The U.S. isn’t alone. More than 146,000 people applied for asylum in Canada in 2023, a record—and over 1.5 times the previous record, set in 2022. More than 1.1 million applied in the EU, the highest figure since the influx of refugees from the Syrian civil war in 2015-16. In the past three years, about 15 million people have sought new lives in the world’s wealthiest countries. It’s the biggest surge in a century.

With many citizens across the West becoming more anxious about immigration—the issue having fueled support for populist-right parties and candidates for years now—more of their governments are tightening restrictions on it. Those who’ve left their home countries, meanwhile, face dislocation, difficult journeys, and often lasting trauma. Others fare worse. Last year was the deadliest year ever for migrants. More than 8,500 died en route. So why are so many people on the move?

Rebecca Hamlin is a professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the author of two books on migration, Let Me Be a Refugee and Crossing. When it comes to migration, Hamlin says, a lot of people get a lot wrong. For one, most migrants don’t come from the world’s poorest countries. They come from countries that are no longer so poor. Usually, migrants move within their region—not to the West. And the vast majority don’t leave simply to look for better employment opportunities. Instead, they often feel forced by a combination of things—not least, violent conflict, material hardship, and climate change.

As Hamlin sees it, wealthy countries are wasting their money trying to prevent migration. Migrants, she says, aren’t deterred—even when they know the journey will be longer, harder, and more expensive. And even when they know they might die trying …

• “The news media, government policy, international and domestic laws—they all tend to divide migration into two basic kinds: forced or voluntary. But it’s way more complicated. People usually decide to move because there’s political instability or conflict in their country, for example, and because they’re suffering extreme material consequences as a result. War tends to bring poverty and corruption. These factors interact. Then add climate change and you can start to see why so many people are moving.”


• “Major destination states, like the wealthy countries in Europe and the United States, aren’t willing or able to grant refugee or asylum status to more than a certain number of people a year. So it’d be a mistake to look at those numbers and say, Only one in 10 people trying to enter the Global North each year are real refugees. It’s impossible to know. The reasons why people migrate are so multifaceted, and destination countries don’t have accurate records of how many migrants were forced to leave their countries of origin. Some forced migrants might get authorized entry into a destination country through a visa application. Some might get employment, student, or spousal visas. We just don’t know the real numbers.”


• “A lot of people are trying to figure out ways to measure the effectiveness of policy, but it’s very difficult. The debate is around measurement and whether we can really gauge the effects of these deterrence policies.
  It does seem as though Trump winning in 2016 had a deterrent effect, but that wasn’t necessarily about any particular policy; it was just the feeling that he was intimidating. On the other hand, there’s no evidence that news of the Biden administration’s crackdown on the asylum-adjudication process—making it harder to get into the U.S.—got through to the people considering migrating. Still, many countries assume tough policies work.”

Downfall in Dhaka

Bangladesh’s supreme court overturned the law behind the quota system, but the protests grew into a broader movement calling for Hasina’s removal. She’d ruled Bangladesh since 2009, regularly quashing dissent, including by killing opposition activists.

Amid the recent protests, government security forces and vigilantes from Ms. Hasina’s party—among them, a paramilitary unit whose past leaders have faced international sanctions over accusations of torture, kidnapping, and murder—cracked down on demonstrators, arresting more than 10,000 of them.

Why did the crackdown fail—and the rebellion work?

The most violent day of protests was August 4, as almost 100 demonstrators died in clashes across Bangladesh. But that evening, protest leaders decided to move up by one day a planned mass march to Hasina’s residence, originally scheduled for August 6. Instead of backing down when faced with a new curfew and rising violence, the protesters realized that the public’s fear of the regime had largely faded, allowing the movement to continue growing. Dozens of former senior military officers also called on its current leadership not to rescue “those who have created the current situation.” On August 5, the army chief announced Hasina’s resignation, saying he’d begin the formation of an interim government.

Hasina, one of the world’s longest-serving female leaders, was the daughter of Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh to independence and served as its first president. He and most of his family were assassinated in an army coup in 1975, survived only by Hasina and her sister.

—Michael Bluhm

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