The long-term aim is EI Dorado: the Arab Middle East, as well as Iran and Iraq, the Mecca to all prospective migrants from South Asia, where the seductive lure of dirhams and comparatively well-paid, if menial, jobs beckons.15 A passage to the Middle East means several things: status at home, a steady income and, for the unmarried, an upswing in the marriage market. But in many cases, the hopefuls end up not in El Dorado but as helpless prey of touts, mercenaries and border guards—as in the brothels of South Asia.

Mixed Migration

The importance of handling these economically-driven outflows, in addition to the refugees and displaced people that move across the world, was highlighted by Sadako Ogata, the then United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, when she travelled to India in May 2000. Calling for a separation of migrants and refugees, she defined the category of economic migrants as the ‘third dimension’ of the problem of displacement.

‘Poverty, under development and unemployment are also contributing to population movements in search of economic opportunities. Population flows are therefore increasingly becoming mixed in nature. Some are migrating for economic reasons; others are fleeing from conflict and persecution. Managing mixed migrations poses serious challenges, if the rights of asylum seekers and refuges are to be safeguarded,’ Ms Ogata declared to an attentive audience in Delhi.16

Ms Ogata, one of the world’s best known advocates of refugee rehabilitation during her tenure as UNHCR chief, recognized a crucial issue in her visit to India that many other refugee rights’ specialists had forgotten. That in some nations, such as India, migrants are more significant as a political and economic issue than refugees.

This was a message that went home to her hosts for it was a theme close to the heart of the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Delhi.

She spoke of the increased mobility among communities internationally as they struck out for better lifestyles. ‘Increased mobility and the disparity in resources also mean that population movements will be, more and more, a mix of refugees and economic migrants. We shall encounter with increasing frequency the case of a person fleeing his or her own country for a variety of motives: fear, danger, persecution, certainly; but also, equally compelling, the legitimate urge to seek a better life.’

The urge to seek a better life is indeed legitimate. The problem arises when the means to fulfil that aim are illegitimate.

Chapter Eight

An Inner World: Chars, Islanders and Diwanis