The COVID-19 Shock to the System of Human Mobility and the International Response

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

CHAPTERS 

[00:05:15]: IOM’s role during the pandemic 

[00:06:47]: Global travel restrictions and stranded migrants 

[00:09:59]: Mapping restrictions and supporting returns 

[00:12:25]: Designing inclusive health-based travel systems 

[00:16:10]: Risks of a two-tier mobility system 

[00:19:25]: 2021 economy and mobility drivers 

TRANSCRIPT 

[00:00:03.120] 

Hi, welcome to Moving Beyond Pandemic, the Migration Policy Institute's podcast about travel, migration and mobility during COVID-19. I'm Meghan Benton, I'm the Research Director for our international work and also for MPI Europe, our sister organization. The pandemic has been a huge shock to the whole international mobility system. From the chaotic and knee jerk way that countries closed their borders back in March, which left countless travelers and migrants stranded, to the moratorium countries imposed on visa processing which halted much international migration. As we begin the process of opening up, how do we need to improve global governance to restart human mobility safely and securely? I spoke to Elizabeth Collett, who is Special Advisor to António Vitorino, the Director General of the International Organization of Migration IOM, to get a global overview of what's happening with migration and mobility and to discuss the challenges and opportunities that the pandemic poses for global governance. Liz used to be Director of MPI Europe, so you might be able to tell from the way we interact with one another that she used to be my sort-of boss. And if you listen carefully, you might be able to hear some airplanes flying overhead just as we start to talk about the future of travel, which is slightly ironic.

[00:01:20.490] 

Hi, Liz.

[00:01:21.610] 

Hi, Meghan. How are you?

[00:01:22.970] 

I'm good, thank you. How are things? How's Geneva?

[00:01:26.490] 

Geneva is good. It's cold but sunny, which is just how we like it.

[00:01:32.250] 

Does it feel like winter is coming or is the mood still a little upbeat?

[00:01:37.130] 

I think the sunshine really helped though. We're getting progressively tighter in terms of regulations around social distancing, so I think the mood is now: how long do we have before we're all shut in our apartments again?

[00:01:50.140] 

I was wondering if you could start by talking a bit about your job. So what do you do and how has it changed this year with the arrival of the COVID pandemic?

[00:02:02.220] 

When I finally define what my job is, it will be more than time to leave. But right now I'm the Special Advisor to the Director General on Policy and Strategy, which means I sort of take a bird's eye view of all of the work IOM is doing in terms of policy development, policy advice, a lot of the strategic communications around what IOM is trying to raise awareness of in different issues and thinking through where our strategic direction is, which can mean anything on a day-to-day basis. But certainly this year I think the pandemic's impacted us on a individual level in terms of how we work together with working from home, across many offices around the world, while still trying to maintain operations. And that's particularly difficult when IOM is involved in emergency response and a range of activities, right up to working with governments on particular aspects of migration. So COVID's had an impact on the general working practice. And I think for us, we've really tried to focus on what are the impacts for people on the move, the populations we serve, all the different aspects of that, raise awareness of it, as well as trying to mitigate those impacts as far as we're able.

[00:03:22.640] 

It's been such a dramatic year for migration and mobility from travel bans and border closures and tourists and migrants stranded. What's it been like from the inside of the UN system to be watching this unfold? And do you think if this isn't pushing you too far, do you think the history books will look favorably on the UN response to pandemic?

[00:03:47.490] 

Well, it's happening at an interesting time. I mean, I think we're seeing multilateralism under strain writ large for the UN system. And yet at the same time, the UN comes into its own during a crisis moment. So very quickly, crisis and interagency coordination structures were set up, a lot of thinking about how to support the most vulnerable people. And that particularly includes refugees, internally displaced persons, and other people on the move. So from a protectionist point of view, in terms of how do we make sure we are delivering on the ground, I think the UN system has sprung into action. What is then harder, I think for the UN system right now, is then thinking long term on socioeconomic impacts and working with states to try and get them to lift heads from the immediate crisis response, to see the looming long term impacts and also work on those. And I think that's a challenge because the UN has huge operational capability, IOM has huge operational capability, but we also rely on states themselves to be able to engage in that conversation about what needs to happen and how to think about cooperation across borders in order to make things work.

[00:05:07.020] 

And that's not just border travel, but that's everything to do with socioeconomic impacts, financial support, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:05:15.980] 

And what's IOM's role in all of this? And has it changed this year or do you see a different role in future?

[00:05:23.580] 

So I think a lot of IOM's work has fundamentally not changed. We've continued to have to deliver on programming that we were delivering before. Before and particularly in emergency situations, you can't just stop working. You have to find different ways of working. And here I think IOM has really, in a number of areas, demonstrated quite a lot of innovation in terms of adapting to remote working where possible and also dealing with issues that haven't fundamentally changed, but may have exacerbated during the crisis. To give an example, would be working on counter trafficking. It's not that anything has fundamentally changed in terms of trafficking, but the vulnerabilities of particular people who are caught up in those situations and journeys may be all the more acute because of border closures, because it's harder to reach people personally. It's changed the way in which we work in a lot of places. Then there are new and emerging issues for IOM that we are grappling with. This is unprecedented in terms of a global slowdown in cross border travel. And we see the number of restrictions on a day to day basis have expanded enormously. And let me try and find some of those restrictions for you.

[00:06:47.760] 

For example, as of the end of September, 93,000 travel restrictions across 219 countries, territories and areas were in place. And that's an extraordinary number of restrictions to then make sense of because those restrictions don't all look the same. It's not just stopping border crossing, it is different types of policy put in place at those borders. And for IOM, one of the increasing concerns is then what to do with those people who are stranded, who may have lost employment, who may have found themselves without housing, or may just be wishing to return home and unable to because finding a way home in terms of finding a flight, being able to pay for a flight, being able to take a journey has just become exponentially harder over the last six months.

[00:07:40.710] 

It sounds like such a complex landscape where you're addressing all of these issues related to particular vulnerable groups. But then there's also this kind of big looming question about whether border closures are going to be with us for the foreseeable future, what ultimate impact these restrictions will have and what kind of broader shifts we'll need to see to border management and travel as the pandemic goes on. I mean, you mentioned the hundreds of restrictions that are still in place, but there's been a shift increasingly from quite blunt travel bans and order restrictions to medical requirements, so pre departure COVID tests or quarantines. And how is IOM addressing this issue? I mean, I've seen lots of people speak about how this is possibly a kind of 9/11 moment where we need to be thinking about health standards and screening within border management. And even your Director General has been pretty pragmatic about how this might be the necessary cost to turn the tap back on to lots of migration pathways to refugee resettlement.

[00:08:49.030] 

No, I mean, I think you're right. It's now becoming much more nuanced and also becoming much more complex. Right. So the first few months was: let's shut down and see what happens. And now people are trying to find management techniques which may involve slowing or stemming cross border movement without stopping it entirely. And then that comes with that sort of regional change. Right. So we're seeing the Southern Hemisphere coming out of winter, looking around and starting thinking about opening up. Just as Europe goes into winter, North America goes into winter. And so while the Southern hemisphere might be popping their heads up and looking around and saying, well, how can we open up our travel? Europe's sort of not the place you would necessarily want to see. So you're seeing this misalignment now, the regionalization of those restrictions as well as then the different choices being made by governments on how to manage that cross border travel. So one of the things I think IOM did from the beginning and is continuing to do is mapping is looking at points of entry and what restrictions are in place and creating a global mobility restrictions database.

[00:09:59.400] 

And that seems like a small thing to do, but it seems to us that there are very few global overviews of exactly who is putting in place what restriction, what does that look like, what are the visa policies in place, what kind of testing would you need, for example, or what kind of quarantine policies are in place and being able to offer that map. And it's interesting talking to colleagues who are working on that. The travel industry is extremely interested in that database because for them, they're trying to find predictability. So there's a certain amount of sort of information gathering on another level, as I mentioned, significant numbers of migrants we find stranded in one way or another. Our recent estimates say at least 2.7 million in need of support. So it's providing support for those individuals in terms of support before travel or returning home, trying to facilitate that return home and then return and then support upon arrival, often in countries that are sort of unprepared for large numbers to return home, both in terms of the sort of community economics and social life, as well as the very specific support that goes with that.

[00:11:15.860] 

So there's a whole range of sort of interventions that IOM is thinking through and alongside that, contributing to that broader discussion about how do you rethink travel across the continuum, before the journey, during the journey, after the journey. And colleagues have produced a paper on cross-border mobility in COVID times and that really highlights the vast range of things that you can do. I don't think there's a single silver bullet in there. It's about where are the most appropriate things you can do along the border, from social distancing during the journey through to the value of testing and certification of testing through to quarantine. And some very basic things which IOM has been doing, which is helping governments put in place standard operating procedures which many, particularly land border crossing points don't have. How to manage this and integrate this. We have international health regulations, but have all countries sort of rolled that out at the border and understand what to do in order to integrate health security into border security.

[00:12:25.770] 

That's really interesting, your point about the different speed of the regional response and different kind of regional configurations at a different point right now. Because it's not just a resources and capacity issue. It's also, as you mentioned, the seasonal effects of the virus and the fact that they're just at a different point in the trajectory right now. But it's interesting how that plays into the other kind of major trend that we're seeing, which is new health requirements that are all being designed around primarily airports and business travelers and tourists, which I think is an interesting question for the migration world. Like, how do we respond to this? Because on the one hand, there's all this money being poured into these new systems and there are interesting coalitions forming around health people working on vaccine access and tech people working on digital health records. But the concern would be that new systems that are designed around affluent business travelers will not work for vulnerable groups. So digital health records pose challenges for exclusion. Is IOM thinking about those issues? Do you have a personal view about is it possible to design a system that works for both vulnerable groups and the sort of higher ticket business travelers who will open up the money?

[00:13:44.250] 

So it's an important point to raise because from the beginning IOM has been saying let's think hard about what reopening looks like and make sure that the management policies put in place are inclusive ones that don't shut out not just individual travelers. And looking at the wealth of individual travelers and their capacities, but looking at whole countries. Because some of the ideas being put in place require a certain level of border infrastructure, for example, which isn't always available across the world. But if countries in the industrialized world, say in the OECD membership put in place certain high bars in terms of who they are willing to open up to and partner countries can't reach those bars, then they're effectively shut out of the travel system along with those people who reside in those countries. So there is a sort of risk of a two tier system opening up. And that's sort of the broad brush thinking about this. And then when you sort of go a little bit deeper, you realize that mobility that we might typically think about within Europe, for example, getting to an airport or crossing a border in a car, this is not necessarily the kind of mobility that other regions in the world are thinking about in terms of cross border trade and people who cross borders every day for whom this might be a significant impediment to livelihoods.

[00:15:12.150] 

Not just whether I can me, whether I can dash across the border to France and enjoy myself for the day, but really how can I maintain a livelihood in terms of cross-border travel? And Europe has put in place a lot of exceptions in recognition of that. So there are lots of different levels at which this works at. And then a final concern just to raise because I think we sort of, there's been a lot more focus on this in trade terms perhaps. But what are the impacts on the travel industry writ large and what are the costs of travel long term? If we can't find coordination of borders between regions is, well, you know, different travel operators will find it harder to maintain a program and a timetable and the same prices that they previously have done. So you may be pricing people out of travel in the future if we can't find some more sort of universal and inclusive approaches to this.

[00:16:10.670] 

Could you say a bit more about this concern about a two tier system? Does it mean in effect that some people just won't be able to travel cross-border for trade, move to pursue new economic livelihoods? Or is the concern that this is a sort of tipping point after which there will be just much more irregular migration and more people using smugglers and a sort of growth in the shadow migration world?

[00:16:41.360] 

So I think one of the challenges is that it's really hard to look at the data and understand what's going to happen next because we can look at sort of shutdown of regular channels of movement and say, well, of course people will find irregular means. And I think that may well be the case in particular areas where people feel like they have no other choice. But people may also start making different decisions about whether or not to move based on what their expectations are of what exists at the other end. If we're talking about a global recession and high unemployment, the risk reward of moving across the world may change significantly. So we may see a global drop in the number of people who want to take journeys particularly long distances in the future. But I think from the perspective of what the implications are of a two tier system, we will see increased migration is already regional, but we may see an increase in the regionalization of migration and countries trying to find ways of managing travel between themselves. Last week the European Union came up with a recommendation for cross-border travel within the EU with several criteria to focus in on.

[00:18:01.460] 

I think you'll see other regions of the world sort of taking a similar approach. Then how do we match up those approaches? If we don't have a common language or a common set of reference points for exchange and what's the baseline for travel, we may end up with lots of expanding bubbles around the world based on an understanding of concepts and what works that are becoming more and more different.

[00:18:27.760] 

And it's interesting that these bubbles will be defined by health criteria rather than existing economic factors. So we might see new regional economic systems partly shaped by public health criteria or by coordination over the virus response.

[00:18:43.200] 

We've seen over the last decade growing regionalization and sort of regional integration processes around the world, of which the EU is the most sophisticated. So one of the advantages the EU has had was common language when it came to talking about border management and travel, etc. etc. Which immediately makes it easier then to discuss common terminology for this particular experience. Now, other regions in the world don't necessarily have that, but they have a sort of baseline of they're used to talking to each other about this. They've been thinking about it at a regional level. So I wonder whether that will play into what will happen in the future.

[00:19:25.160] 

Another major question, and you mentioned the difficulties of being able to predict anything that will happen next year is what the economic picture will be. So right now there's a major question mark over how just long term border closures will affect the global economy and global tourism that you already mentioned. But I think one interesting question is whether or not a very uneven global economic recovery will create huge incentives for people to move or huge incentives for countries to lock down and then how it will affect people's desire and propensity to travel. What do you think, looking to 2021, about how the economic picture will play into mobility?

[00:20:12.010] 

So I mean, I would throw the question back to you because I know you've thought about this almost more than I have. I think my big part of that would be migration won't stop, but it will shift and change quite a lot. How that changes depends a lot on the sort of outlook countries have, particularly in traditional destination countries. And their willingness to be inclusive to migrants and recognize that there are industries in which migrants have become essential. But also then what that means in countries of origin and transit, particularly origin, where people may not have either the desire to be long distances from family at a time of a sort of public health concern. I think we've underplayed that. We assume that this is the same as previous types of global recession where it's a purely economic analysis. But as you and I both know, a lot of different factors feed into whether someone makes a decision to move or not. And this has been a particularly striking few months where people have been separated from families. And that does, I think, change a lot of those choices that people make. But yeah, it's one of those.

[00:21:33.610] 

This is going to be a podcast that dates very quickly if I make predictions, but it's really hard to tell. Some sectors have proved themselves to be essential even with a lockdown. Agriculture, health. Obviously some are going to get hit by tourism, and some of them are just going to be trickier to think about. I mean, one of the concerns of UN Women, the UN agency responsible for women around the world has pointed out that there are 8.5 million women in domestic work around the world. And domestic work is a particular sector which is both essential in terms of a global economic downturn won't necessarily affect someone who is in a care position, for example, but it is so personal to a household that that might mean those women are in particularly vulnerable situations or maybe left out in the cold, almost literally. Should households make different decisions based on their public health concerns, based on individual income? So there's a lot of uncertainty, and the data I think that we have isn't necessarily capable of capturing all of the different changes that are taking place.

[00:22:48.970] 

I think you did a pretty good job there of making a prediction. So I'm going to ask you another prediction question.

[00:22:53.690] 

I was trying avoid that.

[00:22:55.670] 

You started off talking about how your working practices have changed at IOM. And when I think about you, I mean, you're one of the best, the most traveled people, you know. You've probably been to every airport and you're so used to travel for work being such a big part of your life. Do you think this is the end of frequent trips across the globe? And what other changes do you think that we're likely to see to. To travel more broadly? As someone who won't make predictions but likes to think about the future, are we going to need to completely rethink airports so that they are, you know, by definition socially-distanced and that we're no longer funneling people through the smallest channels. What changes are we going to be seeing to public transportation?

[00:23:42.670] 

I mean, it's... These are super interesting questions, I can tell you. On a personal note, I haven't been to an airport since the end of February, and I surprisingly don't miss it that much.

[00:23:52.520] 

How is your perfume supply?

[00:23:54.920] 

My perfume supply was always terrible, so it's not really been affected by that. But I did used to pick up a lot of chocolate in Brussels.

[00:24:05.800] 

So,

[00:24:08.040] 

I mean, what I see within the UN system is a surprisingly swift facility with sort of online meetings and meetings that used to be held in person. And I think there's a focus now on the essentiality of travel that has fundamentally shifted. And realizing that you can have many of the meetings you had in person online has shifted what might have been seen as essential in 2019 versus what's seen as essential in 2020. And you do miss certain parts of those conversations. You miss the coffee break discussions or, or the meeting people in an office or meeting people in the field that can give you a rounder perspective of what you're doing. So it does become a little more two dimensional, that kind of work. Right. But at the same time, we are, it is also, I think, revealed the unnecessary nature of a lot of travel. And I'm not just talking about the UN system, but generally it's not always necessary and we're beginning to realize that. So I don't think we'll bounce back to the same old working practices. And it might be more thoughtful how people use their time when they travel.

[00:25:22.120] 

They may make more of an effort to fit more into that travel in the future. When it comes to the international travel system, I mean, I come back then to whether we go back to an age where certain forms of travel become that much more expensive, that we are limiting the number of people who can take advantage of air travel, for example, and what that might mean. And here that's fine until you realize that there are families living in separate countries across the world who may have to make new choices because they won't be able to see each other every year as they might have done before, or every couple of months, but would have to make choices about financial choices about where to be in the future. So I do wonder about the robust nature of a travel industry and particularly for parts of the world that aren't necessarily as interconnected within Europe, you used to be able to hop on a plane and go to one place or another in a day. I think those forms of travel will be fairly robust. It's the long haul travel I think you would have bigger questions about.

[00:26:36.200] 

And if that becomes significantly more expensive, we may be thinking about working in different ways.

[00:26:42.360] 

And of course it all depends on whether and at what rate we kind of return to some kind of normality and whether as some people are predicting, this isn't the last pandemic of our generation. It's a kind of new reality that we're in.

[00:26:58.360] 

Yeah. And to go back to the question I didn't answer, which I realize now because I've got a terrible memory. Yeah. I think airports will have to adjust in terms of social distancing and how they're managed. Land borders will have to adjust as well. As you say pandemics and this may not be a one off. So we have to think permanently about how to integrate health concerns into border management infrastructure. And that's a new thing, but it might give rise to some very interesting innovations in terms of contactless travel, digital identification, remote visa processing. We've seen a huge amount of work in terms of countries finding their feet in terms of how much they can do remotely when in person. Immigration services shut down and then the sort of aspect. And again coming back to another question of yours I didn't manage to answer for IOM, the issue of legal identity has been important for a while. It's in our strategic vision that we think everyone having access to legal identity is extremely important. Not just in terms of access to services or being part of a public system within country, but in terms of cross border travel.

[00:28:16.490] 

Now if we're moving to digital identity and contact-less travel, that becomes all the more important. So what is this new world of travel going to look like in, in terms of moving online? What are the data and privacy issues attached to that? What are the tradeoffs people are going to have to make and how are we going to make sure that that doesn't shut people out the system because they do not have access to those documents. And that's I think a serious concern.

[00:28:43.050] 

And answering all of these questions requires a lot of coordination and bringing together lots of different actors. So, final question. If you are thinking about your vision of what a pandemic proof system of global governance looks like.

[00:29:02.510] 

Small things. Small things.

[00:29:04.670] 

It doesn't have to be next year, but what would we need?

[00:29:08.590] 

Well, I think this last six months has really revealed that there's been an increase in multilateralism when it comes to talking about mobility and discussing the global compacts for migration really brought home that there were opportunities and there was value in countries talking to each other on these issues in a global stage. But one of the sort of practical aspects of how do you manage cross border travel and come up with common concepts of border management? And then in this specific instance, how do we come up with common concepts in terms of an acceptable infection rate in a partner country, an acceptable testing mechanism and certification process and all these sorts of things has been absent on the international stage. And we need to bring a lot of different actors together to start talking about what that looks like, not in terms of imposing any ideas on governments who remain supremely sovereign in this realm, but in order to basically create enough of a baseline to have mutual exchange and discussion. Because I was struck when the EU early this year came up with their list of countries outside the European Union who might be exempt from particular restrictions due to the pandemic.

[00:30:33.550] 

A number of EU countries said, that's very nice, we're not going to adhere to that list because we have our own concerns and different criteria to apply. But then also a number of the partner countries outside the EU went, it's very nice to know you don't have restrictions on us, but we have a restriction on you because we're not sure you're safe. So that mutuality, I think, really was laid bare, the absence of mutual exchange on this. And so what can we do to build up the supporting architecture to allow that conversation to happen so that countries can start exchanging with each other and creating greater predictability in a global travel system? And that's not just a job for a migration agency, though I think IOM has particular concerns in this space. It affects trade, it affects tourism, it affects a lot of different sectors that we're going to have to bring together and have that conversation.

[00:31:29.930] 

Thank you so much, Liz. It's been great talking to you.

[00:31:32.410] 

It's been lovely. Thank you.

[00:31:36.730] 

Thanks to all of you for listening. A couple of takeaways just before we close. First, it's very difficult to get a global picture of what's happening and to understand how much of a dent 2020 has made to human mobility. I know that IOM is trying to map and quantify these effects as Liz spoke about, including through its points of entry closure and mobility restrictions databases. And at MPI, we've also been trying to follow these effects. But I do think it might take some time to really understand the significance of what happened this year and look ahead to what this might mean for the future of mobility. My second takeaway is that multilateralism is in a paradoxical situation right now. So the pandemic has shown just how important and somewhat lacking international coordination is. The UN system has in many ways sprung into action. It's in a kind of crisis mode, but it's also revealed the limitations of the international system. The pandemic's created new operational challenges, and it's laid bare a lack of trust among many countries that have instead retreated into national responses and solutions. And then finally, I was really struck by her comments on how COVID might affect the incentives and capacity that people have to live transnational lives.

[00:32:54.000] 

So this isn't just about how border restrictions and medical requirements are constraining mobility. It's not even about the economic picture and the fact that that can reshape some of the drivers of migration. It's also about this broader travel and mobility framework that she spoke about. From the cost of flights to how easily you can cross a land border to do trade. This enables people who did before, to live lives of all kinds in multiple countries. And this framework writ large has been destabilized by the pandemic. It's unclear what will happen next, so stay tuned for our podcast, which will bring new perspectives to bear on these important topics in the coming weeks. If you'd like to join us, please subscribe. This is Moving Beyond Pandemic. You can find it wherever you find your podcasts or on our website, migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. We also have lots of information there about COVID-19 and migration. MigrationPolicy.Org/Topics/Coronavirus. Thanks to my colleagues Lisa Dixon, Michelle Mittlestadt and Kenia Guerrero for producing this podcast. The music on today's episode was Juno in the Space Maze by Loo Pop. I'm Meghan Benton. I'll see you next time.