The aim of the study is to discuss how refugees are different from or similar to the “ordinary” labor or economic migrants. The analysis will focus on refugees and issues such as assimilation or pluralism, identity, transnationalism, or settlement/citizenship rights and how they are different or similar to economic immigrants.
Main Analysis
Refugees are groups of persons that flee from their country due to political or ethnic persecution or conflict. Refugees end up in forced or involuntary migration. On the contrary, labor migrants are a group of people that migrate due to economic reasons. In most cases they migrate for voluntary motives.
From the finding above, refugees and labor migrants have some similarities in the sense in which both result to migration as a solution to their plight. However, they differ in their motives since refugees flee due to political conflicts and ethnic tensions unlike labor migrants who migrate for economic reasons. The other difference is that refugees do not exercise their freewill in their decision to migrate like labor migrants who do so voluntarily.
In addition, refugees are people who receive official recognition from a government of their status as refugees; therefore, they are granted visas and get permission to immigrate within the country. This is different from asylum seekers since they do not get legal recognition of their status as refugee from the host government.
Statistics indicate there are 11.5 million international refugees while the number totals to approximately 33 million. International community, for instance, first world countries should intervene in order to reduce crises affecting refugees. Such intervention has been more evident where refugees occupy territories of economically and politically stable nations. This refers to refugee crises that took place in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Darfur.
Assimilation is the process where minority immigrant groups adapt the culture of the dominant group and end up incorporated into the majority society. On the contrary, ethnic pluralism is where immigrants do not become incorporated to a dominant culture (American society) but retain their cultural identity. Cultural assimilation affects the persons (refugees) and they experience high levels of stress as well as mental disorders. Language is among the issues affected by cultural assimilation.
Another sensitive issue refers to immigrant rights and citizenship. This is because they end up living in a host country permanently or indefinitely due to reasons such as economic hardships found back home, assurance of improved living standards while in the host society et cetera.
The other scenario is that immigrants end up more socially embedded in the host society and it becomes impossible for them to abandon the experience. As a result, they decide to stay longer in the host society and invite their relatives where such leads to chain migration.
Therefore, upon immigrants’ settlement in a country for a long period, the government should protect their fundamental human rights. Other civil rights for the refugees include freedom of thought, expression, and movement. Additionally, they should not be subjected to torture or persecution without just course.
They are entitled to economic rights such as access to decent jobs, worker protection and capacity to join trade unions. This extends to political rights such as freedom of assembly or association, social rights such as access to education or medical care and entitlement to retain their cultural identity.
Conclusion
The study has demonstrated the similarities and differences between a refugee and labor immigrant. The most important difference is that the former flees the country due to political or cultural persecution. While in the latter, they just flee in order to seek economic opportunities, therefore, are not forced by the circumstances. All in all, refugees should be empowered as ends in themselves so that they can return to their countries and participate in nation building.