CityReads│A Massive Loss of Habitat

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What Is behind the New Migrations: A Massive Loss of Habitat

A massive loss of habitat from massive land-grabs to poisoning of land and water due to mining is behind the new migration.

Saskia Sassen, 2016. A Massive Loss of Habitat: New Drivers for Migration,Sociology of Development,2(2):203-244.

Source:

Picture source: 

Aral sea,1989-2014,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea#/media/File:AralSea1989_2014.jpg

I examine three flows that have emerged very recently. One of these is the sharp increase in the migration of unaccompanied minors from Central America—specifically, Honduras, Salvador, and Guatemala. The second is the surge in Rohingyas fleeing from Myanmar. The third is the migration toward Europe originating mostly in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and several African countries, notably Eritrea and Somalia. Yet each points to a larger context marked by mostly extreme conditions, because it is not simply part of a chain migration where households may play the crucial role in producing an economic calculus that allocates particular members to the migration option.

Extreme violence is one key factor explaining these migrations. But it is not the only one. I add a second key factor: thirty years of international development policies have left much land dead (because of mining, land grabs, plantation agriculture) and have expelled whole communities from their habitats.

Moving to the slums of large cities, or, migration, has increasingly become the last option. This multidecade history of destructions and expulsions has reached extreme levels made visible in vast stretches of land and water bodies that are now dead. At least some of the localized wars and conflicts arise from these destructions, in a sort of fight for habitat. And climate change further reduces livable ground.

On the basis of these destructions and on the characteristics of the three emergent migration flows, I argue that this mix of conditions—wars, dead land, expulsions—has produced a vast loss of habitat for a growing number of people. These, then, are not the migrants in search of a better life who hope to send money and perhaps return to the family left behind. These are people in search of bare life, with no home to return to.

Feeding the loss of habitat: a new phase of advanced capitalism

Today’s phase is marked by the expulsion of growing numbers of people and the destruction of key components of the “advanced” capitalisms of the mid-twentieth century in order to feed an advanced capitalism shaped by extraction and financialization.

Inside capitalism itself we can characterize the relation of advanced to traditional capitalism as one marked by predatory dynamics rather than merely evolution, development, or progress. At its most extreme this can mean immiseration and expulsion of growing numbers of people who cease to be of value as workers and consumers. But it also means that traditional petty bourgeoisies and traditional national bourgeoisies cease to be of value. I see these destructions as part of the current systemic deepening of capitalist relations. One brutal way of putting it is to say that the natural resources of much of Africa and good parts of Latin America and Asia count more than the people on those lands count as consumers and as workers.

First, debt as a logic of extraction. For much of the 1980s and onwards indebted poor countries were asked to pay a share of their export earnings toward debt service. This share tended to hover around 20 percent. From 1982 to 1998, indebted countries paid four times their original debts, and at the same time, their debt stocks went up by four times. These countries had to use a significant share of their total revenues to service these debts.

The primacy of this extractive logic became a mechanism for systemic transformation that went well beyond debt service payment—the devastation of large sectors of traditional economies, including small-scale manufacturing, the destruction of a good part of the national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, the sharp impoverishment of the population, and, in many cases, the impoverishment and thereby corruptibility of the state.

The second feature is how this gradual destruction of traditional economies prepared the ground, literally, for some of the new needs of advanced capitalism, among which are the acquisitions of vast stretches of land—for agriculture, for underground water tables, and for mining. Precisely at a time of extreme financialization and systemic crisis, we see the growing demand for those material resources. The third feature is the new survival economies of the poor and the impoverished middle classes.

The rise of foreign land acquisitions expands the operational space of advanced capitalism. From 2006 to 2011 over 200 million hectares of land in Africa, Latin America, and particular regions of Asia were acquired by foreign governments and foreign firms.

The key reason for these land acquisitions is rapid development in some parts of the world generating a demand for industrial crops, food crops, wood, water, metals, and more.

While the much-reported explosion in global food demand and in its prices has certainly been a key factor in this new phase of land acquisitions, it is biofuels that account for most of the acquisitions. Cross-referenced data from the Land Matrix show that biofuel production accounts for 40 percent of land acquired. In comparison, food crops account for 25 percent of cross-referenced deals, followed by 3 percent for livestock production and 5 percent for other nonfood crops.  Farming broadly understood accounts for 73 percent of cross-referenced acquisitions. The remaining 27 percent of land acquired is for forestry and carbon sequestration, mineral extraction, industry, and tourism.

A second major pattern is the massive concentration of foreign acquisitions in Africa.

Land acquisitions can be categorized into four main groups: (1) oil-rich Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and Jordan; (2) populous and capital-rich Asian countries such as China, South Korea, Japan, and India; (3) Europe and the United States; (4) private companies from around the world. Investors are mostly energy companies, agricultural investment companies, utility companies, finance and investment firms, and technology companies.

Migrants in search of bare life: three extreme cases

I focus on key features of a variety of emergent flows, each marked by extreme conditions.

Central America: Unaccompanied Minors

Central America is one of the key regions for the flight of unaccompanied minors that took off over the last two years. What is new is this flow of unaccompanied children driven out from their homelands mostly by the extreme urban violence that has erupted over the last few years. The sharp rise in urban violence is partly generated by the expulsions of rural workers from their land due to the expansion of plantations growing food for the United States market, and the dying of the land itself, due to excess pesticides and fertilizers. Cities increasingly are the only places where these displaced men and women can go.

In 2014,Ninety-eight percent of unaccompanied minors arriving at the United States border were from Honduras (28 percent), Mexico (25 percent), Guatemala (24 percent), and El Salvador (21 percent). 

Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are the most violent places in the world. Furthermore, these countries are among the poorest nations in Latin America. This combination of elements contributes to explain high emigration among both children and adults. Most extreme is El Salvador, with up to 18 percent of the population leaving.

The arrival of tens of thousands of minors in the United States created distinctive challenges. Many have been housed in detention centers that have been described as unacceptable for the housing of minors. It is becoming a sort of crisis for some local governments now hosting thousands of them.

South East Asia’s Refuge Seekers: The Andaman Sea

There are about 1.1 million Rohingya living in Myanmar; they are not recognized as citizens. There is active persecution of the Rohingya for being Muslim.

The country’s opening and its enabling of foreign investors coincides with a somewhat sudden vicious persecution of the Rohingya by particular groups of Buddhist monks and the expulsion of the Rohingyas from their land, and even the killing of Muslims. The renewed persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya people is happening in a context of sharp increases in land grabs for plantations and mining.

In various areas of Southeast Asia we see significant evictions of small farmers from their land to make way for mining, plantations, and office buildings. Foreign firms have been among the major investors since Myanmar opened its economy to foreign investment. 

Mediterranean Migrations toward Europe

The Mediterranean, especially on its eastern side, is now the site where refugees, smugglers, and the European Union each deploy their own specific logics and together have produced a massive multifaceted crisis.

Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan are major sites for the making of desperate refugees. It is an era of violence in the Middle East and North Africa, with nine civil wars now going on in Islamic countries between Pakistan and Nigeria. This is why there are so many refugees fleeing for their lives. Half of the 23 million population of Syria have been forced from their homes, with four million becoming refugees in other countries.

The number of global refugees in 2014 was over 60 million. Over the last two years about 25 million people were driven from their homes, including almost 12 million Syrians, 4.2 million Iraqis, 3.6million Afghans, 2.2 million Somalis, and almost half a million Eritreans.

These people are expelled and there is often no home to return to. These trends are enormous challenges to the international system. Besides war, the failed development policies contribute to the incapacity of the governments involved to prevent the current collapse of whole segments of their society and economy.

Conclusion: in search of bare life

The histories and geographies shaping these three sets of flows are varied and complex. There are no easy solutions. These are not emigrants; they are refuge seekers. "Sending them back from where they came" is often not an option. What was once home is now a war zone, a new private gated community, a corporate complex, a plantation, a mining development, a desert, a flooded plain, a space of oppression and abuse.

The flows are to be distinguished from the 250 million-plus regular immigrants in the world today. They are subsets of larger flows of displaced people whose numbers are approaching 80 million. But they stand out by their sudden surging numbers and by the extreme conditions in the areas where they originate.

War is not always the main cause. They often point to longer histories of oppression and exploitation of a country’s population and the destruction of local economies. Much of it is indirectly or directly enabled by predatory local elites and often severely misguided “development programs.”

I examine three emergent migration flows, each with specific features that can be described as extreme. One big difference from the past is that part of the story is a massive loss of habitat due to a variety of extreme patterns, from massive land-grabs to poisoning of land and water due to mining. I examine how the development models implemented over the last 30 and more years have enabled some of these negative conditions. Further, another major factor reducing the habitat of these migrants is a proliferation of asymmetric wars. Both sets of factors reduce the habitat for more people. One outcome of this combination of elements is these new migrations.

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