Whether it is the stranding of tens of thousands of migrant workers at the Libyan–Tunisian border, or the large-scale displacement triggered by floods in Pakistan and Colombia, hardly a week goes by in which humanitarian crises have not precipitated human movement. While some people move internally, others internationally, some temporarily and others permanently, there are also those who become "trapped" in place, unable to move to greater safety. Responses to these "crisis migrations" are varied and inadequate. Only a fraction of "crisis migrants" are protected by existing international, regional or national law. Even where law exists, practice does not necessarily guarantee safety and security for those who are forced to move or remain trapped. Improvements are desperately needed to ensure more consistent and effective responses. This timely book brings together leading experts from multi-disciplinary backgrounds to reflect on diverse humanitarian crises and to shed light on a series of exploratory questions: In what ways do people move in the face of crisis situations? Why do some people move, while others do not? Where do people move? When do people move, and for how long? What are the challenges and opportunities in providing protection to crisis migrants? How might we formulate appropriate responses and sustainable solutions, and upon what factors should these depend? This volume is divided into four parts, with an introductory section outlining the parameters of "crisis migration," conceptualizing the term and evaluating its utility. This section also explores the legal, policy and institutional architecture upon which current responses are based. Part II presents a diverse set of case studies, from the earthquake in Haiti and the widespread violence in Mexico, to the ongoing exodus from Somalia, and environmental degradation in Alaska and the Carteret Islands, among others. Part III focuses on populations that may be at particular risk, including non-citizens, migrants at sea, those displaced to urban areas, and trapped populations. The concluding section maps the global governance of crisis migration and highlights gaps in current provisions for crisis-related movement across multiple levels. This valuable book brings together previously diffuse research and policy issues under the analytical umbrella of "crisis migration." It lays the foundations for assessing and addressing real challenges to the status quo, and will be of interest to scholars, policy makers, and practitioners committed to seeking out improved responses and ensuring the dignity and safety of millions who move in the context of humanitarian crises.

Fertility and reproductive health issues more broadly have tended to be of low priority in humanitarian crises. Public attention is drawn by information concerning the magnitude of refugee flows, of death tolls, and of numbers of injuries. Reproductive health has been regarded as a longer term issue that could safely be put on the back burner during the crisis phase of an emergency, when issues of providing adequate food, clean water, and shelter, plus treating acute infectious diseases of crowding, take priority. This report reviews what evidence there is concerning the effects of humanitarian crisis on fertility, with a view to identifying common patterns that may exist across settings and be of value in guiding responses to future crises.

The world is witnessing a rapid rise in the number of victims of human trafficking and of migrants—voluntary and involuntary, internal and international, authorized and unauthorized. In the first two decades of this century alone, more than 65 million people have been forced to escape home into the unknown. The slow-motion disintegration of failing states with feeble institutions, war and terror, demographic imbalances, unchecked climate change, and cataclysmic environmental disruptions have contributed to the catastrophic migrations that are placing millions of human beings at grave risk. Humanitarianism and Mass Migration fills a scholarly gap by examining the uncharted contours of mass migration. Exceptionally curated, it contains contributions from Jacqueline Bhabha, Richard Mollica, Irina Bokova, Pedro Noguera, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, James A. Banks, Mary Waters, and many others. The volume’s interdisciplinary and comparative approach showcases new research that reveals how current structures of health, mental health, and education are anachronistic and out of touch with the new cartographies of mass migrations. Envisioning a hopeful and realistic future, this book provides clear and concrete recommendations for what must be done to mine the inherent agency, cultural resources, resilience, and capacity for self-healing that will help forcefully displaced populations.

This book critically examines the association between the notions of crisis and migration in the context of Latin America, and from three different perspectives: first, it analyzes the discourses based on the concept of crisis employed by the media, academic researchers, civil society organizations and the state to frame human mobility issues; second, it investigates migrants’ agency under conditions of crisis; and third, it discusses whether “migration crisis” is a conjunctural or structural phenomenon in the region. Chapters in this contributed volume investigate the crisis-migration nexus in seven Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua and Uruguay – by discussing different human mobility phenomena, such as the migrant caravans that departed from Central America bound to Mexico and the United States; the Nicaraguan exodus caused by the political crisis in the country; the perception of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia’s media; the presence of Caribbean migrants in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Crisis and Migration: Critical Perspectives from Latin America will be of interest to a wide range of social scientists interested in migration studies, as well as to policy makers and civil society organizations. This book offers a fresh look at the way we conceive, represent, and think about the relationship between crisis and human mobility. As the volume’s contributions show, a critical examination of the notion of crisis is a first step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the plight of present-day migrants worldwide.

By conservative estimates about 50 million migrants are currently living outside of their home communities, forced to flee to obtain some measure of safety and security. In addition to persecution, human rights violations, repression, conflict, and natural and human-made disasters, current causes of forced migration include environmental and development-induced factors. Today's migrants include the internally displaced, a category that has only recently entered the international lexicon. But the legal and institutional system created in the aftermath of World War II to address refugee movements is now proving inadequate to provide appropriate assistance and protection to the full range of forced migrants needing attention today. The Uprooted is the first volume to methodically examine the progress and persistent shortcomings of the current humanitarian regime. The authors, all experts in the field of forced migration, describe the organizational, political, and conceptual shortcomings that are creating the gaps and inefficiencies of international and national agencies to reach entire categories of forced migrants. They make policy-based recommendations to improve international, regional, national, and local responses in areas including organization, security, funding, and durability of response. For all those working on behalf of the world's forced migrants, The Uprooted serves as a call to arms, emphasizing the urgent need to develop more comprehensive and cohesive strategies to address forced migration in its complexity.

International treaties, conventions, and organizations to protect refugees were established in the aftermath of World War II to protect people escaping targeted persecution by their own governments. However, the nature of cross-border displacement has transformed dramatically since then. Such threats as environmental change, food insecurity, and generalized violence force massive numbers of people to flee states that are unable or unwilling to ensure their basic rights, as do conditions in failed and fragile states that make possible human rights deprivations. Because these reasons do not meet the legal understanding of persecution, the victims of these circumstances are not usually recognized as "refugees," preventing current institutions from ensuring their protection.In this book, Alexander Betts develops the concept of "survival migration" to highlight the crisis in which these people find themselves. Examining flight from three of the most fragile states in Africa—Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia—Betts explains variation in institutional responses across the neighboring host states. There is massive inconsistency. Some survival migrants are offered asylum as refugees; others are rounded up, detained, and deported, often in brutal conditions. The inadequacies of the current refugee regime are a disaster for human rights and gravely threaten international security. In Survival Migration, Betts outlines these failings, illustrates the enormous human suffering that results, and argues strongly for an expansion of protected categories.

Crisis and migration have a long association, in popular and policy discourse as well as in social scientific analysis. Despite the emergence of more nuanced and even celebratory accounts of mobility in recent years, there remains a persistent emphasis on migration being either a symptom or a cause of crisis. Moreover, in the context of a recent series of headline-hitting and politically controversial situations, terms like ‘migration crisis’ and ‘crisis migration’ are acquiring increasing currency among policy-makers and academics. Crisis and Migration provides fresh perspectives on this routine association, critically examining a series of politically controversial situations around the world. Drawing on first-hand research into the Arab uprisings, conflict and famine in the Horn of Africa, cartel violence in Latin America, the global economic crisis, and immigration ‘crises’ from East Asia to Southern Africa to Europe, the book’s contributors situate a set of contemporary crises within longer histories of social change and human mobility, showing the importance of treating crisis and migration as contextualised processes, rather than isolated events. By exploring how migration and crisis articulate as lived experiences and political constructs, the book brings migration from the margins to the centre of discussions of social transformation and crisis; illuminates the acute politicisation and diverse spatialisations of crisis–migration relationships; and urges a nuanced, cautious and critical approach to associations of crisis and migration.