón indicates that there’s a very profitable “industry of detention and deportations”, feeded by private detention centers and charter flights that take these irregular migrants back to their countries of origin. The second major trend mentioned by Chacón is the asymmetry that exist in the freedom of movement given to money and rich people, and the freedom of movement given to poor people and persons from the global south: money and rich people circulate almost freely around the globe, while poor people and persons from the global south have their mobility very controlled.
For Oscar Chacón, it’s important to bring the discourse about how beneficial immigration is for both the countries of origin and the countries of destination.
“ […] If you are, you know, a corporate actor, and you want to move anywhere you want, in order to maximize your profits, you are very much encouraged to do that, even supported, you know, to do that, by way of taxes rebates to you. But if you are an individual seeking a better possibility for you to sell the only thing you have, and that’s your ability to work, then you don’t have the same rights.” – Oscar Chacón
Rima Kalush
In Rima’s opinion, the migratory panorama in the Persian Gulf is very similar to what the other presenters have said to their specific contexts: the vast majority of the migration to and within the countries of the region is made through regular channels, once some significant share of these nations workforce is composed by foreign citizens, but many of them become irregular by motivations that go beyond their capability of action or control. Kalush cited criminal charges that are charged against migrant workers as, perhaps, the greatest of these problems – suddenly, these charges turn them into irregular migrants. Another important issue in the Persian Gulf, as described by Rima Kalush, is human trafficking: some people enter nations such as Saudi Arabia and Oman as agricultural or domestic workers and end up in an abusive situation.
“The most of the workers who, you know, who become irregular [in the Persian Gulf region], become so because, you know, employers are in charge of their residency permit” – Rima Kalush
The webinar brought so many insightful perspectives thereby creating a positive migration discourse. The need of surpassing racism and discrimination, and also the need of elaborating decolonial migratory policies, at the end, was a concensus among the panelists.
Felipe Honorato lives in Valinhos, Brazil. Currently he is a student of the PhD programme in Social Change and Political Participation at the University of São Paulo / Brazil and young professor at IESCAMP College in Campinas – SP / Brazil. He is also a researcher in the Study Group on Research and Oral History (GEPHOM / EACH – USP) and at the Laboratory of Media and Public Sphere Studies (LEMEP / IESP – UERJ), collaborating with the “Manchetômetro” website. ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Felipe_Honorato Academia: https://usp-br.academia.edu/FelipeHonorato Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felipe-honorato-428880a1/