MPI's Migration Information Source Newsletter

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April 15, 2022

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Spotlight
Korean Immigrants in the United States
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/korean-immigrants-united-states
Immigrants from the Korean peninsula are one of the ten largest foreign-born groups in the United States, but their numbers have actually shrunk in recent years. Immigrants from Korea tend to be older, better educated, and earn higher incomes than the overall immigrant and native-born populations.

Feature
Vaccine Requirements Predate the COVID-19 Pandemic by More than a Century
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/vaccine-certificate-covid19-history
Requirements that international travelers and migrants prove vaccination against certain diseases are about as old as vaccines themselves. In some cases, vaccine certificates predated the existence of government-issued passports. This article explores the history of these requirements, which began with smallpox and have since been applied for diseases including cholera, polio, yellow fever, and, recently, COVID-19.


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EDITOR'S NOTE

The worst drought that the Horn of Africa has seen in decades is threatening millions with hunger and quickly turning into a dire humanitarian crisis. Already this year, 500,000 people in Somalia have been displaced, and about 90 percent of the country's land is under drought conditions. The displacement could reach 1.4 million within the next few months.

New rains should be arriving this month, but forecasts suggest a continued dry period. As the situation stands, as many as 6 million people are on the brink of famine. In recent weeks, analysts have evoked the memory of Somalia's 2011 famine, when 260,000 people died, about half of them children under age 6.

The drought is also affecting neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia. Across the region, at least 29 million people are at high levels of food insecurity.

While famines are thankfully much rarer now than they were during parts of the 20th century, their full effects are unclear. Batul Sadliwala and Alex de Waal previously examined the connections between famine and migration for the Migration Information Source, noting that despite significant research, it remains unclear whether migration precedes or follows famine and whether it mitigates or worsens starvation. Read that article: www.migrationpolicy.org/article/emerging-crisis-famine-returning-major-driver-migration

Conditions in the Horn are expected to be aggravated by the war in Ukraine, which has dramatically escalated the costs of food and other staple goods such as cooking oil. At the same time, the overwhelming international attention on Ukraine has allowed other crises to fade from public attention and receive scant donor money (humanitarian efforts in Somalia have received a paltry 4 percent of needed funding for the year). The episode shows how global crises can be interdependent, even if the linkages are not immediately visible.

Yet while humanitarian crisis linked to climate events such as drought can force many from their homes, migration can also be a strategy to build resilience against uncertain environmental conditions. In the Source, Patrick Sakdapolrak and Harald Sterly previously examined this process in Thailand (find that article here: www.migrationpolicy.org/article/building-climate-resilience-through-migration-thailand). Some members of the Somali diaspora have provided crucial assistance to their ancestral home.

In the future, movement throughout East Africa might be slightly easier, thanks to new regional efforts aimed at closer cooperation on migration and shared protections for migrants. Slightly more than half of all African migrants stay elsewhere on the continent, and many East Africans can move easily within the region due to integration efforts, as Samuel Okunade explained in a Source article last year (read that article here: [link removed]). But uneven access to worker and other protections can reduce the benefits of this movement.

Most of the people displaced by the current drought have moved internally. But the international dimensions of the crisis point to the growing importance of solutions that extend beyond borders, whether it is the ability of a migrant worker to easily send back remittances or responses to lessen the shock of food prices sent soaring by events in far-flung breadbaskets.

Best regards,

Julian Hattem

Editor, Migration Information Source

[email protected]

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NEW FROM MPI

Beyond the Border: Opportunities for Managing Regional Migration between Central and North America
www.migrationpolicy.org/news/managing-regional-migration-central-north-america-roadmap
By Ariel G. Ruiz Soto and Andrew Selee


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HAVE YOU READ?

The Emerging Crisis: Is Famine Returning as a Major Driver of Migration?
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/emerging-crisis-famine-returning-major-driver-migration

Africa Moves Towards Intracontinental Free Movement for Its Booming Population
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/africa-intracontinental-free-movement

When Outbreaks Go Global: Migration and Public Health in a Time of Zika
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/when-outbreaks-go-global-migration-and-public-health-time-zika


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MEDIA CORNER

Sarah Dryden-Peterson explores individuals who are pioneering new visions of refugee education in "Right Where We Belong: How Refugee Teachers and Students Are Changing the Future of Education."
www.reach.gse.harvard.edu/right-where-we-belong

Levi Vonk's "Border Hacker: A Tale of Treachery, Trafficking, and Two Friends on the Run" documents an unlikely and extraordinary friendship between a journalist and a migrant hacker deported from the United States.
www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/levi-vonk/border-hacker/9781645037057/

Sociologist Heba Gowayed follows Syrian refugees in Canada, Germany, and the United States in "Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential."
[link removed]

What happens when resettled refugees confront Indigenous sovereignty conflicts? Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi tries to answer that question in "Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine."
www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520379657/archipelago-of-resettlement

Historian Natalia Molinan unveils how a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles's Echo Park became a community institution in "A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community."
www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520385481/a-place-at-the-nayarit

In "Status and Ethnic Identity: A Study on First- and Second-Generation Migrants in Germany," Andreas Genoni examines the role of migrants' social status across generations.
[link removed]

"Conducting Immigration Evaluations: A Practical Guide for Mental Health Professionals," by Mariela G. Shibley and Matthew G. Holt, is designed for clinicians involved in U.S. immigration legal proceedings.
www.routledge.com/Conducting-Immigration-Evaluations-A-Practical-Guide-for-Mental-Health/Shibley-Holt/p/book/9780367689988


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