This seminar is open to the public.
Gone are the days when most forced international migration occurred along well-charted and predictable routes. People fleeing war, violence, climate related disaster, and other threats to their lives now routinely lack any official humanitarian assistance. Instead they are forced to resort to tortuous and improvised itineraries which not only expose them to serious, even life-threatening risk, but also bring them face to face with frontline host populations ill-equipped to receive and sustain them. Yet, despite their lack of preparation and necessary support, time and again, these frontline hosts rise to the humanitarian challenge—displaying remarkable material generosity and openness of spirit despite the disruption to their quotidian routine and the lack of effective institutional engagement.
This pervasive aspect of frontline host behavior, which we refer to as empathic solidarity, is both critical and fragile. In such settings, the cost of inaction is high and potentially irreversible. Once allowed to take root, the dissipation of solidarity, and its replacement by hostility, from frontline hosts sets in motion negative and foreseeable outcomes widely documented in policy analyses across comparative contexts. Proactive state and international policies that anticipate and strengthen the empathic solidarity of border communities, could, by contrast, foster generative win-win outcomes.
The Migration Cluster Seminar features interdisciplinary speakers discussing how to sustain empathic solidarity for distress migrants in their host communities.
