What happens when refugees and other migrants are caught up in disasters that destabilize their new homes? Sadly, there have been no shortage of opportunities to find out.

Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on migrant workers, including in places such as the United States and the Persian Gulf, and the virus has spread quickly in confined camps for refugees and asylum seekers.

Additional disasters have been heaped on top of this public-health crisis. Most notably, fires devastated the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos last week, displacing thousands of people in the overcrowded camp. The consequences of this fire will reverberate through multiple levels: for local dynamics between residents and new arrivals in Lesvos, for Greece's relationship with migrants, and for Europe's attitude towards the Eastern Mediterranean and external borders more broadly. Hanne Beirens, the Director of MPI Europe, has outlined some of the steps necessary to develop a path forward in an excellent new commentary.

Refugees and other migrants often bear the brunt of a range of disasters worldwide. For instance, a sizeable portion of the 200 casualties from the August 4 explosion that devastated Beirut were migrants from Syria and elsewhere, and many of Lebanon's 1.5 million refugees—the largest per capita population worldwide—may suffer economic consequences of the fallout.

As new arrivals, migrants often lack the social safety nets to fall back on when jobs, homes, and communities are wiped away. They may not know the local language, have the skills to navigate opportunities for aid, or be able to access government benefit systems.

This vulnerability makes them prime targets for abuse and exploitation. Some unauthorized migrant farmworkers in California were encouraged to ignore evacuation orders ahead of recent wildfires that have ravaged the state, and others have been unpaid or underpaid for work such as hurricane cleanup. After 2011 flooding in Thailand, migrants paid high fees to illicit brokers who would take them on dangerous trips to the Myanmar border.

Still, there have been reports of remarkable recovery, strength, and resilience in the face of crisis. Refugees raced to help in the aftermath of the Beirut blast, and migrants rallying together are a feature of disasters from storms in Iowa to flooding in Thailand. Paradoxically, migrants can be both especially vulnerable and especially resilient in the face of crisis. "Their resilience arises partly from the everyday inequalities that they already confront, and partly because of previous experiences of disasters," scholars Shinya Uekusa and Steve Matthewman wrote in a 2017 analysis.

Maegan Hendow examined some of these issues in a 2018 article in the Migration Information Source that remains tragically relevant. Migrants caught in crisis can find themselves in a protection gap, she wrote, unable to fully access assistance from governments, aid groups, or international organizations. While it is impossible to tell when the next disaster will strike, it is a safe bet that migrant populations may be exposed to some of its hardest impacts.

Best regards,
Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
[email protected]