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Expertly curated news and analysis on human migration around the world.  

Writer's pictureTeam AID International

Mafia exploitation, fugitives from conscription, techie trafficking and more

News

The Panamanian National Migration Service states that over 150,000 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, have traversed the dangerous Darién Gap wilderness to enter Panama from Colombia, en route to the southern US border, the highest recorded so far.

Sicilian agricultural labor unions and watchdogs of the agriculture-mafia nexus are striving to halt exploitation by regional agricultural mafia (caporaleto) who force thousands of immigrants without necessary paperwork to work as underpaid farm labor with neither job security nor benefits.

The German government has pledged to grant additional land and resources to towns and cities coping with a Ukrainian refugee influx, while simultaneously tightening border control with Austria and the Czech Republic to curb migration from other countries like India.

Eritrean authorities are using illegal detention and withholding of essential supplies to force families to turn in eligible adults for military service in neighboring Ethiopia’s civil war in which the Ethiopian army is fighting the northern Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The Indian government announced the rescue of 130 Indian IT workers lured by scammers promising lucrative jobs to Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, then illegally smuggled into Myanmar and forced under threat of violence to perpetrate cyber fraud and other digital crimes.

Severe flooding in northeastern Thailand has inundated over 1,000 villages, forcing more than 20,000 people to take refuge in temporary shelters, with authorities warning of similarly serious threats to heavily populated urban areas like Bangkok in the coming days.

Opinion and analysis

This article from the Brookings Institute presents an insightful account of the socioeconomic and cultural factors driving internal migration of African Americans within the USA. From a mass south-to-north exodus in the early 20th century, the analysis chronicles the steady trickle of black Americans returning to the south since the 1970’s.

Spain has the world’s third largest immigrant Romanian population, with over 0.5 million resident Romanians in 2021. This Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysis dissects the various factors underlying the boom and decline of Romanian migration to Spain in the early 2000’s, in countries of origin as well as destination.

In this report, Foreign Policy magazine uncovers one of the least discussed fallouts of the Russia - Ukraine conflict, namely the mass exodus of Russian men into neighboring Central Asian states to escape conscription, with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan being preferred destinations.

As Australia undertakes multiple initiatives to attract migrant workers to help meet its current, severe labor shortage (estimated vacant jobs: 490,000), workers’ rights advocates are campaigning for policy reforms to ensure fairer treatment of migrant workers in a system hitherto characterized by rampant violations of labor law where immigrant workers are concerned.

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