Asia has a disproportionate share of the world’s young, working-age population—which represents the most mobile cohort—with resulting major immigration flows to other regions, and increasing intraregional migration as demographic transitions occur at different levels within Asia. The research here focuses on how the labor-sending countries of the region, notably the Philippines and other Colombo Process countries, manage these migration flows and the recruitment process. It also examines other conditions affecting the region, including humanitarian protection challenges, climate migration, diaspora relations, and remittances.
Some of the strictest COVID-19 pandemic-era limits on human mobility occurred in the Asia Pacific region. Border closures started in East and Southeast Asia in early 2020 and quickly spread through the entire region, in some cases remaining in place for more than two years. This report examines the approaches countries took and reflects on the immense costs and benefits of using border measures to tackle public-health risks.
Remittances are a vital lifeline for migrants’ families around the world and an important source of revenue for many low- and middle-income countries, especially in times of crisis. As more people turn to digital financial technologies for these money transfers, this shift holds the potential to shake up the rigid remittance industry and boost development benefits. But it also brings new challenges, as this report explores.
Fifty years after the birth of the Philippines' strategy to use emigration as a tool for development, the government is doubling down on labor migration. While deployment of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) slumped during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the government and civil society pivoting to assist with return migration and reintegration for hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, emigration has since rebounded, as this article details.
The end of the Vietnam war, marked by the fall of Saigon in 1975, precipitated the mass Indochinese refugee crisis, which saw more than 2 million people flee the region, often on unseaworthy boats. Following the war, Vietnamese migration was divided between humanitarian flows to the West, and labor migrants to allied communist countries. More recently, Vietnam's rapid economic growth has prompted increased labor migration to Asia and a rise in migrant brides.
Faced with rising numbers of foreign entries (long- and short-term), China in 2012 adopted new legislation to manage its migration flows—the first reform to the country's immigration law since 1985. With an underlying tension in the legal framework between restricting immigrants deemed unwanted and welcoming those viewed as desirable, this feature examines the exit-entry law's key points.
Migration has begun to follow the flow of capital after years of Chinese investment in major infrastructure projects in Zambia. This feature article, based on original research including the coding of 25,000 Zambian entry permits, examines the emerging migration pattern from China to Zambia, as Chinese migration to the country has increased 60 percent since 2009.
In 2014 governments in Europe, North America, and Australia reacted to significant mixed flows of humanitarian, economic, and family-stream migrants with a range of new policies. These came as some migrants presented themselves to authorities for processing rather than trying to evade U.S. or European border controls, with the knowledge that backlogs and little political will for the removal of vulnerable populations might allow them to stay for extended periods.
Fears regarding the spread of the deadly Ebola virus following an outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone prompted governments around the world to regulate travel from and within West Africa. Travel bans, airport health screenings, closed borders, and traveler quarantines were among the policies implemented. International organizations argue such restrictions drive possibly symptomatic travelers to illegally bypass borders and encourage dishonesty in the exit screening process.
Marking the launch of an IOM-MPI report, this webcast examines the state of mobility across world regions into the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic—what travel restrictions remain, what policy adaptations have occurred, and how do systems improve for the next public-health crisis.
Despite high hopes that international movement would be revived in 2021 after the deep chill in 2020 with designation of a global pandemic, cross-border mobility remained limited as migrants and travelers faced complex rules, high costs, and uncertainty as new COVID-19 variants emerged. This report assesses global mobility in 2021, including changing use of travel restrictions, their impacts on mobile populations, and efforts to safely restart migration and travel.
Public opinion of refugees and asylum seekers is often portrayed as a binary, reflected in stories of them as “threats” or “benefits.” Yet in reality, people can hold a variety of competing beliefs and concerns about forced migrants and their impacts on society. This report explores these different narratives, the contexts in which they flourish, and the types of initiatives that have been used to try to boost solidarity and ease tensions.
Digital health credentials that verify a person’s COVID-19 vaccination, testing, or recovery status are a central part of efforts to restart international travel and migration. This report explores these credentials’ use to date and persistent challenges, including those related to international coordination and technical compatibility between systems. It also recommends strategies to more fully leverage their potential and make them more inclusive.
Most of the world's refugees live in low-income countries where rates of COVID-19 vaccination remain low. Although refugees have been formally included in many governments’ vaccination plans, a combination of factors has made access to jabs difficult, as this article explains.
Immigrants from the Korean peninsula are one of the ten largest foreign-born groups in the United States, but their numbers have actually shrunk in recent years. Immigrants from Korea tend to be older, better educated, and earn higher incomes than the overall immigrant and native-born populations.
Requirements that international travelers and migrants prove vaccination against certain diseases are about as old as vaccines themselves. In some cases, vaccine certificates predated the existence of government-issued passports. This article explores the history of these requirements, which began with smallpox and have since been applied for diseases including cholera, polio, yellow fever, and, recently, COVID-19.
Do host communities respond differently to people migrating because of environmental impacts compared to refugees fleeing war or migrants seeking work? Research discussed on this episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration suggests the answer is yes.
