Unravelling Nigerian Migrations to China

Since the 1990s, migration in the West has been going through a process of politicization, in part due to the geopolitical shifts that occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the impacts of economic transformations like the Schengen agreements and the rise of anti-immigration sentiments. More contemporarily, the influx refugees in countries like Greece have impacted local, regional and national policy, law and politics.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, immigration has become highly securitized and migration controls have increasingly become normalized as a means to control security threats. These changes are ongoing with the current debate on immigration in the United Kingdom and the United States, among many instances.

In addition to affecting public sentiments, law and policy, the politicization of migration has also led to changes in research on international migration. A lot of research today focuses on migration to the West and the effects migration has in that sphere. Very little, however, has been said about the migrations happening between non-Western developing countries.

According the UNHCR Global Trends Report of 2015, 86 per cent of refugee migrations happen between developing countries. Despite this, most of the developments in international refugee law are taking place in the West; and this has led to an imbalanced international refugee regime that focuses more on Westward migrating refugees, paying insufficient attention towards migration patterns across the rest of the world.

Developments in the West are important and insightful but using them as the only lens through which we understand international law contributes to the disconnectedness between international law and non-Western narratives and experiences. It also reinforces the distance between the global South and global North, where states from the former region are considered to be sender state and states from the latter, consisting of desirable destinations. Analyses of South-South migrations and their implications on international law are, therefore, important in challenging these constructs.

In Mutua wa Makau’s 2000 analysis, “Critical Race Theory and International Law: The View of an Insider-Outsider”, the current system of international law and international relations is based on the consolidation of Western domination of the world over time. This has resulted in institutionalized hierarchies and dichotomies that are destructive and oppressive because they silence narratives that are non-Western and offer significant and alternative knowledge.

As a result, a refocus on the impact of south-south migrations is necessary. This reconsideration is possible by focusing on emerging narratives in non-Western contexts of South-South migrations. According to Obiora Chinedu Okafor, the purpose of such reconsideration would be “to write the Third World into international legal analysis, focusing on under-studied narratives of third world peoples in international law.” South-South migrations are currently understudied and under-analyzed in international law, as opposed to other disciplines such as anthropology. A multiplicity of approaches and narratives of international migrations is needed in the consideration of the development and evolution of international migration globally.