Unravelling Europe’s ‘Migration Crisis’

Overall Verdict: ★ ★ ★ ★ 

Why this book?
Since its introduction as part of the 2016 A-Level specification, I have always struggled to teach the case studies and examples of the Migration, Identity and Sovereignty topic to a standard that I’m happy with. This is particularly the case for the Mediterranean migration crisis- which is explicitly mentioned on the specification. Despite reading multiple articles and watching multiple videos, I’d never been fully confident in my subject knowledge, very aware that everything I’d read was from the viewpoint of the Western media. In order to change this, I attended an RGS Monday night lecture on the topic of migration (given by Heaven Crawley) and subsequently bought this book. Although synthesising academic research, it is jargon free and less dense than you might first expect. You can think of it as a mini-textbook specifically on the topic!

This book begins by explaining how the crisis was misrepresented by the media, arguing that the way the ‘unprecedented’ movement was reported as a single coherent flow of people that ‘came from nowhere’ led to very little interest in the back stories of those arriving. The lives and stories of the individual people and families migrating was lost and instead generalised and erroneous assumptions were made, distorting people’s opinions. Through a mixture of individual stories, quantitative results from their research, and critical discussions, this book seeks to give a genuine insight into the ‘crisis’ and does so incredibly successfully.

For more information, data and analysis, visit the MEDMIG project website.

For teachers:
What is particularly invaluable about this book is the critical lens through which it discusses migration- yet it does so without jargon and dense academic language. If, like me, you want to ensure you’re teaching Europe’s migration crisis in the most accurate, representative and objective way possible, I highly recommend this book. Some explicit examples of how it has changed my teaching are given below.

When I’ve taught migration at A-Level before, I’ve previously presented the push-pull model and continued to use language such as ‘push factors’ and ‘pull factors’ without really critiquing them. This quote below has now been added to my lessons to enable  me to do that with students:

‘Historically, much of the thinking around migration decision making has been dominated by push-pull models based on principles of utility maximisation, rational choice and labour mobility. Not only do push-pull models make assumptions about the ways in which individuals respond to different factors, they presuppose that decisions are based on full information, neglect the role of intervening variables, and ignore or downplay a wide range of social factors, including social networks.’ (p.7)

The same can be said for the definitions within this topic: 
‘There are few more challenging questions for academics and policy-makers than where, and how to draw the line between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary migration’. The positioning of this line, and the factors, places and experiences which come to be associated with the categories that lie either side, shape our understanding of who constitutes a ‘refugee’ on the one hand, and an ‘economic migrant’ on the other.’ (p.8)

‘Migration policies are themselves pushing people into, and out of, categories which determine their access to protection and rights. The current use of simplistic categories of ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ migration creates a two-tiered system of protection and assistance in which the rights and needs of those not qualifying as ‘refugees’ under the legal definition are effectively disregarded.’ (p.8)

Finally, I wanted to share two examples of quotes from the book that I’ll use, similarly to those above, to challenge the binary nature with which students can sometimes discuss causes of migration:
“Many respondents told us that they had taken the decision to move for economic reasons but it was conflict that had created their economic insecurity.”

“Equally, many of those who had initially moved for primarily economic reasons to countries such as Libya, then found themselves facing violence and insecurity.”