MigrationMigration Is Rising, but So Do Border Barriers

By Gianna-Carina Grün

Published 13 August 2021

The global population grew by a quarter over the past 20 years, but the numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers doubled in the same time frame. Today, one in 97 people is forcibly displaced. In 2015, it was one in 175. The trend of rising migration parallels another trend that attempts to halt or at least manage the first, as more and more countries are building, or announcing, various border wall complexes.

Although thousands of miles apart, Lithuania and the Dominican Republic have something very specific in common: Due to increasing migration from their respective neighboring countries, both recently decided to tightened their borders.

Both countries are showcases of an ongoing trend: The world today is seeing ever more refugees and asylum-seekers than two decades ago. Political conflicts and the effects of climate change are among factors forcibly displacing people around the world. And the situation looks set to continue along this path.

Whereas the global population grew by a quarter over the past 20 years, numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers doubled in the same time frame, according to United Nations data. Today, one in 97 people is forcibly displaced. In 2015, it was one in 175. Most of these displaced people have found refuge in countries in western Asia and North Africa, such as Turkey or Sudan.

Latin America and the Caribbean have seen the biggest increase in refugee numbers — more than 100-fold from 2000 levels (from 44,000 to 4.8 million), with Colombia, Chile and Peru witnessing the biggest increases. According to UNHCR, this is mostly due to the fact that 3.6 million Venezuelans displaced abroad have been included in the most recent figures.

This spike had the region catch up with other migration hot spots, such as sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and North America, where refugee numbers roughly doubled since 2000.

More Refugees, More Border Walls
The trend of rising migration parallels another trend that attempts to halt or at least manage the first: Between 2000 and 2021, the number of completed, started or announced border walls in the world more than quintupled, from 16 to more than 90 wall complexes, as data collected by DW shows.

Governments mostly cited illegal immigration as the main reason for building border walls, followed by illegal trade (i.e. the smuggling of goods, and trafficking of people or drugs) and terrorism concerns, according to a study headed by the Delàs Center for Peace Studies that analyzed border walls built between 1968 and 2018.

Barriers: Patchy or Highly Militarized
The effectiveness of border barriers against irregular migration, illegal trade or terrorism attacks is not always easy to assess, since there are often multiple interlinked factors at play.