Institutional Strengths of Wealthy Countries and the Migration Crisis - A Crossroads at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Institutional Strengths of Wealthy Countries and the Migration Crisis - A Crossroads at the Beginning of the 21st Century

At the beginning of the 21st century, climate change is accelerating human migration and testing the institutional readiness of countries. Rich countries in the Northern Hemisphere have strong administrative structures and infrastructure, giving them an advantage in post-disaster recovery and maintaining livelihoods. The European Union, for example, has a policy of climate adaptation and energy transition, and the United States and Canada are considered to have the ability to weather the storm with their disaster prevention technology and economic strength. However, this institutional strength does not necessarily translate into flexibility in immigration.

Looking at the international situation at the time, in the early 2000s, the influx of refugees from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq shook the politics of Western countries. In addition, immigration from the Middle East and Africa surged across Europe, providing the backdrop for the rise of anti-immigrant political parties. For wealthy countries, even hundreds of thousands of immigrants were a factor in fragmenting domestic politics and amplifying fears of cultural conflict and insecurity. In contrast, poor countries such as Bangladesh and Sudan, despite having millions of displaced people, had to rely on international aid due to weak institutional and financial foundations.

This contrast is why it is called the migrant crisis. The essence of the crisis lay not in the number of migrants themselves, but in the inability of the receiving countries to reach a political consensus. At the time, the United Nations and the World Bank advocated the need to view the migration problem from the three axes of security, humanitarian, and climate adaptation, and technologically, GIS-based migration forecasting and biometric immigration control were beginning to be introduced. However, the fact that wealthy countries with institutional capacity were actually reluctant to accept immigrants further deepened international tensions.

This contradiction persists to this day, and the debate at the time posed the fundamental question of how to view human mobility in the era of climate change.