Migration Challenges: From Aging Populations to Securitization

Migration is one of the most consequential forces shaping the modern world. It drives economic growth, reshapes demographics, and sparks fierce political debate. But migration today faces a complex set of challenges – from aging populations desperate for workers to governments tightening borders in the name of security. Understanding these challenges is essential for anyone interested in how societies function, who gets to move, and what happens when they do.

Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals 🔗

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development places migration squarely within its framework for reducing global inequality. SDG Target 10.7 calls on all countries to facilitate orderly, safe, regular, and responsible migration through well-managed policies. It is the most direct reference to international migration in the entire SDG framework, and it falls under Goal 10 – the goal dedicated to reducing inequality within and among countries.

To track progress, UN DESA and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) developed indicator 10.7.2, which measures how many countries have policies that support safe and orderly migration. The indicator evaluates six policy domains drawn from the Migration Governance Framework, ranging from migrant rights protections to international cooperation. As of the most recent data cycles, just over half of all governments report having a comprehensive set of such policies in place, with significant variation across regions.

The SDGs also address migration indirectly through targets on reducing remittance costs (10.c), combating human trafficking (8.7), and promoting student mobility (4.b). The IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre emphasizes that migration is a cross-cutting theme relevant to all 17 goals. For instance, migrants contribute an estimated 7 to 10 percent of their host country’s GDP, directly supporting SDG 1 on poverty eradication. Yet measuring these linkages remains difficult because many countries still do not disaggregate development data by migratory status – a gap that target 17.18 specifically seeks to address.

The stakes are high. In 2023, over 8,100 migrants died or disappeared during their journeys, marking the deadliest year on record according to IOM’s Missing Migrants Project. This reality underscores the urgent need for the kind of safe migration pathways that SDG 10.7 envisions.

Aging populations and the demand for migrant labor 🔗

Across the developed world, populations are aging rapidly. Fewer births and longer lifespans mean shrinking workforces and ballooning pension obligations. This demographic shift has turned migration into an economic necessity for many countries.

Japan: a case study in demographic pressure 🔗

No country illustrates this better than Japan. According to the OECD, Japan has historically had some of the lowest migration flows relative to its population among developed nations. But that is changing fast. The country’s working-age population has been declining since 1995, and roughly 30 percent of its population is now aged 65 or older. The total labor force could drop from about 69 million in 2023 to around 49 million by 2050 if current trends hold.

To respond, Japan introduced the Specified Skilled Worker System in 2019, which allows mid-skilled foreign nationals to work in labor-shortage industries like healthcare, construction, and manufacturing. By 2024, foreign workers in Japan reached a record 2.3 million – quadruple the number from 2008. In 2024, foreign workers contributed more than half of Japan’s total labor force growth. The government has also announced plans to replace its older Technical Intern Training Program with a new Employment for Skill Development Program starting in 2027.

The European Union’s parallel challenge 🔗

The EU faces a similar predicament. In 2022, 23.8 million citizens of non-EU countries resided in a member state, representing 5.3 percent of the EU population. Their median age was about 36.6 years – nearly nine years younger than the native population’s median of 45.4 years. This age gap highlights migration’s role as a demographic counterweight. Without continued migrant inflows, many European economies would struggle to sustain their healthcare systems, pension programs, and service industries.

The core tension is clear: aging societies need migrant workers, but political resistance to immigration often remains strong. Balancing these competing pressures is one of the defining policy challenges of the 21st century.

The feminization of migration 🔗

Migration has long been studied as a predominantly male phenomenon. For decades, women who migrated were typically seen as dependents – wives, daughters, and mothers joining male breadwinners abroad. That picture has fundamentally changed.

Today, women make up about 48 percent of the global international migrant stock (approximately 146 million at mid-2024, per UN DESA). More importantly, a growing number of women are migrating independently – as primary earners, heads of households, and autonomous decision-makers. The IOM’s regional office for the Americas notes that this trend of independent female migration is what scholars and policymakers commonly refer to as the “feminization of migration.”

Beyond the numbers 🔗

However, the concept needs careful nuance. The World Migration Report 2024 points out that while the absolute number of female migrants has steadily risen since 1990, the share of women among all international migrants has actually been relatively stable – and has even declined slightly at the global level. In other words, migration has in some respects become more masculinized rather than more feminized, driven largely by male-dominated labor migration corridors to regions like the Middle East and North Africa.

Regional patterns vary widely. Latin American and Caribbean emigration trends lean more female, and immigration to North America shows a slight feminization over recent decades. Meanwhile, South Asian emigration has become substantially more male-dominated. Among the global migrant workforce, men accounted for about 61 percent of all migrant workers in 2022, while women made up around 39 percent.

Vulnerabilities and contributions 🔗

Female migrants face distinct risks. They are disproportionately concentrated in care work, domestic labor, and the informal economy – sectors where labor protections are often weak or nonexistent. Many women work without legal documentation, making them invisible in official statistics and vulnerable to exploitation. As research published in the Journal of Global Health puts it, migrant women are often triply disadvantaged: by race or ethnicity, by their status as non-nationals, and by gender inequalities.

At the same time, independent female migrants are significant contributors to remittances. Research from the IZA World of Labor suggests that women migrants tend to maintain stronger ties to their families back home and may remit more reliably than their male counterparts, though aggregate data disaggregated by gender remains limited.

Recognizing the agency and economic power of female migrants – rather than treating them solely as victims – is essential for effective migration policy. Labor migration policies themselves are often gendered, favoring male-dominated skilled occupations and inadvertently marginalizing women who work in feminized sectors like healthcare or education.

The securitization of migration 🔗

Few events have reshaped global migration policy as dramatically as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since all 19 attackers entered the United States on legitimate visas, the immediate policy response was to treat immigration primarily as a national security issue. This shift – what scholars call the securitization of migration – has had lasting consequences worldwide.

The post-9/11 transformation 🔗

In the United States, the Migration Policy Institute documents how the decade after 9/11 saw immigration policy viewed principally through a security lens. The Department of Homeland Security was created to bridge gaps between intelligence and immigration functions. Visa screening was dramatically tightened, biometric data collection became standard, and programs like the Visa Security Program – first deployed in Saudi Arabia in 2003 – expanded to dozens of consular posts worldwide. Information-sharing between agencies that once guarded their databases became a cornerstone of the new system.

Domestically, enforcement tools initially designed to target security threats were gradually repurposed to track and remove ordinary undocumented immigrants who posed no security risk. Programs like 287(g) – which deputized local law enforcement as immigration officers – expanded from a single agreement in 2002 to over 100 agreements within a decade.

Europe and the broader trend 🔗

The securitization trend was not limited to the United States. As scholars writing in Cogent Social Sciences argue, the 21st century has seen successive waves of securitization in Europe, triggered first by 9/11, then by the 2015 refugee crisis, and later by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each crisis consolidated the political framing of migrants as potential threats, justifying stricter border controls, expanded surveillance, and tighter asylum procedures.

The Copenhagen School of security studies provides the theoretical backbone for understanding this process. Securitization occurs when political actors successfully frame an issue – in this case, migration – as an existential threat, thereby legitimizing extraordinary measures that would otherwise be politically unacceptable. Immigration discourse shifted from economic or humanitarian concerns to the language of borders, threats, and national survival.

The consequences are far-reaching. When migration is primarily seen through a security lens, it becomes harder to pursue the kinds of safe, orderly, and legal migration pathways that SDG 10.7 calls for. Humanitarian obligations get sidelined, and migrants themselves – especially those from Muslim-majority countries or the Global South – face heightened suspicion and discrimination.

Technology, automation, and the future of migrant labor 🔗

Technological change is fundamentally altering who migrates, where, and for what kind of work. Automation, artificial intelligence, and digitalization are reshaping labor markets in ways that have direct implications for migration patterns.

Displacement of low-skilled labor 🔗

Previous waves of automation primarily displaced workers performing routine, manual tasks – the kinds of jobs many low-skilled migrants filled in manufacturing, agriculture, and logistics. Robotics and process automation have reduced the demand for this type of labor in advanced economies. According to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, manufacturing hubs that were hard hit by automation saw significant employment losses and, in some cases, chronic joblessness among displaced workers.

For migrant workers without specialized skills, this creates a double bind: the traditional entry-level jobs that once provided a foothold in destination countries are shrinking, while the skills required for remaining positions continue to rise.

AI and the new skill demands 🔗

The rise of AI adds a new dimension to this disruption. Unlike earlier automation, AI increasingly affects cognitive, non-routine tasks – work once considered the exclusive domain of skilled professionals. The International Monetary Fund estimates that nearly 40 percent of global jobs are exposed to AI-driven change. In advanced economies, the exposure rate is even higher at roughly 60 percent.

This creates a complex picture for migration. On one hand, countries are increasingly designing visa programs to attract highly skilled workers in AI, data science, cybersecurity, and related fields. Skill-based immigration is growing across the OECD. On the other hand, workers who cannot upgrade their skills – whether native or migrant – risk being left behind. Research from the Brookings Institution highlights that displaced workers frequently retrain from one automation-susceptible job to another, suggesting that standard retraining programs may not be sufficient to address the scale of the challenge.

Opportunities alongside risks 🔗

Technology does not only threaten migrant livelihoods; it also creates new opportunities. Digital platforms have made remote work possible for skilled workers in developing countries. The demand for healthcare workers – driven by those same aging populations discussed earlier – continues to grow, and technology cannot fully substitute for the human dimension of care work. Furthermore, countries facing acute labor shortages are investing in migration pathways that combine skill development with employment, such as Japan’s upcoming Employment for Skill Development Program.

The key challenge for policymakers is ensuring that the benefits of technological change are widely shared. This means investing in education and retraining, designing immigration systems that recognize a broad range of skills, and avoiding the assumption that technology alone can solve the labor shortages that aging societies face.

Finding the balance 🔗

Each of these challenges – aligning migration with the SDGs, managing aging-driven labor needs, advancing gender equity, resisting the impulse to securitize, and adapting to technological change – is difficult on its own. Together, they form a deeply interconnected web of policy questions that no country can afford to ignore.

The evidence is clear that migration, when governed well, benefits both sending and receiving societies. Migrants fill critical labor gaps, contribute to innovation, send remittances that lift families out of poverty, and enrich the cultural fabric of their communities. But achieving these outcomes requires deliberate choices: investing in data, protecting rights, opening legal pathways, and resisting the temptation to reduce migration to a security problem or an economic calculation alone.

What do you think? Can aging societies realistically meet their labor needs without significantly increasing immigration – and if so, how? Is the securitization of migration an inevitable response to global instability, or a political choice that undermines the very goals the international community has set for itself?

References

1. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal10
2. https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/data/sdg-indicator-1072-migration-policies
3. https://gmdac.iom.int/migration-data-sdgs
4. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/recruiting-immigrant-workers-japan-2024_0e5a10e3-en.html
5. https://amro-asia.org/strengthening-japans-workforce-the-role-of-foreign-labor-in-addressing-demographic-challenges
6. https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/women-girls-migration
7. https://lac.iom.int/en/gender-and-migration
8. https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/what-we-do/world-migration-report-2024-chapter-6/current-context-feminization-migration-growing-global-gender-gap-migration
9. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3833565/
10. https://wol.iza.org/articles/feminization-of-migration-and-trends-in-remittances/long
11. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/post-911-policies-dramatically-alter-us-immigration-landscape
12. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2023.2296601
13. https://www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/2023/swe2314
14. https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2026/01/14/new-skills-and-ai-are-reshaping-the-future-of-work
15. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ai-labor-displacement-and-the-limits-of-worker-retraining/