Migration, Nationhood and Human Rights
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
FALL/WINTER 2020 FALL/WINTER YOUR UBC CONNECTION NEW WORLD DISORDER THE CHINESE CANADIAN EXPERIENCE LAND GRABS IN LATIN AMERICA EXPERIENCE DISORDER LAND CHINESENEW THE GRABS WORLD CANADIAN IN LATIN Migration, Nationhood and Human Rights Is it time to reset the way you protect your loved ones? Alumni Insurance Plans can help. 2020 will go down as the year of the great reset. The year we all got back to basics and were reminded of what really matters: family and protecting it. Maybe it’s time to reset the way you protect your loved ones. Alumni Insurance Plans can help protect you and your family against life-changing events that can happen at any stage of your life. Choose from Health & Dental, Term Life, Major Accident Protection, Income Protection and more. Reset your protection. Get a quote today. Call 1-888-913-6333 or visit us at Manulife.com/ubc. Underwritten by The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company (Manulife). Manulife, Stylized M Design, and Manulife & Stylized M Design are trademarks of The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company and are used by it, and by its affiliates under license. Available to Canadian residents only. © 2021 The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company. All rights reserved. Manulife, P.O. Box 670, Stn Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2J 4B8. Conditions, limitations and exclusions may apply. See policy for full details. Accessible formats and communication supports are available upon request. Visit Manulife.ca/accessibility for more information. Manulife Ad_MultiProduct_8x10.75.pdf 1 11/20/2020 1:04:23 PM Editor’s Note EDITOR Vanessa Clarke, BA GRAPHIC DESIGNER Pamela Yan, BDes EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Rachel Glassman, BA’18 Eric Davenport UBC PRESIDENT & VICE‑CHANCELLOR A MORE WELCOMING WORLD Santa J. Ono UBC CHANCELLOR We’ve already been through a lot of change in 2020, but here’s one more – Steven Lewis Point, LLB’85, LLD’13 a comprehensive rethink of Trek magazine. We’re hoping you’ll find it one of VICE‑PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT the more agreeable changes this year has dished up. We’ve kept the best bits, & ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT; created some new best bits, and have extended it into a digital-first publication PRESIDENT’S DESIGNATE with a much more substantial online presence at trekmagazine.ca. We’ve also Heather McCaw, BCom’86 made the shift to themed issues – in this case, human migration. ASSOCIATE VICE‑PRESIDENT / People have always moved between countries, and it’s estimated that there EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALUMNI UBC are more than a quarter of a billion international migrants in the world today. Natalie Cook Zywicki But recent years have seen increasing numbers of people on the move because TREK they have no choice. War, persecution, natural disaster, poverty and other Trek magazine is published two times negative forces have displaced approximately 70 million people, with about a year in print by the UBC Alumni 26 million of them seeking refuge across borders. Association and distributed free of charge to UBC alumni and friends. Although the vast majority are hosted by less developed countries, an Opinions expressed in the magazine do influx of refugees to wealthier nations has been accompanied by a rise in not necessarily reflect the views of the anti-immigration sentiment and a striking effect on the social and political Alumni Association or the university. landscape. While some see immigration as a welcome benefit that can Address correspondence to: counteract the disadvantages of an aging population and help create a The Editor, alumni UBC dynamic and prosperous society, there is also a common perception that 6163 University Boulevard, large numbers of newcomers from different cultures represent competition Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z1 for work and social services, or a potential threat to security and to the social [email protected] Letters are published at the editor’s and cultural status quo. discretion and may be edited for space. Immigration has become one of the most divisive issues of this century, and the number of forcibly displaced people is only projected to increase ADVERTISING Jenna McCann as climate change takes its toll. The human cost has already been shockingly 604 822 8917 [email protected] high, leading to calls for international cooperation on a fairer and more compassionate system to manage large-scale migration and allow for the CONTACT NUMBERS AT UBC resettlement of millions of refugees. But the challenges are daunting and Address Changes 604 822 8921 [email protected] complex. It’s not surprising that migration has become the focus of increasing alumni UBC / UBC Welcome Centre academic attention. 604 822 3313 toll free: 800 883 3088 At UBC, a multidisciplinary cluster of researchers is working to better understand its roots and consequences, to address the challenges it poses and Volume 76, Number 1 Printed in Canada by Mitchell Press the misperceptions that abound, to help protect human rights, and to create Canadian Publications dialogue around the opportunities immigration represents if it is managed Mail Agreement #40063528 well. Over the summer, the migration research cluster learned it was to Return undeliverable become a fully-fledged UBC centre of research. And that development Canadian addresses to: must rank as one of the year’s best changes of all. Records Department UBC Development Office Suite 500 – 5950 University Boulevard VANESSA CLARKE Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3 Editor TREK / ALUMNI UBC 1 Who Belongs? THE MIGRATION ISSUE 4 Understanding the new world disorder 8 Tracking land grabs in Latin America 14 Turning journalism inside out 18 Poetry: Dear Nour 20 Chinese Canadians: the fight for a seat at the table 28 Poetry: Movement 30 Changing the locks on the Canada-US border Cover: A mother and son wait at a refugee shelter in Bulgaria. (Dimitar Dilkoff/Afp Via Getty Images) This page: Immigrants land in Greece. Who Belongs? With today’s polarized politics, people may not agree on the terminology – immigrants? refugees? invaders? – but there’s little doubt that migration is reshaping the world. PHOTOGRAPH BY MYRTO PAPADOPOULOS THE MIGRATION ISSUE / WORLD STAGE New World Disorder Syrians are fleeing. Americans are building walls. Indians are battling brain drain. And Hungary is incentivizing childbearing so that immigrant labour is no longer needed. Antje Ellermann explains why. 4 TREK / ALUMNI UBC the university’s Institute for European Studies. Her cur- rent focus is on the political dynamics that drive immigra- tion policy, and why countries faced with similar situa- tions have adopted strikingly different policy approaches. Her new book, The Comparative Politics of Immigration: Policy Choices in Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and the United States will be published in March by Cambridge University Press. We asked her about the factors at play behind negative receptions of immigrants, and what can be done to promote peaceful and cohesive societies. THE NUMBER OF FORCIBLY DISPLACED PEOPLE IS AT A HISTORIC HIGH. WHAT ARE THE MAIN CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THIS? Today, about one in every 110 people on Earth has been forced to flee. Another way of thinking about this is that every two seconds someone is forced to leave their home. Armed conflict is the number one reason for this. Over the past decade, the number of major civil wars has almost tripled, civil conflicts have become more protract- ed and more violent, targeting civilians. We just need to look at what has been happening in Syria, Myanmar, and Afghanistan, or in Somalia, the Sudan, and Congo. A sec- ond driver of displacement is the inability of governments to ensure the political, economic, or physical security of I their citizens. Think Venezuela or El Salvador. In future, we will see a lot more displacement as a result of climate change, because of widespread crop failure and the fact that entire regions will become uninhabitable because of heat, desertification, and flooding. To make matters worse, the historic high in human displacement in the Global South has triggered nationalist responses across the Global North. The wealthy democ- racies of Europe, North America, and Australasia for the most part have sealed and externalized their borders, which means that those fleeing violence or poverty cannot IN THE 1990s, when Antje Ellermann first turned even make it to those countries who have the fiscal and her academic attention to the politics of migration and administrative capacity to offer protection. citizenship in liberal democracies, many of her political There is a drastic imbalance between the need for, and science colleagues considered it a niche area. Today, as the provision of, protection. More than half of all refu- millions of people seek refuge from war, poverty, and gees have been displaced for five or more years, many for violence in their home countries, and anti-immigration several decades. Millions of children grow up in refugee sentiment has established itself as a dominating factor in camps, deprived of their childhood. Of all the refugees politics and elections, academics are paying much closer in UN camps awaiting resettlement to countries in the attention to large-scale migration and its consequences. Global North, only one per cent will ever be resettled. Two years ago, Professor Ellermann founded UBC’s Migration Research Excellence Cluster. It’s a group of WHAT FACTORS LIE BEHIND THE RISE OF RIGHT-WING about 60 researchers from various disciplines who col- POPULISM IN EUROPE AND THE US? laborate on research that “seeks to understand the causes, Explanations of the rise of right-wing populism focus on consequences, and experiences of global human mobility,” two sources of insecurity. The first is a sense of economic everything from forced displacement and statelessness insecurity, prevalent among those in the lower half and to border governance and refugee integration. This year, middle of the income distribution.