How can governments strengthen the solidarity of locals toward forced migrants?

By Jacqueline Bhabha, JD, MSc
Director of Research, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights; Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Why do local people who generously welcome forced migrants arriving on their doorstep often change their attitude as time passes? Put differently, why does local solidarity all too often morph into hostility or even rank xenophobia with the passage of time? The Distress Migration Program at the FXB Center has been investigating this question for several years. As solidarity toward forced migrants becomes more and more urgent in the U.S., with the vertiginous unravelling of decades’ old protections, the question seems more pressing than ever for a center founded to study health as a human right.

We first observed the dissipation of enormous solidarity and its gradual replacement by local hostility on the small Greek island of Lesvos in 2019. We studied how island residents became progressively dissatisfied with the failure of the authorities to address changing needs in the face of a huge increase in demand for services caused by forced migration. While the population on the island swelled from a couple of thousand migrants to over 850,000 in a space of 10 months[1], as Syrian Afghan and Iraqi refugees fled persecution in search of safety, neither the Greek nor the EU authorities significantly increased the island’s supply of educational, medical or other basic services. Predictably, the single island hospital became overwhelmed and treasured old olive trees were chopped down to provide fuel for encamped refugees in the face of harsh winter weather[2]. As a result, local people who had wholeheartedly welcomed the refugees – rescuing them from the sea with their own hands, providing food, clothing and shelter – over time became resentful of the deterioration in their quality of life caused by official inaction. Not a sign of any inherent or “natural” xenophobia, but rather a preventable dissipation of local solidarity in the face of government inaction[3]. 
 
Fast forward to 2023, and the impact of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine on neighboring countries. The FXB Distress Migration Program undertook a research project in Poland to study local reactions to the very large influx of Ukrainian refugees[4]. Because the EU, with unprecedented speed and foresight activated a long dormant “temporary protection directive”, arriving Ukrainians were immediately granted three years’ legal permission to stay and work. Generous EU funds supplemented local resources to support the access of Ukrainians to public services. As a result, local Poles’ initial solidarity persisted – no dramatic deterioration in their communities ensued, no sense that their access to healthcare or education was being jeopardized. Despite a complex history of mutual antagonism dating back to World War 2, Poles generally maintained their solidarity towards fleeing Ukrainians. 

In late 2024, the FXB Distress Migration Program secured a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to further pursue the question of local solidarity towards distress migrants in two Latin American countries, Mexico and Colombia. The Foundation was interested in learning from the experience of these two countries, both of them recent recipients of large-scale distress migration. In particular the foundation wished to better understand the drivers of local solidarity (or its absence) with a view to disseminating relevant findings where they might positively impact government policy, in the U.S. and more broadly. We are at the very start of our research but after two initial trips, one to Mexico and one to Colombia, we are optimistic about the likelihood of substantial “learnings”. We have been extremely fortunate in the partners we have secured – the Mora Institute in Mexico, a government funded social science research institute in Mexico City, and Pro Familia, an independent sexual and reproductive health non-profit organization in Colombia. Together with our partners, we have decided on four case study sites for each country.

Our very preliminary impressions suggest that the findings will be highly informative. In Mexico City, we met with migrant shelter staff and elected government officials deeply committed to an “intercultural” politics of inclusion and non-discrimination: mechanisms for promoting migrant access to necessary documentation and to appropriate services were evident even in the poorest parts of Mexico City. So were official initiatives to build bridges between locals and those newly arrived. In the Colombian capital Bogota and in Cùcuta, a city bordering Venezuela, we met with government employees providing “integrated services” catering to the needs of both local and migrant populations, again in very impoverished neighborhoods. In both countries, the messaging was clear – on billboards and in the comments of officials who spoke with us: everyone, irrespective of their nationality, gender identity or legal status, has a right to health. This of course is consistent with international law which has long enshrined the right to health as a core entitlement for all human beings. Our partners’ messaging also perfectly complements the founding principle of the FXB Center which is that health is a human right. We look forward to moving forward with data collection, and eventually dissemination of findings that we hope will better inform governments about how to support and not undermine local solidarity towards those forced to flee their homes for safety. 

[The above represents solely my own views and does not necessarily represent the views of the institution.]

[1] UNHCR (2015). Greece – 2015 Year-End Report Summary. Available at: https://reporting.unhcr.org/greece-2015-year-end-report-summary
[2] Ethnos. (November 15, 2019). Λεσβος: Μηνυτήρια αναφορά για την κόλαση της Μόριας. Available at: https://www.ethnos.gr/greece/article/72284/lesbosmhnythriaanaforagiathnkolashthsmorias
[3] Bhabha, J., Digidiki, V., Markowska-Manista, U. (forthcoming). Solidarity towards Distress Migrants: How Changing Frontline Communities depend on States to build a new Public Space. In R. Rubio Marín, D. Estrada Tanck, B. Menezes Queiroz and F. Staiano. Migration and Human Rights. Edward Elgar Handbook.
[4] Digidiki, V., Bhabha, J. Markowska-Manista, U. & Dobkowska, J. (2024). Building Inclusion, Sustaining Solidarity towards migrants in frontline local communities: The case of Poland during the Ukrainian Refugee Crisis. FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, Boston, USA.