Who is a migrant?
By Antara Vats and Nikita Yadav
For this blog our team explores an extremely important (and politicised) issue in the migration world, today. How do we define a migrant?
One of the key issues plaguing migration research, worldwide, is the lack of understanding of migrant definitions. Who is a migrant? Who is a refugee? Who is a person of concern? While migration is used as a broad umbrella term, where a person falls in the sub-categories is a key determinant of how they are treated by the international community.
MIGRANT
An umbrella term, not defined under international law, reflecting the common lay understanding of a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons. The term includes a number of well-defined legal categories of people, such as migrant workers; persons whose particular types of movements are legally-defined, such as smuggled migrants; as well as those whose status or means of movement are not specifically defined under international law, such as international students. Source: UN Migration (IOM)
A similar definition is used by the United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs.
While there is no common legal definition for migrants, there are two broad frameworks through which the phenomenon is defined — the inclusivist and the residualist.
The inclusivist view considers migrants a whole category, including within it all people who have moved from their usual place of residence and regardless of their reasons or legal status. This category includes migrant workers, students, refugees, trafficking victims, and every other kind of international migrant. The residualist view considers migrants as all people who have moved from their usual place of residence for any other reason than war or persecution, This category applies the term ‘migrant’ to all except refugees. The former is usually associated with bodies such as UN Migration-International Organisation for Migration (IOM) while the latter is associated with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Source: Meaningofmigration.org, Peace Research Institute, Oslo.
REFUGEE
According to the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted in 1951, a refugee is someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.
ASYLUM SEEKER
An individual who is seeking international protection. In countries with individualised procedures, an asylum-seeker is someone whose claim has not yet been finally decided on by the country in which the claim is submitted. Not every asylum-seeker will ultimately be recognised as a refugee, but every refugee was initially an asylum-seeker.
READ MORE: UNHCR 2018 Asylum Trends in Select Countries
Mandate Refugees
Persons who are recognised as refugees by UNHCR acting under the authority of its Statute and relevant UN General Assembly resolutions. Mandate status is especially significant in States that are not parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol (such as India).
Internally Displaced Person
An individual who has been forced or obliged to flee from his home or place of habitual residence, “…in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflicts, situations of generalised violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognised State border” (according to the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement).
At the end of 2018, 41.3 million people were IDPs : READ MORE
Person of Concern to UNHCR
A person whose protection and assistance needs are of interest to UNHCR. This includes refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless people, internally displaced people and returnees.
Returnee
A person who was of concern to UNHCR when outside his/her country of origin and who remains so, for a limited period (usually two years), after returning to the country of origin . The term also applies to internally displaced persons who return to their previous place of residence.
Secondary Movements
The notion refers to asylum-seekers and refugees moving independently from their first host country to another country in search of protection and solutions.
SOURCE: UNHCR Glossary of Terms
VIDEO: How does the UNHCR differentiate between refugees and migrants?
As the international discourse around migration has grown, a staggering number of people call themselves migrants. According to the IOM World Migration Report of 2020, there are 272 million international migrants, of which 164 million were migrant workers and 25.9 million were refugees. The legal status of this growing category of people is an increasingly important issue, especially the subtle differences between different categories of migrant and refugee. As the Global Compact for Migration of 2018 acknowledges, not everybody should migrate. Understanding the needs of migrants of different categories is the first step towards helping the world better capitalise on the benefits of migration.
*The authors are Research interns at India Migration Now, a migration data, policy and research agency.
