Rohingya refugees sit in a boat as they are intercepted by Thai authorities in January 2013. AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.
Whenever there is an unexpected mass movement of people, the media is quick to name it a crisis. Before the current situation in the Mediterranean captured global attention, mass migrations in Central America and south and southeast Asia briefly made headlines in 2014 and 2015. But these events were blips on the radar and did not provoke any sustained action to change global and regional migration policies.
Migration has become an international priority only now that it has become a problem for Europe at an unprecedented level. Although this can be seen as evidence of the eurocentrism of the world system, it also provides an opportunity to learn from previous migration ‘crises’ in order to reform migration policy at the global level.
