Is migration a human right?

Your question states that migrants are migrating to access safer living conditions and better standards of living and are dying in pursuit of these. In response to your inquiry about whether migration is a human right, I second what Dr. Fahmy stated above: migration is not a human right. Additionally, there is no legal definition of what constitutes a migrant. However, scholars generally agree that a settler is someone who changes their country of usual residence regardless of the reason for migrating or changing legal status. As Dr. Fahmy stated above, migrants only have rights under international law through refugee (someone who applies for refugee status outside of U.S. borders) and asylee (someone who applies for asylee status inside U.S. borders or at U.S. port of entry) processes or domestic immigration processes. The main point here is that if you are a person seeking asylum because your state is persecuting you or your state is unable or unwilling to stop someone else in your state from persecuting you, that is grounds for asylum, provided you meet the threshold requirements during your asylum hearing in the states. What is not grounds for asylum is if your state is unable to provide for you, e.g., meet your standard of living necessary for your human dignity. The human right to migration does not exist, and that is okay because not everything is a human right–not everything is meant to be a human right. However, stemming from this consensus comes a more pressing and interesting question. What criteria are currently missing from the asylee and refugee framework? Your question implies criteria some scholars argue should be grounds for refugee status, i.e., wanting a standard of living adequate for human dignity, e.g., fleeing state fragility. Migration is not a human right (it is not accepted that casual migration/economic migration rises to the level in which the act of migration thus constitutes a human right), yet displaced people still exist outside of the framework. Therefore, what criteria are currently not grounds for refugee or asylum status but arguably should be considered as criteria?  In an article titled “Survival Migration: A New Protection Framework,” by Alexander Betts, Betts introduces a new concept called Survival Migration (Betts 361). Survival Migration is defined as “persons outside their country of origin because of an existential threat to which they have no access to a domestic remedy or resolution” (Betts 365). The “persons outside their country of origin” bit implies that people have access to the international community, and the international community has access to them (Betts 365). The “existential threat” bit is not limited to the right to life but includes core elements of dignity grounded in basic rights (Betts 365). A basic right refers to a right, for without it, no other rights can be enjoyed, i.e., basic liberty, basic security, and basic subsistence (the current refugee regime includes, to some extent, the first two but does not touch on the latter) (Betts 365). The nonexistent “access to domestic remedy or resolution” bit implies that there is an inability to find a solution within domestic courts or through an international flight alternative, therefore making the act of cross-border migration the only viable source of protection (Betts 365). This concept arises out of the new drivers of forced migration (environmental change, livelihood collapse, and state fragility) that exist outside of the framework for refugee/asylee status as outlined in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1961 Optional Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (that dropped the geographical and time restrictions present in the ‘51 definition) (Betts 361). These survival migrants experiencing environmental change, livelihood collapse, and state fragility do not have their basic rights protected under international law–survival migrants exist in an economic migrant/refugee dichotomy in which they are not legally refugees or asylees granted protection under the ‘51 Convention. Yet, they are not economic migrants for which the possibility of refoulment exists (Betts 362). Regarding the thousands of people attempting to reach safer or better places to live, and many are dying trying to do so, these people do not have the human right to migrate, as migration is not a human right. Some of these people probably have circumstances that meet the threshold that would qualify them for refugee status, yet for reasons such as backlogs in which applications are taking too long; they chose untraditional cross-border migration as it was the avenue they believed necessary for survival. However, others exist in the economic migrant/refugee dichotomy and are searching for safer and better places of living. They are not solely fleeing because of individualized persecution but because of the deprivation of socioeconomic rights related to probably the political situation in their country of origin (Betts 362). Thus, how do we protect those who fall outside of the existing refugee regime? When Betts looked to see if there were any protections under international law for survival migrants that fall outside the scope of the 1951 refugee convention, he found a significant gap in the institutional framework to address these new driving factors of displacement (Betts 362). Moreover, to be analytically precise, refugees are survival migrants, but not all survival migrants are refugees, and survival migrants are international migrants, but not all international migrants are survival migrants (Betts 365). To conclude, migration is not meant to be a human right; instead, I argue, to protect migrants from new drivers of forced displacement, broadening the scope of those allotted protection under the current refugee regime, i.e., the concept of survival migrants, is a place to start in addressing the thousands dying in pursuit of the restoration of their human dignity.