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Beyond Borders, Beneath Headlines: The Real Psychology of Migration

Social & Démographie

Dr Anjhula MYA SINGH-BAIS - 16/06/2025

Few realize that if all international migrants formed a single nation, it would rank as the fifth most populous country in the world—surpassing Brazil, Pakistan, and Nigeria—with approximately 281 million people globally classified as international migrants as of 2020 (International Organization for Migration [IOM], 2022; United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs [UNDESA], 2020).

This imagined polity, forged by movement rather than boundaries, embodies both the hope and fear that drive one of the most polarizing issues of our time: immigration.

As a psychologist from the Asia-Pacific, a region with both vast diasporas and porous vulnerabilities, I approach this global issue not with policy prescriptions, but with the pulse of human experience. Migration is not merely about numbers or economics, it is about the inner worlds of the people who leave, the communities who receive them, and the defeaning silence in places where no one can leave, like Gaza.

Perception and Reality: A Tale of Two Worlds

Wealthy democracies are not facing a migration crisis, but a perception crisis. The disconnect between actual inflows and imagined invasions fuels divisive rhetoric. While public opinion in countries like France, Germany, and the UK estimates that 25–30% of their populations are immigrants, the actual foreign-born populations are significantly lower—around 10% in France (INSEE, 2023), 19.5% in Germany (Destatis, 2023), and approximately 14% in the UK (Pew Research Center, 2019; Ipsos MORI, 2015). In Japan, the foreign-born population remains just over 3%, despite persistent public unease around immigration (Ministry of Justice Japan, 2024).

This dissonance is not accidental, it is emotional. It is not about “them,” but about “us.” Insecurity about identity, anxiety over economic precarity, and loss of communal clarity manifest as scapegoating. The unconscious, as Jung might say, projects its shadow onto the migrant.

The Psychology of Leaving and Receiving

To leave is to rupture the psyche. The migrant grieves before arriving: for language lost, customs dropped, and futures imagined but deferred. Whether fleeing war or seeking wages, the act is psychologically monumental.

But receiving is equally fraught. Welcoming newcomers forces communities to confront their deepest instincts about fairness and belonging—feelings that are easily tangled with fears of cultural erosion or diminished safety. Our brains aren’t hardwired for suspicion or exclusion; they’re built for empathy, shaped by the stories we hear and the conditions we live in.

You see this clearly in the quiet generosity of rural Malaysians sharing meals with Rohingya refugees, or in the graceful solidarity of Pacific islanders who opened their homes to those displaced by rising seas. These moments remind us that fear is not a foregone conclusion, it’s a choice, and so is compassion. Peace requires active cultivation. Public policy must mirror public psychology, not inflame it.

What the Global South Historically Knows

Across the Global South, and especially in the Asia-Pacific, migration historically wasn’t a crisis; it was a rhythm of life. Whether it’s Bangladeshi garment workers in Malaysia or Filipino nurses in Japan, the flow of people has long underpinned not just household survival, but national economies and regional influence. Movement here is less about spectacle, more about sustenance.

Yet this wisdom is absent in Global North debates. Migration is too often treated as a disruption to control rather than a constant to comprehend. Worse, some nations exploit this flow while refusing its reciprocity: take the remittances, deny the rights.

Herein lies the paradox: These same nations are aging, their birth rates declining. Migration is not their problem, it is their solution.

The Case of Gaza: The Inverse Migration Crisis

Gaza provides the chilling counterexample: a place where no one can leave. Migration is the ultimate pressure valve, a human instinct that allows for release, survival, and continuity. To deny it, to wall people in, is a psychological form of suffocation, breeding despair and militancy. If Europe’s problem is how to receive, Gaza’s is the unbearable fact that no one can exit. This must be part of our migration debate.

Beyond Us and Them: A Way Forward

Much of today’s debate recycles an outdated binary, the “us vs them”, straight out of the Trumpian playbook. But this is not a game. It is life and death. We need to start from simplicity: All of us come from migrants. Borders are recent inventions. The art of fighting for migration justice is not to yell louder, but to listen deeper. Not to win the argument, but to rehumanize the frame.

To build a just society is to make peace with movement. It is to recognize that demography is destiny, but psychology is the path. And it is to admit that migration is not a threat to democracy, it is a test of it.

Let us not look away.

Dr. Anjhula Mya Singh Bais is an international psychologist trauma specialist, activist, and global governance expert from the Asia-Pacific. She is a speaker at Les Rencontres Économiques d’Aix-en-Provence 2025

References (APA):

The inner journey of migration: A silhouette of memory, movement, and separation.
Image generated by Dr. Anjhula Bais via OpenAI DALL·E (2025). AI-generated original.

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