The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.
You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest
No. 182 | April 23, 2026
NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS
Bompani, B., Camminga, B., Marnell, J., & Wairuri, K. (2026a). East African queer and trans displacements. Bloomsbury Academic. Open access book. This open-access volume brings together original scholarly and creative works to explore the drivers, impacts and meanings of queer and trans displacement in and from East Africa. Drawing on diverse case studies, this ground-breaking collection demonstrates the value of regional perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches. Over the past decade, East Africa has become synonymous with state-sponsored homo/ transphobia, marked by draconian legislation and recurring moral panics. These escalating dynamics have forced many LGBTQI East Africans to flee their homes. Some reach other parts of the continent or even further afield, but most end up in neighbouring countries, facing similar risks and hardships. Yet it would be wrong to characterise East Africa solely as a producer or host of LGBTQI refugees. It is also a site of activism and community, of belonging and enterprise, where the limits of protection mechanisms are tested and redefined.
Clark-Kazak, C. R. (2026a). Age and immigration policy in Canada: Toward an equitable approach. UBC Press. Open access book. Discrimination on the basis of age and family status is deeply embedded in Canadian immigration law and policy. How and why does age function as part of a broader system of border control? Age and Immigration Policy in Canada draws on archival research, case studies, and interviews with lawyers, former public servants, and settlement workers to unpack the explicit and implicit justification for age qualifications in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and regulations. This is an innovative, thoughtful analysis for researchers, scholars, and students of migration studies, public policy and administration, sociology, refugee and immigration law, and social work. Public officials, lawyers, and civil society organizations who work with immigrant populations will also appreciate its empirical contribution to understanding Canadian immigration law and policy.
Bandarchian Rashti, N. (2026). Resettlement Stories: Photovoice with Adolescent Girls and Young Women with Refugee Backgrounds in Québec. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 41(2), 1–22. Despite extensive migration research, the resettlement experiences of adolescent girls and young women with refugee backgrounds remain underexplored. This research, grounded in girlhood studies and participatory visual and arts-based methodology, engaged nine participants (ages 14–24) from Haiti, Venezuela, Congo, and Brazil in the province of Quebec, Canada. Through photovoice, participants documented their experiences, highlighting key challenges such as discrimination, mental health struggles, financial insecurity, and educational barriers. While they reported feeling physically safe, systemic barriers continued to hinder their full integration. Findings emphasize the need for targeted support and programs to foster meaningful inclusion and long-term well-being.
Kılınçarslan, P., Dalkıran, M., & İçduygu, A. (2026). Navigating Vulnerability in the Context of Resettlement: Syrian Youth in Türkiye. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 42(1), 1–22. This article explores vulnerability in the resettlement experiences and imaginaries of Syrian refugee youth (aged 18–35) in Türkiye, a group often excluded from conventional vulnerability frameworks. Based on in-depth interviews, it conceptualizes vulnerability as multi-faceted, spanning innate, structural, and situational dimensions. Findings show how shifting migration policies, politicization, and institutional barriers compound insecurities, shaping how youth imagine and pursue resettlement in a protracted refugee context. The study contributes to debates on vulnerability, youth migration, and the evolving possibilities of resettlement, and underlines the need for international policies and agreements that adopt context-sensitive approaches addressing structural and situational factors.
Masterson, D., & Vidarte, R. (2026). Circular refugee migration: Understanding protracted displacement beyond a refugee-returnee binary. International Migration Review. Open access. What explains patterns of circular migration during protracted refugee displacement? We examine circular refugee migration (CRM) between Syria and Lebanon, focusing on why refugees undertake trips to their home country and how they navigate them. The findings suggest that CRM is a high-stakes survival strategy that people are compelled to rely on during protracted displacement, with three key empirical regularities. First, refugees traveling between the host country and home country face considerable risks, including forced conscription, arrest, and violence on smuggling routes. Second, CRM is usually driven by urgent needs related to healthcare, documentation, and family. Third, CRM often reveals a disconnect between intentions and outcomes due to worse-than-expected conditions—planned circular migration may result in unplanned return, and planned return may end in unplanned circular migration.
REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS
Briefing note: How are humanitarians using artificial intelligence? January 2026 pulse survey insights. (2026). Reliefweb. The humanitarian sector continues to face deep funding shortfalls and structural change amid accelerating global AI developments. AI is embedded in the humanitarian ecosystem, but largely driven by individual uptake of commercial tools. Working with vulnerable populations and sensitive data – and the imperative to do no harm – means responsible AI adoption and skills development are critical challenges for the sector.
Exhausted: Three years of displacement and the collapse of survival systems in Sudan and the region. (2026). Norwegian Refugee Council. On 15 April 2023, war broke out in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since then, the fighting has been fierce, turning major cities into battlegrounds, villages and farms into ashes, and forcing millions of families to flee their homes. Hundreds of thousands died in the violence, and entire communities were killed because of their ethnicity in Darfur.
Three years later, Sudan has become one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with mass atrocities inflicted on civilians, and famine confirmed in multiple areas. The crisis did not stop at Sudan’s borders. To understand how Sudanese are coping three years into the war, the authors surveyed refugees and IDPs across Sudan, Chad and South Sudan. Findings are supplemented by a separate needs assessment by partners in Egypt and REACH’s Multi-Sector Needs Monitoring (MSNM) Round 2 data for Libya.
Internal Displacement Law and Policy in a Changing World by Deborah Casalin. (2026). Researching Internal Displacement. This is the third volume in a series on ‘Internal Displacement in a Changing World Order’. It argues that in the face of escalating pressures on international cooperation, resources and norms – which in turn aggravate the situation of IDPs and their societies – it is crucial to keep consolidating the internal displacement legal regime, as well as strengthening and building on it further to address the growing and evolving challenges of internal displacement situations. The first part outlines some features of the internal displacement legal regime which may be leveraged to safeguard existing progress. These include its foundations in international human rights law and international humanitarian law; its multi-level anchoring; and its broad contextual relevance. The second part indicates some ways in which this legal regime can be reinforced and developed in the longer term: in particular, by consolidating existing protections at different levels; clarifying and further elaborating norms where needed; and gathering and analysing relevant legal data to track evolution and application of the internal displacement legal regime, as well as how this may still need to develop.
Somali systems: from aid-centred to state-led crisis response by Surer Mohamed & Dustin Barter. (2026). ODI Global. This paper examines the prospects for shifting from aid-centred to state-led crisis response in Somalia and Somaliland. It is grounded in political economy dynamics, including the role of aid, that are deeply consequential and typically antithetical to realising and sustaining state leadership. The analysis is guided by near universal agreement across interviewed stakeholders that the status quo is untenable and the need for change is urgent, yet long-term vision and substantive change remain elusive.
The case for large cash transfers: supporting refugees to meet basic needs and build resilience by Kerrie Holloway, (2026). ODI Global. This policy brief reports the findings of the baseline and endline surveys of the large cash transfer programme in Kiryandongo. It builds on a previous policy brief published by Humanitarian Policy Group in September 2025, which showed that cash is faster, cheaper, less wasteful, more impactful and more flexible than aid given in kind, and argued that cash transfers – and ideally large cash transfers – should be given first in a crisis.
NEWS AND BLOG POSTS
Failed peace deal: The Iran war has inflicted a cascade of losses that may never be recovered by Kawser Ahmed, April 14, 2026. The Conversation. Every ceasefire is haunted by the same question: will it live up to the promise of peace? The United States and Iran could apparently only focus on their disagreements during peace talks in Islamabad, with negotiations led by American Vice President JD Vance failing to result in a deal. Experts speculated that Iran’s 10-point peace proposals and the American 15-point plan were too far apart to lead to consensus. This is perhaps unsurprising. Between 1945 and 2009, a survey of peace treaties suggests that fewer than half of all countries that experienced armed conflict managed to avoid falling back into violence.
From Gaza to Lebanon: Forcible Displacement Dressed in Humanitarian Garb by Eitan Diamond & Ellen Nohle, April 17, 2026. EJIL: Talk! In recent hostilities, first in the Gaza Strip and now in Lebanon, the Israeli military has adopted a new modus operandi: issuing blanket relocation directives instructing millions of people to indefinitely leave their places of residence (evacuation orders in Lebanon were discussed here). The apparent objective is to enable Israel to engage an enemy embedded in densely populated civilian areas while ostensibly respecting its obligations under international humanitarian law (IHL), including the obligation to direct operations only against military objectives, to refrain from attacks expected to cause excessive incidental civilian harm, and to implement precautions in attack.
Lebanese return to devastated south as fragile 10-day truce takes hold, April 17, 226. Aljazeera. Displaced Lebanese have begun cautiously returning to their homes in the south after Lebanon and Israel agreed to a 10-day truce, even as the Lebanese army calls on residents to delay their return and Hezbollah warns it has its “finger on the trigger” in case of Israeli violations. Tens of thousands of people poured into areas of southern Lebanon on Friday morning hours after the truce went into effect, many heading back to homes and villages battered by more than a month of Israeli attacks.
Pakistan Deports Over 5,000 Afghan Refugees in One Day Amid Intensified Crackdown, April 13, 2026. Kabul Now. Pakistan deported more than 5,000 Afghan refugees on Sunday, the largest single-day figure in recent months, as Islamabad intensified its campaign against undocumented Afghans amid ongoing border tensions with the Taliban. The Taliban-run commission for refugee affairs said 4,796 Afghans entered Afghanistan through the Torkham crossing in eastern Nangarhar province, while 369 others returned via the Spin Boldak crossing in southern Kandahar.
Trapped between borders and bureaucracy by Caolán Magee, April 18, 2026. Aljazeera. Amir Ali stood on a narrow strip of land between two countries. Ahead, Moroccan guards moved through the darkness with flashlights and dogs. Behind him, Algerian security forces waited. For two days, he stayed hidden in the hills between the Algerian town of Maghnia and Morocco’s Oujda, watching the patrols below. Ali had been travelling for more than a year. He had fled a war in Sudan that killed his family, been detained and beaten by the country’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), extorted by police and trafficked to a farm in Libya, where captors demanded money and tortured those who could not pay. He had crossed deserts and borders, slept rough and gone hungry. Now Morocco, the last stop on his journey, was close enough to see.
VENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Event | Queer and Trans Mobilities and the Search for Refuge – Book Panel, University of Bristol (Hybrid). Despite decades of expansion in international asylum frameworks, queer and trans people continue to face a world in which protection is partial, exclusionary, and shaped by the very power structures that produce their displacement. This panel brings together the authors and editors of three major new works to interrogate the politics of queer and trans displacement across different scales and geographies — from the shortcomings of the international refugee protection regime, to the complex social, political, and legal dynamics of East Africa, to the contradictions of queer liberal governance in the Global North and South. The panel will discuss: The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge (University of California Press, 2026), East African Queer and Trans Displacements (Bloomsbury, 2026), and Queer Liberalisms and Marginal Mobilities (Routledge, 2026). Speakers are Mengia Tschalär, Samuel Ritholtz, Rebecca Buxton, B Camminga, and Diego García Rodríguez. This is a hybrid event on May 20, 2026, 4:00 – 5:30 PM (BST) at the University of Bristol and online.
Podcast: Why Is Immigration Policy So Hard to Get Right? Migration Policy Institute. Why has immigration become so politically divisive—and why is it so difficult for governments to design policies that satisfy both public concerns and economic needs?
Toolkit to identify statelessness in Scotland. European Network on Statelessness. This is an accessible toolkit to help frontline practitioners in Scotland identify if someone they are working with might be stateless or have undetermined nationality. The toolkit provides practical guidance on how to identify statelessness and signpost those affected to the right information, advice, and support. The resource is aimed at frontline practitioners in Scotland who are not experts in statelessness or immigration or nationality law. This might include social workers, healthcare workers, registrars, teachers, migrant and refugee support workers, community organisations, guardians, and others.
Webinar: Borders, Responsibility, and Refugee Governance In a Changing Protection Landscape. Columbia University. This virtual event on May 4, 2026, 10:00 – 11:00 AM ET, examines forced migration through the lens of global governance, focusing on the interconnected roles of Turkey, Greece, and France within broader regional and international systems of refugee protection and migration management. Rather than treating displacement as a challenge faced only at Europe’s margins, the discussion considers how governance is shaped across countries of transit, arrival, and political decision-making.
Webinar: Forced Migration in Latin America: Challenges and Creative Solutions. Columbia University. This virtual event on April 28, 2026, at 5:00 – 6:00PM ET, features speakers, Roberto González, Silvia Corradi Sander, Franklim Colletti, and Manuela Orjuela. In 2026, the world marks the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention — the treaty that established the international framework for refugee protection in the aftermath of World War II. This milestone comes at a moment of unprecedented displacement, strained protection systems, and growing pressure on the multilateral institutions that once anchored global cooperation. However, migration is both a historical constant and a driver of transformation in Latin America. Join this webinar to hear how expert panelists challenge the crisis-centered narrative and review migration as a constitutive element of Latin American societies, seeking creative solutions for the issues posed by this phenomenon.