41 Development Education and Hope
Guest Editorial: Development Education and Hope
Stephen McCloskey
Introduction
Recent issues of Policy and Practice have debated the converging crises that are enveloping the world. Issue 38 addressed the question of migration which has been weaponised by the far-right to incite hatred and violence toward asylum-seekers who have been targeted by protestors feeding off myths, stereotypes and disinformation (Stacey, 2025). A trend across Europe has seen centre-right political parties steal the clothes of far-right parties which is bringing extreme anti-migrant positions into the political mainstream (Henley, 2025). In heated debates inflamed by social media and the right-wing press, migration has deflected public attention away from the economic causes of poverty and inequality at home by focusing on immigration. What is rarely discussed by the media is that the overwhelming majority of refugees and those in need of international protection, some 73 percent, were hosted by low- and middle-income countries in 2024 and just 23 percent hosted by countries in the global North (UNHCR, 2024: 2). Rather than introduce safe and legal routes as a more humane and orderly means of tackling the question of migration, the global North continues to force migrants to make treacherous journeys across land and sea to seek sanctuary and protection. And, of course, rarely are the issues that drive people in the global South to seek asylum discussed rationally in the Euro-Atlantic countries because many of these push factors emanate from the global North such as arms sales fuelling conflict, global heating and economic sanctions. It is estimated, for example, that economic sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union since 1970 have killed 38 million people in the global South and forced many more to emigrate (Hickel, Sullivan and Tayeb, 2025).