Editorial
| Date | 01 October 2016 |
| Published date | 01 October 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12287 |
Editorial
The rise of nationalism of which we spoke last issue has, regrettably, continued unabated, fueled
by not only the Brexit vote which has played into the hands of nationalist political interests in other
countries but by the series of terrorist attacks in a number of European countries which has further
increased fears of immigrants and refugees and produced calls for ever greater restrictions on
migration. One such control mechanism, the agreement between the EU and Turkey, has had the
perhaps predictable effect of shifting migration routes back to the Mediterranean crossing to Italy
together with a return to high numbers of deaths at sea, at over 3,100 for 2016 at the time of this
writing, according to the IOM. The future of this agreement remains uncertain, especially now with
the increased tensions between the EU and Turkey resulting in part from the Turkish government’s
responses to the attempted coup on July 15. The United Nations General Assembly’s September 19
High Level Summit to “address large movements of refugees and migrants with the aim of bringing
countries together behind a more humane and coordinated approach”was designed to forge a new
path for the international community in responding to these flows in ways that are humane while
preventing them from developing into a crisis. Success here will require a deep commitment on the
part of the governments of UN member states and a willingness to work multi-laterally, and per-
haps by pooling sovereignty. We can hope that the International Organization for Migration’s
becoming an agency of the United Nations, with the agreement to be signed at the September
Summit, will stimulate the sorts of international co-operation required.
We open this issue with a set of papers that examine the impacts, intended or otherwise, of the
institutions of society on migrants. The highly regulated societies of today have established a myr-
iad of institutions to deliver services to their populations and to maintain social order. These regula-
tory frameworks have adjusted to the reality of large scale migration in a variety of ways, some
supportive, some less so, and some creating unintended effects that can undo the good that was
their principal objective. The complexity of modern government programs is evident, for example,
in Sweden’s old-age pension system. Ekberg and Lindh take us through the effects of a highly dif-
ferentiated system on immigrants, some of whom have done better than others as a result of recent
changes to the system and its attempts to manage the reality of some immigrants bringing pensions
with them from their homelands. Political institutions tend to offer voting rights to only those who
are citizens, but non-EU citizens in the Italian province of Bologna can take advantage of an inno-
vative Foreign Citizens Council which Sredanovic looks at from the migrant residents’point of
view, discovering that their motives for voting are many and varied, and sometimes surprising.
Health care institutions are primary in any society and are among the most costly to operate, and
restricted access to migrants is not uncommon. Demintseva and Kashnitsky explore the limits to
health care faced by migrants from some of the former Soviet states and the strategies they use to
overcome the barriers. In general, access to the institutions of a society feature prominently in the
lives of immigrants, and the labour market is regarded as among the keys to successful integration.
Pendakur and Pendakur take advantage of the rich data sources on labour market outcomes in
Canada to reveal the trajectories of those who came to the country as children. They find
regrettable disparities, especially for visible minority male immigrants.
Dr. Howard Duncan, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
doi: 10.1111/imig.12287
©2016 The Author
International Migration ©2016 IOM
International Migration Vol. 54 (5) 2016
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
To continue reading
Request your trial