May 28th 2016

S P E C I A L R E P O R T

M I G R AT I O N

Looking for a homeLooking for a homeLooking for a homeLooking for a homeImmigration.indd 1 13/05/2016 12:36

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A list of acknowledgments and sourcesis at Economist.com/specialreports

CONTENT S

3 The language of migrationTerminological exactitudes

4 Politics Welcome, up to a point

6 IntegrationA working solution

7 DemographicsNot so fast

8 ResettlementBring me your huddledmasses

10 Lebanon’s and Jordan’splightCaught by geography

11 Refugee camps in AfricaFrom here to eternity

13 Looking aheadHow to do better

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LIKE COUNTLESS STUDENTS of German before him, Ahmed is strug-gling with his verb placement. Eager to learn, he listens patiently as theearnest volunteers from Über den Tellerrand kochen (Cook Outside theBox), a Berlin-based outfit that began by offering refugees a space to pre-pare food and has since branched out into language classes, explain thefiendish intricacies of the grammar. But before long they have moved onto the difference between Sie and Du, and Ahmed is floundering. “I lovethe German people,” he says later. “But I just can’t speak their language.”

That isnothisonlyproblem. Deposited byGermany’s refugee officein Hoppegarten, a distant suburb of the capital best known for horserac-

ing, Ahmed, a 24-year-old Syrianrefugee, cannot afford to com-mute to Berlin proper. Even if hecould, he might still find it hard toget a job, though as a refugee hehas full access to Germany’s la-bour market. A barman by train-ing—he claims to mix a killer mo-jito—Ahmed would face a lot ofcompetition in job-poor Berlin,and his lackofGerman isa handi-cap. It is also hindering his searchfor accommodation closer totown, which, within reason, thestate would pay for. For now, itseems, he is stuck.

Ahmed arrived in Germanylast November, joining hundredsof thousands of Syrians and oth-er asylum-seekers on the migranttrail via Turkey, Greece and theBalkans. Like many of his compa-triots, he had fled not Syria itselfbut Lebanon, where he and hisfamily had been leading a clan-destine life for years, safe from

harm but struggling to get by and unable to return home. As his story sug-gests, Germany (along with several other European countries) faces ahuge challenge integrating its newcomers, most of whom arrived withfew language skills or qualifications, into its labour market and widersociety. That will take time, resources and political capital. In some coun-tries it will test assumptions about welfare, housing and employment.

But last year’s drama was also a sharp reminder to Europe that itcannot insulate itself from the troubles of its wider neighbourhood. Foryears Syrian refugees had been building up in Turkey, Lebanon and Jor-dan, not to mention the millions displaced inside the country itself. Ofthe estimated total of13m displaced by the war (7m inside Syria, 6m out-side), around 1m have gone to Europe. Lebanon now hosts 1.07m regis-tered Syrians (the total number is closer to 1.5m), a staggering burden for acountry of 4.5m. In Jordan 1.3m refugees swallow up one-quarter of pub-lic spending. Governments and officials in the Middle East had warnedEurope about a wave of refugees. But without a robust system of interna-tional rules that could have eased the burden on the refugee-hostingcountries, or any political interest in Europe in resolving the problem, itwas left to Ahmed and manyothers like him to vote with their feet, bring-

Looking for a home

The migrant crisis in Europe last year was only one part of aworldwide problem. The rich world must get better at managingrefugees, says Tom Nuttall

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ing chaos in their wake. What was Lebanon’s problem is nowGermany’s. Belatedly, the rich world has learned that the currentsystem of international protection for refugees is broken. AndEurope, which is where the global refugee regime began 65 yearsago, and where its limits have now been most starkly exposed,will have to be the catalyst for change.

The 60m questionThanks in part to the explosion of refugees from Syria, the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), theUN’s refugee body, now puts the world’s displaced population ata post-war record of 60m, of whom 20m are stranded outsidetheir own countries (the map shows only registered refugees, forwhom firm figures are available). Except for a couple of brightspots, such as the possible return of up to 6m internally dis-placed Colombians after a peace deal between the governmentand the guerrillas, the problem is getting worse. New conflicts inplaces like South Sudan are creating fresh refugee problems; old-er ones, such as Somalia’s, grind on with no solution in sight.

Still, there is no iron law that says the globally displacedmust continue to rise in number. Conflicts can be resolved, justas they can breakout. Perhaps more worrying is that a record 45%of the world’s refugees are now in “protracted situations” thathave lasted five years or more. Syrians are the latest recruits tothis wretched club, and the welcome is wearing thin in the coun-tries to which most have fled. Indeed, dismal prospects in Turkey,Jordan and Lebanon partly explain last year’s exodus to Europe.

Shocked to learn that they were legally obliged to help thepeople streaming across their borders, a growing number ofEuropean politiciansand officialsare pressingforrevisions to theUN’s 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol, which make

up the main framework for international protection of peoplefleeing persecution and provide the basis for the work of theUNHCR. The convention is one of the most potent instrumentsof international law ever devised. The primary obligation that itplaces on signatories is the duty of non-refoulement, meaningthey may not return people to countries where they are at risk.

Butas JamesHathaway, an experton refugee lawat the Uni-versity of Michigan, points out, it has also proved to be an ex-tremely versatile device. Over the decades regional and interna-tional law has built on the convention’s foundations, extendingthe scope of protection beyond the original definition of a refu-gee as someone who faces a “well-founded fear of being perse-cuted”. Notably, many parts of the world now offer protection tothose fleeing war-torn countries like Syria.

And yet the politicians who established the refugee regimein the early 1950s, with the horrors of the second world war stillfresh in the mind, had modest ambitions. The convention cov-ered only Europeans who had been displaced before 1951, includ-ing millions during the war and many more in post-war ethniccleansing. (The UNHCR had no role in helping the millions dis-placed by India’s partition, or the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.) By1950 resettlement and repatriation efforts had reduced Europe’srefugee population to less than half a million. The UNHCR wassmall, poor and feeble. Few expected it to last for long.

However, it turned out to be a ratheruseful adjunct to West-ern foreign policy, particularly for refugees fleeing communist orSoviet-backed states. In 1956 the high commissioner used hisgood offices to help hundreds of thousands of Hungarians whofled the Soviet tanks, even though they were not covered by theconvention. Many were resettled in America or other countriesoutside Europe. The UNHCR helped victims of fighting in Africa

and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, and the1967 protocol to the convention removedits geographical and temporal limits.Agreements in Africa and Asia extendedthe scope of protection. Later, the Euro-pean Union created new forms of protec-tion that fell short of full refugee status, tohelp victims of war and other forms of vi-olence that did not meet the convention’sstrict definition. The result was an interna-tional mesh of laws and institutions tohelp displaced people around the globe.

Magic numberIn time the UNHCR identified three

“durable solutions” for refugees beyondproviding immediate sanctuary: volun-tary repatriation, integration in the coun-try that offered asylum and resettlementto another country, usually in the richworld. All are now floundering. Most refu-gees would dearly love to return home,but that would require resolution of theconflicts they fled in the first place, andthere is little sign of that for Somalis, Syri-ans or Afghans. Returns are at their lowestsince 1983, according to UNHCR figures.

That leaves integration and resettle-ment. Western governments can play acrucial role in both. To promote integra-tion in countries that may be resistant toopening their labour markets or overbur-dening public services, they can providefinancial and logistical support. For the

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Syrian refugees in Turkey, Jordan and Leb-anon, that can mean anything from cheaploans to the creation of special economiczones to assistance for overburdenedtowns and villages. In parts of Africa, thisreport will show, there are glimmers of anew approach that may offer refugees analternative to mouldering in camps.

But today’s politics has turnedagainst resettlement, in which vulnerablerefugees are moved to rich countries thatvolunteer to accept them, usuallywith thehelp of the UNHCR. Too often such richcountries, having clamped down on irregular flows, promisegenerous resettlement to compensate but fail to follow through.Australia, forexample, is often accused ofnot livingup to its vowto increase its resettlement quotas now that it has more or lesseliminated spontaneous arrivals of asylum-seekers by turningthem back at sea. There are worrying signs that the EU may fol-low sui���ague promises of mass resettlement of refugees from

Turkey to Europe have not materialised. America, which tradi-

tionally takes a large share of resettled refugees, has slightly in-creased its quotas but has been deterred by probably ill-foundedsecurity concerns since last November’s terrorist attacks in Paris.Canada’s new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, speedily madegood (at great expense) on an election promise to resettle 25,000Syrians, and then promised to take more. But this alone is a dropin the ocean.

As Peter Sutherland, the UN’s special migration representa-tive, notes, it seems unfair for a country’s proximity to war zonesto define its responsibility to refugees. To ward offthis danger, the1951 convention calls on signatories to act in a “spirit of interna-tional co-operation”, but places no specific obligations on coun-tries and regions not faced with a refugee influx. Last year’s crisisin Europe revealed the weaknesses of the global refugee regime.Europe learned that its carefully constructed asylum and border

rules were no match for migrants whoflouted them en masse. But it also foundthat the arrival of modest numbers of un-invited foreigners quickly upset its com-fortable political and economic balance.To keep them out, in March the EU signeda deal with Turkey that skates close to theedge of international law by obliging asy-lum-seekers who reach Greece to returnto Turkey, where some may face inade-quate protection or even refoulement.

All this shows up a glaring differ-ence in the treatment ofrefugees betweenthe rich and the poor world. In Europe,asylum-seekers are treated generously byglobal standards, even if some countrieshave tightened their rules. In most EU

countries they can work before they ob-tain refugee status (or some lesser protec-tion), and certainly afterwards. They arepromised housing, freedom of move-ment and protection from official harass-ment. Public services generally workwelland benefits are adequate. Afterfive yearsrefugees in EU states can usually becomepermanent residents (which gives themfreedom of movement throughout theEU), and in some cases full citizens. Andeven those whose bids for asylum fail areoften granted some of these privileges,partly because governments find it sohard to send them back.

Fortune favours the braveUnwilling to unwind these protec-

tions, European governments have sim-ply made it harder for asylum-seekers toreach their borders in the first place. Theoverall effect has been something akin toadystopian television game show: the ref-ugees must brave untold hardships toreach their destination, but a glitteringprize awaits them once they arrive.

For the 86% of the world’s refugees

It seems unfair that proximity to war zones shoulddefine responsibility to refugees

WORDS MATTER. OR, as Twitter-savvymigration campaigners on both sides ofthe Atlantic put it, #wordsmatter. Politicaladvocates have long sought to advancewords and phrases likely to generatesympathy for their cause: “pro-life” versus“pro-choice”, “spending cuts” versus“savings”. As opinion has divided overmigration, it is no surprise that the politi-cal battle has spread to linguistics.

Broadly, the best term for those whomove permanently from one country toanother, for whatever reason, is “mi-grants”. If they are fleeing persecution orviolence, they can present themselves asasylum-seekers; once their claim has beenaccepted, they become refugees, with allthe protections that entails. But for some,the term has become loaded.

The English-language service ofAl-Jazeera, a broadcaster, was cheered byrefugee-rights campaigners last summerwhen it vowed to stop calling the peoplestreaming across the Aegean “migrants”, a “reductive” word it said enabled “hatespeech and thinly veiled racism”. TheUNHCR, as the custodian of a legal frame-work that relies on a careful distinctionbetween refugees and others, preferredthe phrase “refugees and migrants”. Fornationalist demagogues like Hungary’sViktor Orban, “migrant” was about aspolite as it got.

America has experienced similarbattles. Latino campaigners have long

urged politicians and journalists to “dropthe I-word” when referring to America’sestimated 11m illegal immigrants. “Un-documented” is now in wide use, but thisperceived concession to political correct-ness irritates some. Donald Trump rouseshis crowds by reverting to the controversialterm “illegals”.

Other languages have their ownversions of this war of words. In German,those who object to the standard term forrefugees, Flüchtlinge (declared word of theyear for 2015 by the Society for the GermanLanguage), now use the PC term Geflüchtete(those who have fled). Germans expelledfrom Czechoslovakia and other east Euro-pean countries after the second world warbecame known as Vertriebene (driven out),a term that conferred victimhood. Mexicanswho unofficially live in the United States callthemselves sin papeles (“without papers”).

In Europe the picture is clouded bymixed motives and imperfect data. Afghansmake up the second-largest group of arriv-als, but around one-third of their asylumclaims are rejected. How should they becategorised? Few Syrians leaving homes inTurkey and Lebanon are fleeing for theirlives, but most win some form of protectionin Europe. And many Africans who emigratefor economic reasons encounter the sort ofpersecution on their journeys that providesgrounds for asylum. The distinction be-tween “refugees” and “migrants” matters tolawyers as well as linguists.

Terminological exactitudes

The way people talk about migration is carefully modulated

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who fetch up in the developing world, the reverse applies: thejourney is often (though not always) less arduous, but conditionsare likely to be far worse. By accidents of geography countriesthat border war zones, such as Lebanon, Jordan and Kenya, findthemselves the involuntary hosts of millions of refugees, somelanguishing in camps, others scratching a meagre existence onthe fringes of cities. Some of these countries, particularly in theMiddle East, never signed the 1951 convention. Others, mainly inAfrica, simply ignore its provisions, denying refugees the right toworkor travel, sometimes fordecades at a stretch. This leaves thehard-working but largely unaccountable (and often underfund-ed) humanitarian organisations that care for them, including theUNHCR, to serve as surrogate states, a role for which they arerarelysuited. The effectofthisapproach can be seen in places likeDadaab, a collection of five camps near Kenya’s border with So-malia described later in this special report (and now threatenedwith closure). There, a second and third generation of refugees isgrowing up entirely dependent on the rations, sanitation ser-vices and schooling provided by NGOs.

Europe’s dilemmaThis special report will argue that the Refugee Convention,

and the further protections embodied in regional agreements,should be retained. But it will also show that fresh thinking isdesperately needed to make them work, especially for refugeesin protracted situations. Developing countries will continue tohost the lion’s share of the world’s refugees, and that need notspell disaster: Syrians may have a better chance ofeconomic andsocial integration in Lebanon or Jordan than in Europe, and willbe more likely to return home if peace is made. Such countriescan also usually host refugees at a small fraction of the cost in Eu-rope or America. But they cannot be left to cope with the pro-blem alone, and when their limits are breached others will feelthe consequences, as Europe learned last year.

A new compact between rich and poor world is thereforeneeded. Europe will be the Petri dish. Other regions, includingNorth America and Australasia but also wealthier parts of theMiddle East, Asia and even Latin America, may follow. A UN ref-ugee summit in New York in September, devoted to exploringfresh avenues for international protection, offersa chance to startthe conversation.

But it will be hard for rich countries to extend more help torefugees when their own voters are fretting about a loss of con-trol. For European governments in particular, that means twothings. First, theymustensure that the integration of refugees likeAhmed proceeds as smoothly as possible, which is harder thanmany suggest. Second, they need to restore confidence in bordermanagement and their ability to control irregular migratoryflows. Europe’s response to lastyear’s crisiswas improvised, cha-otic, divisive and expensive. The damage was immense, and theloss ofconfidence will be hard to repair.

Western governments have been muddying the waters onmigration for decades, pretending that the “guest workers” theyhad imported to ease labour shortages would return home; rely-ing on armies of undocumented migrant workers; and makingunrealistic promises about their ability to control borders. Thishas fostered distrust, allowing anti-immigrant populists to flour-ish, and shrunk the political space for sensible and compassion-ate policies. It has exposed the West to charges of hypocrisy, notalways unwarranted. The hope must be that Europe’s troubleslast year will jolt politicians into taking a more far-sighted ap-proach towards refugee management, including better co-opera-tion among themselves and more help for the poor countriesthat bear the heaviest load. The fear is that, by spooking votersand polluting politics, it will do the opposite. 7

THE EARLY STAGES of Europe’s refugee crisis producedheartwarming imag����olunteers flocked to Greek islands

to help the refugees clambering ashore from their overloadedrubber dinghies. Locals lined the platforms of German railwaystations, applauding the migrants as they stepped off the trains.“I’ve neverbeen so proud ofmycountry,” saysKadidja Bedoui ofWe Do What We Can, a voluntary outfit in Sweden, which at thepeakwas receiving over10,000 migrants a week.

But as the people kept coming, more voters started to be-lieve populists who claimed that governments had lost control.The Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigrant party that hadgained notoriety with a television spot showing burqa-cladMuslims overtaking a shuffling pensioner in a race for publicfunds, topped polls. Eventually Sweden’s overwhelmed govern-ment slammed on the brakes, erecting border controls and tight-ening asylum rules. Other European countries saw the chaos inSweden and Germany as an example ofwhat not to do.

Politics

Welcome, up to a point

Politicians must keep better control of migration,and tell the truth

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International law obliges governments to help refugeeswho reach their borders, but domestic politics constrains theirroom formanoeuvre. Europe presentsa double challenge. First, itis a rich region with a commitment to human rights that happensto sit next to two poor, troubled and crowded ones: Africa andthe Middle East. Second, it is a (largely) borderless club of geo-graphically concentrated states with widely varying economies,benefit systems and labour markets. Asylum-seekers shoparound, leaving some EU countries to bear a far heavier burdenthan others. That sets governments against one another.

Over the years the EU has taken haltingsteps to manage thisproblem. The 2004 Qualification Directive, built on the frame-work of the 1951Refugee Convention, extended the scope of pro-tection beyond the definition in the convention and provided forcommon groundson which it could be granted. Otherrules guar-anteed minimum reception standards for asylum-seekers acrossthe EU and set out which country was responsible for each asy-lum claim (usually the first one a migrant sets foot in). Membercountries were unwilling to sacrifice too much sovereignty (forexample, by allowing EU officials to adjudicate asylum claims),but the rudiments of a common asylum policy worked wellenough when the number ofarrivals was limited.

But all that changed when over1m asylum-seekers reachedEurope last year. Most of them had travelled across safe coun-tries; indeed, a good number hailed from them, particularlythose Africans who sailed to Italy from Libya. European govern-ments had to decide whether to follow through on the promise

of comprehensive protection implied inthe EU’s asylum directives—and in therhetoric ofsome of their leaders.

The answer turned out to be no. AEurobarometer poll last July, even beforethe arrivals peaked, found that immigra-tion had become Europeans’ biggest con-cern, far ahead of the economic issuesthat usually dominate such surveys. Pop-ulist parties like the Sweden Democratslinked governments’ handling of migra-tion to their established claim that eliteparties are incompetent or treacherous.Once the Willkommenskultur in Ger-many and elsewhere receded and thebacklash began, panicked governmentsput up border controls and struck ques-tionable deals with third countries tokeep migrants out. A series of sexual as-saults by migrants on German women inCologne on New�ear’s Eve further dark-ened the mood.

Other rich countries have not facedirregular arrivals on anything like Eu-rope’s scale, leaving them largely free todesign their own refugee policies. TheUnited States, which signed the 1967 pro-tocol to the Refugee Convention but notthe original document, has traditionallytaken in the bulk of refugees resettled bythe UNHCR. But for decades its responsewas driven by foreign-policy consider-ations; between 1956 and 1968 all but1,000 of the 233,000 refugees it admittedcame from communist countries, accord-ing to Gil Loescher, a refugee analyst.

America continued to resettle refu-gees after the end of the cold war, and re-

mains the UNHCR’sbiggestdonorbyfar. But todaysecurity fears,sharpened after last year’s terrorist attacks in Paris and the masskillings in San Bernardino, California, make it harder for theObama administration to take in more than its current plan for10,000 Syrians (on top of 75,000 refugees from elsewhere). Lin-gering memories of the large numbers of illegal immigrants whoarrived in America from Mexico and Central America in searchof jobs in the 1990s may also have limited politicians’ options.

Pick and chooseCanada has taken a different approach. Its physical remote-

ness from any refugee streams has allowed it to pursue a gener-ous but selective immigration policy, based mainly on its owneconomic needs. One-fifth of its population is now foreign-born,the highest rate in the G8, and nearly half the immigrants have atertiary education. Last year Justin Trudeau, the newly electedprime minister, declared Canada the world’s first “post-nation-al” state. Public confidence in the country’s migration policy al-lowed Mr Trudeau to campaign on a pledge to resettle 25,000Syrian refugees, a rapidly executed policy that proved so popularthat the quota was increased to 35,000. Agrateful Filippo Grandi,head of the UNHCR, calls Mr Trudeau one of his two “saviours”(the other is J��ong Kim, the president of the World Bank).

But geographical seclusion can cut both ways. Japan show-ers money on the UNHCR but until 2010 accepted no refugees atall, in keeping with a closed-door migration policy that few vot-ers seem minded to overturn. Australia does resettle thousandsof refugees each year, but has taken a tough line on spontaneous

arrivals since a surge in boat people fromSouth-East Asia three years ago. The navynow intercepts all asylum-seekers at seaand either sends them back to their portof departure or directs them to detentioncentres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.This expensive and legally dubious poli-cy enjoys bipartisan political support,and Australia bristles at international crit-icism. Politicians have hinted at revisingor even withdrawing from the 1951 con-vention, which Australia signed.

EU officials often fume about the op-probrium heaped upon Europe over mi-gration while rich Gulf or Asian states

look the other way. Every time spontaneous arrivals to Europesurge, so do calls for barriers to be erected, navies to be dis-patched, laws to be scrapped—and allegations that Europe hassuccumbed to a newage ofprejudice. That isunfair. In Britain, forexample, where concerns about migration have been rising foryears (as has immigration itself), standard measures of xenopho-bia have been declining: just15% ofpeople worryabouta relativemarrying someone of a different race, down from 50% in themid-1980s, according to research by British Future, a think-tank.

Instead, the hostility springs from a fear that governmentshave lost the ability to manage who may or may not cross theirborders, supposedly one of their primary responsibilities to citi-zens. “Nothing erodes public acceptance of migration like theperception that it is out ofcontrol,” says Paul Scheffer, a Dutch an-alyst. That iswhyEurope, havingmessed up its initial response tothe migrant crisis, had no alternative but to strike its deal withTurkey in March.

oters have also grown tired of confusing and contradic-tory messages. Rare is the politician who can speak honestlyabout immigration. When foreign workers first arrived in largenumbers in western Europe decades ago, political leaders, espe-cially in Germany, insisted that theirs were not immigration

The EU’sprogress onmigrationand asylumrules hasbeenagonisinglyslow

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countries. But over the years voters watched a different story un-fold as the sights and sounds of the streets changed and govern-ments started to write integration policies. In countries likeSpain and America, politicians’ reluctance to acknowledge thatthey needed foreign workers led to growing irregular immigra-tion and, later, to embarrassing amnesties. America is still batt-ling this legacy. Immigration from Mexico to the United Stateswent into reverse at least two years ago, yet 38% ofAmerican vot-ers agree with Donald Trump’s proposal to build a giant wallalong the country’s southern border.

Politicians still struggle to talkabout immigration, says Sun-der Katwala of British Future. He thinks they should avoid dis-missing public anxiety by spouting facts and figures, whichpreaches to the converted but confirms sceptics’ fears about de-tached elites. But they should also resist aping the rabble-rousingof populists who will never command majority support. Themessages that resonate best with voters acknowledge the pres-sures of migration while calling for the benefits to be harnessed.Some politicians are getting the message. Since Sweden’s main-stream parties lifted the taboo that once surrounded debates onimmigration, support for the Sweden Democrats has slid.

Most importantly, politicians should remember that unre-alistic promises may come back to haunt them. David Cameron,Britain’s prime minister, will never live down his doomed vowin 2010 to reduce annual net immigration to his country to below100,000 (“no ifs, no buts”). Politicians in Sweden and Germanymay be repeating that mistake by pledging to send back tens ofthousands of failed asylum-seekers, which on past form theywill find hard to do. Designed largely to deternew migrants, suchtalk instead risks further eroding public trust.

But many liberals also need to come clean. The police andmedia cover-up after Cologne shattered many Germans’ confi-dence in their government’s policy. All sides need to accept thatrich countries cannot remain immune from the global increasein mobility, and that certain sectors would collapse without mi-grant labour; but also that refugees are not invariably a greatboon to economies, asadvocates suggest. But to ensure the maxi-mum benefit from the arrangements for everyone, the newcom-ers have to be properly integrated. 7

YEHYA IS ONE of the lucky ones. A refugee from the north-ern Syrian city of Aleppo, he reached the Netherlands in

June 2015, before the rush of arrivals swamped the asylum sys-tem. He obtained protection in just two months, entitling him tobegin integration classes at Implacement, an Amsterdam-basedfirm that offers refugees three-month courses on language, com-puter literacy and a basic introduction to Dutch life, taking ineverything from taxes to transsexuals (“Muslims find that a bitstrange,” admits an administrator).

Classes like these began in the early1980s, springing from aDutch integration policy written by Rinus Penninx, an academicwho feared that the guest workers the Netherlands had been im-porting, largely from Turkey and Morocco, and theirdescendantswere in danger of becoming an underclass. Initially legal, eco-

nomic and social integration was encouraged, but culture, reli-gion and customs were to be left out as part of a laissez-faire ap-proach that later, in the Netherlands and elsewhere, becameknown as multiculturalism.

It’s compulsoryIn time that changed as some Dutch voters grew anxious

about the cultural distance between some groups of migrantsand mainstream society. In 2004 the debate sharpened after aDutch-Moroccan Islamistmurdered Theo van Gogh, a controver-sial film-maker. Integration became, and remains, contested po-litical territory. The government shifted the burden of integra-tion to the migrants themselves, which Mr Penninx frowns on.Today the “Integration in the Netherlands” website baldly states:“You have three years to integrate…You must pass the integra-tion exam within this period of time.” This exam, which testslanguage skills and knowledge of Dutch society, is compulsoryfor any migrant who seeks to obtain permanent residence. Fail-ure to integrate can incur a fine of up to €1,250 ($1,410). After lastyear’s influx, other countries, such as Germany and Belgium, aremulling tightening integration requirements for refugees.

ManyEuropean governments face a dilemma: bettercondi-tions for asylum-seekers should help their integration, but mayalso attract more of them. Under the strict Dutch approach, asy-lum-seekers may not receive anything more than basic state as-sistance until their claim has been processed. After last year’ssurge in asylum applications to 59,000, that can take a year ormore after arrival. Limited employment rights are offered aftersix months. This delay infuriates local politicians, who want toget on with integration while asylum-seekers are still motivated.

Integration is one of the three “durable solutions” theUNHCR seeks for refugees. In the poor world, most governmentsfear unsettling their own citizens by allowing refugees to floodlabour markets. That is less ofa concern in the developed world;indeed, there is evidence that over time refugees may spur low-skilled natives to move into more productive employment. Butthe record of rich countries in integrating immigrants into theworkforce ismixed. America doeswell; itsflexible labour marketcreates large numbers of low-skilled jobs, and officials aim to getresettled refugees into workquickly. Last year the Migration Poli-cy Institute, a think-tank, found that in the United States, be-tween 2009 and 2011 male refugees were more likely to be em-ployed than their locally born counterparts; female refugeesfared as well as American women.

Integration

A working solution

The best way to settle newcomers is to find them jobs

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In Europe the results are patchier. Some of the more visiblesigns of failure to integrate earlier immigrants—from the ban-lieues that ring French cities to the divided towns of northernEngland—make it harder for governments to take in new ones.The country to watch is Germany, which took in 1.1m asylum-seekers last year. Some will be refused protection, and otherswill return home voluntarily. But Germany still faces the biggestintegration challenge in Europe; failure will discredit AngelaMerkel, the chancellor, and hamper her attempts to organise apan-European resettlement scheme for Syrians. The Cologne as-saults stoked concerns about cultural clashes. But the challengeof finding employment for hundreds of thousands of peoplemay prove tougher.

“What is integration? It’s a job, and speaking German,” saysAchim Dercks of the Association of German Chambers of Com-merce and Industry (DIHK). Recognising the powerofworkto in-tegrate newcomers, in 2014 Germany cut the waiting period be-fore asylum-seekers can lookfora job to three months. By EU lawmost countries must open their labour markets to asylum-seek-

ers after nine months, though several do not. All refugees are en-titled to workonce their claim has been approved.

Access to the labourmarket isoflittle use ifmigrants cannotspeak the language. That mattered less for the Turkish and Mo-roccan guest workers who manned Dutch and German assem-bly lines in the 1960s and 1970s. But today even basic jobs requirelinguistic fluency, if only to understand health and safety rules,so most governments lay on language classes for newcomers.That delays entry into the labour market.

A bigger problem is that refugees have tended to flock tocountries with little need for low- or unskilled labour. Half ofthose who have arrived in Sweden in the past two years havenine years or less of schooling, says Susanne Spector, a labour-market economist at the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise,but 95% of jobs require more than that, and the few basic jobsavailable attract an average of three applicants each. Germany’sFederal Employment Agency reckons that only10% of the recentarrivals will be ready to work after one year, 50% after five yearsand 70% after15. (Mr Dercks is more optimistic.)

A CONSPIRACY THEORY took hold in Germanylast year: it was self-interest, said critics, notcompassion, that led Angela Merkel to openthe door to hundreds of thousands of refu-gees. Greying Germany, expected to lose 10mof its current population of 81m by 2060,desperately needed an injection of youngworkers to boost its labour force and prop upits pension schemes. Who better to provide itthan the young migrants streaming acrossthe border? And what was good for Germanywas good for its neighbours. Nine of theworld’s ten countries with the highest shareof over-65s are European (the tenth is Ja-pan). Nor are more babies likely to bringrelief: the fertility rate in all EU countries isbelow—often far below—the replacementrate of 2.1children per woman.

Four-fifths of asylum applicants in theEU last year were younger than 35. Thanks toimmigration, Germany’s population stoppedfalling in 2011and has been rising slightlybut steadily ever since. Young immigrantscan help ageing societies in two ways: theylower the dependency ratio (the proportionof the non-working young and old to peopleof working age), and they often have morechildren than the native population, at leastinitially. America’s open immigration policyhas helped it maintain a relatively healthyage structure. By contrast, the population ofJapan, which allows almost no immigration,is declining by hundreds of thousands a year.Last year, as the magnitude of the refugeeinflows became clear, Vítor Constâncio, avice-president of the European Central Bank,said that immigrants could stop Europe from

committing “demographic suicide”.But migrants are no demographic

panacea. The scale of immigration needed tocompensate for Europe’s rising age profile ispolitically implausible. Germany’s FederalStatistics Office recently calculated that thecountry would need to accept 470,000 work-ing-age migrants a year to offset its de-mographic decline. And the migrants wouldhave to keep coming, because they age, too,and their fertility rates tend quickly to con-verge with those of the native population.Besides, they do not always stick around. Thefertility fillip Spain got from high immigra-tion before the financial crisis, for example,evaporated when foreign workers went homeafter the 2008 crash.

Not so fast

Refugees cannot solve Europe’s demographic woes

Indeed, demographics can present athreat as well as an opportunity. Populationforecasts for the Arab world and, in partic-ular, sub-Saharan Africa foreshadow growingmigration pressures. Thirteen of the 15countries with a total fertility rate (roughly,numbers of children per woman) above fiveare in Africa. In 2050, according to UN fore-casts, the population of Africa will be threetimes that of Europe, compared with lessthan twice as much today. The continentalready struggles to find jobs for the 11myoung men and women that reach workingage every year. Governments are often con-tent to see young people leave: emigrantsrelieve pressure on labour markets and sendhome juicy remittances. Europe will remainthe destination of choice for most of them,but they may not be a good fit for the jobs onoffer there.

Better, then, to help developing coun-tries create jobs for their own? The king ofMorocco supposedly once told EU leaders thatif they did not want his people, they wouldhave to scrap their agricultural subsidies andtake his oranges instead. This apocryphalstory got things upside-down: emigration inpoor countries tends to rise with income perperson, up to around $7,500 a year, as peopleacquire the means to leave. The Africanmigrants who reach Europe via Italy are oftenamong the richer and better-educated. So asAfrica gets wealthier, more of its people maydecide to chance their hand elsewhere. Somewill go to richer parts of their own continent,but plenty will seek the bountiful lands totheir north. Europe, look out.

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That leaves a lot ofmigrants drawingunemployment bene-fit; and long-term welfare dependency, particularly of non-citi-zens, drains treasuries and fosters resentment. Christina Merker-Siesjo, who runs Yalla Trappan, a social enterprise for migrantwomen in Rosengard, a refugee-heavy district of Malmo, saysSweden’s generous benefits can induce passivity among new-comers. Better to get them involved in some form of activity assoon as possible, whether paid or voluntary.

A recent IMF report urges countries to make labour marketsmore flexible to speed up the integration of refugees. Germany’sHartz labourand welfare reforms, introduced between 2003 and2005 by the then chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, made it more at-tractive to take the sort of low-skilled work that may suit manyrefugees, but plenty more can be done to loosen up what re-mains a tightly regulated labour market. From this summer anew “3+2” rule will protect refugees on three-year vocationalcourses from deportation for two years after completing theirtraining, removing a disincentive to recruiting them. Germanymay not be crying out for low-skilled labour, but its tradition ofvocational training can provide a bridge into workfor some. Thecountry could also do a better job of recognising the qualifica-tions ofskilled refugees, such as doctors.

In Sweden nearly 20% of the non-Europeans who immi-grated in 2002-12 were asylum-seekers and refugees, and lastyear’s influx will have pushed the number higher. This helps ex-plain why unemployment for immigrants, at16%, is almost threetimes that for natives. Employment rates for refugees are lowerthan for native Swedes even after ten years. Ms Spector says thatin the long run the best thing the government could do for immi-grants is to allow much greater variation in pay to encourage em-ployers to create more low-skilled work.

The lesser of two evils?That would be a hard sell in a country that cherishes its col-

lective-bargainingtraditions, in which employersand unions ne-gotiate annual wage deals. But some opposition parties haveurged a reduction in pay to get more refugees into work. Swedenmay ultimately have to choose between unemployment ranksswollen by refugees or a looser approach to employment andbenefit rules, including stronger incentives to work. That will betricky. The Hartz reforms, though widely credited with keepingGerman unemployment low, were blamed in part for MrSchröder’s defeat at the polls in 2005.

Last year’s influx of refugees included many children, andeducating them will be crucial for long-term integration. Coun-tries must balance their specific needs—especially languagelearning, which calls for segregated teaching—against the socialvalue of teaching them in the same classrooms as everyone else.Germany has recruited new teachers and set up one-year “wel-come classes” for newcomers with a focus on language teaching.

Housing presents another challenge. In most countries asy-lum-seekers are placed in reception centres until their cases areheard (unless they can find theirown accommodation). Once ac-cepted, they are usually free to live where they like. But cities thatare popular with refugees, such as Berlin, may not offer the bestworkopportunitiesorbe well placed to provide welfare support.To avoid overconcentration, the German government is consid-ering obliging refugees to stay put for their first two years.

Canada has tried an alternative to the usual state-led inte-gration model. Since 1978 it has allowed voluntary groups, suchas churches or diaspora organisations, to sponsor refugees pri-vately, supporting them financially for a year and introducingthem to life in their new home. One-third of the 25,000 Syrianrefugees Canada has recently taken in were resettled this way.Privately sponsored refugees tend to integrate more quickly; one

study found that aftera year76% had jobs, compared with 45% ofthose backed by the state. The British government is now consid-ering a scheme along Canadian lines.

But in the poor countries where most refugees live, integra-tion poses an entirely different set of problems. In long-estab-lished refugee camps NGOs usually provide services like healthcare and education, sometimes to a higher standard than is avail-able to the country’s ordinary residents, but governments rarelyallow the refugees to work. Labour-market restrictions haveforced most of the working-age Syrian refugees in Turkey, Leba-non and Jordan into black-market jobs, with the attendant ex-ploitation. Little wonder that so many aspire to a better life in theWest, either braving dangerous journeys to get there or acceptinga long wait for a state-backed resettlement. 7

NINE COUNTRIES HOST most of the world’s refugees.None of them is wealthy. All border war zones, from Syria

to South Sudan. The simplest way for rich countries to help thepoorones that shoulder the lion’s share ofthe global refugee bur-den is through resettlement, the UNHCR’s second “durable sol-ution”: accepting refugees directly from the countries they havefled to. Many countries have had annual resettlement quotas fordecades, agreed with and implemented through the UNHCR.America, for example, plans to take in 85,000 refugees this year.But the numbers are nothing like enough to accommodate themost acute refugee emergency: the 5m or so Syrians stranded inTurkey, Lebanon and Jordan, not to mention the 7m displaced in-side Syria, many ofwhom could still flee.

That is why some Europeans have sought a new approach:eliminate, or at least drastically reduce, irregular migrant flows,and launch a mass refugee-resettlement scheme instead. It is a

Resettlement

Bring me your huddledmasses

It worked for the Indochinese. Why not the Syrians?

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2 beguiling idea: replace chaos with order, destroy the businessmodels of the smugglers who thrive on illegality, and have coun-tries choose refugees rather than the other way around.

Mass resettlement was supposed to play a large part in thecontroversial agreement struck between the European Unionand Turkey on March 18th. The deal committed the Europeans totaking in one Syrian refugee from Turkey for every irregular Syri-an sentbackfrom Greece. Largernumberswould be resettled un-der a separate “voluntary humanitarian admissions” scheme,which could also include Jordan and Leb-anon. The more ambitious speak of reset-tling 250,000 Syrians a year to Europe. Ifthat inspired America and otherrich coun-tries to step up their efforts, the burden onSyria’s neighbours might become moremanageable and the chaos of irregular mi-gration could be brought under control.

It has been done before. Almost all of the 180,000 Hungar-ians who fled to Austria after the Soviets suppressed the 1956uprising were quickly resettled, some as far afield as Nicaraguaand New Zealand. But for most the model is the Indochinese“boat-people” crisis that began in the 1970s, which gave rise toperhaps the most successful mass resettlement in history. Mil-lions of refugees scrambled on to boats to flee the communistgovernments that tookover�� ietnam, Laos and Cambodia fol-lowing the American military withdrawal in 1973. When over-burdened South-East Asian countries started to turn refugeesaway, the international community took action. Between 1975and 1995 about 1.3m Indochinese refugees were moved to richcountries, mainly the United States, Canada and Australia.

Most settled in well. In America, the median household in-come of immigrants from South-East Asia is now higher thanthat of people born in the country. Filippo Grandi, the UN’s refu-gee chief, notes proudly that the refugee co-ordinator whoshowed him around Illinois on a recent visit was an evacueefr�� ietnam. The response to the Indochinese boat people sug-gests that co-ordinated global action with a bigdollop ofpoliticalwill can resolve refugee crises. Could it workfor Syrians?

Probably not. The numbers are far larger today, and Syriansare not the only people seeking refuge. America’s generosity to-wards the boat people sprang in part from a desire to show sol-idarity with the victims of communist regimes. (The same had

been true of the Hungarians.) The West may sympathise withthe victims of Bashar al-Assad’s barrel bombs, but sees little geo-political gain in helping them. Even the Indochinese effort wasneither quick nor easy. It involved several false starts and lots ofarm-twisting, and tookyears to complete. And Europe’s politicalwill has been sapped by the chaos of last year’s mass arrivals.

But if Europe cannot muster the will for mass resettlement,the danger is of drift towards an Australian-style solution inwhich a “hard” rejection policy is unleavened by generosity and

neighbours are left to bear the burden. Australia boasts that it haseliminated the unplanned arrival of asylum-seekers by sea. Butits politicians’ promises to boost the resettlement of refugeeshave not been kept: quotas fell from 20,000 in 2012-13 to 13,750 in2014-15 (although numbers are due to rise again). Campaignersdevote their energy to undoing Australia’s offshoring deals withPapua NewGuinea and Naururather than boostingresettlementnumbers. Europe may be moving in this direction: the push forresettlement has got lost in the row over the deal with Turkey.

Chaos into orderIf Europe cannot do it, what about the rest of the world?

Canada’s programme, described earlier in this report, is gener-ous but pricey, and highly selective: single men are placed at theback of the queue. America is already struggling to meet itspledge to resettle 10,000 Syrians this year. Barack Obama wouldprobably like to take more, but that will be hard in an electionyear dominated by Trumpian immigration demagoguery. Andfears of terrorism have clouded the issue, despite elaboratescreening protocols for refugees that can take two years or more.After last November’s attacks in Paris, Republican governors fellover themselves to declare their states closed to refugees.

In other regions the picture is dimmerstill. Japan and SouthKorea, never known for generosity towards refugees, have notagreed to accept any Syrians at all. The same goes for the richGulf states, none of which has signed the Refugee Convention.Some, such as Saudi Arabia, host large numbers of Syrians onwork visas, but these offer nothing like the protection affordedbyrefugee status. Brazil isa brighterspot; ithas issued humanitar-ian visas to over 8,000 Syrians under an open-door policy, al-though barely a quarter of them have made the journey so far,not least because they have to find their own air fares.

With the usual routes apparently blocked, Mr Grandi hastried to expand the criteria for resettlement through “additionalpathways”—university scholarships, expanded family reunionand humanitarian visas. Over the next three years the UNHCR

hopes to move at least 450,000 Syrian refugees to the West,mainly from Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. But a recent confer-ence in Geneva failed to attract many new resettlement pledges.

It seems clear that there will be no Indochinese-style massresettlement solution to Syria’s refugee crisis. That may not be adisaster. Resettlement is in some ways an admission of defeat.Refugees who have been accepted into a third country are lesslikely to return to their original homes than those who remainwhere they were first granted asylum. “I’m not a big fan of [reset-tlement], but what are the alternatives?” asks Mr Grandi. Forthose in the world’smost “protracted refugee situations”, that is acrucial question. 7

Some Europeans are now arguing for a new approach:drastically cut back irregular migrant flows and put inplace a mass refugee-resettlement scheme instead

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LOOK AT US, we’re just sitting here,” says Hassan al-Ba-rouk, a refugee from al-Qusayr, a Syrian town near Homs.

The air inside the tent in which your correspondent encountersMral-Baroukand a clusterofother refugees, part ofa small campoutside the Lebanese town of Saadnayel, is thick with hopeless-ness. There is no talkofadventuring to Europe, no question ofanorganised resettlement to a country that might offer a future. In-stead the complaints pour forth. The Lebanese authorities makeit impossible to register, which denies refugees the ability tomove freely. Schools arbitrarily stop Syrian children from attend-ing classes. Work is forbidden. The main way ofpassing the timeis swapping WhatsApp messages with friends and family backhome, as the regular phone chirrups testify. Everyone in the tentsays they want to return home to Syria, but no one believes it canhappen soon.

Refugees like the 24 families in this “informal tented settle-ment” (the Lebanese government does not allow official refugeecamps) make up 15-20% of the Syrians in Lebanon. Most of therest rent their homes, which are often just garages or disusedwarehouses. The camp-dwellers are the poorest of the bunch,obliged to sell assets and take on debt to pay their bills, includingannual rent of $300-$1,000 a year per tent. NGOs are on hand tohelp, but food rations have been cut for lack of funding. Onlyemergency medical treatment is covered. Some towns here inthe Bekaa valley, an agricultural region in Lebanon’s east, havemore refugees than locals. And they are not going away.

A troubled landLebanon has more refugees per head of population than

any other country; its near-neighbour Jordan has one-third thenumber. Riven by sectarian strife between its Sunni, Shia andChristian populations, and with a 15-year civil war in livingmemory, Lebanon is a minnow in a volatile region with irasciblegiants like Iran and Saudi Arabia tugging at its politics. Its frac-

tious parliament has been unable to elect a president since 2014,and struggles to hold legislative sessions more than once a year.At times the state is unable to perform basic functions, as themountains ofuncollected rubbish bags on some streets testify.

Lebanon’s economy was splutteringeven before the Syrianrefugees crossed over, and the 1.5m now inside its borders—morethan the total number of asylum-seekers who reached Europelast year—make up overone-quarterofits population, disruptingthe labour market, overburdening water and sanitation systemsand, since the vast majority are Sunni, upsetting the sectarianbalance. The public debt has swelled. Lebanon’s attempts to dis-tance itself from Syria’s strife have faltered as Hizbullah, the Shiamilitia, has intervened to help the Assad regime and Sunni terro-rists have scrapped with Lebanese troops in the country’s north-east. Add to all this the apparently insoluble problem of the half-million Palestinian refugees living in the country, and you mightreasonably askhow Lebanon is managing.

To answer that, Nasser�assin, an academic at the Ameri-can University of Beirut, points to the extensive and long-stand-ing informal networks between Syrians and Lebanese. Under adeal struck in 1993 Syrians could work in Lebanon without visas;perhaps halfa million were doing so before the war. (Jordan hada similar arrangement.) Many of the scruffy refugee settlementsaround Lebanese towns grew out of informal housing plots forSyrian farm workers. Syrians working illegally for low pay onfarms or building sites are competing mostly against each other(or Palestinians); few Lebanese are interested in such jobs. Eu-rope, suggests Mr�assin, could learn a thing or two from Leba-non about the value of informal mechanisms.

Perhaps half the Lebanese economy is underground, andthe authorities tend to turn a blind eye to Syrians who workwithout permits. The ownerofa large, popularSyrian restaurantin the middle ofBeirut says finance-ministry officials told him tofind a Lebanese business partner to get round ownership restric-tions. He, and many other Syrians like him, are useful sources ofemployment forrefugees. Some Syrian capital has followed refu-gees over the border, and private landlords benefit from lots ofnew tenants who are pushing up rents. Every refugee has a storyto tell about ill-treatment at the hands of locals, but there havebeen no widespread protests or reports of systematic persecu-tion. The wide dispersal of refugees around the country mayhave helped.

Thus has Lebanon stayed afloat for now. But, notes���as-sin, the country is storing up trouble. Life has become much

Lebanon’s and Jordan’s plight

Caught by geography

Syria’s neighbours bear a heavy burden

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tougher for refugees since the government tightened its rules lastyear. Registered Syrians must now pay $200 to renew residencypermits and sign a pledge not to work; the non-registered requirea Lebanese sponsor. Most refugees do not have official papers,and over two-thirds live below the official poverty line. Someschools are “double-shifting” (Lebanese in the morning, Syriansin the afternoon), but most refugee children are not in school atall. Many must toil in the fields to help keep their families going.

Little wonder so many Syrians grabbed the chance to leavefor Europe when it came last year. In January, as Turkey preparedto reintroduce visas for Syrians travelling from third countries,the queues at Beirut airport stretched around the block. But nowthat that valve has been shut, a large, idle population could startto pose a security threat. Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian al-Qaeda affili-ate, has sought to recruit among refugees.

Can the UN’s “durable solution” of integration work here?Not according to one French official, who says Lebanon wouldcollapse if forced to offer citizenship to all the refugees it has tak-en in. Thatmaybe true, but there isplentyofground between theextremes of mass naturalisation and permanent limbo. Fortu-nately the West has started to rethink its approach. A recent do-nor conference in London raised $11 billion for Syrian refugees,and promised more help for host communities.

This is already bearing fruit in some quarters. The deputymayor of Majdal Anjar, a town in the Bekaa that took in 25,000refugees, boasts about the shiny new rubbish-collection vehiclehe has been sent, courtesy of the UN. Donors such as Britainspeakenthusiastically offunding sewage systems, irrigation pro-jects and flood walls for particularly burdened regions. The EU

plans to relax trade barriers on certain goods from Jordan tocreate jobs for both locals and refugees. In exchange for all thislargesse, donors want the beneficiaries to do more for the refu-gees they host, in particular by opening up their labour markets.At the London conference the Lebanese governmentpromised toease formal restrictions in a few sectors. This summer Jordanplans to launch a pilot programme that will offerworkto 150,000refugees in low-tax special economic zones.

Charges that the West hopes to manage its refugee problembythrowingmoneyat itmaybe justified. Butmoneygoes furtherin the region than it does at home: Mr�assin estimates it can cost40 times as much to host a refugee in Britain than it does in Leba-non. And although the NGOs are skint, fresh forms of financingare emerging. The World Bank recently relaxed its rules on pro-viding cheap loans to middle-income countries facing humani-tarian crises, such as Jordan and Lebanon.

A hologram governmentIn some ways Lebanon is a special case. What Rabih Shibli,

also at the American UniversityofBeirut, calls its “hologram gov-ernment” makes it difficult for foreign diplomats to extract reli-able commitments. And like most other Middle Eastern coun-tries, Lebanon held back from signing the Refugee Convention.But more than five years into the Syrian crisis, there are signs thatthe governmentmayrelaxsome ofits strictures, particularly if itsown citizens can see some benefit. Here, and elsewhere in the re-gion, donorscan encourage thisbyworkingwith the grain ofsuc-cessful regional and local programmes. Amore predictable fund-ing structure would help, so that refugees do not see wild swingsin their financial support, and municipalities can better plantheirprovision ofpublic services. And the West’s resettlementef-forts should extend beyond Turkey to Jordan and Lebanon.

All told, the refugees in Lebanon and Jordan are probablystill betteroffthan the hundredsofthousands in Kenya’sDadaabcamp 4,000km to the south, near the Somali border, who havelived there all their lives. 7

“STATUS DETERMINATION”. “IMPLEMENTING part-ners”. “Well-founded fears”. One of the first things you no-

tice aboutDadaab, a sprawlingcollection ofrefugee camps in theKenyan desert 90km (56 miles) from the Somali border, is the jar-gon. It comes thick and fast in conversation with the NGO work-ers running the field offices and health clinics. It is on the postersin agency compounds and the donated t-shirts sported by tod-dler���ou even hear it from some of the younger refugees, be-cause the quickest way to get a water pipe fixed or a latrine builtis to use the language of rights and repression. In Dadaab, theworld’s largest agglomeration of refugees, the bureaucracy is al-most as stifling as the heat.

It was not supposed to be like this. The refugee-protectionregime established after the second world war promised liveli-hoods and security offered by stable states, not NGOs. But al-though many Europeans may imagine refugees as people on themove—crossing the Mediterranean in overloaded rubber din-ghies or trudging through the Balkans—Dadaab is closer to the re-ality ofmost ofthe world’s displaced people. Some 345,000 refu-gees, 95% of them Somalis who have fled across the border, arespread across five camps, their lives governed by dozens ofNGOs that have little understanding of development or state-building, and a Kenyan police and securitypresence that at timescan feel more like an occupying force.

Back in 1991, when the UNHCR first consolidated the infor-mal settlements established by Somalis fleeing civil war into anorganised refugee camp, no one expected Dadaab to last thislong. But over time the camps grew (some now resemble cities),informal economies emerged and people got used to the life. So-malia’s endless strife made return home difficult for most.

In many respects the NGOs that run the place do a fine job.The schools they operate are overstretched, but that is partly be-

Refugee camps in Africa

From here to eternity

Kenya’s Dadaab camp has become many refugees’permanent home—but the goverment wants to shut it

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2 cause they have attracted lots of pupils. There are no funds fortreatingchronicconditions, but the clinicsare clean and well run;acholera outbreaklate lastyearwasquicklycontained. Manyref-ugees dislike the maize, beans and flour they are given—“donkeyfood”, says one—but now that the UNHCR has introduced a bio-metric system to cut fraud, it is at least distributed efficiently.There are flourishing secondary markets for UN rations. In someways the services are better than those available to some Ken-yans, so thousands oflocals, mainly ethnic Somalis, have passedthemselves offas refugees to gain access to the camps.

But agencies can do only so much. Few refugees are able towork. Once children finish school there is little chance of highereducation except for the lucky few who obtain scholarships toplaces like Canada. “What’s the point?” asks Deka Abdullahi, anambitious 18-year-old at Hagadera Secondary School, who com-plains that her hard work will leave her no better off than girlswho quit school years ago. Many refugees have simply pressedpause on life, idling away the hours by chewing the fat (or thekhat). A second generation has grown up with no knowledge oflife outside Dadaab; a third is already10,000 strong.

The “docile, disempowered” refugees, writes Ben Raw-lence in City of Thorns, an account of life in Dadaab, “do as theyare told. They hesitate before authority and plead for their rightsin the language of mercy.” Their lives are shaped by externalforces that reach the camps through two main tribunes: the agen-cies and NGOs that sustain them, and the Kenyan government,which wants to close them. Then there is the violence of Soma-lia’s al-Shabab insurgency, which has spilled over into the campsin previous years.

Dadaab isa much saferplace these days, but that is nothowKenya’s politicians see things. The government says the campsharboural-Shabab terrorists. In May itabruptlydisbanded itsde-partment for refugee affairs and said it would close Dadaab byMay 2017, without explaining how such a massive operationmight be carried out. Some saw the announcement as a ruse toextract more money from donors, who have been distracted bythe Syrian crisis. Since 2010 the UNHCR’s fundingforDadaab hasfallen from $223 to $148 per person a year (excluding food). TheWorld Food Programme cut its rations by 30% last year. Previouspledges to close Dadaab have come and gone, yet this time thegovernment seems more determined.

Aid groups warn that closing Dadaab could trigger a hu-manitarian catastrophe, particular ifrefugeeswere sent into dan-ger zones across the Somali border. But the government has rare-ly been interested in outsiders’ views. For years donors haveurged Kenya to allow refugees to integrate, by loosening restric-

tions on work, opening up to investment in infrastructure or al-lowing them to move out of the camps. But even if the govern-ment does retreat from its plan, there is no prospect of localintegration for the denizens ofDadaab, and only a lucky few willbe resettled.

That leaves the UNHCR’s third “durable solution”: volun-tary repatriation. In 2013 the UNHCR and the Somali governmentbowed to Kenyan pressure and backed returns for Somalis in Da-daab. Under this “tripartite agreement” the UNHCR arrangesjourneys back to Somalia for willing refugees. They are given a$100 voucher for food, and agents follow up with phone calls tocheckon their progress. “The world is looking at the Middle East,not at us,” says Abdisaid Aden, a former businessman, as he pre-pares to board a repatriation flight to Mogadishu after five yearsin Dadaab. He blames cuts in the camps for his decision to leave.Over14,000 refugees have returned since the scheme took effectin December2014. But that is not fast enough for the government.

Almost all those who have been repatriated are from thesecond influx of Somali refugees, who arrived in Dadaab in2010-11fleeingdroughtasmuch asviolence. The first, much largerwave, dating to 1991-92, will be harder to persuade. With settledlives in the camps, they have more to lose and, in most cases, lit-tle to return to: mosthave sold, or lost, whatassets they had in So-malia. “I’m not going anywhere,” grins Bishar Barre, a tailor whohas lived in Hagadera, the largest of the five camps, since 1992.His small clothes-repair outfit keeps him busy, and his ten chil-dren have places in the camp’s schools. He says he will leaveonly ifeveryone else does.

Try another wayElsewhere in Kenya things may be more promising. In Kalo-

beyei, a settlement outside Kakuma, another refugee camp, inthe remote north-west, a plan is afoot to grant refugees smallplots of land and allow them to sell their produce. (Kakuma wasalso slated for closure in May, but the government appears tohave backtracked, as there are no suggestions of terrorist links tothe camp.) Cash vouchers may replace food rations to encouragelocal economic integration. It is early days, but agencies hope Ka-lobeyei may be built up to accommodate 60,000 people. The ex-periment was inspired by a model over the border in Uganda,where refugees from Congo, Rwanda and elsewhere have longbeen granted a degree of self-reliance. From beginnings in farm-ing, some have now diversified into commerce and manufactur-ing. One-fifth of refugees in Uganda employ people outside theirfamily, and of those 40% are Ugandans, according to research byOxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre. This approach has

provided refugees with livelihoods andhope, and helped secure some supportfrom their Ugandan hosts.

Alas, back in Dadaab the residentshave no such ambitions. Instead they areleft to pray for more generous donors, agradual improvement back home andmercy at the hands of their Kenyan hosts.Around the world, from Pakistan to Gaza,over 11m refugees are living in such “pro-tracted situations”. “We don’t have a fu-ture,” says�ictoria, a South Sudanesewoman, as she concludes a phone con-versation with an NGO about a brokenwater tap. “We’re just refugees.” This is lifefor hundreds of thousands in Dadaab.Syrians entering their fifth year of dis-placement in neighbouring countries fearthey might be going the same way. 7

The Kenyangovernmenthasclampeddown onrefugees’freedom ofmovement

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THE REFUGEE CONVENTION says that states should do“everything within their power to prevent [refugees] from

becoming a cause of tension” between them. They have mani-festly failed. Chaotic flows set governments against one another.Countries hosting lots of refugees bitterly resent the rest of theworld for failing to do its bit. Refugees, bar the lucky few whohave made it to developed countries, are increasingly locked inlimbo, wards of a system run by NGOs that offers them no hopeofbuilding a meaningful life.

Thatdoesnotmean the world should rip up the conventionand start again, as some urge. A tapestry of international law hasbeen woven around the idea that there is a specific class of peo-ple who deserve the protection of states other than their own.Starting from scratch is more likely to undermine that idea thanexpand on it. A legal definition of refugees is needed to secureconsent in countries that protect them. Without it the right to asy-lum, and the prospect of resettlement, will evaporate.

Instead, suggests James Hathaway of the University ofMichigan, view the convention as a beautiful house with a worncarpet. It needs renovation, not reconstruction. That means twothings. First, recognition that refugees will eventually need morethan humanitarian protection. Second, a new compact betweenthe rich world, which has the resources to manage the problem,and the poor, which bears the brunt of it. Countries like Lebanonand Kenya are providing a global good and deserve more help.

The startingpoint must be a new approach to protracted sit-uations to place integration at the heart of refugee policy. That

does not mean giving refugees immediate citizenship rights (al-though in due course they should be offered to some). The pos-sibility of a return home should never be blocked off. But overtime, grantingrefugees a degree ofself-determination can reducethe distressing waste of human potential in places like Dadaab,and reduce friction between refugees and their hosts.

For too long Western politicians have been profuselythanking refugee-hosting countries for their generosity whilechastising them for not allowing their guests to work or movearound freely. Such hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed in the de-veloping world. So in a related change, the West should intro-duce long-term development thinking into refugee policy, thebetter to align the interests of refugees with those of the commu-nities that host them.

Some refugee aid should be shifted from humanitarianagencies to development budgets, politically difficult thoughthat might be. The World Bank has already changed its rules tohelp middle-income countries facing large refugee burdens. Indi-vidual rich countries, or clubs of them, could offer trade prefer-ences to countries with large refugee populations, as they do forthe world’s poorest. But governments are not the only actors. Jor-dan’s economic zones show how the private sector may be en-couraged to help both locals and refugees.

Be preparedManaging the world’s stockofrefugees is one thing; dealing

with sudden flows from conflict areas that can strain economies,infrastructure and social cohesion is another. Countries like Leb-anon and Jordan, dealt a poor hand by geography, should not beleft to cope on their own.

It is impossible to tell where or when the next wave of dis-placement will appear, but educated guesses can be made. TheUNHCR is worried about women and children fleeing gangs inCentral America and heading for the United States. In north-eastNigeria Boko Haram has displaced 2.2m people. The Middle Eastis as flammable as ever. And otherpotential sources of large pop-ulation shifts loom, notably climate change, which might gener-

Looking ahead

How to do better

Spontaneous migrant flows cannot be prevented, butthey can be handled more competently

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would otherwise struggle tokeep a lid on. The disorderlyflows into Europe last year werethe outcome of a problem al-lowed to fester. “Refugees areconvincing governments of theneed to act,” says Mr Grandi ofthe UNHCR. If nothing is done,“they will come anyway.” Euro-pean leaders no doubt regrethaving paid so little attention toillegal migration until a year ago.Many fear the next wave, fromLibya, Turkey or even Russia. Apre-emptive approach might beseen as a form of insurance. Sothere is a strong case for Europeleading the way.

But first the EU must get itsown house in order, using thebreathing space that the dealwith Turkey has granted (pro-vided it holds). Rather thansquabbling about plans drawnup in Brussels to spread refugeesaround member countries, itshould think about differentways in which countries maycontribute, be it in cash or inkind. There is a case for generat-ing common resources to man-age this common problem,whether by issuing bonds, as Italy has proposed, or through anew tax, as Germany might prefer. At the same time the EU mustcontinue its slow trudge towards a harmonised asylum system.

The advantages of co-operation are less obvious to coun-tries isolated from the direct consequences of regional unrest,such as Australia, Japan and, to a degree, America. But they, too,have an interest in preserving the liberal order that is threatened

by vast refugee flows. They do not want to see the EU, its greatestchampion, tear itself apart. Another refugee crisis in the MiddleEast could topple governments, with unpredictable conse-quences in a combustible region. And even the status quo mightnot be stable. Some refugee populations, if left to rot, can turn towhat aid groups call “negative coping strategies,” from drugabuse to crime to the threat of terrorism across borders. Manywill be exploited, especially children.

In the end, though, nothing can force a government to domore for refugees outside its borders. The policies of the next ageof refugee management still depend on a spirit of compassionand humanitarianism. Migration is an intrinsically ambivalentbusiness, both for the governments that must manage it and forthe migrants themselves. The hopes they have invested in a newhomeland will always be tempered by regret for what they havelostand byfearofwhatmaylie ahead. Asforpolicymakers, thereis nothing they can do to prevent unpredictable refugee flows.But they could certainly make a better job ofmanaging them. 7

14 The Economist May 28th 2016

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Artificial intelligence June 25thChinese society July 9thThe company September 17thThe world economy October 1st

2 ate fresh waves of migration as arable land degrades and waterscarcity leads to conflict and flight.

Help from the rich world should begin with the traditionalresponses: more resettlement and more help for humanitarianbodies. Acutely overstretched countries should be given particu-lar support. David Miliband, head of the International RescueCommittee, a humanitarian group, wants rich countries to ac-cept 10% of the world’s refugees, concentrating on the most vul-nerable. More money is needed, too. Last year the UNHCR wasable to meet only half the needs it had budgeted for, and severalof its projects were left massively underfunded.

But fresh thinking is also needed to help countries avoidsinking into protracted situations. Places like Lebanon shouldnot have to hold out the begging bowl at hastily convened donorconferences every year or two. Agencies have learned to moveequipment and personnel near conflict zones in preparation fora wave of refugees. An expanded global fund for displacement,overseen by an independent authority that can spring into ac-tion when required, would make such planning and responseeasier. Governments might prefer the predictability of regularlypaying into a fund to ad hoc donor events. And once refugee pro-blems turn from acute to chronic, the response should shift fromhumanitarian to development.

The International Organisation for Migration, which maysoon be folded into the UN, could help match global migrationsupply and demand as part of a tighter international migrationregime. But global governance has its limits. The internationalsystem is prone to inertia and turf wars. The UNHCR, the tradi-tional guardian of the rules governing refugee movements, nolonger carries the clout it once did, andmay find it difficult to embrace fresh ap-proaches to protection. So the political en-ergy for change will have to come fromgovernments, often acting together. Thenext American president, if so inclined,might encourage a rethink of the globalprotection scheme, perhaps with the helpofa new UN secretary-general.

The new approach should workwith the grain of international politics. Bi-lateral relationships often yield better re-sults than sluggish international bodiescan offer. Spain’s deals with West Africancountries such as Senegal, which combinepolice and patrol co-operation, repatria-tion deals and lots of aid, slashed illegalimmigration some years ago. Some coun-tries will be well placed to accept particular refugee groups be-cause of historical or colonial ties, as in the successful resettle-ment in Britain of the Ugandan Indians expelled by Idi Amin in1972. Rich countries seekingto plugparticulargaps in their labourmarkets might be encouraged to take in refugees.

It’s everyone’s problemAll these changes would make it clearer that legal responsi-

bilities to refugees cannot be separated from politics. Too oftennational politicians and international officials talkpast each oth-er: accusations of xenophobia fly in one direction, dismissals ofstarry-eyed idealism in the other. In the West, the first principlesof international refugee law are wearily revisited every timenumbers surge.

Lawyers and NGOs need to accept that the treaties andrules they cherish will wither without the continued consent ofthe democracies that drew them up. Politicians, for their part,should acknowledge that aid agencies manage a problem they

Migration is an intrinsically ambivalent business, bothfor the governments that must manage it and for themigrants themselves