Addressing the Sociopolitical Effects of the Refugee Crises

Insight into why some countries are more willing to open their borders, while others are doing the opposite.

This decade will end with a politically stunted United States, a Brexit-congested EU, and a significant downturn in global economics, but these problems are slight when compared to those caused by the massive population displacements happening all over the globe. Refugees throughout South America, Africa, and the Middle East have foisted significant geopolitical burdens on many nation-states, who seem to be responding with walls.

There’s a contradiction here. On one hand, the contemporary Westphalian systems of sovereign states are morphing into larger, non-bounded and non-bordered entities, as evidenced by the EU’s free-movement Schengen Area and the recent passage of the African Continental Free Trade Area. On the other hand, uptrends in internal and external xenophobia suggest that many nations are intent on maintaining the solidarity of their statehood through stricter border policies and a renewed emphasis on their cultural identities, becoming averse to outsider influences in the process.

Although the decade’s political turmoils are profound, and the international disputations between nations are mounting, the issues brought on by the refugee crises are not yet insurmountable. They, instead, require critical insight into why some countries are more willing to open their borders, while others are doing the opposite — especially if the world is to effectively address its most pressing period of population displacement since the end of World War II.

Mixed Responses to the Refugee Crises

The 2000’s were infamous for terrorism — the 2010’s will likely be remembered for the humanitarian cataclysms that occurred as a result of the Syrian Civil War and the global refugee crises. As of today, 78 million people have been forcibly displaced, whether by war or persecution, and the world’s responses have been widely varied. While some countries have worked to integrate the refugees into their communities, others have closed their borders or ignored the matter entirely — many nation-states are understandably concerned about how the refugees and migrants affect the integrity of their internal order, and these concerns have directly impacted their overall propensity towards external openness.

Research is beginning to show that the regions which hosted refugees were more likely to see an onset of civil conflict, and though the regions beyond the immediate neighbor countries did not experience severe security threats, many non-neighboring host nations have had complications. Earlier this year, a Syrian refugee in the USA was arrested on terrorism charges after being caught planning a domestic attack, and his arrest was followed by cries of opposition against any future asylum seekers. Germany — widely acclaimed for its efficient response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis — has been rethinking their policies, particularly after the infamous New Years Eve attacks, when mostly-immigrant men across the nation carried out hundreds of sexual assaults.

Clearly, not all refugees and asylum seekers are criminals, but in a time of terrorism and heightened fear-of-the-other, there’s been serious inflammation of underlying xenophobic sentiments. Natives in host nations like Germany are beginning to prioritize the sanctity of their state through political dissonance — frequent spurts of anti-immigrant idealism has led to tension in the moderate and left-leaning populace, helping Alternative für Deutschland (a far-right political party) achieve surprising success in recent elections. Some see this phenomenon as a reflection of “Germany’s historical struggle between xenophobic tendencies and liberal aspirations,” and others see it as an ostensible response to overwhelming refugee migrations.

It would, however, be tendentious to claim that only Germany is undergoing a period of policy reassessment — a number of other non-neighbor nations are starting to regard refugees as identity threats. In the USA, President Donald Trump gained widespread support for his anti-immigration platform, incumbent efforts to ban certain nationalities from entering the country, and continued attempts to construct a wall along the southern border with Mexico. This is a nationalistic acceleration when compared to that of the previous administration, but could also be considered a defensive response to the terrorist attacks, war, economic fluctuations, and bipartisan political contention throughout the past decade. Where once the United States had defined itself as a ‘melting pot’ of multicultural immigrants, the dominant ethnocultural attitude now sees incoming immigrants as potential threats.

Other states that are more willing to accept refugees simply don’t have the infrastructure to effectively integrate them. Ethiopia has long maintained an open-door policy for refugees, but is simultaneously struggling to care for its own displaced populations. For other nations, necessity — not precedent — is forcing them to accommodate new refugees, who then become vilified for their socioeconomic strain. Moreover, the sectarian conditions of the Middle-East, where a large percentage of the world’s displaced people reside, collides with the systems set up by the West — there is hardly any regional consensus on how to handle the refugees, let alone how to collaborate with the remainder of an increasingly cloistered world.

Addressing the Effects

It’s clear that integrating refugees is only a temporary solution to an endemic problem — directly engaging the causes of displacement is an absolute necessity. Furthermore, fervent backlashes to forced immigration has proven that national boundaries and the nationalities behind them are still profoundly important, and must be taken into consideration when determining potential solutions.

Right now, more than 78 million people have been pushed from their homes, and many of them live without adequate food and shelter. A collaborative international effort to address their suffering through sustainable action would benefit more than just the refugees, but the world as a whole.

Literary References

Bonikowski, B., & Dimaggio, P. (2016). Varieties of American Popular Nationalism. American Sociological Review, 81(5), 949–980. doi:10.1177/0003122416663683

Holmes, S. M., & Casteneda, H. (2016).43(1), 13–24. doi:10.1111/amet.12259

Physicians for Human Rights. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2019, from https://www.phr.org.il/en/

Samuel Woolley and Philip N. Howard, Eds. Working Paper 2017.3. Oxford, UK: Project

United Nations. (n.d.). Asylum and Migration. Retrieved April 15, 2019, from https://www.unhcr.org/asylum-and-migration.html