How migration deals prioritize political self-interest over refugee protection
Fiona B. Adamson and Kelly M. Greenhill investigate the increasing prevalence of migration agreements and their worrying similarities with past policies
The government of the United Kingdom has received strong criticism for its plan to involuntarily transfer migrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda , as part of a £140 million deal agreed in 2022. Yet it is far from alone in pursuing migration deals that privilege geopolitical interests over human rights. In late March, US President Joseph Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a deal designed to enable both countries to deny entry to unauthorized asylum seekers and summarily deport them. Germany is also considering plans to send migrants to Africa and recently established a new government post for enacting migration deals. This follows a swathe of migration deal-making by the EU and other European states. Indeed, since 2014 the UK has agreed almost £320 million worth of migration control deals with France alone.
Transactional migration deals include several elements that can amount to organized state-sanctioned forced migration. Often, they involve a significant transfer of resources from one state or organization to another in exchange for accepting the return or resettlement of people deemed ‘illegal’ or ‘unwanted’. These agreements span the globe and transcend traditional North/South divides, frequently featuring foreign aid along with programs that externalize migration control, strengthen borders and incorporate migration management into regional security regimes.
Many of these mechanisms fly in the face of humanitarian and legal commitments. Such obligations include the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol, which provide human rights protections for those fleeing violence and persecution. In a context where international migration policy increasingly disregards such protections, it is vital to understand how this transactional approach became normal.
A concerning history
Upon closer inspection, transactional migration arrangements have a long history in migration policy-making. In our ongoing research on organized forced migration, we have already identified over 300 cases of transactional forced migration since the start of the twentieth century alone. Contemporary deals are strikingly similar to early and mid-twentieth-century analogues in multiple ways.
In the first half of the twentieth century states, international organizations and a range of other actors all participated in organized forced migration schemes. The legacies of these schemes still shape contemporary migration management. Lineages can be traced to colonial population transfers in the first half of the twentieth century, proposals to relocate ‘problematic’ populations en masse to far-flung locales, and repatriation schemes during and after the Second World War that today would be characterized as ethnic cleansing. Then, as now, such schemes were often justified on grounds of ‘pragmatism’, involved promising financial transfers in exchange for receiving populations and were deeply intertwined with states’ geopolitical objectives. Contemporary policy-makers would do well to remember that such schemes tended to be replete with unintended consequences that often resulted in long-term political instability and heightened tensions for the sake of short-term political gain.
Similar policies, similar problems
In this regard, today’s generation of migration deals is already proving remarkably similar to its predecessors. As migration deals increasingly centre on ‘returns’ and ‘pushbacks’, the financial transfers that accompany them often lead to aid dependency and have unforeseen domestic political consequences. For example, the EU’s ‘return’ regime and accompanying financial transfers have reshaped the domestic economy and politics of the Gambia. The same is true in the Pacific, where the tiny island nation of Nauru has in effect become financially dependent on migration-related payments from the Australian government.
As in the past, today’s transactional forced migration deals are often disguised with humanitarian rhetoric. Then, as now, the language of ‘protection’, ‘partnerships’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘opportunities’ and ‘preservation of life’ obscured the detrimental effects of such deals on the individuals subject to them. This is often no accident. The EU in its official guidance uses the term ‘removal’, rather than ‘deportation’ or ‘repatriation’, because deportation is seen as having a ‘negative connotation’. That this language of compassion has been used previously in numerous instances of state-induced forced migration throughout the twentieth century, including in cases with dire humanitarian consequences, is not reassuring.
Conclusion
The management of international mobility is widely agreed to be a reflection of state preferences rather than of the principles of the ‘international liberal order’. Yet the extent to which states are now openly willing to pursue migration deals at the expense of human rights and in breach of obligations under the Refugee Convention remains concerning. This is particularly worrying as the politicization and exploitation of public fears about forced migration continue to mount, which may incentivize an even larger number of states and non-states actors to enter into these arrangements. If this openly transactional approach to migration gains momentum, potentially deleterious effects on human rights — as well as unforeseen domestic and geopolitical consequences — are likely to result.
Read more about transactional migration deals here.
Fiona B. Adamson is Professor of International Relations at SOAS University of London.
Kelly M. Greenhill is a political scientist with faculty appointments at Tufts University and MIT.
They are the architects of the ongoing Diplomacy of Forced Migration dataset project.
Their article, ‘Deal-making, diplomacy and transactional forced migration,’ was published in the March 2023 issue of International Affairs.
All views expressed are individual not institutional
