Racism and migration
RACISM AND MIGRATION Introduction Today, one in every 50 human beings is a migrant worker, a refugee or asylum-seeker, or an immigrant living in a ‘foreign’ country. Current estimates by the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are that some 175 million people live temporarily or permanently outside their countries of origin (2.5 per cent of the world’s population). Many of these, 80-97 million, are estimated to be migrant workers and members of their families. Another 12 million are refugees outside their country of origin. These figures do not include the estimated 20 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) forcibly displaced within their own country, nor tens of millions more of internal migrants, mainly rural to urban, in countries around the world. Given this picture of the scale of migration, it is not surprising that the Durban Conference gave extensive attention to migrants as a major category among the contemporary victims of racism, raci