One thing common to the bulk of geographical research is a strong empirical grounding. Methodologically, geographical work on forced migration covers the whole range of social scientific approaches, from strongly positivist to firmly post- structural, and the importance placed on data varies. Nevertheless, any knowledge of where and who forced migrants are depends on methods of counting, systems of categorization, and the politics and practices of distribution of that information, so data and the means of categorization are important considerations. There are plenty of sources of statistical information about forced migrants, including international organizations (chiefly UNHCR), national governments, NGOs, and individual targeted pieces of research and a range of techniques for gathering such information, some more associated with geography than others. There is also a substantial literature critiquing the processes of identifying, categorizing, and counting forced migrants (Crisp 1999).
Given this range of sources, data itself has a geography. For example, where governments are responsible for examining individual claims for asylum quite detailed information is collected from individual asylum seekers, whereas in areas where refugee status is granted on a collective basis, precise data may be more difficult to come by. Even where data is accurate, access is not a given. A series of studies by geographers such as Koser (e.g. Koser and Pinkerton 2002)
Geographies of Forced Migration
have drawn on classic geographical work on the diffusion of information to show that, despite what many Western European governments appear to believe, the information on which individual asylum seekers base migration decisions is lacking any level of detail on comparative policy regimes. Diffusing information on the danger of certain migration routes has become an important strategy to try to dissuade irregular migrants, but the effectiveness of such information campaigns is unproven. This highlights the geographically uneven nature of information but also a range of other problems with large-scale data collection.
The categories on which such data is typically collected do not correspond with the ‘forced migration’ focus of this volume; neither asylum seekers nor refugees correspond exactly with the broader category of forced migrants and data is collected in a (p. 115) huge variety of ways. Data on individual characteristics of forced migrants are equally hard to come by in most contexts, even basic data on sex or age are often lacking. This fuels arguments of systematic bias in the application of international protection, which go beyond critiques that men and women are treated differently to an argument that the entire system of international protection is structurally deficient in gendered ways (Crawley 2001).
The motivations for data collection may also be questionable. It goes without saying that institutions collect data for their own interests, which are not necessarily shared with those of forced migrants. This has important consequences for the ethics of any research that cooperates directly with such collection but also implications for the accuracy of such data.
Where data manifestly serve interests of disciplining and controlling migrant populations, as is typically the case with state data, migrants may not cooperate or may even have an incentive to report inaccurate information. Even institutions focused more clearly on refugee and migrant welfare, such as UNHCR, may use data in ways that are contrary to the interests of individual migrants (Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005). Finally, even where data is collected and accurate it may not be easily available due to practical or political issues with distribution
Geographical techniques are now widely used in the collection and presentation of data about forced migrants, and are often considered to resolve problems of accuracy, quality, and presentation. One of the most widely discussed
technologies is GIS, which describes any piece of software that links stores of information to geographical positions, allowing maps to be updated automatically as associated data changes. GIS software is now used routinely to coordinate emergency response planning in situations around the world, including monitoring and responding to related forced migration (Cutter 2003).
There are a number of significant technical hurdles to the widespread uptake of GIS (Emrich, Cutter, and Weschler 2011); three most significant are worth mentioning here, though all are gradually being overcome. First, GIS software is expensive and requires a degree of technical expertise to operate effectively; web-based GIS such as Google Earth are beginning to change this, since they are free and relatively easy to use and community monitoring of certain areas of high environmental sensitivity now occurs using GIS. Second, new data to be added must be geo-referenced, that is, its location must be known, and this usually requires the use of GPS, though this is also becoming easier as handheld GPS are becoming more affordable and frequently integrated into other devices, such as mobile phones. Finally, most software requires new data to be added to pre-existing maps, which may not be sufficiently accurate or up to date. This is likely to be a particular issue in responding to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, or tsunami, which may themselves have altered the landscape through which people are forced to move.
Remote sensing provides a potential solution to the lack of up-to-date information on the ground. Given the development of ultra-high-resolution images, data from satellites, which includes measurement on non-visible spectrums allowing things like cooking sources to be identified, provides a useful means of estimating populations when (p. 116) on the ground censuses are not feasible. It is not likely that remote sensing data would be available sufficiently quickly to be of use in natural disaster management. Surveying new maps is often the only solution where road or river networks have been destroyed or substantially altered and urgent response is required. The high cost and expertise required for new surveys means that this is still concentrated in specialist UN agencies such as OCHA or specialist NGOs like MapAction (<http://www.mapaction.org>). When time frames are more extended, remote sensing can provide a worthwhile source of information. Recent research has highlighted the utility of remote sensing to obtain estimates of the total population of the Darfur camps in Kenya, for example, where computer calculations were shown to be as accurate, and much quicker, than analysis of satellite photos with the naked eye (Kemper et al. 2011). As satellite imagery and the software necessary to analyse it becomes more widely available this technique is likely to become more widespread in the monitoring and control of mobile populations.
New technology is obviously not apolitical. Although many of the uses of GIS, GPS, and remote sensing in monitoring and
responding to situations of forced migration are justified as furthering support and solidarity towards those migrants, this is not necessarily always the case. In 2008, UNHCR teamed up with Google to develop a new layer for Google Earth that can be downloaded to show the location of refugee camps with the aim of further awareness and solidarity with refugees around the world. Palestinian activist groups quickly raised objections, since the 27 Palestinian refugee camps in the Occupied Territories, which have existed for more than 50 years but are not administered by UNHCR, were excluded from the refugees layer (Sabbah 2008). On a more theoretical level, Franke (2009) has associated the requirement to locate refugees with UNHCR’s need to locate human rights within particular nation states, a tendency, he argues, which inevitably restricts human freedoms expressed in the ability to move in the first place. Such normative issues of spatial theory have become a more significant focus of critical geographical research and are explored in more detail in the final section. Before then, this chapter turns to the substantial body of geographical research on the impact of the environment on forced migration.
Environment and Forced Migration
Interest in the potential impact of the environment on forced migration dates to the 1970s. Although it has continually been presented as ‘new’, Étienne Piguet and colleagues (2011) remind us that even Ravenstein, in one of the earliest attempts to theorize migration in 1889, suggested ‘unfavourable environment’ as a reason motivating migration. Climate change is already affecting the environment, but not in a uniform, predictable fashion. Extreme climatic events are becoming more common and environmental variability is increasing (IPCC 2007). Most of the research in this area has envisaged a direct relationship between environmental change and migration and a focus on the numbers of people likely to be forced to move has become common (e.g. Gemenne 2011).
(p. 117) Recent geographical work has challenged this orthodox approach in four significant ways: it has highlighted the vast differences in numerical estimates and questioned the logical possibility of reaching any kind of accurate estimate of the numbers of people who will be forced to move; it has emphasized the interconnections between different motivations to migrate and developed a much more critical position on the possibility of isolating the environment as a discrete cause of movement; it has investigated potential destinations of migration related to environmental factors; finally, it has
questioned the basis for protecting those forced to move by environmental factors, particularly the desirability of the term
‘environmental refugee’.
Mainstream work on the impact of climate change on society has typically sought to establish the significance of the issue in terms of the numbers of people who will be forced to move over the next few decades. Numerical estimates of resulting forced migration vary wildly, from the tens of millions to a billion (Gemenne 2011). The most basic approach to estimating numbers involved working out how many people live a certain distance above the mean water mark and assuming that they would all be forced to move by sea level rise of a similar magnitude. This is an oversimplified approach since environmental change is far more complex than a simple measure of sea level rise and includes much greater and still largely unpredictable forms of climate variability. It also assumes that migration is an impact of climate change whereas, for the entire history of human settlement, migration has been a form of adaptation to environmental stress. Indeed, migration is one of a number of proactive responses to environmental stress that should be built into development interventions (Boano, Zetter, and Morris 2008). Recognition of the complexity of environmental factors and the understanding of migration as an adaptive strategy have characterized much recent geographical work on this issue and led geographers to reject the possibilities of numerical estimates of migration as an impossible task (Gill 2010).
Once migration is understood as an adaptive strategy, rather than an impact of environmental change, the impossibility of isolating the environment as a discrete factor motivating migration becomes more obvious. Environmental change does not necessarily provoke new migration, but further complicates established migration systems in which people move for reasons which may be partly environmental but are also related to established economic, political, social, and cultural factors. Black and colleagues (2011) build on these insights to develop a new approach to environmentally induced migration. Rather than asking if climate change will cause migration their preferred approach is to investigate how climate change will affect existing drivers of migration. They select case studies in Ghana and Bangladesh to demonstrate that the evidence of migration responses to climate change is highly variable; in some cases increased flooding reduces the likelihood of migration, for example, whereas in others it results in new attempts to diversify livelihood strategies through migration. This approach to migration has been taken up by two large-scale research projects: the UK Government Office of Science (Foresight 2011) and the European Commission funded ‘Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios (EACH-FOR)’ (Warner et al. 2009).
Geographies of Forced Migration
(p. 118) Relatively little attention has been paid to potential destinations of environmental related migration (Findlay 2011). Given the dominance of events at migrants’ point of origin in any consideration of the topic, origin factors have generally been prioritized in this literature. Although numerical estimates of environmentally forced migration provide very limited details of intended destinations they are frequently interpreted as referring to south to north migration. This is inaccurate. It is now well established that most migration resulting from environmental stress will be over very short distances and often circular in nature, as individuals return once a crisis is over (Findlay 2011).
A final key question in this area concerns the resolution of incidents of environmentally related displacement. The term
‘environmental refugee’ is still widely popular, and highlights the responsibility of the international community to act. Yet this term is widely rejected by geographers since the analogy with refugees is questioned (Gill 2010). Refugees are people whose bond with their own state has broken down, whereas those forced to move by the environment are frequently assisted by their own state. Black (2001) argues that it is in the interests of states to insist on the
‘environmental refugee’ label since they are a group to whom states owe fewer obligations. Blitz (2011) shares this concern but suggests that in certain cases—notably small, low-lying, island states that will likely be wiped out completely by sea level rise—individuals will effectively become stateless and it may be possible to make use of the statelessness convention, which he argues, offers greater potential as the basis for some kind of international agreement.
The Place of Forced Migration: Location and Spatial Theory
Space, and the related notion of location, are key geographical concepts and though it also figures significantly in related social science disciplines geographers accord a particular attention to spatial issues and have developed a range of approaches to related concepts, such as scale and territory, that provide theoretical support to research into forced migration. As the first subsection of this chapter argued, location is a key determinant of the categorization of forced migrants and these concepts allow geographers to question binary distinctions that are central to the understandings and categorizations of forced migration. These include the nature of the nation state as a political entity and the key role played by the international border in definitions of refugees, the construction of global level spatial distinctions, such as North and South but also, relatedly, notions of migration, mobility, and immobility, which are typically distinguished by the crossing (or failure to cross) significant international borders. In developing theoretical approaches to these issues, geographers have drawn freely from other disciplines. This section examines these various trends in research into spatial theory and forced migration.
One of the most fundamental spatial categories, which is widely questioned by critical geographical research is that of the nation state itself. The international border is clearly (p. 119) fundamental to definitions of one particular group of forced migrants, refugees, but the issue of whether or not any forced migrant remains on the territory of their state of citizenship is determinant of the rights they can legitimately claim from the state and their access to international protection. Treating the results of such a historically contingent and dynamic process as the creation of international borders as fixed, given, or ‘natural’ ontological categories is widely questioned by geographers, especially in the field of migration. A seminal article by Agnew (1994), arguing that the nation state should be seen as a dynamic collection of institutions, has remained tremendously influential in geographical research. Research into forced migration has developed approaches to ‘denaturalize’ the nation state by focusing on the experience of individuals involved in implementing nation-state policies (Mountz 2010). Yet the ‘essentialist’ view of the nation state as linking territory and culture may inform the perspectives of forced migrants themselves (Brun 2001). Understandings of ‘emplacement’ or rootedness as identified with a single location have been widely criticized (e.g. Malkki 1995) but relationship to place is something that is potentially transferable as critical research into geographies of home has suggested (Blunt and Dowling 2006).
It is not just the nation state which can be seen as constructed or historically contingent. An influential strand of
geographical work identifies scale as politically constructed (Delaney and Lietner 1997). As Marston summarizes, ‘scale is not necessarily a preordained hierarchical framework for ordering the world—local, regional, national and global. It is instead a contingent outcome of the tensions that exist between structural forces and the practices of human agents’
(2000: 220). In relation to research on forced migration this has typically been used in a political context to investigate the ways in which institutions of regional governance, such as the European Union, present themselves. Yet, as Marston argues, it can also inform research into social reproduction. These perspectives can help undermine the familiar view of
‘nested’ scales, through which local institutions defer to regional, to national, and to global in a constructed imagination of progressive importance. From the individual perspective, all action inevitably takes place at a local level so to attribute
irresistible power to forces seen as ‘global’ may reflect on the impression of agency that individual migrants feel they possess.
Scale is therefore explicitly involved in the construction of boundaries, both those that are explicitly policed and those that are more broadly imagined, such as generalized distinctions between ‘North’ and ‘South’ at the global level. The distinction between mobility and migration depends on the crossing of these frequently ill-defined spatial and temporal boundaries. The mobilities paradigm has demonstrated that in many contexts ‘mobility’ is a more flexible term than
‘migration’, more suited to the realities faced by forced migrants. A special issue of the journal Mobilities has recently explored these links (Gill, Caletrio, and Mason 2011), highlighting the application of mobility studies to understand forced migration as more than an individual, linear movement. Discussion of mobility also leads more obviously to investigations of immobility, an increasingly common experience for forced migrants and one that requires a great deal more attention (Conlon 2011).
(p. 120) Space and location are central to refugee movement in terms of patterns of settlement or resettlement. Spatial patterns of movement and residence are increasingly incorporated into analysis of migration and social transformation (Castles 2003). Even in 1993 Black argued that geographers have analysed far more than the physical locations of refugee movement, including social and cultural elements of their engagement with those new locations. Nevertheless, spatial analysis was one of the consequences of migration that he felt geographers were particularly equipped to analyse.
Both the construction of scale and the production of space are significant in analysing spatial practices such as the dispersal of asylum seekers or refugees (e.g. Robinson, Andersson, and Musterd 2003). In spatial terms, quantitative indexes for measuring segregation of particular populations were developed in classic geographical work in the 1970s (e.g. Peach 1975) and their use remains concentrated in particular schools of quantitative urban studies.
A final locational distinction worth investigating is between the camp and the city. The work of Giorgio Agamben has been particularly influential in geographical research on forced migration, though as in other areas, his challenging perspective is increasingly questioned (Ek 2006; Sigona 2015). For example, Darling (2009) working with destitute asylum seekers in the UK eventually turns away from Agamben’s rigid rejection of any type of asylum determination, in favour of Derrida’s more nuanced approach to hospitality. Similarly, Ramadan (2012) initially finds Agamben’s approach useful in his analysis of Palestinian refugee camps but goes on to develop the ‘beyond Agamen’ perspective, finding Agamben too negative and offering too little space for refugee agency. This example demonstrates the willingness of geographers to borrow from other disciplines in the exploration of key geographical themes, but also the interest in using such theoretical approaches critically.
Conclusion
Geographical work on forced migration has come a long way since Black summarized it in terms of the ‘causes and consequences’ of migration—though of course much ongoing work would still fit that description. What is perhaps most interesting to note over the intervening period is how geography has developed a much more critical approach, so that a
‘geography of forced migration’, as Hyndman outlined, is no longer assumed to contain a catalogue of physical locations, but may explore the dynamic implications of space and location in terms of key social scientific questions on the
distribution of power, the construction of social and political reality, and the place of individuals in society.
This chapter has highlighted the tremendous breadth of the geographical perspective on issues related to forced migration. As a geography of forced migration, it has not sought to enumerate the physical locations of forced migrants.
As the first subsection sought to demonstrate, given the nature of data available, that is a near impossible task. Many also argue that it is normatively questionable, though geographical research, in the form of GIS and remote sensing has provided some of the tools to further that goal. (p. 121) It has also reviewed new geographical approaches to the relationship between environmental change and forced migration and discussed further issues of categorization, particularly the label ‘environmental refugees’. Finally, it has demonstrated the politically constructed nature of many understandings of location that are fundamental to key categorizations of forced migrants.
Categorization is one of the themes that has run through this chapter. Categorization of forced migrants is inevitable in both policy and academic contexts, though perhaps in different ways. An important ongoing division in geographical research in the area of forced migration exists between critical and applied policy research. Recent debate was fuelled by an article which claimed that critical research was inevitably distinct from applied policy research which served the interests of the state (Fuller and Kitchin 2004). Although this position has been disputed (e.g. Pain 2006) it does highlight