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

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Carrera, S., & Colombi, D. (2025). Irregularising human mobility: EU migration policies and the European Commission’s role. Springer. Open access book. What is the history and current state of play of EU law and policy covering irregularised human mobility? What has been the role and contributions of the 2019-2024 European Commission as regards EU migration policy? This book investigates how migration policies have been problematised at the EU institutional level, in particular by the European Commission. It critically assesses the assumptions lying behind the Commission’s political priorities, agendas and policy outputs. Through the concept of irregularity assemblages, the book examines how EU policy professionals and bureaucracies in the relevant Commission services problematise their respective mandates/portfolios; how they interact with each other and even compete; and how they frame certain forms of human mobility as being an ‘irregular migration problem’ or not. After retracing key historical developments in the framing of irregularised human mobilities at the EU level, the book identifies six policy approaches in the work and structures of the 2019-2024 European Commission. It finds that a home affairs and criminalisation approach that prioritises a law enforcement understanding of cross-border and intra-EU mobility, and pursuing a Ministry of Interior-like agenda, has prevailed. This approach stands at odds with human dignity and other legitimate public policy approaches, such as those giving priority to employment and social inclusion, non-discrimination, and fundamental rights, where the administrative migration status of the individual is not the entry point. The overriding priority driving EU migration policy has been the expulsion, policing and criminalisation of people framed or categorised as ‘irregular migrants’. The analysis shows how Commission has failed to effectively perform its role as guardian of the Treaties and unequivocally enforce and comply with EU Treaty constitutive values, EU law and Better Regulation commitments in migration policies.

Dauvergne, C. (2025). Towards a theoretical account of the refugee in international law. International Journal of Refugee Law, 37(2), 151–174. Open access. The ambition of this work is to describe what it would mean to interject the concept of the refugee into theoretical accounts of international law and to argue that this undertaking is overdue and increasingly necessary. The starting point is the twinned observations that the refugee is almost entirely absent from international legal theory, and that refugee law scholarship has rarely engaged with the dominant narratives of international legal theory. Despite being a creature of the law, the refugee is more theoretically anchored in accounts of international relations than in theoretical accounts of the law. The article begins outside legal theory, with Arendt and Haddad, arguing that work in international relations theory provides insight into how and why this inquiry is worthwhile. It then traces where refugee law scholarship has encountered theoretical accounts of international law, as well as some leading accounts where the figure of the refugee is notably absent. The article considers how a deeper engagement with the refugee informs our understandings of sovereignty, humanitarianism, and the nature of obligation in international law. It closes by advocating for a larger project of theorizing the refugee within international law.

Hyeon, Y. (2025). Fake refugee? Yemeni refugees becoming faceless labour in South Korea. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–21. Open access. The arrival of 561 Yemenis fleeing from Yemen civil war on Jeju Island in 2018 has rendered the refugee issue visible in South Korea. The unexpected influx provoked intense backlashes, stigmatising them as ‘Gajja Nanmin (fake refugee in Korean)’. Aligned with critical refugee scholarship, this article challenges the long-standing refugee/migrant binary, exploring the layered and often overlooked experiences of Yemeni refugees in South Korea. Their lived experiences reveal a paradox where the state is the one who disrupts the refugee/migrant binary framework, effectively regulating Yemenis with humanitarian sojourner status categorisation, following its developmental migration policymaking trajectory. As the first longitudinal research on Yemenis, this article highlights a refugee reception experience beyond the dichotomy of the Global North and Global South, offering an opportunity to transcend multiple binaries that structure the complex terrain of migration.

Jean-Pierre, J., Brisbane, M., Hassan, S., Bailey, J., & Barrie, H. (2025). The influence of Transnational Cultural Capital on Black Immigrant and Refugee Youth Perspectives of School Discipline. Migrant Children and Youth, 103–123. Open access. Studies that focus on youth’s perspectives of school discipline seldomly highlight immigrant and refugee youth’s viewpoints. Meanwhile, the influence of newcomer parents’ cultural capital is often assessed to investigate social mobility while their children’s pre-migration cultural capital remains largely understudied. Drawing from Bourdieu’s social reproduction theory, this study illustrates how transnational cultural capital affects Black newcomer high school students’ perspectives of school discipline. The authors found consistent with prior Canadian studies that the participants reported concerns regarding bias, anti-Black racism, and the lack of fairness of school discipline interventions. Yet, their views also diverged since they perceived that everyday civility and behavioral expectations in the classroom were lenient when compared with their country-of-origin education systems. These findings reveal the significance of examining newcomer youth’s transnational cultural capital and not only parental cultural capital. The conclusions also point to the relevance of investigating transnational cultural capital in aspects of education other than academic achievement and social mobility. This study also reveals the importance of considering the intersectionality of the migration status and racial identity of French-speaking and English-speaking Black newcomer youth when we analyze their school experiences.

Rosvall, P. Å., Öhrn, E., Beach, D., Johansson, M., & Rönnlund, M. (2025). Educational stakeholders’ perspectives on educational transitions and future careers for young refugees in rural areas undergoing depopulation. Intercultural Education, 1–14. Open access. There are high hopes that young refugees will help to counter population decline in Sweden’s rural areas. However, there is a need to better understand the factors and processes that facilitate or hinder their persistent integration and continued presence (including further education and work preparation). This article explores the prevailing refugee reception practices and their consequences during and after the major refugee wave in Sweden that started in 2015. This wave, caused by wars in Syria and Afghanistan, had a huge impact in Sweden’s rural areas. The findings illuminate these groups’ understandings of requirements for effective, fruitful reception of young refugees, and how their reception can be organised to improve their preparation for further education and work. The results also reveal notable differences between rural areas (e.g. between smaller and larger rural municipalities), and suggest that young refugees’ prospects and likelihood of remaining in such areas can be enhanced by measures including incorporating multicultural and intercultural perspectives in staff training, and organisational adjustments to enhance local career learning and interculturalism.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Climate Change and Migration. (2025). Reliefweb. This report examines the links between climate change and migration, showing how environmental stressors drive human mobility. Produced by Cairo University’s Migration Research Unit in partnership with IOM, the study draws on case studies from Bangladesh, Mexico and Morocco, with special emphasis on Egypt as a highly vulnerable lower-middle-income country. It situates climate-induced migration within broader social, economic and political contexts, analysing both rapid- and slow-onset events and their differentiated impacts on vulnerable populations. Offering fresh insights and lessons, this report speaks to policymakers, researchers and practitioners confronting one of today’s most pressing global challenges.

Experiences and challenges faced by migrant women affected by immigration detention. (2025). UN Women. Immigration detention is a punitive practice that deprives migrants of liberty and exposes women to profound risks. This policy brief examines how detention systems—marked by overcrowding, abuse, and a lack of healthcare—harm migrant women and gender-diverse people, compounding trauma and violating their human rights. It documents sexual and gender-based violence, denial of reproductive health care, and inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities, all of which erode dignity and well-being. Through a feminist, intersectional lens, this policy brief highlights how structural discrimination and restrictive migration policies magnify these harms. It calls attention to the urgent need for non-custodial, community-based alternatives to detention that protect rights, provide access to services, and enable migrants to live with dignity while their cases are resolved.

From Displacement to Resilience: Aid, Economic Recovery, and Social Cohesion in Post-War Iraq. (2025). Reliefweb. Large-scale displacement and return can disrupt the economic and social fabric of communities, leading to intergroup tensions and increased competition over resources. Iraq has experienced high levels of displacement caused by the 2014 conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). This baseline report is the first in a series of publications that will be produced as part of a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of the ILA program in the governorates of Anbar, Diyala, Salah Al-Din, and Ninewa. Based on over 6,000 survey interviews, this report describes baseline economic conditions and social cohesion among people targeted by the ILA program and the surrounding communities, providing evidence of a robust correlation between economic vulnerability and different dimensions of social cohesion. Based on these findings, the report provides evidence-based guidance for policymakers and practitioners supporting local recovery efforts in Iraq and similar post-conflict settings.

Policy Brief: Chaotic Policy Changes Are Ending Access to Asylum in America. (2025). AILA. The Trump Administration’s numerous asylum policy changes over the past year have made it harder for individuals to access lifesaving protections. This brief overviews the consequences of these policy changes and possible reforms to make the asylum system more fair, accurate, and humane.

Promising Practices and Peer Learning: Alternatives to Immigration Detention in the Asia-Pacific within the Framework of the GCM and GCR. (2025). International Detention Coalition. This report is based on a hybrid event hosted within the auspices of the Second Asia-Pacific Regional Review of Implementation of the GCM. The report covers highlighted issues concerning the rights and welfare of migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless populations in the Asia-Pacific region.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Communalized Human Rights Amid Growing Internal Displacement in the Arab World by Manoug Antaby, October 3, 2025. Researching Internal Displacement. The Arab region has faced decades of wars, uprisings, and disasters, displacing millions and straining fragile protection systems. While humanitarian actors often step in during crises, human rights organizations have struggled to play an effective role in safeguarding IDPs. This article examines these institutional shortcomings and proposes a more context-sensitive, community-based approach to protecting IDPs’ rights beyond emergency relief. Ultimately, the author argues for foregrounding a ‘communalised human rights approach’ to displacement, one that integrates the strong Arab cultural traditions of kinship, communal solidarity and mutual aid into protections for displaced people.

How America’s Retreat from Refugee Protection Undermines Global Stability by John Slocum, October 16, 2025. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The Trump administration is dismantling the United States Refugee Admissions Program and lobbying other countries to weaken protections for at-risk refugees and asylum seekers. The stakes for millions of refugees in need of resettlement are high. The administration’s actions threaten not only them, but the fundamental principles underlying the global refugee protection system.

Refugees in Ethiopia Face Rising Hunger as WFP Forced to Reduced Rations, October 13, 2025. World Food Program USA. The World Food Programme (WFP) warned that refugees in Ethiopia are at risk of rising hunger as critical funding shortages force cuts to food rations. In October, WFP was forced to reduce rations for 780,000 refugees in 27 camps across Ethiopia from a 60% ration to just 40%. This means each person will now receive food assistance equivalent to less than 1,000 calories per day. Only 70,000 newly arrived refugees who fled conflict in neighboring Sudan and South Sudan will continue to receive full rations for the next six months. Hunger and malnutrition rates are very high among the new refugees.

Sudan’s displaced are in homes, not just camps – and aid keeps missing them by Greeballah Mohamed, October 15, 2025. The New Humanitarian. The conflict in Sudan (fought primarily between the national army and the paramilitary-turned-rebel Rapid Support Forces) has created the largest internal displacement crisis in the world, with nearly 12 million people forced to flee their homes. Yet one of the most important facts about this crisis – one the international aid system has struggled to grasp – is that it is not solely a crisis of camps. The data confirms what anyone on the ground can see. An estimated two-thirds of Sudan’s displaced people are living within host communities – absorbed into the homes of relatives, friends, and even strangers. This isn’t a small detail; it is a paradigm-shifting reality that makes the traditional, logistics-heavy aid model redundant – yet the system has struggled to adapt.

Who will take 30,000 asylum seekers? EU’s talks hit early roadblock, October 16, 2025. China Daily. The EU’s new migration pact is headed for its first major test, with member states facing a Christmas deadline to agree on the relocation of at least 30,000 asylum seekers — and so far, no country has stepped forward. Interior ministers from the EU’s 27 nations met on Tuesday in Luxembourg to begin talks on the so-called “solidarity mechanism”, a key pillar of the migration reform adopted last year and set to fully enter into force in 2026. The pact aims to ease pressure on frontline countries such as Greece and Italy by requiring other member states to either take in asylum seekers or pay 20,000 euros ($23,400) per person to help alleviate the strain. But the plan has already hit resistance from member states. (China Daily is a Chinese Communist Party-owned newspaper).

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Book Launch: Hearts of Freedom. McGill-Queen’s University Press. This book is about the first-hand accounts of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees who settled in Canada, contributing to the well-being and strength of their country. This event will be on Nov 2, 2025, Burnhamthorpe Library, Mississauga, Canada, from 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET.

Forced Migration Research Archive. Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog. With last week being 2025’s Open Access Week, the Forced Migration Research Archive is a subject-focused repository hosted by YorkSpace at Canada’s York University. It was established to provide authors a free and easy way to make their research openly accessible. FMRA welcomes the following items, in English, French or Spanish: postprints/accepted manuscripts of journal articles and book chapters (green open access); open access articles published in diamond/gold and hybrid journals; open access books and book chapters; theses and dissertations; and certain forms of grey literature such as research reports, policy briefs and working papers.

Penalties Against Women Seeking (International) Protection. WIRL. This will be the fifth in a series of free online seminars hosted by the Women in Refugee Law (WiRL) network on the theme of “Refuge in a cold climate: the impact on women”. These are public events, ideal for anyone whose work relates to refugee or asylum-claiming women or with an interest in the needs and experiences of refugee women. This series draws on WiRL’s global membership to apply a gendered lens in analysing the impact of increasing hostility to refugees in different states and contexts. Speakers for this event will be Natasha Yacoub, Paula Banerjee, and Catherine Briddick. The online event will be on November 6th, 2025, 9:00 AM (GMT/UTC).

Seminar: Refugee Pathways to Freedom and Peace. Centre for Refugee Studies. Janet Billson will present on two recent publications: 1) Refugee Pathways to Freedom: Escaping Persecution and Statelessness, London: Bloomsbury, 2024. Individual and focus group interviews with Russian Doukhobors, Rohingya, Nepali-speaking Bhutanese (Lhotshampa), and Kurds. Focus on the marginalizing impacts of refugee status, flight, refugee camps, and Canada-U.S. resettlement policies. 2) Refugee Pathways to Peace: Escaping the Chaos of War, London: Bloomsbury, 2025. Individual and focus group interviews with Syrian, DR Congolese, Liberian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese refugees. Focus on refugee integration and resettlement policies, and the future of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and relevant global frameworks. This is an online event that will be on November 4, 2025, 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM ET.

WEBINAR: “Displacement due to Environmental Factors: Lessons from Latin America”. Internal Displacement Research Programme, Refugee Law Initiative. Latin America is often seen as a region that exemplifies how environmental factors – such as environmental degradation and exploitation, resource scarcity and competition, and disasters – can force people to flee their homes. But the legal and policy challenges posed by the vastly greater numbers of people forced to displace within their own countries as a result of these environmental factors are all too often overlooked. This webinar, addressing that major gap, discusses new research on how Latin American societies have addressed these underexplored challenges: Professor Andrea Pacheco Pacifico, presenting on Brazil, starts by arguing that such displacement is less “natural” than the result of inadequate responses to environmental risks, failures in governance, and structural inequalities, Dr Beatriz Eugenia Sánchez-Mojica, speaking to Colombia, considers how these experiences intersect with dynamics of internal armed conflict and what this means for reorienting existing policy for people displaced by the conflict, and Dr Patrícia Nabuco Martuscelli takes a different intersectional approach, asking how displacement driven by environmental factors overlaps with other factors promoting vulnerability, such as being a child or member of a minority group. This webinar will be on November 6th, 2025, 1-2 pm BST UK.

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

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Briddick, C. (2025). Violence against women and regimes of exception: Undoing discrimination in migration law. Oxford University Press. This book analyses migration law’s treatment of women. It identifies patterns of disadvantage, scrutinises justifications for differential treatment, and argues for migration status reform. It conceptualises and then delineates obligations in relation to violence against women. Centrally, it brings together a series of distinct responses to violence experienced in the context of migration control and offers a new framework for their evaluation. To do so, it integrates doctrinal, empirical, and theoretical material to understand the difference that migration status makes to an experience of violence and to establish how the resulting compounded disadvantage should be remedied. The analysis starts in the UK and with the European Convention on Human Rights, broadening to connect with European Union law and the Council of Europe’s Trafficking and Istanbul Conventions. This approach provides valuable insights into the role and ability of national courts, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union to scrutinise different forms of discriminatory treatment. While this book focuses on rules and regimes in the UK and Europe, its arguments can be applied in a broader range of jurisdictions and contexts. Consonant with the feminist jurisprudence and approaches to international law with which it engages, the book is structured around the legal challenges that migrant women have brought to the rules that determine their status.

Polak, R., Tosun, A., & Jödicke, A. (2025). Religious and non-religious narratives on Migration Interdisciplinary Perspectives. BRILL. Open access book. This volume analyzes religious and non-religious narratives on migration from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. Narratives shape the perception of migration. The recourse to religion as well as the self-understanding of religious people and religious communities play an important role in this context. As part of the COST Action 2017 “Connecting Theory and Practical Issues of Migration and Religious Diversity”, international researchers from various disciplines – theology, social sciences, philosophy – are exploring contemporary perspectives on migration based on subject-specific understandings of the concept of “narrative” and are also discussing the role and contributions of religion. Particular attention is paid to the original voices of migrants. For this purpose, the innovative method of so-called “narrative cafés” was developed. The volume thus offers numerous insights for critical reflection on migration narratives in academic and socio-political practice.

Pacífico, A. M. C. P., Nabuco Martuscelli, P., & Franciely de Melo Silva, T. (2025). Internal environmental displacement in Latin America and the caribbean: Legal and policy approaches. Palgrave Macmillan. This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the pressing issue of environmentally displaced persons (EDPs) in Latin America and the Caribbean, filling a gap in the existing literature. The concept of EDPs only gained prominence on the international stage in the late 20th century, but despite significant attention in recent years, there has been a conspicuous absence of a consolidated resource on the topic, particularly within this region. This comprehensive work not only serves an academic purpose but also provides valuable insights and guidance to governments, NGOs, international agencies, and other actors grappling with the dilemma of protecting EDPs in the region. It stands as a unique and indispensable resource, offering a consolidated repository of information, data, and references that is unparalleled in the field. Readers will benefit from the wealth of knowledge and expertise encapsulated within this book, making it an essential addition to discuss the issue.

Alkatiri, F. A. (2025). Indonesia and the UNHCR: Different approaches to East Timorese refugees in West Timor. SAGE Open, 15(3). Open access. This article investigates the refugee crisis that occurred in Belu regency in 1999 due to the divergences between the UNHCR and Indonesian government, concerning the status of East Timorese refugees, whether Refugees or Internally Displaced Persons. This issue was analyzed through a case study of the different views that have created the split of the roles. The UNHCR became responsible for the repatriation agenda, while the local integration and resettlement burden fell to the Indonesian government, impacting the durable solution implementation. To avoid this burden, the Indonesian government revoked the status of the “refugees” to be Indonesian citizens in 2003, affecting badly the refugees’ lives.

Kiwanuka, A., Shamim, A., Nakalanda, R., Kalembe, D., Musisi, I. (2025). Financial Inclusion of Refugees: The Role of Trust and Financial Literacy. ORSEA Journal, 15(1). Open access. This research examines how financial literacy and trust influence financial inclusion among refugees in the Kampala district of Uganda, and explores whether trust mediates the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion. Findings indicate that both financial literacy and trust significantly enhance financial inclusion. Financial literacy also positively affects trust in financial institutions, with trust partially mediating the financial literacy–financial inclusion relationship. These results support theories of financial literacy and trust in explaining financial inclusion. Conducted solely among refugees, its findings may not be fully generalizable to other marginalized groups, such as women or youth. Additionally, the cross-sectional, quantitative design limits deeper insights into the dynamics of trust and financial literacy. This research is among the first to explore the mediating role of trust in the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion within a refugee context, thereby contributing to the understanding of financial inclusion in Uganda.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Aid Worker Security Report 2025 – Defenceless: Aid worker security amid the humanitarian funding collapse by Abby Stoddard, Meriah-Jo Breckenridge, Monica Czwarno, Mariana Duque-Díez. (2025). Humanitarian Outcomes. This year’s Aid Worker Security Report comes at a major inflection point for international humanitarian assistance and during an alarming new peak of violence against humanitarians. The 2025 edition – the 15th since data tracking began – was almost not produced after the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD), lost its US government funding when the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled. The funding crisis now rocking the sector comes on top of escalating conflicts and a steep erosion of respect for humanitarian norms and the laws of war by state actors – amplified in some places by public smear campaigns against aid organisations. 

Four Years on, Surviving or Thriving: Success, Challenges, and Workforce Development for Afghans and New Americans in Vermont by Justin Chamberlain. (2025). USCRI. Almost four years after the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan sparked large-scale resettlement efforts in the United States, more than 600 Afghans have been resettled across Vermont by state resettlement agencies led by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants-Vermont (USCRI-VT) and the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC), with the assistance of other refugee service providers. Vermont, a state with an aging native-born population and historically high outmigration rates, has struggled to maintain its population and retain a workforce strong enough to support its most in-demand industries and drive economic growth. Increasingly, Vermont has depended on its growing population of immigrants of all backgrounds and immigration statuses to fill gaps in its workforce and economy. While there is a strong body of research on the economic contributions, challenges, and successes of immigrants in the United States, much less attention has been given to impact and experiences of Afghans resettled after the 2021 U.S. evacuation. Virtually no published research focuses specifically on Afghans in Vermont, despite their potential to play an important role in the state’s economy and society. This study found that Afghans are already making vast and meaningful contributions to Vermont’s workforce and economy; however, the majority are living below salaries sufficient to provide true financial stability. This report recommends targeted service enhancements and increased resource investment for Afghans and refugee communities across Vermont, to more effectively support their integration and help unlock their full potential, ultimately contributing to a stronger, more resilient state economy and social fabric. 

From Borders To Communities: A Situational Analysis Of Returnees’ Needs In Afghanistan – September 2025. (2025). Reliefweb. IOM’s latest analysis, drawing on IOM’s household data and community-level insights, provides a comprehensive picture of undocumented returnees in high-return areas in Afghanistan. While families continue to return from abroad, many face challenges moving beyond short-term coping strategies toward sustainable reintegration. Widening gaps in livelihoods, services, and resilience highlight the urgent need for strengthened support to achieve durable solutions. 

How can development actors scale refugee labour mobility? (2025). Reliefweb. Development actors are well suited to play a meaningful role in scaling up complementary labour pathways for refugees, yet their current contribution falls far below its potential. Exploring how development actors can engage to support refugee labour mobility is a worthwhile endeavour that can help increase the size, scope, and sustainability of these pathways. Against a backdrop of rising displacement, fewer resettlement places, and frequent obstacles to refugee mobility, complementary pathways are a promising tool for providing more durable solutions for individuals in need of protection. 

Rohingya refugees express feeling unsafe, lacking control over their future, September 29, 2025. Médecins Sans Frontières. Eight years after hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled a campaign of extreme targeted violence in Myanmar, a new report from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), The Illusion of Choice: Rohingya Voices Echo from the Camps, shows people caught in a protracted crisis, facing constant threats of violence, diminishing aid, and a profound lack of control over their own future. The situation in the camps is worsening as essential services are reduced due to significant cuts in donor funding. MSF argues for Rohingya voices to be central to all discussions with access to services and self-reliance opportunities, to build a future that allows for safe, dignified, and voluntary return. 

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS 

Around the world, migrants are being deported at alarming rates – how did this become normalised? by Andonea Jon Dickson, Cetta Mainwaring, & Thom Tyerman, October 2, 2025. The Conversation. Under President Donald Trump, the United States is expanding its efforts to detain and deport non-citizens at an alarming rate. In recent months, the Trump administration made deals with a number of third states to receive deported non-citizens. In Australia, the Labor government has similarly established new powers to deport non-citizens to third states. The government signed a secretive deal with Nauru in September, guaranteeing the small Micronesian island A$2.5 billion over the next three decades to accommodate the first cohort of deportees. In the UK, the Labour party expanded the “Deport Now Appeal Later” scheme in August, extending the countries to which people can be deported without appeal rights from eight to 23. In all three countries, migrants can now be banished to states to which they have no prior connection. 

Australia’s “mass migration” myth: The real story is mass deportation by Gerry Georgatos, October 4, 2025. Independent Australia. Australia is awash with political rhetoric about “mass immigration.” Headlines, parliamentary speeches, and public commentary insist the nation is being “flooded” with arrivals. Yet the statistics do not bear this out. Immigration intake numbers fluctuate, but the dominant trend of the past decade has not been runaway growth — it has been the unprecedented expansion of deportations. Under the Migration Act 1958 and specifically its notorious section 501 provisions on “character grounds,” deportations have reached historic highs, at times exceed 1,000 annually. This is not immigration at all — it is exclusion, expulsion, and destruction of lives. 

Disposable yet indispensable: refugees in the global economy by Asli Salihoğlu & Cameron Thibos, October 5, 2025. OpenDemocracy. Refugee populations have become durable components of national labour markets in many regions around the world. They are central to garment production in Turkey, demolition in Japan, domestic work in Poland, and can be found filling out the ranks of the precarious, informal labour force in countries from Venezuela to Bangladesh. Refugees’ reliance on work to survive is likely to increase in the coming years, even though most host governments continue to resist letting them do so legally. Major donor countries are reducing their humanitarian aid budgets – the shuttering of USAID in the US, for example, is an extreme rupture that has reverberated across the Global North aid infrastructure. As support drops away, refugees are faced with an inevitable choice: work, or go without. The global economy continues to quietly and precariously integrate refugees and asylum seekers into the machineries of capitalism. 

Migrant caravans no longer want to go to the United States by Bryan Avelar, October 2, 2025. El Pais. A group of about 1,000 people are walking north from Tapachula, Mexico, with the goal of staying in Mexico City instead of crossing the border into American territory. For at least the last eight years, dozens of caravans have set out from this very place with one goal: to cross the northern border and reach American territory. But the so-called “Trump Effect”—that is, the fear of the U.S. president’s anti-immigration policies—has had an effect that was unthinkable until recently: migrants no longer seek a new future there. 

Rising Migration in Latin America and the Caribbean Has Ushered in a Volatile New Era by Diego Chaves-González, Valerie Lacarte, Andrew Selee, & Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, October 2, 2025. Migration Policy Institute. A historic level of migration is reshaping the societies and politics of Latin America and the Caribbean, giving rise to a new era best defined by volatility. After years of unprecedented human mobility since 2010, during which time the number of migrants in the region roughly doubled, migration has become unpredictable, multidirectional, and increasingly difficult for governments to manage. Countries have simultaneously grappled with the integration of displaced people (primarily Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Cubans), secondary migration as individuals moved on when opportunities faltered, circular and return migration, and emigration of frustrated middle classes. 

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA  

Course: Migration and Integration: Refugees, Rights & Realities. University of Amsterdam. Millions of people around the world are forcibly displaced. But what are the intertwining factors causing these issues? What is the true impact of displacement on an individual? What does it mean to be labelled a “refugee”, and how can we become more understanding of the situation and lack of control refugees have in making decisions about their future? This two-week online programme will explore topics like this in depth and critically discuss current refugee crises which are happening around the globe today. The online course will run from January 19-30th, 2026. The early bird deadline to sign up is November 1st, and the final deadline is December 7th. 

CRS/EUC Book Launch: Undoing nothing: Narratives and Practices of everyday life in a place for asylum seekers. Centre for Refugee Studies, York University. What does everyday life look like for young men who flee to Europe, survive, and are then assigned temporary housing? Hypersurveillance or parallel normality, irrelevance, or even nothingness? Based on four years of ethnographic research, Undoing Nothing recounts the untold story of Italian asylum seekers’ struggles to produce relevance—that is, to carve out meaning, control, and direction from their legal and existential liminality. Their ways of inhabiting space and time rest on a deeply ambivalent position: together and alone, inside and outside, absent and present. Their racialized bodies dwell in their assigned residence while their selves inhabit a suspended translocal space of moral economies, nightmares, and furtive dreams. This book illuminates a distinctly modern form of purgatory, offering both a perceptive critique of state responses to the so-called refugee crisis and nuanced psychological portraits of a demographic rarely afforded narrative depth and grace. The guest author is Paolo Boccagni, Professor of Sociology at the University of Trento. This is a hybrid event (In person: HNES 141 (EUC building, Keele Campus, York University), on October 31, 2025, 11am – 12:30pm (Toronto/EDT). 

Designing for Belonging: What Neuroscience Teaches Us About Shelter, Space & Healing. Clark University. This session bridges neuroscience and humanitarian practice, exploring how the built environment influences well-being, safety, and belonging. From tents and shelters to flood-resilient housing and refugee camps, the panel examines how physical spaces can either magnify stress or restore hope. Speakers include Donald H. Ruggles, Minar Thapa Magar, Ana Carolina Helena, and will be facilitated by Dr. Devora Neumark. This online session will be on October 30th, 2025, 9:00am to 10:00am. 

Seminar: The Plight of Afghans in Iran: The Complex Gendered, Socio-political and Cultural Dimensions of a Fraught and Critical Relationship. Centre for Refugee Studies, York University. Niloufar Pourzand will provide a perspective on the recent forced deportations of over one million Afghan refugees from Iran, while presenting insights into the history and trajectory of over 6 million Afghan refugees coming to Iran in the course of the past several decades, making it the number one destination in the world when it comes to refugees, and the profound impact their presence has had on Iran/Iranians and of course, on Afghans themselves, those who have stayed, been deported and/or left for other diaspora destinations. The human/refugee rights aspects of what has transpired over a period of time, as well as the gendered and socio-political dimensions will be discussed, while also sharing insights about its profound consequences and possible future scenarios. The seminar will be on October 23, 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:30PM ET. This is a hybrid event at York University and online. 

Webinar – Protecting the rights of stateless Palestinians in the UK. European Network on Statelessness, London UK. This webinar is bringing together expert insights and lived expertise on protecting the rights of stateless Palestinians in the UK. What to expect: A summary of the recent legal briefing and what it means in practice, including for those working with or representing impacted community members, a community perspective on the lived realities of displaced Palestinians in the UK and across Europe, and a forward-looking discussion on how legal practitioners, the courts, civil society, and other key actors can help close protection gaps and advance rights – both in the UK and across Europe. The webinar will be on October 23, 2025, 12:00-12:45 UK time. 

Workshop MOEBIUS – The European Border and their Thickness. Multidimensional Perspectives. EDIEC. If the thickness of borders has been studied widely by geographers who underscore that they are not any more one dimensional line between dyads but from now on multi-dimensional areas opposed to migrants, the idea has not been fully exploited by other disciplines. This is the purpose of this panel that will create discussions between sociology, political science and law on the matter. Diverse approaches will consider the width of EU external borders that expand their borders outside the territory (externalisation) and extend them inside their territory (internalisation); that constitute large spatial spaces (which unfold migrants in networks beyond and below the territorial State limits) and long temporal phases (which impose an immersion of migrants in a temporality that is both dilated and suspended). In order to seize the consequences of the fact that borders and territory are decoupled, the material thickness of EU borders will be explored. This online event will be on October 15, 2025, 2:00PM to 5:00PM Europe/Paris time.

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

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Coutin, S. (2025). On the Record: Papers, Immigration, and Legal Advocacy. Open access book. Immigrant residents seeking legal status in the United States face a catch-22: the documents that they must present to immigration officials—bank records, paycheck stubs, and contracts in their own names—are often challenging for undocumented people to obtain. In this book, Susan Bibler Coutin analyzes how undocumented immigrants and their legal representatives attempt to surmount documentary challenges. Based on four years of fieldwork and volunteer work in the legal services department of an immigrant-serving nonprofit and in-depth interviews with those seeking status, On the Record explores these complex dynamics by taking seriously both documents themselves and the legal craft that has developed around their use.

Barboza, J. Z. (2025). Undesirable but Unreturnable Migrants: the Challenges of Dealing with Criminal Migrants in Need of Protection. Brill Nijhoff, International Refugee Law Series, Volume: 25. This book studies how States regulate the situation of migrants in need of international protection who have a criminal background or pose a threat to public order. Regulating the situation of these migrants is a challenge to States, which may sometimes resort to measures that violate human rights. The book thus evaluates the solutions applied, identifying best practices and suggesting a possible human rights compliant solution for this situation.

Baú, V. (2025). Social cohesion in protracted displacement: Limits to peace between young people in Camps. International Social Science Journal. This article brings to light the limits to peace that currently exist between young people in Kakuma refugee camp through a framework of social cohesion. The main drivers of conflict among the vastly diverse youth of Kakuma are examined to provide evidence of the gaps in social cohesion that endure in the camp. A framework of analysis built around notions related to social cohesion is applied to the qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with humanitarian professionals working in the camp. The discussion arising from the findings offers key considerations on humanitarian work with young people in contexts of protracted encampment such as Kakuma, and on how such work can more effectively address cohesion among diverse youth. Ultimately, the insights offered want to inform the trajectory of humanitarian work with encamped young people, with the view of enhancing peace, wellbeing and cohesion in camps.

Fee, M. (2025). Displacing refugees: Resettlement and the reconstitution of families. Social Problems. Sociologists traditionally use integration as the framework for studying the benefits and shortcomings of refugee resettlement, which is considered one of three durable solutions for forced migrants. This paper problematizes dominant narratives of resettlement as a time of integration and a solution to displacement. The author demonstrates how the resettlement process becomes displacing for refugees, as it can reconstitute kinship structures in three distinct ways: 1) by prolonging earlier separations caused by forced migration; 2) by creating new separations that become difficult to rectify; and 3) by bringing together outdated family units. Consequently, resettlement engenders social, emotional, and economic harms that are further disruptive to refugees’ lives. By centering refugees’ experiences, this paper makes visible the tensions caused by this humanitarian program and offers a novel framework for understanding the early stages of a refugee’s resettlement. With a focus on how initial resettlement has a displacing effect on refugee families, the author contributes to scholarship on immigrant incorporation, immigrant families, and sociological understandings of displacement.

Rees, P., Ibreck, R., & Weslety, S. (2025). The ‘unfair’ Refugee Agency: UNHCR accountability after protests and violence. Journal of Refugee Studies. Open access. Urban refugees increasingly resort to sit-ins outside United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) offices because they lack avenues for accountability. Our fieldwork reveals their experiences of neglect, mistreatment, and violence and the ways that these are compounded by UNHCR’s responses to protests, generating deep mistrust. Drawing on interviews with refugees in three protest sites and a workshop with legal practitioners, we document disturbing accusations, implicating UNHCR in human rights violations. We reflect on these findings and explore the possibility of transforming the agency’s accountability relations in the context of declining budgets and influence. We argue that the agency must abandon its securitized response to refugee-led protests and adopt a ‘networked accountability’ approach, engaging with the plural authorities that hold legitimacy in refugee protection. Although UNHCR is currently structurally dependent upon major donors and host states, it must embed accountability relations with refugee-led organizations (RLOs), NGOs, and legal practitioners to fulfil its mandate and protect refugees.

See, J., & Asmawi, A. (2025). From Theory to Classroom: Implementing Translanguaging Pedagogy for Refugee Learners. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 41(1), 1–32. This study bridges the gap between theoretical frameworks and classroom practice by designing a translanguaging pedagogy (TP) module for volunteer teachers at an alternative learning centre serving refugees in Malaysia. Grounded in a comprehensive needs analysis and refined through expert consensus, the module emphasizes bilingual proficiency, interactive teaching methods, and diverse learning materials to enhance English communication skills. Focused on pedagogical usability and teacher engagement, the research evaluates the module’s effectiveness through teachers’ perceptions and interactions with students, rather than language proficiency outcomes. Findings demonstrate TP offers a practical, inclusive approach to meeting refugee learners’ unique needs, contributing to the development of adaptable, effective teaching strategies that translate theory into impactful classroom practices for marginalized communities.

Telfah, R. (2025). “I Am a Princess Who Moves Around a Lot”: Syrian Refugee Women and the Shifting Roles and Responsibilities During Early Settlement in Southwestern Ontario. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 41(1), 1–20. This article takes a feminist approach to understanding Syrian refugee women’s early settlement experiences in small southwestern Ontario communities. It draws on interviews with Syrian refugee women who arrived in Canada with their families, sometimes without husbands, in 2016–2019. It is argued that the refugee journey and resulting shifts in Syrian women’s reproductive activities, including when they settle in rural/small-town southwestern Ontario, help them find a voice, giving them greater independence and power within their families. This study emphasizes the gendered nature of household production and contributes to literature on social reproduction by exploring the often-overlooked context of refugee resettlement. Findings highlight the necessity for policies that provide better support for refugee women during early settlement.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Aid Worker Security Report 2025 – Defenceless: Aid worker security amid the humanitarian funding collapse by Abby Stoddard, Meriah-Jo Breckenridge, Monica Czwarno, Mariana Duque-Díez. (2025). Humanitarian Outcomes. This year’s Aid Worker Security Report comes at a major inflection point for international humanitarian assistance and during an alarming new peak of violence against humanitarians. The 2025 edition – the 15th since data tracking began – was almost not produced after the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD), lost its US government funding when the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled. The funding crisis now rocking the sector comes on top of escalating conflicts and a steep erosion of respect for humanitarian norms and the laws of war by state actors – amplified in some places by public smear campaigns against aid organisations.

‘Going to the Supermarket was Hard’: Pandemic Foodscapes and Unsettled Food Practices of Refugees in the Waterloo Region by Ramachandran, Sujata; Onyango, Elizabeth; Si, Zhenzhong; Ahmed, Zack; Eguiguren, Mercedes; Crush, Jonathan, and Arya, Neil. (2025). Migration & Food Security (MiFOOD). In this paper, researchers examine how the ‘new normal’ of pandemic-living transformed the local food environment in Ontario as pandemic foodscapes. Using selected findings from mixed methods research with a small sample of recently resettled refugees in the Waterloo region, they evaluated how these changes affected their grocery shopping and food-sourcing habits. The study found that participants spent more time acquiring food from a reduced number of food sources and experienced an overall weakening of their household food security. The decline in food access and availability was most pronounced for the ethnocultural foods that immigrants and refugees preferred to consume.

Nicaragua: UN Experts warn of escalating repression reaching beyond borders. (2025). United Nations Human Rights Council. Nicaragua’s Government is expanding its repression of perceived opponents far beyond its own borders, targeting Nicaraguan citizens abroad as part of an intensifying campaign to silence critics in exile, the UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua said in a new report. The report, presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, documents how the Government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has targeted thousands of Nicaraguans abroad – many who fled the nation following a bloody 2018 crackdown – through a series of severe measures including arbitrary deprivation of nationality, entry bans, denial of passports, confiscation of property, digital surveillance, threats, as well as intimidation and punishment of relatives who remain in Nicaragua.

Sudan’s information war: How weaponised online narratives shape the humanitarian crisis and response. (2025). Reliefweb. Since the outbreak of full-scale conflict in Sudan in April 2023, the country has faced one of the world’s most acute humanitarian crises. One key dimension of this conflict has been a deepening emergency in the information domain. Misinformation, disinformation and hate speech have been used as deliberate tools of war, weaponised to distort narratives, fracture social cohesion and obstruct humanitarian access. It has been directly linked to devastatingly violent impacts on communities. At the same time, connectivity blackouts, fractured media ecosystems and the politicisation of communication channels have made safeguarding trustworthy information for communities affected by crises more urgent and more difficult. This report aims to provide practical insights and policy guidance for humanitarian responders, donors, media practitioners and Sudanese civil society.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Human mobility under threat: How is Latin America responding? by Lina Arroyave & Christy Crouse, September 1, 2025. Dejusticia. In 2025, migration policies from the Global North intensify securitization and externalization of control, undermining fundamental rights in Latin America. This blog examines how the region, despite setbacks, can sustain rights-based responses and build alternatives to the criminalization of human mobility.

Not enemies, but people: Why the world needs to rethink the language of war by Martin Danahay, September 24, 2025. The Conversation. The term “narcoterrorist” conflates the U.S. internal “war on drugs” and external “war on terror” and suggests drug smuggling is punishable by death without trial. Canada, incidentally, has followed the lead of the U.S. by designating a list of drug cartels as terrorist organizations. This means Canada is now involved in the expansion of violence against people associated with drug smuggling or drug use when they’re labelled terrorists. It also aligns Canada with the American “war on drugs.” The problem with both terms — the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror” — lies in how they serve to justify killing people. Violence is portrayed as an appropriate response to a threat from an “enemy” rather than an attack on people who may or may not be linked to drugs or terrorism.

Sri Lanka: Detainees Decry Poor Conditions and Indefinite Detention in Welisara Detention Centre, September 16, 2025. Global Detention Project. According to the testimonies received by the GDP, a group of at least ten people from numerous countries spanning Asia and Africa–Pakistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malaysia, China, among others–have been detained for months at the Welisara Detention Centre (outside Colombo) with no end in sight. They claim to have been initially arrested as part of an investigation into their statuses; however, after languishing two months in prison, they were eventually transferred to immigration detention without any charges being pressed.

The Mediterranean: Both a graveyard and a bottomless money pit due to EU border policies by Luna Vives, September 22, 2025. The Conversation. Over the last decade, European governments have invested heavily to militarize their sea borders and outsource control responsibilities to partners in Africa and the Middle East. But despite exponentially growing border budgets, people continue to take to the sea to reach EU territory, encountering violence and death. It’s time to admit that this repressive strategy has failed and to ask what should come next.

The perfect storm: Why immigration has become the scapegoat for our age of crisis by Alan Gamlen, September 23, 2025. 360Info. Economic shocks, social strains, and rising inequality have unsettled democracies everywhere. In this atmosphere of fear and anger, immigration has been cast as the culprit, offering populists a simple story for a complex age.

Uganda has signed a deal with the US to take asylum seekers – what’s behind it and what’s at stake by Franzisca Zanker & Ronald Kalyango Sebba, September 18, 2025. The Conversation. Uganda has agreed to take on an unspecified number of third-country nationals who have a pending asylum claim in the US but cannot return home due to safety concerns. In other words, these are people who should likely be protected as refugees, but are no longer wanted in Donald Trump’s America. Uganda is set to receive development funds in return. It also retains discretion on a case-by-case basis.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

On the Move: Rapidly Evolving Migration Trends and Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean. Migration Policy Institute. This timely and thought-provoking recording on migration in the Americas features discussion of the new book, On the Move: Migration Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean (2025) by Andrew Selee, Valerie Lacarte, Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, and Diego Chaves-González (published by Stanford University Press), surprising patterns, and the urgent policy questions facing Latin America and the Caribbean today.

Podcast episode – Refugee inclusion in practice: Experiences, outcomes, and impacts. PROSPECTS podcast – Refugees at Work. This final episode of the series examines how the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus (HDPN) shapes refugee livelihoods and host community economies. Svein Erik Stav (Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research) and Tewodros Aragie Kebede (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, Norad) share the opportunities, challenges, and policy lessons from countries applying the HDPN approach.

Small Business, Big Impact: Immigrant Hiring and Integration in Five Canadian Cities. Research Matters. This virtual presentation explores how Canada’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are navigating labour shortages and what can be done to better meet labour needs by leveraging the pool of immigrant talent. SMEs make up 99% of employer businesses in Canada, yet many struggle to grow due to limited access to skilled workers. Immigration is key to filling these gaps, but newcomers often face barriers to employment and employers often miss out on their skills and talents. This session shares insights from interviews with SME leaders, service providers and policymakers on how to better connect immigrant talent with local business needs. Speakers are Alice Craft, Senior Research Associate, Conference Board of Canada, and Federica Guccini, Researcher, Conference Board of Canada. This virtual event is on October 8th, 1:30 to 2:30 PM ET.

22nd Annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference. Migration Policy Institute. The hybrid conference will feature thoughtful policy and legal analysis and discussion of some of the most important immigration issues that have surfaced in the U.S. policy debate, bringing together leading experts, policymakers, attorneys, advocates, and more. This year’s sessions include: State of Play: Mass Deportation Campaign Hits the U.S. Economy, Communities, and Public Opinion; Expanding Access: Scaling Immigration Legal Services for Communities and the Nation; a keynote conversation with Fareed Zakaria; and, A New Era: Immigration Enforcement Above All Else. This event will be on October 9, 2025, 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM ET.

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

Dear RRN Research Digest readers and contributors, we hope you had a lovely summer! We’re excited to continue with the RRN Research Digest and look forward to a fantastic year ahead. If you have anything you’d like us to consider featuring, email us at rrn@yorku.ca. We look forward to hearing from you.

Warmly,

RRN Digest Team

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Ansar, A. (2025). Rohingyas and the Geographies of Precarity in Exile: Everyday Life in Bangladesh and Malaysia. De Gruyter. Open access book. Focusing on Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Malaysia, this study provides an in-depth analysis of the contribution of historical legacies of exclusion, along with contemporary practices of marginalization and otherisation, to the transcendence of the precarity landscape. In light of the 2017 displacement of over a million Rohingya from Myanmar’s Rakhine state to neighbouring Bangladesh, the book offers a nuanced and empirically driven analysis of precarity across a wide spectrum at discrete and overlapping scales, shaped by statelessness, vulnerability, uncertainty, onward migration and everyday practices of exclusion. Bringing together the diverse manifestations along the lines of identity, status, space, mobility, gender and labour, the study proposes a comprehensive understanding of precarity, conceptualized as the ‘interconnected geographies of precarity’. Elucidating the intricate web of structural constraints that predate (in Myanmar) and are continually reconstructed and actualized (in exile), the book examines the continuum of precarity in extended transnational spaces – a phenomenon that is complex, non-linear, transitional and multi-faceted.            

Çirkin, Z., Sakiz, H., & Çuhadar , P. (2025). Career Construction Experiences of Syrian Refugee Women in Turkish Higher Education: Opportunities and Obstacles. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 41(1), 1–19. This study explores the career construction and higher education opportunities and challenges faced by Syrian refugee women in Türkiye through semi-structured interviews with 40 women enrolled at a public university. Findings reveal significant challenges in career construction and higher education stemming from the intersectionality of gender and refugee status, including job market discrimination, increased housework and caregiving responsibilities, and moral concerns about independent women. The study also identifies opportunities for empowerment through women’s rights, autonomy, equality, and self-sufficiency. It contributes to refugee studies, higher education, and integration by acknowledging the transformative potential of education and employment for Syrian refugee women.

Ferdous, J., & Atar, E. (2025). Stalled repatriation of rohingya refugees: Diplomatic hurdles, regional politics, and the path to Sustainable Solutions. Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 12(3). Open access. The Rohingya people have sought refuge in Bangladesh following decades of ethnic and religious persecution in Myanmar. After the mass exodus in August 2017, Bangladesh launched emergency repatriation initiatives. In November 2017, Bangladesh and Myanmar reached a preliminary agreement on repatriation, despite widespread concerns from human rights organizations. This article examines the stalled repatriation of Rohingya refugees by analyzing diplomatic challenges, regional geopolitical dynamics, and potential solutions. The present study, from a policy standpoint, advocates for greater diplomatic pressure on Myanmar, stronger regional cooperation, and the development of a comprehensive refugee policy. Furthermore, empowering Rohingya refugees through education and economic opportunities can mitigate security risks while fostering sustainable repatriation models. Additionally, third-country resettlement and international burden-sharing must be prioritized to achieve long-term and dignified solutions.

Iqtait, A. (2025). From conditionality to weaponisation: The transformation of aid in Palestine post-October 2023. Third World Quarterly, 1–21. Open access. This article examines the shift from aid conditionality to aid weaponisation in Palestine in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack. It argues that donor actions following this event represent a transformation in their approach to Palestinian aid, moving from aid conditionality to aid weaponisation, where aid is utilised not just as a securitised tool for development and governance but as a mechanism of punishment and control. The article constructs the evolution of aid conditionality, showcasing various forms encompassing both explicit and implicit conditionalities. It then explores how aid weaponisation has manifested through aid suspensions and withdrawals, donors’ uncritical adoption of Israeli discourse, heightened surveillance of Palestinian organisations, and administrative measures that constrain autonomy. Thus, aid weaponisation serves as an active tool reinforcing conditions that perpetuate, rather than alleviate, settler colonial violence and, as in Gaza, ongoing genocide.

Krawczyk, M., & Baselice Pelicioni, A. B. (2025). The Role of Art in the Liminal Setting of Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 41(1), 1–21. In this article, the authors examine the role of art in negotiating hybrid identities among refugees in the Nakivale settlement, Uganda. They highlight how refugees use artistic expression to navigate their sense of belonging and reconstruct their lives amid prolonged displacement. The study explores the dynamic interplay between refugees’ cultural practices and the influences of governmental and non-governmental organizations. By emphasizing the potential of bottom-up artistic initiatives, they challenge traditional views of refugee passivity and underscore the importance of supporting refugee-led cultural expressions to enhance policy-making and improve the quality of life for displaced individuals.

Zakaria, N. N., & Alders, H. (2025). Cultural Rights and Social Inclusion: Reflections on the engagement of refugee communities in Egyptian museums. Curator: The Museum Journal. Open access. In recent decades, Egypt has been a place of refuge for many individuals fleeing political upheaval, including Sudanese, Syrian, Yemeni, Iraqi, and Palestinian communities. The influx of Sudanese refugees since 2023 has further increased the country’s refugee population. Yet, despite their growing presence, Egyptian museums have largely overlooked the stories, heritage, and experiences of refugees in their exhibitions and programs. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how Egyptian museums could advance social inclusion of refugee communities and support their cultural rights. The paper proposes practical strategies for Egyptian museums to move beyond their traditional agendas by developing sustainable initiatives—such as co-created exhibitions, intercultural workshops, and collaborations with refugee organizations—that amplify refugees’ voices and promote shared values of diversity and inclusion.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Beyond Camps and Communities: The Economics of Refugee Relocation in Bangladesh. (2025). World Bank Group. Relocating refugees to remote purpose-built settlements offers an alternative to hosting refugees in traditional camps or local communities. Yet, its consequences remain poorly understood. This paper evaluates the well-being and fiscal implications of relocating Rohingya refugees from the overcrowded camps of Cox’s Bazar to Bhasan Char, a newly developed remote island settlement in Bangladesh. The paper documents two main findings. First, relocation is associated with a systematic reduction in refugee well-being, including lower food consumption (in both variety and nutritional value), higher illness and depression rates, and lower wages. Second, these outcomes occur despite significantly higher costs: per capita service delivery in Bhasan Char is approximately three times more expensive than in Cox’s Bazar. These results raise important questions about the sustainability and effectiveness of purpose-built relocation models in displacement settings.

Beyond Tokenism: Displaced Persons’ Participation in the Community Engagement Forum. (2025). Reliefweb. This report presents findings from a global research consultancy examining the value, accessibility, and inclusiveness of the Community Engagement Forum (CEF) for forcibly displaced persons (FDPs). The study responds to growing global commitments such as the Grand Bargain and the Global Compact on Refugees, urging humanitarian platforms to shift from tokenistic engagement toward authentic inclusion of crisis-affected populations. It assesses the extent to which displaced persons can access and meaningfully participate in the CEF’s current platforms and 2025 strategic initiatives, and provides practical recommendations to strengthen their voice, leadership, and influence within the Forum. Importantly, this study does not evaluate the utility, design, or effectiveness of CEF platforms for international humanitarian practitioners or coordination actors. Rather, it centres on the lived experiences, needs, and perspectives of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and their representative organisations, groups often underrepresented in global decision-making and humanitarian discourse.

Climate-Change Vulnerability and Climate Migration: Evidence from Guatemala. (2025). American University. As extreme weather events, including floods, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires, have grown more frequent and severe, climate migration has become more commonplace. But to what extent does climate change vulnerability impact people’s decision to relocate? Existing literature tends to blame resource scarcity, suggesting that vulnerability to climate change merely accelerates migration. The authors found a stronger relationship between a respondent’s sense of climate vulnerability and their propensity to consider migrating when compared to their sense of economic hardship or poor government response to climate-related extreme weather. Extreme weather events serve as an intervening variable between economic adversity and migration, confirming the value of scholarship on climate vulnerability and adaptation policies.

Kaldor Centre Resource Bank for Displaced Scholars. (2025). UNSW Sydney. This resource bank has been designed to support researchers and scholars in the field of refugee and forced migration studies, with a particular focus on scholars with lived experience of displacement. This resource bank provides an overview of some of the key research, writing and support services that are available in English. The resource bank also provides details of some of the research networks and job recruitment platforms that are available to scholars around the world.

The intersection of mobility, environmental and climate change, and conflict in the East and Horn of Africa: A synthesis of the existing knowledge and remaining research gaps. (2025). Mixed Migration Centre. This report synthesizes the state of knowledge on the interlinkages between environmental degradation, climate change, conflict, and mobility in the East and Horn of Africa, focusing on Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. This research was undertaken as part of the MECMEA project: Managing the impacts of environmental change and conflict on mobility in Eastern Africa through evidence-based inclusive policy dialogue and collaborative actions. The project is made up of a consortium of members led by the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network (HoA-REC&N), and including Mixed Migration Centre (MMC), Association Djibouti Nature, South Sudan Nature Conservation Organization (SSNCO), and PanAfricare Kenya.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Protection or prevention? The global refugee system is at a crossroads by Mustafa Alio & Rez Gardi, August 18, 2025. The New Humanitarian. Across borders and oceans, refugee journeys continue – driven by conflict, persecution, and a lack of safety. Yet global responses are increasingly focused not on ensuring protection, but on preventing movement. While the rhetoric remains humanitarian, the reality is a growing investment in containment, deterrence, and control. The infrastructure of refugee protection is being retooled to stop people from moving, not to help them survive displacement. This shift isn’t just policy drift – it’s a political choice. One that reflects a deeper problem: Refugees are wrongly treated as a crisis, while the real crisis is a system that approaches protecting human life as optional and stopping movement across borders as essential.

African migration: 5 trends and what’s driving them by Kevin J.A. Thomas, August 20, 2025. The Conversation. The author is a social demographer and in a recent study, identified trends that will shape the future of African migration flows and are different from migration patterns of the past. There are at least five emerging trends: migration between African countries is not following colonial labour migration patterns, Africans are migrating to new destinations (for example in South America and Asia), there’s more diversity in the types of African migrants, based on who they are, why they are migrating and how they are doing it, there is significant migration to Africa from non-African countries (like China), and institutions (such as municipal and traditional authorities) have an expanding role in migration.

Central Mediterranean deaths at 370 this year, with 300 missing – IOM by ANSA, August 18, 2025. InfoMigrants. At least 370 people have died and 300 are still missing along a migrant route in the Central Mediterranean from the beginning of the year until August 9, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Libya. Calls continue to be made for the opening of legal channels of migration and more funding by international organizations.

People dumping in the Pacific by Frank Brennan, September 6, 2025. Pearls and Irritations. Australian governments of all stripes have long maintained a commitment to secure borders and an orderly migration program. Utilizing the benefit of being an island nation-continent, governments over the last 30 years have taken expensive steps to stop boatloads of asylum seekers reaching Australia and to remove those who do manage to arrive to former colonies, Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Labour and Liberal are as good or as bad at it as each other, depending on your point of view.

Downpours stymy aid teams following deadly landslide in war-torn Sudan, September 4, 2025. United Nations. War-torn Sudan continues to face “a horrific humanitarian situation” as UN colleagues scramble to help communities affected by the devastating landslide that struck Tarseen village in South Darfur state. The death toll has not yet been verified as ongoing downpours and rugged terrain are making it extremely difficult to reach the impacted communities, according to the UN migration agency, IOM. To date, an estimated 150 people were displaced from Tarseen and neighbouring villages, with families now sheltering in nearby communities.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

CRS Seminar –  The (Im)mobility Nexus: Building Bridges Between Migration and Resistance Studies to Understand the “Self-Confinement” of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Communities in the Colombian Pacific Region. Centre for Refugee Studies. In the past twenty years, there has been a growing number of studies on the immobile aspects of human migration, referred to in recent literature as the “(im)mobility turn” in migration studies. Most of these studies problematize the binary or dichotomous distinction between mobility and immobility, as well as the marginalization of the latter, pointing to the intrinsic relationship between the two concepts/phenomena. Although this emerging literature highlights that immobility should not be taken for granted, much of it focuses on the forced, or “involuntary,” characteristics of this condition – in other words, on the constraints, regulations, and pressures that prevent people from exercising their human right to migrate. While recognizing the importance of this debate, this presentation aims to take a step further in migration and resistance studies by unpacking the (im)mobility nexus in the Colombian Pacific region. Drawing from an intersectional and intercultural perspective, it seeks to show that immobility is not merely the result of social structures that prevent or restrict movement, but can also be an expression of political agency and decision-making – even amidst a context of internationally recognized armed conflict and humanitarian crisis, as has been the case in Colombia for over half a century. This is a virtual event on Zoom, on September 30th, 2025, 1:00 – 2:30 PM ET with guest speaker, Raquel Araújo de Jesus, Postdoctoral Fellow, São Paulo Research Foundation.

Forced Displacement and the City: Lessons from Germany and the MENA Region. DAAD. This one-day symposium will explore the intersections of forced migration and urban development, addressing both challenges and opportunities from the perspectives of urban planning, sustainable development, architecture, and design. Bringing together voices from Germany and across the MENA region, the event aims to: Share experiences and lessons learned between diverse academic and professional actors, foster dialogue on inclusive and resilient urban strategies, encourage integration, spatial justice, and sustainable community development, and re-envision the role of architecture and design in complex processes such as refugee crisis. This will be on October 1, 2025, at the DAAD Regional Office in Cairo, Egypt. The deadline to register is September 20th, 2025.

IASFM20 Podcast Series. IASFM20 and Washington University. Drawing from the 20th International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) conference held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in January 2025, this podcast on urban development and forced migration is produced by RDI UREF, a research group on urban refugees by Resilience Development Initiatives Indonesia, and contains material from the conference. Episodes in this podcast are delivered in a mix of Bahasa Indonesia and English.

Metropolis International 2025 Summit. Toronto Metropolitan University. The 2025 Metropolis International Summit is taking place at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) on October 2-3, 2025. This landmark event marks an exciting new chapter for Metropolis International as it partners with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration (CERC Migration) program at TMU. Over two days, global scholars, policymakers, and practitioners will convene for a cutting-edge dialogue on migration and integration. The program will offer fresh insights, critical analysis, and recommendations from leading experts on topics including solidarity cities, diaspora finance, and the evolving terrain of advanced digital technologies on migration research and policy. The event will also feature keynote addresses by Dr. Alejandro Portes, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Princeton University, and H.E. Amb. Amma Twum-Amoah, Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development, African Union.

The Making of a Crisis: Unpacking Sudan’s Neglected War. University of Toronto. Activist and co-founder of Sudan Bukra TV, Husam Mahjoub, will speak to the role of the UAE in the war in Sudan, and Humanitarian Aid and Development Expert Iman Ahmed  will speak to the humanitarian situation. This will be followed by a Q&A facilitated by student leaders from the Sudanese Student Union. The panel will take place on Monday, Sept. 22, at 6 pm at the William Doo Auditorium on the St. George campus. Delicious Sudanese refreshments and snacks will be served. The event is free, and you can register through the link to hold your place.

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

Dear RRN Research Digest readers and contributors, we would like to thank you for your continued support. This will be our last issue of the academic year, and we hope to see you again in September. We wish you a lovely summer!

Many thanks,

RRN Digest Team

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Panepinto, A. (2025). Ending impunity for international law violations: Palestinian bedouins and the risk of forced displacement. Hart Publishing. Open access. This open access edited collection is the first book-length academic publication on the Palestinian Bedouins at risk of forced displacement in the Central West Bank and Greater Jerusalem area. At its core are two questions: firstly; what are the humanitarian vulnerabilities they face and how are they produced/constructed? And secondly, how does protracted impunity for international law violations drive humanitarian protection risks for them? It interweaves international law, community-based empirical research and interdisciplinary perspectives, to offer the broadest possible framework for understanding these complex and complicated questions.

Tadokoro, M. (2025). The International Politics of Migration: Interstate Relations and the Peoples Who Cross Borders. Springer Nature; Springer. Open access. This open access book discusses the impact of cross-border migration on the relationships between sovereign states. While there is already a vast amount of literature on immigration, it often focuses on issues such as human rights, citizenship, and social integration, reflecting the contemporary interests of Western countries. However, as long as the most fundamental norm of international politics remains the mutual recognition of exclusive jurisdictional rights over territory by sovereign states, people crossing borders pose various challenges to this system of sovereign states. It is this awareness of the issue that makes this book unique.

Dahie, H. A., Osman, M. A., Jimale, Y. A., Mohamud, F. I., Hussein, H. A., Alasow, M. O., Osman, A. A., Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, Dakane, M. M., & Hussein, D. A. (2025). Determinants of institutional delivery service utilization among internally displaced vulnerable populations in benadir region, Somalia: A community based cross-sectional study. Journal of Migration and Health, 11, 100319. Open access. Every day, nearly 830 women succumb to preventable pregnancy and childbirth-related complications, with 99 % of maternal deaths occurring in developing nations. Maternal mortality is disproportionately higher among women in rural areas and impoverished communities, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where approximately 85 % of cases are concentrated. In Somalia, a country grappling with prolonged conflicts and a healthcare system in disarray, maternal mortality remains alarmingly high at 692 per 100,000 live births. Delivery institutions in the IDP camps are mainly operated by humanitarian agencies and offer their services free of charge. The aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence of institutional delivery and factors associated with it among internally displaced mothers in Benadir region.

McAllister, K., Yoshimizu, A., & Ahadi, D. Migration and the politics of methodology: Doing fieldwork, Decentring power, and foregrounding migrants’ perspectives. (2025). Routledge. This volume examines the politics of fieldwork and the challenges of researching migrants constructed as outsiders both nationally and transnationally. Based on research with undocumented migrants, temporary workers, refugees, international students, and those who, having received citizenship status find their lives to be discursively and legally restricted, it shows how interdisciplinary fieldwork-based approaches can provide detailed accounts of migrants’ voices and their conditions of existence, offering insights into the ways in which they understand and take part in producing their transnational worlds. Applying critical, self-reflexive methodological approaches that challenge assumptions about who has the authority to produce knowledge and what types of knowledge have the authority of truth, Migration and the Politics of Methodology will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, geography, and communication and cultural studies with interests in research methods and migration.

Senevirathne, K.M.S., Quayle, A. and West, A. (2025), “Accounting for the stateless: Indian Tamils and the historical construction of racial inequality in Sri Lanka”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 38 No. 9, pp. 133-162. Open access. This paper aims to provide a historical perspective on the beginnings of racial inequality by analysing the changing citizenship identity of migrant Indian Tamils in post-colonial Sri Lanka (1948–2003), and the role accounting plays in constructing them as stateless non-citizens. This study shows how accounting plays a supplementary role in providing the state with an account of its population through practices of naming, counting and valuing. These practices also create Indian Tamil migrants as new objects of knowledge using their non-citizenship and racial identity. Government accounting of the everyday life (bios) of these non-citizens (births, deaths, education and wage rates) provided yearly evidence of the social and economic disparities between Sri Lankan citizens and the stateless Indian Tamils who lived predominantly on plantation estates.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Key Insights from Route-based Research Along the Main Migratory Routes in East and Horn of Africa. (2025). IOM UN Migration. This publication presents the main findings from five years of route-based research on migration in the East and Horn of Africa (EHoA), focusing on the region’s three main interregional routes. These include the Eastern Route, from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula; the Northern Route, from the Horn of Africa and the Sudan towards North Africa and Europe; and the Southern Route, from the Horn of Africa to Southern Africa. Through 10 key messages, this report provides an accessible overview of migration dynamics, offering valuable insights into the complexities of movements from the region and serving as an entry point for understanding the challenges, drivers and patterns shaping migration in the EHoA.

On the precipice of progress: National policy openings that increase forcibly displaced adolescent and youth enrollment and retention in secondary education. (2025). INEE. National-level policies are vital to the realization of forcibly displaced adolescent and youth engagement in secondary education. As multiple global-level frameworks and commitments are non-binding, national-level laws and the policies formulated within them help provide the political, social, and material conditions that adolescents and youth need for their right to secondary education to be achieved. This publication draws upon four case studies from the host-country contexts of Colombia, Iraq, Nigeria, and Rwanda. It contributes towards an emerging evidence base and informs an action agenda to increase forcibly displaced adolescent and youth enrollment and retention in national secondary education systems.

The Annual Global Overview of Migration Routes 2024. (2025). IOM UN Migration. The Annual Overview of Migratory Routes aims to provide a global snapshot of migration in 2024 from a route-based perspective. This approach investigates routes across national and regional boundaries, requiring a multi-country perspective and holistic view of human mobility, which considers people at origin, in transit, and at their destinations. By using this approach, the report seeks to provide an overview of the main dynamics along some of the world’s key migratory routes. It aims to investigate the interconnections between this global network of interdependent routes, bringing together data and analyses from all of IOM’s Regional Data Hubs and the global network of Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) operations. This report provides a comprehensive global snapshot of the latest trends and data on key migratory dynamics on major routes every four months and on an annual basis.

The State of the World’s Human Rights: April 2025. (2025). Amnesty. The 2025 edition of Amnesty International’s annual report, The State of the World’s Human Rights, assesses national, regional and global developments across a wide range of human rights themes. It identifies world trends related to violations in armed conflicts, repression of dissent, discrimination, economic and climate injustice, and the misuse of technology to infringe on human rights. It also highlights how powerful states have deliberately undermined the international rules-based system, hindering the resolution of problems that affect the lives of millions. The report documents human rights concerns during 2024 in 150 countries, connecting global and regional issues and looking to the future.

2025 Refugee resettlement response guide. (2025). International Rescue Committee. For decades, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) has served as a safe pathway for individuals fleeing violence and persecution to enter the United States and become valuable members of our communities as neighbors, entrepreneurs, employees, fellow congregants, leaders, and more. This program has helped the United States step up to meet critical global needs, including welcoming Afghans fleeing the fall of Kabul and Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion of their country in recent years. As of January 2025, the resettlement program has been indefinitely suspended. On January 20, the administration signed an Executive Order that indefinitely suspended the resettlement program. A few days later, on January 24, the administration ordered resettlement agencies to halt any activities supporting resettled refugees. On March 25, a U.S. appeals court allowed the administration to continue pausing refugee resettlement efforts while litigation works through the legal system.This guide offers tips and helpful examples for: Engaging with your elected officials, engaging with the press, and engaging on digital and social media to express support for the US refugee program.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Algeria expels more than 1,000 migrants to northern Niger by Emma Wallis, April 23, 2025. InfoMigrants. Reports on the Spanish and Portuguese news agencies EFE and LUSA suggest that migrants from 17 different countries, including Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mali, Gambia, Guinea, Niger, Somalia, Sudan, and Bangladesh were expelled from Algeria on April 19.

Civilians trapped, children at risk, amid escalating violence in Darfur, May 1, 2025. Reliefweb. As fighting intensifies in Darfur, children are bearing the brunt of a deepening humanitarian catastrophe. In the past three weeks, thousands of children and families have been forced to flee their homes – many for the second or third time – in search of an elusive sense of safety. The escalation of fighting since April 11 has reportedly killed hundreds, and driven a mass exodus of civilians from Al Fasher, and Abu Shouk and Zamzam camps. Approximately 150,000 people have sought refuge in Al Fasher, crowding into unfinished buildings, schools, or sheltering under trees – yet still exposed to ongoing shelling and without access to safe water, food, or healthcare

Empowering development through data on forced displacement by Daniel Boller, Ariya Hagh, & Hiroko Maeda, April 15, 2025. World Bank Blogs. Over 117 million people around the world are forcibly displaced due to conflict, violence, and persecution, as of 2023. Forcibly displaced people, including refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced people (IDP), and other people in need of international protection, face significant vulnerabilities that impede their economic participation and social inclusion, placing social and economic pressures on host communities and countries. The World Development Indicators (WDI) have recently included a suite of indicators on forcibly displaced people, likewise reflected in the World Bank Group Scorecard, sourced from data published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), including data published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

5 ways to tackle Australia’s backlog of asylum cases by Daniel Ghezelbash, Keyvan Dorostkar, & Mia Bridle, April 24, 2025. The Conversation. People who apply for asylum in Australia face significant delays in having their claims processed. These delays undermine the integrity of the asylum system, erode public confidence and cause significant distress to people seeking asylum. For people seeking asylum who have their initial applications refused and seek review in the Administrative Review Tribunal and in the Federal Circuit and Family Court, the process can often take more than ten years. The authors’ research evaluated data on Australia’s previous attempts to increase efficiency of asylum processing. They also examined international best practice for designing fair and fast procedures, including lessons from recent successful asylum reforms in Switzerland.

UNHCR: Funding crunch increases risks of violence, danger and death for refugees, May 2, 2025. Reliefweb. Deep funding cuts are removing critical support for the world’s most vulnerable refugees, who now face even greater risks of abuse, poverty, being forced to return home to danger or the prospect of new perilous journeys, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, warned today. Two thirds of refugees find safety in countries neighbouring their own, most of which are resource-poor. Reduced funding is hitting hardest these refugees and their host communities, which are already stretched to the limits. UNHCR can already see the impact as efforts to stabilize and support populations in fragile host countries are scaled back or terminated. The prospect of long-term solutions is also receding, complicating border management, adding to risks of trafficking and abuse, and encouraging onward movement; more may drown at sea.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Conference on Internally Displaced People: Shifting Power and Advancing Protection (Recording). Refugees International. Commemorating the anniversary of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, Refugees International, Georgetown University, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced persons, ODI Global and IDP leaders hosted a series of panels and a keynote address on internal displacement, focusing on ongoing protection needs, challenges and opportunities, and the shifting landscape of solutions. This event took place on April 14, 2025.

Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State; Dr Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky (Assistant Professor of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) (Seminar). Refugees Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Between the 1850s and World War I, about one million Muslims from the Russian Empire’s Caucasus region sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire. In his new book, Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State, Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky examines how Circassian, Chechen, Dagestani, and other refugees transformed the late Ottoman Empire and how the Ottoman government managed Muslim refugee resettlement. Empire of Refugees argues that, in response to Muslim migrations from Russia, the Ottoman government created a refugee regime, which predated refugee systems set up by the League of Nations and the United Nations. This seminar will be on May 20th, 2025, 5pm to 8pm, GMT, online.

Race, Refuge and Repair: Rethinking Migration from the Global South; Keynote Speaker: Prof. Tendayi Achiume in discussion with SA Human Rights Commissioner Tshepo Madlingozi (Workshop). Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town, South Africa. The colloquium aims to bring together the crucial empirical work currently organised under the banner of ‘border criminologies’ with critical legal analysis, including Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and related work at the intersections of refugee law, race, decolonisation and criminalisation. It seeks to advance scholarship on the imbrication of law and colonisation and the legal, political, economic and ecological relationships embedded in Empire, displacement, mobility and refugee protection. This is a hybrid event from May 29, 2025 to May 30, 2025, 9am to 5pm, SAST.

Understanding Syria through Syrian Voices: Refugees’ Stories of Revolution, War, and the Struggle for Home. University of Oxford Podcasts. In this joint seminar with Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, Wendy Pearlman, Professor at Northwestern University, shares personal testimonies collected from displaced Syrians around the world. Over 13 years, Professor Wendy Pearlman has interviewed more than 500 displaced Syrians around the world about their lives under a brutal authoritarian regime, the popular uprising against it, and the subsequent war and refugee crisis. In this presentation, she shares and explores their stories collected in her two books, ‘We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria’ (2017) and ‘The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora’ (2024). These personal testimonials offer a human lens on the stunning recent collapse of the Assad regime, while also offering broader lessons about migration, belonging, and the search for dignity.

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

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Crush, J., Chikanda, A., & Ramachandran, S. (2025). New Directions in South-South Migration. Springer. Open access. This book offers a comprehensive understanding of South-South migration. It explores crucial migration themes such as migrant integration in urban areas, migration and rural transformation, urban migration policy environment, migration corridors, and migrant precarity and survival, especially food security. It features contributions from eminent scholars in the Global South, namely, Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean and the Middle East. Chapters in the book present theoretical perspectives and practical case studies building on the results of detailed surveys, in-depth interviews, field observations and other materials. The book highlights new findings and research outputs from recent and ongoing collaborative projects between multiple researchers from the Global South and North. The book is intended for researchers, graduate students and teachers of geography, social policy, refugees and migration studies, history, international development and urban studies.

Foster, M., Neo, J., & Sperfeldt, C. (2025). Statelessness in Asia: Causes, Conditions, and Challenges in Context. In M. Foster, J. Neo, & C. Sperfeldt (Eds.), Statelessness in Asia (pp. 1–38). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Open access. While statelessness remains a global phenomenon, it is a global issue with an Asian epicentre. This chapter situates the book within the context and multi-disciplinary scholarship on statelessness in Asia by reviewing the causes, conditions and/or challenges of statelessness. It recognizes statelessness in this region as a phenomenon beyond forced migration and highlights the arbitrary and discriminatory use of state power in producing and sustaining statelessness. The chapter reviews the ‘state of statelessness’ in Asia, including applicable international, regional and national legal frameworks. It also maps some of the core themes that emerge from the contributors’ examination of the causes and conditions of statelessness in Asia. These include: the relationship between ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic diversity and statelessness; the legacies of colonialism; contemporary politics surrounding nation-building, border regimes and mobilities; as well as intersecting vulnerabilities. The chapter concludes with some preliminary thoughts on frameworks of analysis and future research agendas, including challenges and prospects for reform.

Biorklund, L. (2025). “We pay with our life and our body:” Gendered and intimate geopolitics of vias Pa’l Norte. Political Geography, 119, 103317. Focusing on life history narratives produced with Central American women on the move in southern Mexico and engaging an intimate geopolitics lens, this article presents differential gendered, classed, and embodied experiences embedded in the vias (routes) Pa’l Norte. The expression Pa’l Norte, commonly used by those traversing migratory routes in Mexico, is not limited to ‘towards the north’ in a literal or geographical sense. Based on ethnographic and participatory research, the article illustrates how Pa’l Norte is both a tangible and imagined destination that encompasses diverse relational intimacies, including safety, hope, love, fear, and trauma. Assuming a geopolitically produced gender exclusion in crossing borders, it explores how changes in infrastructure and migration policies since 2020, including the halt of la Bestia, a transpacific cargo train frequently used by migrants, along with transnational migration governance aimed at preventing northbound movement, have influenced people’s dis(ability) to move in southern Mexico, perpetuating historical exclusions and violence, including the erosion of women’s bodily autonomy. By gendering the concept of viapolitics and providing an intimate reading of it, the article unpacks how women’s experiences of moving slowly and paying with their bodies, and sometimes their lives, in southern Mexico today relate to other women’s experiences in different places and times.

Kihato, C. W. (2025). Securitization is (normal) politics: Epistemological insights from Kenya’s forced migration and security experience. Migration Studies, 13(2). Open access. Using Kenya as a case study, this article contributes to the ongoing migration security debate, calling for a fundamental rethinking of the conceptual framework that underpins securitization theory. It challenges the Copenhagen School’s perspective on securitization, collapsing its foundational norm/exception, politics/securitization binaries. By underscoring the mutually constitutive nature of these processes, the study questions the very existence of a clear distinction between ‘normal’ politics and securitization, arguing that violent and exclusionary practices often operate alongside, rather than outside of, democratic politics. In doing so, the study seeks to amplify the epistemological and ontological significance of African contributions to theory building, countering narratives that label African countries’ politics as methodological outliers. Ultimately, this recovery not only offers a more accurate understanding of securitization in Kenya, it critiques understandings of ‘normal’ politics as ‘good’, exposing the complicity of liberal democracy in the forceful exclusion of securitized identities.

Petrozziello, A. J. (2025). Intersectionality as method for human rights research: Identifying who is made stateless and how through UN treaty body reviews. Journal of Human Rights, 24(2), 182–198. Open access. Few theories have generated the kind of international and interdisciplinary engagement as intersectionality. Nevertheless, intersectionality as a research paradigm has yet to gain ground in human rights research. People can experience the same rights violation on multiple grounds, yet human rights research design and methods—like rights frameworks and treaty bodies themselves—tend to examine each form of discrimination separately or additively. This article demonstrates the value of intersectionality as a methodological approach for human rights research by discussing feminist methodological insights developed through a global qualitative study of exclusionary birth registration practices that lead to statelessness. The discussion highlights three intersections that block access to birth certificates: gender, religious, and ethnic discrimination at the civil registrar; disability and ethnic discrimination in contexts of mobility; and discrimination based on gender, race, and migration status in reproductive healthcare. The conclusion offers human rights researchers an intersectional method for analyzing observations from all human rights mechanisms on a particular issue, to gain a more fulsome understanding of the operations of power that violate rights.

Tanous, O., Hosny, N., & Joseph, S. (2025). Are we all post traumatic yet? A critical narrative review of trauma among Arab refugees. International Journal of Social Determinants of Health and Health Services. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most studied, diagnosed, and treated mental health disorders in settings of war and displacement. A large body of literature has questioned the utility of the PTSD framework and its application to traumatic stress among populations experiencing wars, political violence, and displacement that is chronic and on a population level. No review has yet summarized the conceptual alternatives proposed by scholars for refugees in or from the Arab region. This article reviews conceptual articles from the last three decades that propose alternative frameworks to understand trauma and traumatic stress among Arab refugees in the Arab region. The authors have identified nine articles that critiqued the applicability of PTSD framework for Arab refugees and/or provided alternative key concepts. Themes such as the individualistic nature of PTSD, the nature and longitude of traumatic stress, the “normalization of traumatic stress,” and the medicalization of trauma have emerged. The articles also discuss social justice as recovery, diagnostic recommendations, and the flow of knowledge production from the Global North to the Global South. Our article expands a growing body of literature critiquing the applicability of Western psychiatric models in settings in the Global South, specifically the Arab region.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Civilians in Conflict (Data). (2025). Ecoi.net. In the 2nd post of this methods series, the authors continue to explore the role of civilians in conflict data, focusing on the insights provided by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) datasets. By examining variables such as “civilian targeting”, “deaths_civilians” and the event type of “violence against civilians”, they delve into the complexities of how to responsibly interpret and apply such variables when analysing the impact of conflict on civilians.

International Student Mobility: A Post-Pandemic Reset or a Broader Challenge? by Elizabeth Collett. (2025). Migration Policy Institute. International education has become a huge market, estimated to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Tertiary-level institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada continue to draw large numbers of international students, but other destination countries have also entered the mix. And while Chinese and Indian nationals are among the largest groups of international students, enrollment is growing from countries as varied as Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Brazil. This Transatlantic Council on Migration report outlines important considerations for governments seeking to answer questions about the sustainability of rising numbers, some universities’ reliance on international student tuition, and whether international education is in fact helping countries meet critical skills needs. It provides an overview of recent developments in the international education sector and explores policy levers that can be used to shape demand for international study, the form learning opportunities take, and how they can be smartly aligned with future labor market needs.

Leaving No Child Behind Report. (2025). Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. This report highlights the global issue of childhood statelessness, which affects millions of children and denies them their right to a nationality. Statelessness often stems from discrimination, gaps in birth registration, conflicting nationality laws, and is frequently passed from one generation to the next. Without nationality, children face serious barriers to accessing basic rights- especially education. These barriers, whether legal or practical, prevent stateless children from enrolling in school or completing their studies. The result is often low self-esteem, poor educational outcomes, and limited opportunities in life. While international law guarantees the right to education for all children, many national laws and policies still exclude stateless children. Community groups working directly with affected families stress the need for better support, inclusive policies, and alternative education projects that meet children where they are.

Lives in Dignity: Lessons from Applying Development-Oriented Approaches in Forced Displacement Contexts. (2025). Relief Web. Lessons from Applying Development-Oriented Approaches in Forced Displacement Contexts captures key learning from 14 LiD-funded projects implemented across 15 countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. These projects involved 36 implementing partners (21 local) with US$27 million committed, and 46 per cent going directly to local partners. Key lessons centered around three main areas: partnerships, people and community centred approaches, and sustainability.

Migration Governance in Unsettled Times: How Policymakers Can Plan for Population Change by Meghan Benton, Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, and Kate Hooper. (2025). Migration Policy Institute. Populist claims that immigration is chaotic, unlawful, and unfair are increasingly resonating even within societies whose members generally believe some level of immigration is needed to maintain economic competitiveness. This shift, which has pushed governments of all stripes toward greater restrictions and reduced the appetite for experimentation, comes at a particularly fraught time. This Transatlantic Council on Migration issue brief explores the factors behind this breakdown in immigration governance and lays out strategies for reform, drawing lessons from a range of countries. In particular, it makes the case that regular, long-term planning—while a tall order when governments are grappling with short-term pressures—will be essential if countries are to successfully navigate emerging demographic and economic challenges.

The Cost of Neglect: Two years of war in Sudan. (2025). International Rescue Committee. As Sudan marks two years since the outbreak of war, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) warns of unprecedented humanitarian disaster and failed diplomacy. With millions displaced and famine spreading, IRC urges the international community to retrain focus on Sudan, releasing key policy recommendations to avert further catastrophe.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Canada’s refugee policy could gain renewed attention amid U.S. deportations by Owen Guo, April 15, 2025. CTV News. Back in 2015, the Syrian refugee crisis dominated the final stretch of the federal election as party leaders debated Canada’s approach to asylum seekers. Not this year. With the 2025 federal election consumed by economic angst over U.S. tariffs, Canada’s refugee policy has largely faded from the spotlight. But a recent increase in asylum seekers at a Quebec border crossing could bring the issue back into focus — one that will extend far beyond the campaign trail.

Fresh details emerge on Australia’s new climate migration visa for Tuvalu residents. An expert explains by Jane McAdam, April 9, 2025. The Conversation. The details of a new visa enabling Tuvaluan citizens to permanently migrate to Australia were released this week. The visa was created as part of a bilateral treaty Australia and Tuvalu signed in late 2023, which aims to protect the two countries’ shared interests in security, prosperity and stability, especially given the “existential threat posed by climate change”. The Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union, as it is known, is the world’s first bilateral agreement to create a special visa like this in the context of climate change. This article spotlights what is known so far about why this special visa exists and how it will work.

Germany orders halt on UN refugee resettlement program by Elizabeth Schumacher, April 8, 2025. DW. Germany has ordered a temporary halt to a UN refugee resettlement program it has been participating in for years, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) confirmed on Tuesday. The program is designed for refugees in particular need of protection, such as children, victims of torture, or people in dire need of medical treatment, who cannot stay in their first country of arrival. UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesman for Germany, Chris Melzer, has said that the program was stopped “during the coalition negotiations” that are ongoing between the conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) bloc and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

Targeting Pro-Palestinian Students (and Why That’s Bad for the Jews), April, 2, 2025. The Asylumist. The Trump Administration has been targeting pro-Palestinian activists under an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which provides, “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” Here, the author discusses INA § 237(a)(4)(C)(1) and some policy implications of its widespread use.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Canada’s Migration Diplomacy and the Protection of Migrants: Between International Commitments and National Practices. University of Ottawa. Join us for the inaugural conference of the University Research Chair on Migrant Protection and International Law, marking the official launch of the Chair and introducing its first flagship project on Canada’s migration diplomacy. This conference will explore Canada’s approach to migration diplomacy and its impact on the country’s global reputation and domestic practices. Featuring Professors James Milner (Carleton University), François Crépeau (McGill University), and Idil Atak (TMU), moderated by Delphine Nakache, Chairholder and Professor at the Faculty of Law (Common Law Section). This is a hybrid and bilingual event on May 20, 2025, 11 AM – 2 PM ET.

Localization in the Rohingya refugee response: Dr Miriam Bradley (Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Studies, University of Manchester). University of Oxford, Refugee Studies Centre. The humanitarian localization agenda calls for power and resources to be transferred from international actors to local and national responders in the places affected by crisis. Despite a consensus that humanitarian responses should become more localized, debates persist on how best to achieve this practically. Moreover, there is little evidence to show how such a shift in power affects humanitarian outcomes. This paper asks how localization is understood and implemented in the Rohingya refugee response in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, and with what consequences for the Rohingya population there. It argues that the response scores high on many of the criteria against which localization is measured. This seminar will be in person on May 7, 2025, 5 PM – 6 PM, Seminar Room 1, Oxford Department of International Development, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB.

Protecting the Human Rights of Migrants at Sea: A Course on the International Law of Maritime Jurisdiction, Interception, and Search and Rescue for the Middle East and North Africa – Facilitator’s Guide. IOM UN Migration. The Course on Protecting the Human Rights of Migrants at Sea, and this underpinning Facilitator’s Guide, has been developed for practitioners training national authorities in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean region – and is likely to be of value to national authorities in other regions as well. Its main purpose is to strengthen the technical, analytical and operational capacities of migration officials to more effectively protect human rights in the maritime migration context. In addition to giving an overview of the international legal framework relevant to migrants at sea, the Course and this accompanying Guide cover the following: a review of the law relating to maritime zones and jurisdictional questions at sea; coastal State interception of migrant smuggling vessels and the human rights implications of “effective control”; and maritime search and rescue, including the duties to rescue, coordinate and disembark passengers to a “place of safety”. This Facilitator’s Guide relies on a mixed methodology, linking lecture material with case studies and other activities to help officials explore and apply the law of the sea in practice.

2nd Global Conference on SRHR & Gender Equity in Refugee and Humanitarian Crises. Hope for Refugees International. This unique two-day event brings together a diverse group of participants—from refugees and asylum seekers, academia, to health and social services professionals and community advocates—to explore key issues related to Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH), gender-based violence, and equity for marginalized populations. The event will be from May 9-10, 2025, 163 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON M5A 1S1, Canada.

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

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Gatrell, P., Nowak, K., Banko, L., & Ghoshal, A. (2025). Refugee Voices in Modern Global History: Reckoning with Refugeedom. Oxford University Press. Across modern history, refugees have articulated their experiences and wishes against the backdrop of mass displacement brought about by world war, civil war, revolution, population exchange, decolonisation, and state formation. Men and women displaced in different sites, at different times and from different backgrounds played for high stakes: they deliberated about what to say and to whom, and they sought, expected and generated a response from international organisations and other actors. Refugee Voices in Modern Global History places refugees at the centre of modern history. It demonstrates how ordinary refugees understood their experiences and engaged with institutions that sought to resolve their predicament. It asks how, to whom, and in what circumstances refugees spoke of the emotional impact of displacement and how they expressed themselves politically as well as personally. It shows refugees to have consistently exercised agency. By adopting the term ‘refugeedom’ the authors show how the voices and perspectives of refugees can be incorporated alongside the power dynamics associated with the multiple incarnations of the refugee regime that ‘managed’ refugees and articulated ‘solutions’. Extensive archival research across three continents makes it possible to explain in comparative terms the significance attached to the encounters between refugees and officials in modern Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The result is an original and in-depth study of the contrasting responses of refugees to displacement and to the arrangements made on their behalf at a series of critical junctures in the past.

Kortendiek, N. (2025). Global Governance on the Ground: Organizing International Migration and Asylum at the Border. Oxford University Press. This book offers a new approach to how international organizations govern. Through an in-depth look at the case of migration and asylum, the book argues that international organizations (IOs) not only govern global challenges through rules, standards, expertise, and numbers but also through practice on the ground. Much scholarship has been devoted to the question of how IOs become autonomous agents and exercise authority to shape governance outcomes. Far less attention has been given to the way IOs use their field access to govern global issues on the ground-without first going through formal policy channels or renegotiating their authority. The book demonstrates that through field-based practice, IOs directly regulate global issues in the spaces where they become virulent, in different locations across the globe.

Barber, S. (2025). From silence to academic engagement: How refugee children with disabilities access learning through inclusive ‘artful’ schools in Canada. British Educational Research Journal. Open access. Many newcomer children spend a ‘silent year’ in elementary school classrooms while they adjust to a new culture and language. This often delays inclusion in learning and forming friendships with peers. For refugee children with disabilities (RCDs) this phase may last for 3 years or more, impacting their mental health and sense of belonging, and potentially worsening issues they carry from experiences of war and violence. This paper suggests that these barriers might be overcome through capitalising on strategies that circumvent spoken language by relying on the universal language of art. While making art, children naturally explore their identities, decide how they will present themselves to others, find meaning in a healing narrative and safely process bad memories. The main goal of the study was to uncover hidden ‘knowledge of self and others’ through an arts-based research approach. Five arts education and art therapy methods with 49 children (aged 7–9) were implemented and evaluated, including self-portraits, emoji games, read-aloud story books, paper-bag puppets and digital stories. Findings reveal that over time, students undergo noticeable changes in their cognitive and affective understandings with exposure to art, and improve their language ability, self-esteem and well-being. An unexpected outcome was how the arts may scaffold RCDs into academic learning earlier than expected.

dos Santos Gonçalves, M. do C. (2025). ’Operation Welcome’: Humanitarian Pathway and Admission Applied to the Reception of Venezuelan Migrants in Brazil. Quarterly on Refugee Problems – AWR Bulletin, 64(1), 113–129. Open access. This article discusses ‘Operation Welcome’, a Brazilian government initiative to receive Venezuelan migrants and refugees, which has been managing emergency humanitarian assistance on the border between Brazil and Venezuela since 2018. The study seeks to analyse the dynamics of the reception of Venezuelan migrants through humanitarian assistance, drawing on the theoretical and methodological approach of anthropology on the border. The militarization of humanitarian action emerges as a hybrid perspective of migration control that is shared with NGOs and international agencies working on Operation Welcome in the context of the border analysed. The text suggests that Operation Welcome, by adopting interoperability as a framework for the actions of its actors, favoured the conditioning of the use of force by the State to the principle of social protection, shedding light on the creation of reception systems that are governed by the principle of guarantee and recognition of rights.

Ihnatenko, K., & Sadzaglishvili, S. (2025). Barriers to social service access for Ukrainian refugees with disabilities in Georgia: Outreach and Communication. Social Sciences, 14(2), 95. Open access. This paper aims to identify the barriers to accessing social services for persons with disabilities among Ukrainian refugees and to examine how stakeholders can reach them through communication channels. The article analyzes the challenges faced by disabled Ukrainian refugees in Georgia. The findings reveal significant difficulties faced by Ukrainian refugees with disabilities in accessing essential services such as healthcare, employment, psychological counseling, rehabilitation, early intervention services, legal aid, and information. The primary strategies employed by stakeholders providing humanitarian aid include individualized approaches and communication. However, while many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) assist Ukrainian refugees, there are currently no NGOs specifically focused on supporting children and adults with disabilities in this population.

Jana, M. (2025). Displacement and the reframing of reproductive autonomy: A case of Rohingya women in India. Journal of Asian and African Studies. Open access. Women’s narratives are often absent or distorted in theorisations of displacement, reflecting an ‘androcentric’ international human rights framework. This paper examines the transformation of gender roles and reproductive rights among Rohingya women in Indian refugee camps. Based on qualitative research in the National Capital Region of Delhi and Haryana districts, the author argues that displacement operates as both a barrier and a catalyst, reconfiguring public–private boundaries and enabling subtle negotiations of power. Women’s life histories reveal strategies of mobility and agency within oppressive structures. By integrating discussions on marriage, family planning and childbearing, the paper challenges reductive refugee stereotypes and advocates centring reproductive rights in policymaking.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

ACAPS Thematic report – Afghanistan: Implications of the US foreign aid cuts on the humanitarian response (01 April 2025). (2025). Reliefweb. On 10 March 2025 – seven weeks into the 90-day pause and foreign aid review announced via executive order on 20 January 2025 – the US Government announced that it had cancelled more than 80% of all USAID programmes globally. These cancellations followed a series of stop-work orders (SWOs) issued on 24 January on all US-funded aid activities.  Despite a waiver for life-saving humanitarian assistance announced on 28 January for some programming categories, some organisations still terminated programmes even without receiving a termination notice because of the unclear communication and implementation of the waiver. This report provides a detailed analysis of the extensive impacts of the funding freeze and cuts of USAID on Afghanistan.

Analysing the 2025-26 Federal Budget: What it means for refugees and people seeking protection. (2025). Refugee Council of Australia. This report reviews the Australian 2025-26 federal budget with key points such as, “despite forced displacement globally at unprecedented levels, Australia’s Refugee and Humanitarian Program will remain at 20,000 places, the level set in 2023-24”.

Funding Cuts Threaten the Health of Nearly 13 million Displaced People. (2025). UNHCR. Without adequate resources, an estimated 12.8 million displaced people, including 6.3 million children, could be left without life-saving health interventions in 2025, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency warned on March 28, 2025. The current humanitarian funding crisis, exacerbated by declining health spending in hosting countries, is affecting the scope and quality of public health and nutrition programmes for refugees and host communities, disrupting access to essential services and increasing the risk of disease outbreaks, malnutrition, untreated chronic conditions and mental health issues. When support for refugee health care is cut, refugees will be forced to pay from their own pockets – but they do not have the funds – and will face challenges accessing already strained public services, overwhelming local clinics and hospitals.

Pendular Movements in the Mandera Triangle: Tri-border region of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. (2025). Mixed Migration Centre. This infographic explores cross-border and pendular movements within the Mandera Triangle — the tri-border region of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. Pendular movements refer to the cyclical or repeated movement of individuals or groups living in border areas between two or more locations, often crossing international borders. Home to approximately 350,000 people, the Mandera Triangle is a borderland region prone to recurring environmental shocks, including droughts and floods, as well as varying levels of conflict and insecurity. Consecutive failed rainy seasons have exposed communities to food insecurity and water scarcity, eroding agricultural and pastoral livelihoods. These conditions have shifted seasonal migration patterns and intensified displacement and cross-border mobility.

UN and partners seek $934.5m for life-saving aid to 1.5 million Rohingya refugees and their hosts in Bangladesh. (2025). UNHCR.  UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and partners called on the international community to enhance its support for Rohingya refugees and their hosts in Bangladesh amid rising insecurity in Myanmar and ongoing forced displacement. Unrelenting conflict in Myanmar, dwindling financial resources and competing global crises have made it critical for the international community to step up for the Rohingya refugees, who remain in a precarious situation, entirely dependent on humanitarian aid.

What crisis affected communities need from a humanitarian reset – A guide based on two years of conversations with people on the front lines of crisis. (2025). Reliefweb. What does humanitarian assistance look like in a world with less money, less global solidarity and ever-increasing numbers of people in need? Over two years and across 12 countries, Ground Truth Solutions held more than 34,000 conversations with people experiencing crisis to find out what they want and need humanitarian action to do for them. They offer some clear priorities that should help to navigate this funding crisis.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

DR Congo: Armed violence displaces thousands as cholera outbreak worsens, April 3, 2025. United Nations. Ongoing violence in North and South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to kill, injure and displace civilians, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned. Preliminary reports from partners on the ground indicate at least two civilian fatalities and multiple injuries, with several wounded evacuated to Masisi General Hospital. Meanwhile, many civilians remain confined to their homes due to active crossfire, intensifying fear and limited access to basic needs and services.

Myanmar and the Gutting of USAID by Naw Theresa, April 4, 2025. The Diplomat. On March 28, what is being called a once-in-a-century earthquake struck central Myanmar, devastating huge swathes of the war-torn country. The cities of Mandalay and Sagaing, along with the administrative capital Naypyidaw and villages in the famed Inle Lake region in Shan State have seen widespread and catastrophic death and destruction. The State Administration Council (SAC) junta has reported over 3,000 dead and thousands wounded or missing, but the broad consensus is that the death toll will likely be in the tens of thousands. Strong aftershocks, destroyed highways, power outages, and deep political cleavages are hampering rescue efforts. While U.S. President Trump pledged aid in response, there was a notable absence of American rescue or coordination teams on the ground.

Poland introduces law allowing suspension of asylum rights, March 26, 2025. Notes from Poland. President Andrzej Duda has signed into law a bill that will allow Poland’s government to suspend the right to claim asylum for people who enter the country as part of the “instrumentalisation of migration”, as has been happening on the border with Belarus. The measure has been criticised as a violation of European and international law by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Poland’s own human rights commissioner. Instrumentalisation of migration is a phrase regularly used by Polish and other European authorities to describe the deliberate manner in which Belarus and Russia have used migrants and asylum seekers in an attempt to destabilise EU countries.

Syria after Assad: why many Syrian refugees aren’t returning home by Charlotte Al-Khalili & Melissa Gatter, March 24, 2025. The Conversation. When news of Bashar al-Assad’s downfall broke on December 8 2024, 13 years after the beginning of the Syrian uprising, Syrians around the world rejoiced. The authors rejoiced along with them, having spent the last decade in conversation with Syrians displaced to the neighbouring countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, where they research humanitarian aid in refugee camps and revolutionaries in exile. The dream of Syrian refugees to return home now comes with existential, practical and legal questions.

2 killed as Sudan’s paramilitary intensifies attacks on displacement camp in North Darfur by Fatma Khaled, April 2, 2025. Independent. At least two people were killed in attacks by Sudan’s paramilitary forces on a famine-stricken camp in North Darfur for people displaced by the war in the country, officials and humanitarian organizations said. The Abo Shouk displacement camp in el-Fasher has been attacked on and off over the past 11 months, but attacks have intensified recently, Adam Rijal, the spokesman for the Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, said.

3 million Afghans, many of them at risk for aiding U.S., face expulsion from Pakistan by The Associated Press, March 31, 2025. NBC News. Pakistan plans to expel 3 million Afghans from the country this year, as a deadline for them to voluntarily leave the capital and surrounding areas expired. It’s the latest phase of a nationwide crackdown launched in October 2023 to expel foreigners living in Pakistan illegally, mostly Afghans. The campaign has drawn fire from rights groups, the Taliban government and the United Nations.

4 ways to prevent and manage climate migration by Eric Shahzar, March 20, 2025. World Economic Forum. Accelerated climate change is reshaping migration and displacement patterns worldwide. Extreme weather events, rising sea levels and coastal erosion are making many areas uninhabitable, forcing millions to relocate. By 2050, an estimated 1.2 billion people could be displaced due to climate-related disasters. The scale and frequency of global climate displacement demand immediate and targeted policy intervention. Delays in action only deepen the crisis, pushing affected populations into vicious cycles of extreme poverty, insecurity and further migration. To address this growing crisis, countries can opt for four pre-emptive measures to tackle global climate migration

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Fundamentals of Community-Based Research: A free workshop by Prof. Dina Taha. Resource Centre for Public Sociology, York University. This workshop is a conversation starter about community-based research (CBR), an approach that bridges research to practice and prioritizes collaboration with community members and partners, and centers equity, social justice and research impact – in short, CBR is a tool to operationalize public sociology. Participants will explore the objectives and steps of CBR, key steps in the research process, and practical tools for engaging with communities. Through hands-on examples, we will discuss how CBR can empower marginalized groups, facilitates knowledge mobilization, and contributes to decolonization. By the end of the session, students will have a foundational understanding of how to apply CBR principles in their own research and community engagement journeys. This workshop will be on April 15, 2025, 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM (EDT) on Zoom.

Immigration Actions in First 100 Days of Trump Second Term (Webinar). Migration Policy Institute. During his campaign, Donald Trump pledged swift and sweeping actions on immigration enforcement and policymaking more broadly. From his first day back in office, President Trump and his team began delivering on their promised “shock and awe,” with policies ranging from a halt to refugee resettlement and dramatically widened immigration enforcement in the U.S. interior to an effort to end birthright citizenship. Other high-profile actions, including the declaration of an “invasion;” dispatch of deportees to third countries such as Panama, Costa Rica, and El Salvador; and first-ever peacetime triggering of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, have followed. Amid the “flood the zone” tempo and blizzard of headlines and legal filings during the administration’s first 100 days, it is sometimes difficult to anticipate which actions will have the greatest impact and be most long-lasting. On this webinar (April 24, 2025 at 11:30 ET), MPI analysts will assess the most consequential actions taken during the first 100 days, detail the litigation picture, and analyze some of the early effects of policies on communities across the United States.

Making ‘Loot,’ a Film About Cambodian Crimes and Redemption: A conversation with director Don Millar (Podcast). The Diplomat. From remote Cambodian villages to the world of elite art collectors and galleries in New York and London, the new film “Loot: A Story of Crime & Redemption” documents the theft of artifacts known as “blood antiquities” from in and around the temple ruins of Angkor Wat and Koh Ker during Cambodia’s civil war. Director Don Millar spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about a documentary that was three years in the making, after its screening at the 14th Cambodian International Film Festival in Phnom Penh.

Online NGO Dialogue: Mainstreaming Mental Health and Psychosocial Support across refugee responses in Europe. UNHCR. Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) encompasses the range of interventions undertaken to address psychological distress and promote well-being. It is a critical component of protection and solutions for refugees, asylum-seekers, returnees, stateless individuals, and internally displaced people, who are often significantly impacted due to conflict, persecution, displacement, dangerous journeys and exclusion. In Europe, displaced populations face significant MHPSS challenges, including legal and administrative barriers to care, language difficulties, and limited access to both community-based psychosocial support and specialized services. Stigma surrounding mental health further compounds these challenges, contributing to underreporting and making it difficult to fully assess the scale and complexity of needs. This Regional Dialogue will be an opportunity to discuss how to further mainstream MHPSS across protection interventions, showcase NGOs’ experiences and good practices, and hear from NGOs and develop concrete recommendations on how UNHCR and NGOs can better support each other. This will be on April 11, 2025, 11:00 – 12:30 CET, online.

Trauma casts a long shadow for immigration detainees (Podcast). Immigration Issues – SBS News. A new report from the University of New South Wales in Australia has highlighted alarming mental health outcomes for individuals who have spent time in detention. Refugees and migrants already experience lower rates of mental health literacy – but one initiative is looking to raise awareness and provide easy English resources in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The initiative has emerged amid debate about controversial laws that would enable the government to deport any individual without a visa to a third country.

‘Wicked’ Challenges in Migration Management: Weaponization, Politicization, and Hostile Influence Operations (Podcast). Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University. As allegations of the weaponization of migration proliferate on both sides of the Atlantic, Professor Kelly M Greenhill explored a triad of intertwined and self-reinforcing challenges that inform, affect and complicate migration management and the politics around border security: 1) the weaponization of migration for political, economic and/or military gain; 2) the politicization and exploitation of fears of migration for domestic political gain – or the weaponization of the weaponization of migration, if you will; and 3) the weaponization of the politicization of migration, in the form of hostile influence operations that rely on the deployment of rumors, conspiracy theories, and other forms of what Greenhill calls “extra-factual information” as well as on the direct and indirect creation of actual migration outflows. Drawing upon evidence from recent and ongoing cases, Professor Greenhill also discussed how each of these three distinct phenomena can feed and exacerbate the others, creating vicious feedback loops. leaving target states less secure and more vulnerable to future acts of migration predation and further endangering the human rights of the true victims of migration weaponization, the displaced.

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

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Ambrosini, M., D’Amico, M., & Perassi, E. (2025). Borders, Migrations and Human Rights. Ledizioni. Open access. In an era marked by rising securitarian policies and contested human mobility, Borders, Migrations, and Human Rights offers a rigorous and interdisciplinary examination of the complex relationship between state sovereignty, migration, and fundamental rights. Edited by Maurizio Ambrosini, Marilisa D’Amico, and Emilia Perassi, this volume brings together leading scholars to analyze the resurgence of border enforcement as a central political priority, often at the expense of international legal obligations and human dignity. Drawing from sociology, law, history, psychology, and literary studies, the book interrogates the evolving functions of borders—not only as physical demarcations but as sites of legal, political, and social contestation. Contributors explore topics such as the securitization of migration, the constitutional rights of migrants, EU border policies, the criminalization of solidarity, and the narratives of border-crossing in literature and cultural discourse. Through this multi-faceted lens, the volume reveals how contemporary border practices reshape democratic societies, challenge human rights principles, and expose the persistent tensions between national security and universal justice. A product of the CRC “Migrations and Human Rights” initiative at the University of Milan, this book is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, and advocates engaged in the urgent debates on migration governance and human rights in the 21st century.

Benchekroun, R. (2025). Precarious Motherhood: Navigating relationships and support post-migration in the UK. UCL Press. Open access. Precarious Motherhood explores the experiences of racially minoritised mothers living with insecure immigration status and financial hardship in London, UK. It exposes the impact of hostile immigration policies and precarity on mothers’ interpersonal relationships and access to support. The author draws attention to how mothers manage the constraints they face and enact belonging. She then explores the impact on mothers’ couple relationships, friendships, adult kin relationships and faith-based networks. The book underlines the vital role of personal relationships in providing access to resources and support, but also demonstrates how precariously positioned mothers must carefully navigate relational tensions in their everyday lives. It highlights how social infrastructure facilitates relational practices, helping mothers to sustain their children’s wellbeing and their own.

Abioye, F., & D’Orsi, C. (2025). Deportation of aliens from South Africa: State Practise and State power. Griffith Law Review, 1–18. Migration has become a global phenomenon that has taken centre stage over the years. With increasing international migration, the powers of states to control access to, and to control those who stay within their territories are also further enhanced. Once South Africa emerged from its apartheid past, it became a destination of choice for people all over Africa. Migrants flocked into the country in huge numbers, almost overwhelming the system. The South African government has responded with a securitised approach to control immigration into its territory, including the increased powers to deport illegal migrants. The power to deport, while an exercise of state sovereignty, must however be exercised in line with international and constitutional safeguards. As South Africa continues to grapple with its immigration challenge, this research gives a broad overview of the legal framework governing detention and deportation in South Africa, and its implementation.

Aldamen, Y. (2025). Social media, digital resilience, and knowledge sustainability: Syrian refugee’s perspectives. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 25(1). Open access. This study examines the role of social media in enhancing digital resilience and knowledge sustainability among Syrian refugees. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research combines qualitative and quantitative methods, surveying Syrian refugees in Jordan and Türkiye to explore how social media assists them in accessing information and knowledge resources. The findings reveal that social media plays a crucial role in developing social networks, increasing awareness of events in Syria, and connecting refugees with support systems, helping to combat social isolation and foster a sense of belonging. Additionally, digital tools enable refugees to navigate host country services, learn about their rights, and seek assistance from local and international organizations. The study concludes that social media is an essential tool for enhancing refugee resilience, providing a platform for advocacy, self-reliance, and digital empowerment. Strengthening refugees’ access to digital tools can further support their long-term integration, skill-building, and livelihood opportunities.

Al-Hamad, A., Yasin, Y. M., Rahman, R., Hayrabedian, V., & Metersky, K. (2025). Resourceful aging among migrants and refugees: A concept analysis and model development for Holistic Nursing Care. Journal of Holistic Nursing. Open access. This concept analysis aims to conceptually define resourceful aging among migrants and refugees and develop a model integrating holistic nursing and healthcare practices to enhance their well-being. The study found that resourceful aging among migrants and refugees involves adapting to aging in a new country by embracing changing circumstances and utilizing available resources, enabling well-being, personal agency, and resilience. This process preserves cultural heritage while adapting to new environments, balancing adaptation with identity. The integration of holistic nursing principles into resourceful aging among migrants and refugees can foster more inclusive and healthy communities.

Rabuffetti, F., & Wills, E. R. (2025). The problem with the Comoros Solution: Affect, citizenship, statelessness and the Kuwaiti Bidoon. Citizenship Studies, 1–17. The Kuwaiti bidoon are a subset of the nomadic population of Kuwait who have been made stateless, classified as illegal residents and increasingly deprived of social rights through changing classifications by the Kuwaiti government. In 2014, the Kuwaiti government attempted to obtain citizenship in the African island nation of the Comoros for the bidoon, which would have provided them with a route to legal residency. But would this have provided a just resolution to the bidoon‘s situation? We argue that justice for the bidoon must not simply serve to resolve their de jure statelessness; it must, instead, attend to the injuries produced by this status, most importantly the harm caused by continuous rejection of their affective attachment to Kuwait. In dialogue with theories of access to citizenship and political identification with a state, we argue that under certain circumstances, providing citizenship can increase the harm experienced by stateless people, and that only providing recognition of their affective tie to a political community can resolve it.

Rodriguez, D. G. (2025). LGBTIQ+ asylum and religion: Individual Faith, community belonging, and divine advocacy. Journal of Gender Studies, 1–18. Open access. This article explores the lived experiences of religious LGBTIQ+ refugees and people seeking asylum in the United Kingdom. The study highlights three key themes resulting from religious and spiritual practices: individual resilience, community support, and divine asylum advocacy. Individual resilience is supported by spiritual practices that provide comfort amidst the uncertainty of the asylum process. Community support, through inclusive religious groups, cultivates a sense of belonging, responding to the challenges faced in the UK and one’s country of origin. Divine asylum advocacy illustrates how faith-based practices are assumed to influence legal outcomes, offering a sense of control over the asylum process. This study confronts the homosecular frameworks that depict religious adherence and queer identities as incompatible, advocating for inclusive approaches within asylum policies that recognize the multi-layered identities of LGBTIQ+ people seeking asylum, acknowledging the role of faith as a source of resilience and a strategic tool in navigating the asylum process.

Van Wolleghem, P. G. (2025). Resettlement vs. spontaneous applications. Canadians’ attitudes to asylum policy in a comparative perspective. Journal of Refugee Studies. Open access. Increasing irregular crossings into Canada have put the asylum issue at the forefront of the political debate. This article explores Canadian citizens’ attitudes toward two distinct asylum policies: the long-established resettlement policy endorsed by the federal government, and spontaneous applications, which have sparked public debate over the past seven years. Analyzing original survey data from 2021, they show that a majority of Canadians support asylum policies, irrespective of type. Delving into opposition to these policies, they identify welfare chauvinism as the primary factor, although attitudes to international collaboration on refugee matters and to the United Nations also correlate with policy preferences. A comparative analysis of attitudes in Canada, the USA, the UK, and the Netherlands reveals similar influences on asylum policy preferences. By shifting the focus from attitudes to refugees to attitudes to asylum policy, this study provides novel evidence of an important dimension of Canadians’ attitudes toward refugee-related matters.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Haiti — Haitians deported to Haiti — Profiles, migration experience and intentions of Haitians deported in 2024. (2025). IOM UN Migration. Deportations of Haitians to Haiti remain one of the country’s main migration dynamics. Many Haitians attempt to leave the country through regular or irregular pathways for various reasons. Those who take irregular routes not only risk their lives but are often deported back to Haiti by destination or transit countries. In 2024, nearly 200,000 people were deported to Haiti from various countries. This report analyzes the profiles of Haitians deported in 2024, exploring their sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics, migration experiences, and future migration intentions.

Revolutionizing refugee registration: The Digital Gateway in Egypt by Simon Pierre Diouf & Raad Shaqman. (2025). UNHCR. In August 2024, UNHCR Egypt launched the Digital Gateway to address the growing demand for registration appointments exacerbated by the Sudan crisis and ease the pressure on existing service channels. This innovative platform allows asylum-seekers to create profiles, upload documents, and request appointments online, providing a much-needed alternative to in-person visits and calls to info line (operation’s contact centre) to request new registration appointments. Since its introduction, the Digital Gateway has improved access to registration, enhanced operational efficiency, and offered valuable insights for future digital transformation efforts.

Smuggling and migration in South America: Insights from migrants by Ximena Canal Laiton. (2025). Mixed Migration Centre. This paper explores the use of smugglers by migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean on their journeys through South America. It is based on 1,129 4Mi surveys (4MI is MMC’s quantitative data collection project) and 29 interviews with migrants in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay conducted between July and October 2024, along with 11 key informant interviews. This paper presents findings on the profiles of migrants who hired smugglers along their journey, the motivations for using them, the services sought, and their general perceptions of smugglers. It also provides information on smugglers’ profiles and modes of operation on South American migration routes. This paper offers empirical evidence to inform decision-makers and humanitarian actors.

Socio-Economic Conditions of Forcibly Displaced and Stateless Populations in Asia and the Pacific. (2025). UNHCR. The report presents an explanatory analysis of survey-based data, reflecting the socio-economic situations of forcibly displaced and stateless people across 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The data is sourced from UNHCR’s Results Monitoring Surveys (RMS), a household level survey tool that incorporates standardized questionnaire modules aligned with international standards where applicable, while also being adapted in certain instances to meet UNHCR’s specific contexts. The report offers evidence for enhanced advocacy and programming by exploring relationships between indicators within four thematic areas, covering legal status, social environment, basic needs and livelihoods. It further leverages the sustainable development goal (SDG) indicators to conduct comparative analysis between forcibly displaced and stateless people and nationals in the countries.

Ukraine Situation – Moldova: Disability Task Force – Disability Briefing Note (March 2025). (2025). Regional Refugee Response for the Ukraine Situation. Three years have passed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, forcing millions of Ukrainians to flee their homes. Moldova, a country with a population of 2.4 million people, has hosted the highest numbers of refugees per capita. As of March 2025, approximately 127,000 refugees from Ukraine remained in Moldova, with around 76,000 having received asylum, temporary protection, or residence status. This briefing note provides an overview of the situation of refugees with disabilities in Moldova, highlighting key results achieved in 2024 by Disability and Age Task Force members, persisting gaps, and recommendations for improving inclusion and support. Forced displacement can create or exacerbate disabilities, placing persons with disabilities among the most at-risk and disproportionately affected groups in these contexts.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Atrocities mount daily. Promised aid does not arrive. Why has the west turned its back on Sudan? by Mark Townsend, March 23, 2025. The Guardian. As territory is won and lost by opposing military forces, people grasp at scraps of normality. But the country is undergoing the world’s most severe humanitarian catastrophe and global announcements of help have amounted to nothing.

The EU wants to increase deportations and supports ‘return hubs’ in third countries, March 11, 2025. Associated Press. The European Union wants to increase deportations and is opening the way for “return hubs” to be set up in third countries for rejected asylum-seekers, according to a new migration proposal unveiled Tuesday. Only 20% of people with a deportation order are effectively removed from EU territory, according to the European Commission, which presented the “European System for Returns” in Strasbourg as a potential solution. The proposal aims to set a standard for all 27 members of the bloc and allow national authorities from one country to enforce the deportation order issued by another. Such rules were missing from the EU’s migration and asylum pact approved last year.

The Yogyakarta Principles and Kenya’s Failure to Protect LGBTQIA+ Refugees: Is Community-controlled Policing the Solution? by Christopher Belden, March 6, 2025. Refugee Law Initiative. With the growing anti-LGBTQIA+ political climate worldwide, it comes as no shock that only 37 countries grant asylum for a well-founded fear of persecution based on one’s sexual orientation or gender identity. One of these countries is Kenya located in East Africa. Kenya is home to the Kakuma refugee camp which opened in 1992 in response to the displacement crises during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005) and at the close of the Ethiopian Civil War (1974-1991). The camp in recent years became a gathering place for LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers and refugees from East Africa as a result of the increase in anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation— such as “The Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023” in Uganda. While the Kakuma refugee camp provides a place for LGBTQIA+ asylees and refugees to live, it is far from a sanctuary.

UN chief visits Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh as hunger fears rise, March 14, 2025. Aljazeera. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has visited Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh as their food rations face drastic cuts next month, threatening already dire living conditions in the world’s largest refugee settlement. Guterres’s visit on Friday to the border district of Cox’s Bazar is seen as critical, after the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced potential cuts to emergency food supplies following the shutdown of USAID operations.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Borderlines Podcast: Immigration, Refugees and Border Related Issues. Borderlines. Borderlines is a podcast that was co-founded by Steven Meurrens, Deanna Okun-Nachoff and Peter Edelmann, in July 2016. Peter Edelmann left the program in December 2020, after having been called to the bench of the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Episodes feature discussions – often with a special guest – on Canadian immigration and border-related issues. We are also beginning to venture into various other complementary political and social justice topics affecting Canadians.

Crisis in Congo (DRC). Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture. This is a virtual event on April 2nd, 2025, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST. The panellists for this discussion on the crisis in Congo are Patrick Mpiana, President of Association Des Congolais De L’Ontario (ACO), Dr. Evelyn Namakula Mayanja, Professor Carlton University (Human Rights and Social Justice), Christian Rumu, Senior Campaigner at Amnesty International (Kenya), Ezat Mossalanejad, Policy Analyst/Researcher at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture (CCVT), and Dr. Minakshi Das, working on the Congo crisis with Monash University, Australia. Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health, Global Health, York University (affiliated).

Launch webinar: Addressing Dementia in refugees and migrants- Epidemiology, public health implications and global responses. World Health Organization. Dementia is a critical and growing global health concern for refugees and migrants, as the increasing number of older individuals in these populations exacerbates the burden of this non-communicable disease. There is an urgent need for migrant-inclusive health policies and practices to ensure that refugees and migrants living with dementia receive timely and equitable care. On 31 March 2025, 12:00 – 13:30 CET, WHO will host a high-level webinar to present the findings of the sixth report in the Global Evidence Review on Health and Migration (GEHM) series, focusing on dementia among refugees and migrants. The report explores global challenges and public health impacts for these populations, offering key considerations and priority actions to guide policymakers in addressing these issues at both national and global levels. Click the link for more details.

Podcast episode: Skills shortages, AI and the future of work. Borders and Belonging. Migration has been a constant feature of human history, shaping societies and cultures for millennia. Far from being a new or unusual phenomenon, people have always moved in search of better opportunities, safety, or resources. From ancient trade routes to modern global networks, migration has played a vital role in economic development, cultural exchange and social transformation. Yet despite its ubiquity, migrants are often scapegoated as the cause of economic and political problems in host states, overshadowing the many contributions that human mobility brings to both sending and receiving countries. Borders & Belonging helps cut through the noise. In season 3, host Maggie Perzyna focuses on: Can sanctuary cities inspire innovative approaches to migrant and refugee urban integration? How can we put the principle, “nothing about us without us” into practice? And what does it mean to decentre migration research?

2025 CRS Summer Course on Refugee Issues Climate Migration Futures: Shaping The Research Agenda for 2050. CRS. The Centre for Refugee Studies’ 2025 Summer Course: Climate Migration Futures – Shaping the Research Agenda for 2050, is taking place from June 2–6, 2025 at York University in Toronto, Canada. This course brings together leading international scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to explore the urgent and evolving nexus of climate change and human mobility. Recognizing the recent financial challenges faced by many institutions and individuals, CRS is offering a 50% discount on the early bird virtual participation fee – so the final cost is between CAD$300 – $462 (approx. USD$200-$320) depending where you’re based, plus HST, until the early bird registration deadline on April 15th, 2025.

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

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Huynh, J. (2025). Suburban Refugees: Class and Resistance in Little Saigon. University of California Press. America’s suburbs are more diverse and more unequal than ever before. Focusing on Southern California’s Little Saigon, a global suburb and the capital of “Vietnamese America,” Jennifer Huynh shows how refugees and their children are enacting placemaking against forces of displacement such as financialized capital, exclusionary zoning, and the criminalization of migrants. This book raises crucial questions challenging suburban inequality and complicates our understanding of refugee resettlement—and, more broadly, the American dream.

Kaaria, J., & Murithi, I. K. (2025). Determinants of women empowerment: Case of refugee women living in Nairobi Kenya. Economies, 13(2), 35. Open access. This study investigates the determinants of women empowerment among refugee women living in Nairobi, Kenya. First, the study constructs an index to examine empowerment drivers using data from the Refugee and Host Household Survey (RHHS) 2021. A fractional logit regression model was employed in the study. The results obtained show that the incidence of refugee women empowerment among refugees living in Nairobi was six percent. In addition, the study finds evidence that age; the gender of the household head; the education level of the refugee woman; employment status; and the education of the household head play substantial roles in enabling women empowerment. Conversely, marital statuses (divorced/separated/widowed and single/never married) and religious affiliations (Muslim) hinder women empowerment. Efforts geared towards improving wage employment and education are likely to empower refugee women. The study emphasizes the recognition of the role played by women in household income through care work.

Mazzaferro, G. (2025). Migration, subjectivity and identity: navigating power, agency and discourse in interviews with asylum seekers. Multilingua. Open access. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and positioning approaches, this paper examines how asylum seekers actively assert agency in navigating and (re)constructing their subjectivities and identities within research interviews. The analysis explores the power dynamics inherent in the interview setting and broader public discourse, revealing how asylum seekers engage with and respond to these forces. Rather than being passive subjects of discourse, they employ performative-positioning acts to negotiate power structures and assert control over their self-representations. By analyzing interview data, this study highlights the dynamic interplay between power, discourse and agency in the ongoing construction of identity.

Ovacık, G., & Crépeau, F. (2025). Global compacts and the EU Pact on Asylum and Migration: A clash between the talk and the walk. Laws, 14(2), 13. Open access. The current global mobility paradigm suffers from a great paradox. The illegality of human mobility is manufactured through restrictive migration and asylum policies, which claim to address the supposed challenges of human mobility, such as erosion of border security, burden on the labour market, and social disharmony. On the contrary, they reinforce them, resulting in strengthened anti-migrant sentiments at the domestic level. The contradiction is that the more restrictive migration policies are and the more they are directed at containment of human mobility, the more counterproductive they become. The fact that the policies of the destination states are shaped through the votes of their citizens, and migrants are never part of the conversation which would bring the reality check of their lived lives, is a defining factor that enables state policies preventing and deterring access to territory and containing asylum seekers elsewhere. The authors demonstrate that this is the dynamic behind the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, as it thickens the European borders even further through harsher border procedures and expanded externalisation of migration control. Whereas the Global Compacts represent the paradigm of facilitated mobility and are a significant step in the right direction for moving beyond the defined paradox, the EU Pact represents the containment paradigm and showcases that the tension between the commitments and the actions of states is far from being resolved. Through an assessment of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum’s alignment with the Global Compacts, this article scrutinizes the trajectory of the global mobility paradigm since the adoption of the Global Compacts.

Ragi, M.-E., Ghattas, H., Abi Zeid, B., Shamas, H., El Salibi, N. J., Abdulrahim, S., DeJong, J., McCall, S. J., & CAEP study group, T. (2025). Legal residency status and its relationship with health indicators among Syrian refugees in Lebanon: A nested cross-sectional study. BMJ Global Health, 10(2). Open access. Failure to possess or renew legal residency permits increases the burden on a vulnerable refugee population. It risks detention or deportation, and hinders access to basic services including healthcare. This study aimed to examine the association between legal residency status and health of Syrian refugees living in Lebanon.  The majority of Syrian refugees from the two samples of over 4000 participants reported lacking a legal residency permit in Lebanon. This was associated with poor mental health and lower uptake of COVID-19 vaccination, potentially originating from fear of detention or deportation. These findings call for urgent action to support access to legal documentation for refugees in Lebanon.

Tsourapas, G. (2025). Migration Diplomacy and greek–Turkish relations: A three‐level game analysis. International Migration, 63(2). Open access. Migration diplomacy has become a critical element of contemporary geopolitics, yet its complex dimensions remain underexplored. This article introduces a novel three-level game framework to examine how foreign policy strategies leverage cross-border mobility across domestic, bilateral and supranational dimensions. The 2020 Greek–Turkish border crisis serves as a case study to investigate how domestic political imperatives, bilateral disputes and engagement with European institutions shaped the two governments’ strategies. The study integrates process tracing with diverse multi-source data – including policy documents, media analysis and stakeholder interviews – to demonstrate how migration crises function as instruments of geopolitical contestation. This framework is also applied to cases, such as Morocco–Spain, Tunisia–EU and Belarus–EU, advancing theoretical and empirical understandings of migration diplomacy. The article provides fresh insights into the interplay between domestic politics, bilateral relations and supranational governance, illustrating how migration diplomacy is both a reflection and a driver of contemporary power dynamics in global geopolitics.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Addressing Statelessness and Displacements in Southeast Asia: Workshop Report. (2025). IDRC Research Chairs Network on Forced Displacement; conference of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration. The Centre on Gender and Forced Displacement (CGFD), with the support of IDRC, organized a two-session workshop on January 23–24, 2025, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, focusing on the challenges of statelessness, forced displacement, and migration governance in Southeast Asia. This workshop integrated academic and policy-oriented discussions, bridging theoretical frameworks with actionable policy recommendations. The workshop critically engaged with the historical legacies of colonialism, the securitization of migration, gendered vulnerabilities, and alternative governance imaginaries, with a particular emphasis on the Rohingya crisis and its broader regional implications.

Countering misinformation about refugees and migrants: An evidence-based framework by Saul Wodak, Minjin Erdene-Ochir, Bowen Fung, Daniel Ghezelbash, Lauren Martin and Frances Voon. (2025). UNSW Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. This report aims to help you understand how misinformation works and what to do about it. Drawing on behavioural science and evidence-based strategies, it sets out an easy-to-follow framework for countering misinformation. While the focus is on addressing misinformation in the Australian debate about refugees and migration, the framework can be adapted for use in other countries and across a variety of issues. This is not a messaging ‘playbook’ that prescribes specific wording for every falsehood that may arise. Instead, it provides a structured framework with key principles and a step-by-step approach to help you engage with misinformation effectively. This framework is designed to equip you to respond across a range of situations—including unforeseen falsehoods that may emerge in the future. It also lays the groundwork for you to develop more tailored messaging and campaigns, aligned with your expertise, scope and voice. Complementing the framework, the report includes how-to guides that offer practical examples demonstrating how it can be applied to both existing and anticipated misinformation narratives.

​​Displaced Ukrainians: Challenges and outlook for integration in the EU by Maria-Margarita Mentzelopoulous & Anita Orav. (2025). Think Tank European Parliament. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 forced millions of people to flee Ukraine. To date, approximately 6.8°million people have had to seek refuge, mostly in the EU and its neighbourhood. The EU responded rapidly in March 2022, activating the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) for the first time ever. The TPD’s emergency mechanism offers swift protection and rights to those in need who arrive in large numbers, preventing Member States’ asylum systems from becoming overwhelmed. Rights under the TPD include access to a residence permit, employment, housing, medical and social welfare assistance, and education for children and adolescents. For those fleeing Ukraine, these rights also include travel within the EU, and to and from Ukraine. Currently, the largest number of beneficiaries of temporary protection from Ukraine reside in Germany, Poland and Czechia. Among them are nearly 1.3 million children, with 50 % still awaiting enrolment in their host countries’ education systems.

Internal Displacement Solution Fund (IDSF) – It is time to act together: Durable solutions for internally displaced persons in Colombia. (2025). Internal Displacement Solutions Fund. Overcoming this crisis requires durable solutions that restore the dignity of affected communities, reduce inequalities, and guarantee their rights. Rebuilding territories and livelihoods is not only an institutional challenge but also a collective commitment involving civil society, the private sector, the United Nations, and international cooperation in pursuit of equity, justice, and Colombia’s future.

State of Education for Crisis-Affected Children and Adolescents: Access and Learning Outcomes, Global Estimates 2025 Update. (2025). Reliefweb. The number of school-aged children in crises worldwide who require urgent support to access quality education is rising rapidly, according to a new Global Estimates Report issued today by Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises in the United Nations. The new report reveals that this number has increased by an estimated 35 million over the past three years, reaching 234 million by the end of 2024. The report emphasizes that exposure to armed conflict, forced displacement, climate-induced hazards, epidemics and socio-economic challenges poses long-term threats to children’s health, education and well-being. It further highlights that crises are becoming increasingly intense, widespread and interconnected. Over the past five years, the number of global conflicts has doubled with 50 countries experiencing extreme, high or turbulent levels of conflict in 2024.

USAID Purge Ends With 83 Percent of Programs Canceled by Christina Lu, March 10, 2025. Foreign Policy. After weeks of uncertainty, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on March 10 that the Trump administration has terminated 83 percent of programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the country’s top humanitarian and development agency. The decision amounts to a purge of an organization that has long served as a tool of U.S. soft power and provided critical aid to millions of people worldwide, with programs focused on addressing humanitarian crises, disease, and malnutrition, among others.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

A Dangerous Journey?: The Good Character Requirement, Naturalisation, Trafficking, and Discrimination against Women by Catherine Briddick, March 5, 2025. ILPA. Following the UK Home Office’s change to immigration staff guidance on assessing the good character requirement in nationality applications, Catherine Briddick, human rights and refugee law scholar at the University of Oxford, explains how the new guidance disadvantages women.

Extra 220 children may have been wrongly detained as adult people smugglers in Australia, government admits by Christopher Knaus, February 26, 2025. The Guardian. The Australian government has revealed that a further 220 Indonesian children may have been wrongly detained as adult people smugglers, doubling the number initially thought. Late in 2023, the federal court ordered $27.5m in compensation for an estimated 220 Indonesian children who were wrongly detained as adult people smugglers between 2010 and 2012. The children were wrongly deemed to be adults by federal police, who relied on a wildly inaccurate technique using interpretations of wrist X-rays to determine age. In fact, the children were as young as 12, and should have been sent home to Indonesia in line with Australian government policy. They were instead sent to immigration detention and Australian jails, including, in many cases, maximum-security adult jails, where they languished for years until the error was discovered.

People still being forced to flee as the war in Ukraine continues by Viktoriia Tiutiunnyk and Nikola Ivanovski, February 26, 2025. UNHCR. “In the last six months alone, more than 200,000 people have been evacuated from frontline areas in the east and north,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi on the three-year anniversary of the war recently. He added that since the start of the war, around 10.6 million people have been forced from their homes. While most fled during the early stages of the Russian invasion, the displacement and suffering continues. Many of those being displaced in the east and north of the country are arriving at transit centres before being helped to find temporary shelter at repurposed public buildings known as collective sites.

Sudan: UN food agency pauses aid in famine-hit refugee camp by Emmy Sasipornkarn, February 26, 2025. DW. The World Food Program has halted aid distribution in the Zamzam camp in North Darfur. WFP officials said intensified fighting between the military and RSF paramilitary forced them to stop providing the aid. The United Nations’ food agency said Wednesday it “has been forced” to temporarily stop aid distribution in Sudan’s famine-stricken Zamzam refugee camp in North Darfur. “Without immediate assistance, thousands of desperate families in Zamzam could starve in the coming weeks,” said Laurent Bukera, the regional director for the World Food Program (WFP).

Thailand deports Uyghur asylum seekers to China after more than a decade in detention by Jacob Goldberg, February 27, 2025. The New Humanitarian. Thailand has deported some 40 Uyghur asylum seekers to China after detaining them for more than a decade, UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, said on 27 February. The deportation represents a major blow to human rights activists who have been calling for the group’s release. A Thai court had agreed on 18 February to consider a petition to free the men and was planning to call Thai immigration officials to testify.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Conference on Internally Displaced People: Shifting Power and Advancing Protection. Refugees International. Commemorating the anniversary of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, please join Refugees International, Georgetown University, Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, ODI Global and IDP leaders for a series of panels and a keynote address on internal displacement, focusing on ongoing protection needs, challenges and opportunities, and the shifting landscape of solutions. Above all, the event will consider how to shift power to IDPs themselves. Panels will feature IDP leaders and consider how IDP-led groups can drive decisions and programs that affect their communities. This is more timely than ever: IDP numbers continue to rise and both protracted and new crises remain woefully underfunded and, in some cases, largely ignored by the wider international community. As the Office of the Special Adviser completes its work in 2024, now is also the time to carry forward a bold agenda to improve responses to internal displacement. This event is on April 14, 2025, 8:45 AM – 2:00 PM ET, online and in-person at Georgetown University, Washington, DC.

Dublin, solidarity and age. How do these factors matter in the EU asylum system? IMSCOE. IMISCOE is the largest European network of scholars in the area of migration and integration and this is the network’s podcast, where migration researchers talk about their latest research and why it matters. This podcast episode is about concepts in migration governance that are often taken for granted – but when you dig a bit deeper, or wider, like the researchers in this episode have done, it’s clear that not everyone has the same idea of what they really mean or their implications in practice. You’ll hear Liberty Chee speaking to Eleonora Milazzo, who has been working on what exactly “solidarity” means between European Union Member States when it comes to the asylum system. We may have a sense that so far, it’s been “failing”, but what does solidarity really mean in practice? Ulrike Bialas also joins the conversation, to talk about her research on how age classification determines the lives of young asylum seekers in Germany. How do they experience this legal focus on age, especially when many do not actually have documents that can prove their dates of birth and may not know them, anyways.

Global Migration Podcast: If Not Gender Mainstreaming, Then What?: Gender Equality and Migrant Integration in the EU. UBC Centre for Migration Studies. Gender equality has been a policy goal of EU and other government institutions for over 30 years. Yet the gains in gender equality and women’s rights have been tenuous at best, with the COVID-19 pandemic only making things worse – particularly for migrant women. In fact, socio-economic outcomes for migrant women in the EU have lagged significantly behind those of men and of native-born populations since long before the pandemic. As Dr. Rachel Minto and Dr. Jasmijn Slootjes explain, the intersections of sex, gender, and migration are critical for understanding why these inequalities persist. How do policies of gender equality and migrant integration interact, and how can the unrealized revolutionary approach of gender mainstreaming be activated within institutional policy approaches? With guest host and CMS affiliate, Thea Bracewell.

Walter Gordon Symposium – Equity in Peril: Immigration, Urban Planning and Energy. Massey College. On March 14, 2025, 8:30 AM – 3:15 PM ET, Massey College will be hosting the annual Walter Gordon Symposium. This year’s theme is “Equity in Peril: Immigration, Urban Planning, and Energy.” Policymakers in Canada are grappling with a unique set of challenges that threaten to create or exacerbate existing inequities, including climate change, the shifting political landscape in the US, and a cost of living crisis. This symposium brings together policymakers, academics, and community leaders to explore how Canada can navigate these complex issues while forging a more equitable and inclusive path forward in housing, energy, and immigration policy. Together, they will examine actionable solutions that promote fairness, sustainability, and social cohesion for all Canadians. The event is co-sponsored by Massey College and the Munk School of Global Affairs with support by Tom Axworthy (Massey’s Chair in Public Policy) and Carolyn Tuohy (Senior Fellow, Massey College). This event is available both in-person and online.

2025 CRS Summer Course on Refugee Issues Climate Migration Futures: Shaping The Research Agenda for 2050. Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS). The nexus of climate change and human mobility is rapidly transforming, demanding new, innovative research that anticipates the challenges and impacts of the coming decades. Climate Migration Futures: Shaping the Research Agenda for 2050 challenges conventional approaches and pushes the boundaries of how research can support our response to climate-induced migration. This cutting-edge summer course focuses on bold, forward-thinking research priorities and methods that can help to address the framing of climate migration, the governance of climate migration, ethical strategies for climate adaptation and relocation, and envisioning climate migration in 2050. It will be from June 2 – 6, 2025, 519 Kaneff Tower, York University, Keele Campus. The early bird deadline to apply is April 15, 2025.

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

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Paynter, E. (2024). Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present. University of California Press (Critical Refugee Studies Series). Emergency in Transit responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. This capacious, interdisciplinary study reformulates Europe’s so-called “migrant crisis” from a sudden disaster to a site of contested witnessing, where competing narratives threaten, uphold, or reimagine migrant rights. Focusing on Italy, a crucial port of arrival, Eleanor Paynter draws together testimonials from ethnographic research—alongside literature, film, and visual art—to interrogate the colonial, racial logics that inform emergency responses to migration. She also examines the media, discourses, policies, and practices that shape lived experiences of migration well beyond international borders. Centering the witnessing of Black Africans in Italy, Emergency in Transit reveals how this emergency apparatus operates and posits a vision of mobility that refutes the notions of crisis so often imposed on those who cross the Mediterranean Sea. This book is available in paperback and open access versions.

Asutay, M., Avdukic, A., & Tobin, S. A. (2025). Overcoming the invisible ceiling for the empowerment of refugees and immigrants through Islamic Finance. Global Policy, 16(S1), 5–6. The 21st century has been marked by continuous political, economic and financial crises on a global, regional and national scale, leading to an unprecedented movement of people in the form of refugees and immigrants. The global refugee crisis has reached unprecedented levels, with millions of people displaced due to conflicts, persecution and natural disasters. Access to adequate finance is critical for refugees, as it significantly impacts their ability to improve their living conditions, access essential services such as education and health care, and create economic opportunities for themselves and their communities. However, refugees often face substantial barriers to accessing financial services, including a lack of appropriate financial products, restrictive regulations and limited awareness among financial institutions about their specific needs. Considering the Shari’ah compliant requirement of financial transactions, Muslim refugees are particularly face enormous challenges in this regard.

Gammeltoft-Hansen, T., & Ghezelbash, D. (2024). What role for law in refugee studies? towards a transdisciplinary agenda. Journal of Refugee Studies, 37(4), 837–850. Refugee law has historically formed an important part of refugee studies. Yet, in the past decades, the legal study of refugees has increasingly developed out of sync with refugee studies more generally. The purpose of this special issue is to help bridge the gap between refugee law and refugee studies and foster a broader transdisciplinary research agenda on law within refugee studies scholarship. The special issue serves two overarching purposes. The first is to exemplify and celebrate methodological heterodoxy in refugee law scholarship—deliberately foregrounding perspectives often marginalized within more mainstream legal scholarship. To this end, this issue presents a range of contributions that draw on methods and theories from different disciplines in the study of refugee law, including anthropology, history, psychology, political science, organization studies, and data science. Second, by anchoring this special issue in the Journal of Refugee Studies, we hope to convince the wider refugee studies community that empirical and interdisciplinary legal methods may provide new and important insights into some of the core debates on and long-standing challenges to refugee law.

Omata, N., & Gidron, Y. (2024). Returning to fund refugeehood: dispersal and survival between Uganda and South Sudan. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 51(1), 101–121. Return movements of refugees, even when gradual or temporary, are typically understood as part of a process of full repatriation or as a ‘strategy’ for leveraging socio-economic opportunities across borders. However, for some refugees, return is neither a step towards repatriation nor an empowering strategy. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from Uganda and South Sudan, this article shows how, due to gradual reductions in aid and the lack of livelihood opportunities in Uganda, South Sudanese refugees travel back to their homeland in order to financially support their relatives who remain in exile. These return movements and the phenomenon of split households among South Sudanese are responses to severe hardship and, paradoxically, are deployed to sustain their life in Uganda. While cross-border migration enables refugees to access subsistence opportunities, this article argues that it underscores how refugees must now find their own means to ‘fund’ their refugeehood, given ongoing reductions in international assistance for protracted displacement.

Paquet, M., & Boucher, A. K. (2025). Beyond the queue: The sources and politics of migration backlogs in Canada and Australia. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 1–14. Backlogs are crucial elements of migration politics, and this article introduces tools to analyze them: a matrix of sources of migration backlogs and a conceptual framework capturing government responses to backlogs. The authors apply these tools to the cases of Canada and Australia. Between 2000 and 2020, they identify four sources of migration backlogs in these countries: legislative or policy design problems, technical malfunctions, legal challenges, and political decisions. The analysis shows that governments’ decision not to act to address a backlog can be a political strategy and that other types of responses are possible, including ordering, reorienting, investing, or ceasing.

Pincock, K., Jones, N., Youssef, S., & Al Heiwidi, S. (2025). Formal and informal integration in contexts of displacement: Exploring implications for youth civic identities. Journal of Refugee Studies. A vast number of young refugees are formally excluded from basic civil, political, and social rights in the countries where they have lived for many years, with little prospect of safe return to (and citizenship in) the places their families fled. While development policies frame youth civic participation as key to creating inclusive futures, frameworks like the Global Compact on Refugees focus on labour market integration, without reference to young people or their political subjectivities. This article draws on children’s political geographies and an intersectional approach to analyse findings from research with displaced youth in Jordan and Lebanon. Data show that although legal recognition is important, historical geopolitical dynamics, economic precarity, location, and gender significantly shape how young refugees relate to host states and navigate refugee- and nationality-based identities across and within contexts. These findings nuance understandings of young refugees’ civic identities as shaped by both interpersonal and institutional marginalization.

Wilde, M., Golovátina‐Mora, P., Kramer, P., & Juan, L. G. (2025). Contingent hope: Everyday crisis and future imaginaries among Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 44(1), 20–32. In this article, the authors analyse the experiences of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia by drawing on fieldwork conducted in the cities of Bucaramanga and Medellín between May 2021 and May 2022. They argue that though the situation facing Venezuelan migrants in Colombia is characterised fundamentally by hardship, at the level of everyday experience it is also one shaped by hope. Engaging with recent debates concerning aspiration and care in situations of precarity, they describe this mode of being as contingent hope: as an orientation towards the future premised on the desired improvement of specific circumstances. They contend that the capacity to maintain hope is derived from the strength of kinship ties that stretch across borders and enable emotional investments in the future.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

“Canada has destroyed me”: Labour exploitation of migrant workers in Canada. (2025). Amnesty International. Tens of thousands of migrant workers travel every year to Canada in the hope of providing a better life for their families. They are promised labour opportunities and working conditions that very often they cannot enjoy in their countries of origin. Yet, many find a different reality upon arrival. This report investigates the human rights impact of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), a temporary migration scheme that allows employers to hire migrant workers, primarily in low-pay occupations.

Jurisprudence related to Gender-Based Violence against Women. (2025). EUAA. This report examines court decisions related to gender-based violence, following three landmark rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union providing clearer legal grounds to grant international protection due to persecution or serious harm based on gender. It includes jurisprudence on the assessment of facts and circumstances by asylum authorities and the critical need to implement special procedural guarantees for vulnerable women so that they may participate effectively in the procedure.

Seventy per cent of RSF emergency funds allocated to resettling exiled and displaced journalists in 2024. (2025). Reporters Without Borders. The report highlights how the growing phenomenon of forced exile particularly affects journalists, as risks for information professionals covering conflict zones have increased worldwide. Seventy per cent of the NGO’s emergency funds were allocated to relocating persecuted journalists from all corners of the globe. Today, supporting journalists in exile is crucial to protecting the right to information.

Sudan, ‘the most devastating humanitarian and displacement crisis in the world’ by Conor Lennon. (2025). United Nations. Sudan’s ruinous civil war is approaching its third year, leaving a legacy of malnutrition, massive population displacement and chronic insecurity. As the UN system prepares to launch a call for record funding of $4.2 billion to support aid operations in the country, here are some of the main things to know about what has been described as the largest and most devasting displacement, humanitarian and protection crisis in the world today.

Ukraine — Displacement and Social Cohesion in Ukraine — February 2025. (2025). IOM UN Migration. Since February 2022, numerous communities across Ukraine have witnessed the arrival of displaced persons from other parts of the country or returning from abroad. Continued, widespread displacement is likely to put an increasing strain on public services, infrastructure, housing and the labor market in hosting areas, carrying the potential for increasing tensions between different groups the longer displacement persists. This brief presents key findings on social cohesion, participation in community decision-making processes, and trust in local institutions. Furthermore, it analyses these findings in relation to information on mobility intentions and preferences for durable solutions, aiming to support broader evidence-based programming, policy-making, advocacy, and further research on the subject.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Aid efforts hamstrung in Goma as the M23 tightens control by Emmet Livingstone & Fidèle Kitsa, February 14, 2025. The New Humanitarian. Aid groups in Goma say their response to the city’s capture by M23 rebels and Rwandan troops late last month is being hampered by insecurity and funding cuts, as uncertainty also grows around how they will work under a new rebel administration. Residents of the city – the biggest in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo – said they have been supporting each other as best they can, sharing food, doing emergency first aid, and accommodating people displaced by the fighting. Goma is a humanitarian relief hub for all of eastern DRC, and was the epicentre of a vast crisis before it fell. It hosted nearly one million people displaced by earlier waves of the M23 conflict – who survived in sprawling camps of tarpaulin shelters.

Iran detains 72 Afghan migrants in Semnan province crackdown by Siyar Sirat, February 12, 2025. Amu TV. Iranian authorities have detained 72 Afghan migrants in Semnan province over the past three days as part of an ongoing crackdown on undocumented foreigners, according to Gholamhossein Arab, the police chief of Damghan district. Arab stated that the detained individuals have been transferred to a migrant camp for deportation. “Given the rising presence of undocumented migrants in Damghan, a collection plan was implemented to remove them,” he said. In addition to the arrests, Iranian authorities shut down three businesses for employing Afghan migrants without proper documentation, Arab said.

Majority of Australian voters expect fair and humane approach to refugees, poll shows by Sarah Basford Canales, February 16, 2025. The Guardian. Political leaders are being urged to embrace refugee policies “grounded in humanity, not cruelty” as new research has found a majority of Australians polled believe the federal government has a responsibility to accept people seeking asylum. The polling, commissioned by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and conducted by Redbridge, shows more than half of those polled support granting asylum seekers work and study rights while they await the outcome of their protection visa applications. The findings, from a survey of 1,508 Australian voters in January, show that while many support tough policies for those seeking asylum, many still support compassionate responses.

Stateless in a sinking world: the untold plight of climate refugees by Sneha Singal, January 23, 2025. LSE Human Rights. By 2050, it is projected that 200 million people will require humanitarian assistance annually due to the devastating effects of climate change, creating one of the most pressing humanitarian crises of our time. The 21st century has witnessed climate change transform from an environmental issue into a multifaceted global crisis, profoundly reshaping politics, societies, and human survival. Its consequences extend far beyond rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events, as a critical yet often neglected outcome of these environmental shifts is large-scale human displacement, giving rise to a category of individuals increasingly referred to as “climate refugees.” These “climate refugees,” also known as “environmental refugees” or “the world’s forgotten victims,” are individuals forced to flee their homes due to environmental degradation and climate-induced disasters. Climate change is not merely a challenge for existing refugees but a leading and accelerating cause of forced displacement globally.

The Right to seek asylum does not exist at U.S.-Mexico Border, February 20, 2025. Amnesty International. Amnesty International has found that the right to seek asylum in the United States is non-existent at the U.S.-Mexico border, in violation of U.S. human rights national and international obligations. The organization outlined its findings in a new briefing released today, which documents the treatment of people seeking safety in the United States interviewed between February 3-9 at the border. These alarming findings stem from the Trump administration’s executive actions and the increased militarization of the border by the Mexican government.

Polish MPs pass bill to suspend right to asylum, February 21, 2025. Polskie Radio. The Polish government in October announced a new migration strategy that aims to reduce the number of migrants and tighten control over immigration processes. The strategy also includes a temporary suspension of asylum applications in case of direct security threats. The measure now goes to the Senate, the upper house of Poland’s parliament, for further debate. If passed by both houses of parliament and signed by the president, the legislation will allow the Polish government to suspend the right to seek asylum for a period of up to 60 days along specific sections of its border with Belarus.

UK to deny citizenship to small boat refugees by Mark Easton, February 13, 2025. BBC News. The government has toughened up rules making it almost impossible for a refugee who arrives in the UK on a small boat to become a British citizen. New guidance states that anyone who enters the UK illegally having made a dangerous journey, which could be via boat, but also by means such as hiding in a vehicle, will normally be refused citizenship, regardless of the time that has passed. In a statement, the Home Office said the strengthened measures made it clear that anyone who entered the UK illegally would face having a British citizenship application refused. But the change has been condemned by the Refugee Council and some Labour MPs – including Stella Creasy who said the change “meant refugees would forever remain second class citizens”.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Book Launch and Panel Event | Social Science: A Very Short Introduction. Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University. Social science is a vast, diverse, and contested field, and it is changing rapidly with the growing use of AI and machine learning, with increasing collaboration with the natural sciences and humanities, and with growing concern to make social science research more equitable and inclusive. The panel will bring together some of Oxford’s leading thinkers to discuss Alex Betts’ book and to explore the future of social science, from a range of disciplinary perspectives. It will examine emerging trends and transformation in methods, theory, research impact, graduate training, and in relation to equality, diversity, and inclusion. This is a hybrid event and will be on March 6, 2025, 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM GMT.

CRS Seminar: The Legal and Social Landscape Surrounding Queer Asylum in Japan. Centre for Refugee Studies, York University. This presentation examines how sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) asylum claims are understood within Japan’s refugee and asylum system, an area that remains understudied despite international recognition of SOGI asylum. Through an analysis of SOGI cases in Japan since 2004, drawing from government press releases, media reports, and court decisions, the presentation highlights both the partial protections available to queer asylum seekers and the limitations in the country’s domestic legal framework and administrative procedures for recognising SOGI-based persecution. This document review, while constrained by the small number of claimants and limited access to case information, is also contextualised within the broader social recognition of “LGBTQ+” people in the society. Although some developments in the legal and social landscape surrounding queer people seem to reflect global sexual politics, the issue of queer displaced persons has not yet gained significant prominence within Japan. This discussion demonstrates how these dynamics contribute to inconsistent interpretations of SOGI asylum cases. This is a hybrid event that will be on March 13, 2025, 1:00 PM – 2:30PM (EST), in Toronto at York University.

Launch Event: Global Report on Law and Policy on Internal Displacement (UNHCR-GPC). Refugee Law Initiative, University of London. The event, organised by UNHCR and the Internal Displacement Research Network will launch the second “Global Report on Law and Policy on Internal Displacement: Implementing National Responsibility” developed by UNHCR in collaboration with the Global Protection Cluster’s Task Team on Law and Policy. This report presents an overview – global and by region – of key law and policy developments related to prevention, protection and solutions for IDPs that occurred since the publication of the first Global Report on Law and Policy on Internal Displacement also reflected in UNHCR’s IDP Law and Policy Dashboard. The event will be an opportunity to discuss the findings of the report and hear from experts focusing on key aspects of implementation, including meaningful participation of internally displaced persons and engagement by judicial, human rights as well as development actors. The webinar will take place on 10 March 2025, 1:00PM – 2:30PM GMT.

New global toolkit to guide refugee claims involving climate change and disasters. Kate Jastram, Jane McAdam, Geoff Gilbert, Tamara Wood and Felipe Navarro, International Protection for People Displaced across Borders in the context of Climate Change and Disasters: A Practical Toolkit (Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and Essex Law School and Human Rights Centre, 2025). Displacement in the context of disasters and climate change is already happening. Across the globe, rising temperatures, sea-level rise and more extreme weather events are forcing people to move. Most people stay within their own country. But some cross an international border to seek safety, raising the question, do they qualify for refugee status or international protection on human rights grounds? Lawyers and decision-makers need to better understand when, how and why an individual may have a valid claim for protection in such circumstances. The Practical Toolkit will help legal practitioners, judges and government officials navigate climate-related international protection claims by focusing on established legal principles.

Judging Refugees: Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination. UNSW Kaldor Centre. A recording of the celebratory launch of ‘Judging Refugees: Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination’ held on 20 November 2024. This was a hybrid panel event co-hosted by UNSW’s Centre for Criminology, Law & Justice, and the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, in conversation with Dr Anthea Vogl, Dr Tina Dixson, Associate Professor Maria Giannacopoulos and Professor Daniel Ghezelbash. In ‘Judging Refugees’, Anthea Vogl investigates the black box of the refugee oral hearing and the politics of narrative within individualised processes for refugee status determination (RSD). Drawing on a rich archive of administrative oral hearings in Australia and Canada, Vogl sets global trends of diminished and fast-tracked RSD against the critical role played by the discretionary spaces of refugee decision-making, and the gate-keeping functions of credibility assessment.