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.

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

Balakian, S. (2025). Unsettled Families: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Kinship. Stanford University Press. Against the backdrop of the global refugee crisis, Unsettled Families is a book that investigates the parameters that Global North governments and international humanitarian organizations use to classify most displaced families—more than 99% globally—as ineligible for resettlement, and often as fraudulent. But “fraud” as a category is not as self-evident as it may first appear. Nor is “the family.” Based on long-term fieldwork between Nairobi, Kenya and Columbus, Ohio, Sophia Balakian tells stories of Somali and Congolese refugees navigating a complicated global assemblage of humanitarian organizations, immigration bureaucracies, and national security agencies as they seek permanent, new homes. Viewing the concepts of “fraud” and “family” from different vantage points in this context, Balakian shows how the categories begin to blur out of focus, sometimes to evaporate altogether; what seems to be contained within them scatter outside their received boundaries. Practices that resettlement organizations deem fraudulent are often understood by people living as refugees to be moral actions in an unequal world. Such practices allow them to fulfill obligations to kin—kin defined expansively, in ways that at times exceed the boundaries of normative, US frameworks. Bringing questions of kinship into current discussions on humanitarianism, Balakian locates “the family” as a crucial category in processes of producing, policing, and contesting the boundaries of nation-states in the 21st century.

Benhabib, S., & Shachar, A. (Eds.). (2025). Lawless Zones, Rightless Subjects: Migration, Asylum, and Shifting Borders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Responding to ever-increasing pressures of migration, states, supranational, and subnational actors deploy complex moves and maneuvers to reconfigure borders, rights, and territory, giving rise to a changing legal cartography of international relations and international law. The purpose of this volume is to study this new reconfiguration of rights, territoriality, and jurisdiction at the empirical and normative levels and to examine its implications for the future of democratic governance within and across borders. Written by a diverse and accomplished group of scholars, the chapters in this volume employ legal, historical, philosophical, critical, discursive, and postcolonial perspectives to explore how the territoriality of the modern states – ostensibly, the most stable and unquestionable element undergirding the current international system – has been rewritten and dramatically reimagined. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Aksit, D., & Laenen, T. (2025). Settlement deservingness perceptions of climate change, economic, and political migrant groups across partisan lines. Frontiers in Sociology, 10. International migration is a prevailing issue of our times. With opponents of multicultural societies becoming more vocal across Europe, it is pivotal to strengthen our knowledge of how migrants are popularly perceived in receiving countries. Prior research suggests that there is remarkable agreement within different countries as to which types of migrants are seen as deserving of settlement, cutting across deep-rooted partisan divides. Building on the CARIN deservingness theory, this article sheds new light on this so-called “hidden immigration consensus” by investigating Americans’ original perceptions of different migrant groups rather than following the standard practice of assessing how they react to a set of pre-defined migrant characteristics in a conjoint experiment. Based on a split-sample experiment, the results show that liberals and conservatives significantly differ in their perceptions of political, economic, and climate change migrants on four of the five CARIN criteria. Liberals differentiate between migrants on control, attitude, and identity criteria, whereas conservatives only distinguish on the control criterion. Liberals rate all migrant groups twice as deserving as conservatives. The implications for the settlement deservingness model and the hidden consensus hypothesis are discussed. This article is open access.

Oberman, K. (2025). Enough spurious distinctions: Refugees are just people in need of refuge. Law and Philos. What makes refugees different to non-refugee migrants? A plausible answer is that refugees need refuge. Within their home state, they fall below some threshold. To fulfil their basic human needs, they must migrate elsewhere. Non-refugee migrants might be badly off in relative terms, but they don’t fall below this threshold. It is because refugees need refuge that they have a claim to refuge. States are obligated to admit them at least when they can do so without severe cost. Call this the “Needs Account” of refugeehood – it combines a needs-based definition of a refugee with a needs-based argument for refugee protection. This article defends an unadulterated needs account. It is because they are in need that refugees have a claim to refuge. When politicians and the media brand asylum applicants “bogus” and “fraudulent” for failing to fit the narrow Convention definition of a refugee, they draw a morally spurious distinction between Convention-definition refugees and other people in need of refuge. Someone can fall outside the Convention definition and yet have an equally strong claim to refuge. Scholars who oppose the Needs Account do not all support the Convention definition, but they too draw questionable distinctions. They offer various reasons why the term “refugee” should be reserved for only a subset of those in need of refuge. As we shall see, none of these reasons prove persuasive. This article is open access.

Openshaw, K., Atem, A., & Phillips, M. (2025). Beyond the demands of integration: African refugee resettlement in contemporary multicultural Australia. Genealogy, 9(1), 11. This paper uses the example of negatively racialised refugees from the African continent to reiterate the racialised nature of migrant and refugee experiences in Australia. This is a context that remains deeply influenced by a violent history of British colonisation and racist migration laws, including the restrictive White Australia Policy (1901–1973). Drawing on the authors’ research and personal experiences of working with, and navigating, the Australian resettlement system this article examines the racialised violences inherent in expectations of ‘integration’ for (former) African refugees in a settler colonial country. This paper proffers a principle level re-imagining of refugee resettlement in Australia that challenges patriarchal white sovereignty. It proposes a meaningful consideration of resettlement practices that are community-led, localised, relational and that recognise the agency of refugees who settle in Australia. This open access paper disrupts dominant tropes of refugees as perpetually vulnerable and deficit, by centering the agency, needs and expectations of a good life as it is lived in community, rather than dictated by the state.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

A humanitarian trap? Navigating neutrality, relief and rights in Ethiopia, Myanmar, Syria and Guatemala by Zainab Moallin, Leen Fouad, & Dustin Barter. (2025). ODI Global. This scoping study examines the ever present but intensifying tensions between the provision of humanitarian relief and advancement of rights. While not mutually exclusive, the foregrounding of humanitarianism often comes at the expense of social justice. This can be seen, for example, when social movements are redirected to providing relief, as humanitarian funding gradually distorts the shape of civil society. The Humanitarian Policy Group’s (HPG’s) research examines these different tensions through country studies in Ethiopia, Myanmar, Syria and Guatemala. A scoping study by design, the research sets the scene for issues that HPG intends to grapple with in coming years, and that the humanitarian sector cannot afford to ignore.

Regional Refugee Response Plan 2025-2026. (2025). UNHCR. The war in Ukraine has been the fastest growing and largest displacement crisis in Europe since World War II and has precipitated a regional refugee response of commensurate scale. Following the Russian Federation’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the flow of refugees into neighbouring countries, and beyond, has been met by a remarkable mobilization of assistance – by national and municipal authorities, civil society actors, local volunteers, and refugees themselves, all contributing to ensure protection and meet the essential needs of those fleeing violence. The refugee response continues to address significant needs in host countries. Notably, the 2025-26 iteration of the plan reflects the increased national and local ownership of the response and greater investment by host governments and national civil society in the socio-economic inclusion of refugees.

Smuggling dynamics on the Eastern Route through Yemen. (2025). Mixed Migration Centre. This report focuses on the nature and dynamics of human smuggling along this Eastern Route from the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea between locations of origin in Ethiopia and points of arrival along the coast of Lahj Governorate in Yemen. It examines the role of smugglers, the services they offer, the financial aspects of the journey, and how migrants perceive their smugglers. The study is based on 346 surveys with migrants in Lahj, Yemen and 16 with smugglers in Ethiopia.

UN agencies warn of worsening humanitarian and human rights crisis in eastern DR Congo. (2025). United Nations. United Nations agencies called for an end to the violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as fighting between Government forces and the Rwandan-backed M23 armed group expands. The rebels have already seized the provincial capital, Goma, and reports indicate that they are closing in on the key city of Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province. The hostilities are occurring in a mineral-rich region that has been volatile for decades amid a proliferation of armed groups, which has forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes over the years and seek safety in displacement camps.

UNHCR Operational Framework Voluntary Return of Syrian Refugees and IDPs 2025. (2025). UNHCR. Following the collapse of the Assad government in Syria in early December 2024, many among the 5.5 million Syrian refugees in Türkiye, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt have expressed elation and hope about the prospect of returning to their homes, together with caution. This Operational Framework projects up to 1.5 million Syrians to return in 2025. It covers UNHCR’s engagement from preparations in host countries, counselling, and other protection services. It further includes the provision of return grants that will aid refugees to organize their return, and additional requirements for reintegration programmes for both returning refugees and IDPs inside Syria. This Framework equally covers the return of IDPs, of which there are currently an estimated 7.4 million displaced inside Syria. UNHCR is projecting up to 2 million IDPs to return in 2025.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Are Asylum Seekers Safe from ICE? by Jason Dzubow, Esq, January 29, 2025. The Asylumist. There are probably 4+ million asylum seekers in the United States. These are people who filed an application for asylum, form I-589, with the USCIS Asylum Office or with the Immigration Court, and their dependents. Under the new Trump Administration, are such people safe from detention and deportation by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)? The short answer seems to be: Mostly. Here, the author discusses what protections asylum seekers have and what they can do to be ready if they encounter an ICE agent.

Canada intercepts people trying to cross border in ‘incredibly cold’ conditions by Leyland Cecco, February 7, 2025. The Guardian. More than a dozen people have been caught making the hazardous crossing into Canada, renewing focus on the closely watched – and seasonally perilous – border with the United States. Police in Alberta intercepted two groups attempting to cross into Canada illegally, including one which included five children who were ill-prepared for the cold which can plunge as low as -30C (-22F) at this time of year.

Donald Trump’s suggestion of ‘clearing out’ Gaza adds another risk to an already fragile ceasefire by Karin Aggestam, January 27, 2025. The Conversation. Donald Trump’s recent statement describing Gaza as a “demolition site” – and his suggestion to “evacuate” Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt and Jordan to “clean out that whole thing” – has sent shockwaves across the region. Israel’s extreme ultra-nationalist parties, both in and outside of the Israeli government, are thrilled by the idea. It’s one they have long advocated.

But it has been widely criticised across the region as a potential “second Nakba” – referring to the violence and displacement of Palestinians after Israel’s unilateral declaration of statehood in 1948. The proposal has also been outright rejected by Egypt and Jordan. It has also been strongly condemned by the Palestinians.

Germany: Are conservatives’ plans on immigration legal? by Nina Werkhäuser, January 30, 2025. Deutsche Welle. Germany’s center-right bloc led by the Christian Democrats (CDU) is calling for stricter immigration law following a knife attack in the city of Aschaffenburg that left two people dead. After it came to light that the assailant was an Afghan national who was slated for deportation, CDU leader Friedrich Merz has presented a five-point plan to curb irregular migration. Merz has said that should the CDU bloc emerge victorious in Germany’s federal election on February 23, he will work to implement his plan as quickly as possible. However, questions remain about whether his proposals are legal under German and European Union law.

Inside the Chaos, Confusion, and Heartbreak of Trump’s Foreign-Aid Freeze by Belinda Luscombe, February 1, 2025. Time. The dominoes fell really fast. On Monday, Jan. 20, shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order that called for a 90-day pause on new foreign-aid programs for efficiency and “consistency with U.S. foreign policy.” The order got less attention than some of the others he signed that day but may have much more far-reaching effects. By the evening of Friday, Jan. 24, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had issued a directive that went even further, effectively freezing operations at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. government’s lead provider of nonmilitary foreign aid. No new projects were to be started, no contracts were to be extended, and work was to be stopped on most existing programs. By Monday, Jan. 27, at least 56 of USAID’s top brass were sent home on paid administrative leave for 90 days, reportedly cut off from their email, and, in case the message was not clear, the photos from the walls of their office were removed.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Call for Paper Abstracts – Special Issue: Who is a Refugee in the 21st Century? University of British Columbia. This call for paper abstracts invites paper abstracts that focus on the empirical bottom-up experiences of individuals and groups who have been (internally or internationally) displaced from their recent or original place of residence due to factors such as armed conflicts, persecutions, and natural disasters. How do these groups refer to themselves, and which political, racial, gendered, socioeconomic, and age-related factors shape their self- and other-ascriptions as refugees or otherwise? How do subjective understandings and self-descriptions vary situationally and over time? Authors are encouraged to reflect on the impact of (inter)national definitions of “refugee” but prioritize empirical and on-the-ground experiences including feelings of shame and honor, financial (in)dependence, temporal aspects of displacement, legal possibilities of return, relations to other migrants, and trust in the receiving societies. Abstract submissions from around the world, particularly from outside of Europe and North America, are highly encouraged. Please submit your 400- to 500-word abstracts by March 31st, 2025, to aryan.karimi@ubc.ca. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by April 25th, 2025. The abstracts and the Special Issue proposal will be submitted to the Journal of Refugee Studies for publication consideration.

CRS Seminar: Refugee Protection in Japan and Canada: Some Musings on Sovereignty, Borders and Human Rights. Centre for Refugee Studies. While Canada is widely considered a nation of immigrants and a leading country for protecting refugees, Japan is infamous for its strict social ordering and non-acceptance of immigrants and refugees. These respective national ideologies or narratives, however, are profoundly shaken by the contemporary political dynamics. As Canada is developing into a cohesive nation wherein new Canadian ethnicity emerges (on dispossession of Indigenous Peoples), its asylum system is increasingly loaded with measures for unrecognizing refugees ostensibly to maintain fraud/danger-free communal solidarity. Interestingly, Japan seems to be opening up its otherwise closed national border for foreigners and refugees as it aims to build a ‘multicultural convivial society’, thus making the post-war myth of a monolithic nation a thing of the past. The ongoing developments in both countries indicate that refugee protection/acceptance is fundamentally immigration-based and that it is directly relevant to the sovereign scheme of nation-building/maintaining. The focus of this small talk is on the practice of Refugee Status Determination in Japan as it is compared with that of Canada. It is intended to show how refugees have been excluded from (and recently are selectively integrated into) our nation-building/maintaining scheme. It also critically analyzes how international human rights/refugee law has been domesticated and emaciated in the staunch administrative and judicial processes to sustain fortress Japan. This is a hybrid event on February 25, 2025, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM EST,

In person: Room 626 Kaneff Tower, York University.

Virtual – Zoom: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/7fa6mhMgTeCiQD12Z4l3cA

Food as a tool of oppression – Podcast episode. The Conversation. Food is so much more than what we eat. It is, of course, nourishment — the food we put into our body to fuel ourselves. It can be joyful, like the the smell of pancakes wafting through the house on a Sunday morning, or when loved ones gather around a feast at the dinner table. It can also be deeply personal and defining, connecting us to ancestral history, and cultural and racial identities. And it is also political — especially in the United States — which is the key takeaway in a new book by law scholar Andrea Freeman.

Refugee and Im/Migrant Youth Conference. Centre for Refugee Children, FCJ Refugee Centre, and 54 Collective. This event will bring together organizations and youth to showcase projects focused on supporting refugee and migrant youth and minors. It’s a fantastic opportunity to connect, share knowledge, and work toward creating a better system for the youth we serve. Highlights of the Event: Presentations by youth working on impactful projects across three organizations: Centre for Refugee Children, FCJ Refugee Centre, and S4 Collective, A panel discussion for audience engagement and Q&A, and Opportunities for networking and knowledge-sharing. This event will be in Toronto, Canada at Innis Town Hall, on February 21, 2025, 2:00 PM – 5:30 PM EST.

Refuge-Making: Stories from Iraq. Refugees Studies Centre. This recording is of a talk by Dr Sana Murrani, who presented her book, Rupturing Architecture, the first to critically and visually examine the spatial practices of refuge in response to war, violence, and displacement in Iraq from 2003 to 2023. The talk explored the methods used in the book, including creative deep mapping, memory work, storytelling, and case studies, and focus on the lived experiences of 15 Iraqis. Their resilience underscores broader themes of spatial justice and feminist spatial practices. Dr Murrani examined rupturing as both a mark of trauma and an act of resistance, shaping spaces of refuge. The talk concluded with a manifesto for spatial justice, advocating for integrated approaches to place, memory, and trauma that resonate globally.

Women, Life Freedom, Exhibiting Art by Afghan Women ARTivists. Eleanor Winters Gallery, York University. The exhibition Women, Life, Freedom presents artwork by Afghan women ARTivists associated with the Art of Freedom collective. Within the context of escalating restrictions on women’s rights in Afghanistan, particularly since the resurgence of the Taliban, Afghan women are utilizing their art to as a form of social and political activism. Through their visual art, women aspire to challenge oppressive regimes and raise awareness about critical issues, advocating for social change. Through this exhibition, we demonstrate the role of art and creative expression in amplifying the voices of suppressed communities as well as highlight their agency and resilience. The exhibition will be held at the Eleanor Winters Gallery at York University’s Keele Campus on March 27 (11am – 4pm) and March 28 (12pm – 5pm).

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

Bijak, J. (2024). From uncertainty to policy: A guide to migration scenarios. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Through conceptual, theoretical and methodological analysis, this open access book outlines the current state of the art in future-oriented migration studies. Highlighting key lessons and recommendations, expert contributors assess both the opportunities and limitations of scenario building as an analytical device. They combine demographic, statistical, sociological, economic, geographic and political science expertise to develop a new multi-step process for estimating, predicting and simulating migration flows and patterns. Ultimately, the book emphasises the importance of accounting for uncertainty and complexity in migration policy and presents practical tools for accurately measuring and managing migration now and in the future.

Flowers, P. R. (2025). Refugee policies in East Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. East Asia stands apart from the rest of Asia in the prevalence of the institutionalization of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Despite this widespread adoption of the Convention in East Asia, the record on implementation into domestic law and policy is uneven. This Element offers a comparative analysis of the gap between the institutionalization of the Refugee Convention and the implementation of refugee policy in China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, and Mongolia. Specific attention is given to two key policy issues: refugee status determination—deciding who is granted government recognition as a refugee—and complementary forms of protection—protection based on statutes other than the Refugee Convention. This Element demonstrates that implementation of the Refugee Convention in East Asia depends on a vibrant civil society with the space and opportunity to engage with local UNHCR offices, local branches of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and other stake holders. This Element is free online from 15th January 2025 – 12th February 2025.

Baú, V. (2024) Communicating social cohesion in forced displacement: A framework for protracted situations of encampment. Social Sciences, Vol.13, No.10, 542. This paper addresses the role that communication and media interventions can play in fostering social cohesion among displaced populations in camp settings through a review of both practical and theoretical notions in this area. The multiple definitions available in the literature on social cohesion do not come to a consensus on what this concept means. Yet, despite this lack of substance, reflecting on social cohesion in contexts of displacement has been a prevalent topic. Horizontal social cohesion, which is critical in protracted situations of encampment, is defined by UNHCR as the bond that ‘hold(s) people together within a community’. While a number of studies have focused on the social connection between host and displaced people, scarce attention has been paid to the dynamics and social fractures among displaced communities themselves. Yet, tensions both within and between groups of displaced people may be equally, if not more important to social cohesion than relationships with other groups. In order to begin to address this gap, a communication-based framework for humanitarian and development work on social cohesion in refugee camps is presented. Ultimately, the aim of this article is to offer a starting point for humanitarian agencies working in refugee camps to articulate the adoption of a communication-driven approach in their social cohesion programming.

Yousuf, B., (2025). The invisibilised labour of diasporas as co-sponsors in refugee sponsorship: Lessons from Canada. Refugee Survey Quarterly. For almost 45 years, civil society groups have volunteered their time, energy, and finances to resettle more than 327,000 refugees through Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees programme. Sponsorships are commonly arranged by local communities, faith-based organisations, or private citizens who have entered into agreements with the federal government. Much of this effort is supported by former refugees who were themselves resettled to Canada. Yet, the existing literature underrepresents the crucial role of sponsors with refugee histories. This research examines the previously invisibilised labour of diasporic sponsors, highlighting the unique and vital role stemming from their dual social locations as former refugees and private sponsors.

​​Huth-Stöckle, N., & Heizmann, B. (2025). Are there limits to empathy? A survey experiment on empathic concern and perspective-taking as bases for attitudes towards different groups of refugees. European Societies, 1–40. This article examines how empathic concern and perspective-taking influence different exclusionary attitudes towards refugees. More specifically, the authors investigate how empathic competence underpins social distance towards refugees and the opposition to granting them civil rights. Furthermore, they explore the potential constraints of this relationship by investigating the moderating role of different refugee characteristics via a survey-experimental approach using single-wave data from the GESIS Panel, a representative survey conducted in Germany. The refugee characteristics relate to having a Muslim vs. Christian background and having high vs. low qualifications, implying different levels of intergroup threat. The results indicate that higher levels of perspective-taking and empathic concern are associated with lower social distance towards refugees and opposition to granting rights to refugees. Furthermore, while the respondents’ exclusionary attitudes were higher towards refugee groups, implying higher levels of intergroup threat, empathic concern and perspective-taking predicted more positive attitudes towards the different groups of refugees equally. This implies that the effect of empathy does not depend on outgroup characteristics.

Soennecken, D. (2024). Trudeau 3.0 endgame: Immigrants, refugees, venue shifting, and the deepening of securitization. In: Hillmer, N., Lagassé, P., Rigby, V. (eds) Canada Among Nations 2023: Twenty-First Century National Security. Canada and International Affairs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Having carried three general elections, the Trudeau government has continued the concurrent trends of its predecessors by restricting certain, yet liberalizing other, aspects of Canada’s immigration and refugee policy. During its most recent period in office, reverberations of the Trump presidency, pandemic-related border closures, the invasion of Ukraine, and the growing significance of artificial intelligence have further deepened the “securitization” of migration—that is, the construction of some migrants not only as “unwanted,” but as security threats. Much of this deepening occurred alongside a shifting of decision-making “venues” away from traditional arenas characteristic of the Westminster system, particularly Parliament, toward other avenues. This trend was interwoven with government and societal perceptions of threats, security, and deservedness, which is in line with the evolution of migration policies in other advanced industrialized societies.

Ulusoy, O. (2025). Financing externalisation: The role that EU funds play in shaping the Turkish Asylum and migration policies. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 1–13. The article investigates the impact of European Union (EU) financial instruments, particularly the Facility for Refugees in Turkey (FRIT), on Turkey’s migration and asylum policies. It critically examines how the EU-Turkey Statement of 2016 signaled a shift from Europeanisation to a more transactional relationship centered on externalization and migration containment. The paper argues that while these financial mechanisms provided crucial support during the refugee crisis, they also contributed to the selective Europeanisation and De-Europeanisation of Turkey’s policies, ultimately hindering the development of long-term structural migration policies.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Ecuador: Ongoing Violence Displacing Thousands. (2025). Norwegian Refugee Council. One year after the declaration of ‘internal armed conflict’ by the Ecuadorian President in the country, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) urges the government and the international community to recognise, and provide comprehensive humanitarian assistance to all people who are being forced to flee their homes due to violence from organised criminal groups. Today organised criminal groups are present in provinces Esmeraldas, Manabí, El Oro and Guayas. Their presence leads to a climate of fear. Daily murders are reported, while extortion targets all kind of businesses, forcing many to close. Children are at risk of recruitment into criminal groups, while women face intimidation and are in risk of sexual violence. Facing direct threats and violence, families have no other option than to abandon their homes. New research shows that more than 80,000 were living in internal displacement as a result of violence in Ecuador by October 2024.

Financing Solutions to Internal Displacement. Bridging Humanitarian Aid and Development Finance. (2024). IOM. This policy brief focuses on the development finance perspective of solutions to internal displacement by exploring the complementary roles of public finance, international financial institutions, the private sector, the aid finance architecture and innovative financing mechanisms. Developed jointly by the Office of the Special Advisor (OSA) on Internal Displacement, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Human Settlements Programme and the United Nations Development Programme, the brief represents an inter-agency effort to provide practitioners, governments, international financial institutions, private sector entities and donor agencies with initial findings and lessons learned from experience in implementing the OSA mandate. It offers recommendations for making development finance more conducive to addressing the complex needs of IDPs and the challenges faced by countries as a result of internal displacement.

No One-Size-Fits-All: Outreach and Counselling for Irregular Migrants by María Belén Zanzuchi and Bertrand Steiner. (2025). Migration Policy Institute. Tackling irregular migration to Europe has long been high on the EU agenda. The strategies proposed and adopted for addressing this issue have evolved over time, resulting in an increasingly diverse set of tools. These include strengthened border controls, voluntary and forced return efforts, new legal pathways to offer alternatives to irregular movement, and regularization. In recent years, European countries have also added to the toolkit to address irregular migration by conducting outreach and counselling for specific groups of irregular migrants. The reasons include informing them about available return and reintegration support, raising the visibility of pathways out of irregularity (such as regularization options, where they exist), and ensuring all members of a society have access to certain essential services. As interest and investments in this area grow, this MPI Europe issue brief explores the diversity of initiatives, actors, and practices in this field. It draws, among other sources, on interviews with government and nongovernmental stakeholders in eight European countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) and on roundtable discussions among public officials, local administrations, civil-society actors, and representatives of nongovernmental organizations.

Uprooting the Displaced- The Forced Evictions of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon. (2025). Access Centre for Human Rights. The escalating socio-economic crisis in Lebanon and the recent Israeli bombardment have worsened the already dire conditions faced by 1.5 million Syrian refugees. This report examines the widespread forced evictions of Syrian refugees, exploring causes, impacts, and providing legal analysis of the violation of forced eviction from a human rights lens. Lastly, recommended actions are provided.

World Report 2025: Our Annual Review of Human Rights Around The Globe. (2025). Human Rights Watch. This has been a year of elections, resistance, and conflict, testing the integrity of democratic institutions and the principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. Whether in response to heightened repression in Russia, India, and Venezuela, or catastrophic armed conflicts in Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine, governments around the world are being called upon to demonstrate their commitment to human rights, democracy, and humanitarian action. Many have failed the test. But even outspoken and action-oriented governments have invoked human rights standards weakly or inconsistently, feeding global perceptions that human rights lack legitimacy.  The latest edition of Human Rights Watch’s annual human rights survey provides a summary of the human rights situations in over 100 countries and territories around the world.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Clearing the UK’s asylum backlog has led to rising refugee homelessness by William Shankley, January 6, 2025. The Conversation. New figures show the number of small boat arrivals to the UK in 2024 was up 25% on the previous year. While public attention remains on how people get to the UK, less discussed is what happens to them once they arrive and are later granted refugee status. The reality is that many are becoming homeless. The consequences of this are in plain sight, for instance in Manchester, where council offices have been surrounded by tents erected by refugees for months. Some tents were initially erected as a protest against the council’s inability to provide rough sleepers with housing.

Questions grow over UNHCR inaction as Uyghurs in Thailand face deportation threat by Jacob Goldberg, January 22, 2025. The New Humanitarian. As Thailand faces calls from rights groups and UN experts not to deport a group of Uyghur asylum seekers to China, further questions have surfaced about the approach of the UN’s refugee agency, including why it withdrew asylum seeker status from two men. Thai authorities arrested more than 300 Uyghur asylum seekers near the Malaysian border in 2014. The two countries were part of a popular overland route for Uyghurs fleeing repression in China to claim asylum in Türkiye, which hosts a large Uyghur community. Most of the detainees were either transferred to Türkiye or deported to China in 2015. Now, after more than a decade in Thai immigration detention, the remaining 48 men say they face an immediate threat of deportation.

The Dominican Republic’s expulsion of thousands of Haitians shows the brutality of mass deportations by Masaya Llavaneras Blanco, January 7, 2025. The Conversation. United States President-elect Donald Trump has threatened mass deportations of undocumented migrants once his second term begins. As he prepares to fulfil his campaign promise, it’s important to understand how these types of mass deportations are carried out. The Dominican Republic (DR) offers a cautionary tale. Since the beginning of October 2024, Dominican President Luis Abinader Corona has committed to deporting 10,000 Haitians a week. The Organization of International Migration registered 27,000 Haitians who had been deported from the DR by the end of October, reaching 40,000 by Nov. 18. Haitians represent the largest migrant community in the DR because Haiti and the DR share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

Trump promises to end birthright citizenship and shut down the border – a legal scholar explains the challenges these actions could face by Jean Lantz Reisz, January 20, 2025. The Conversation. During his first day in office on Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders on immigration that would make it harder for refugees, asylum seekers and others to try to enter the U.S. – and for some immigrants to stay in the country. Trump signed executive orders that included declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border and pausing refugee admissions for at least four months. Migrants trying to enter the U.S. at the border also found that CBP One, an app they used to schedule asylum application appointments, was shut down. Amy Lieberman, a politics editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with scholar Jean Lantz Reisz, co-director of the University of Southern California’s Immigration Clinic and a clinical associate professor of law, to understand the meaning of Trump’s new executive orders – and the challenges he could face in implementing them.

US Closing the door to refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants: Trump’s executive orders herald a more inhumane, dangerous world by Bill Frelick, January 22, 2025. Human Rights Watch. The essential step toward a world in which people fleeing war, persecution, and poverty no longer need to risk their lives on overcrowded rickety boats, impale themselves on razor wire border fences, or be preyed upon by human traffickers is the establishment of safe and legal pathways that meet both the protection needs of refugees and the labor needs of countries of immigration. Though far from perfect, the Biden administration, to its credit, did take steps to establish safe and legal pathways. With a flurry of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump, purportedly to stop an “invasion” at the US southern border, regular migration pathways, particularly for people fleeing conflict and abuse, have effectively been closed. These orders suspend US refugee resettlement indefinitely, terminate the parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, cease use of the CBP-One application, and revoke President Biden’s executive order “To Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border.”

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

CRS Seminar: Questions of Privileged Migration to North America in the Second Half of the 20th Century. Centre for Refugee Studies, York University. When millions of people were forced to flee from Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, discussions were waged both in academia and the wider public if the Ukrainians were privileged in comparison to other groups of refugees. It seemed to have been forgotten, however, that similar accusations have been made earlier, ranging from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s with regards to refugees arriving in the United States and Canada from countries like Cuba, Kosovo, Poland and Vietnam. But by taking a close look, we can see that back then the situation too was much more complicated and nuanced, because privileges are relative as well as relational. Why is it then that certain groups garnered a reputation of being preferentially treated while they mostly didn’t feel favoured? Is there something that we can learn in hindsight from these historical cases? And last but not least is there a way to overcome the spiral of mutual accusations and distrust in order to forge alliances? This virtual event will be on February 5th, 2025, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EST (Toronto).

No Exit: Preventing Exit to Prevent Entry. Professor Audrey Macklin (Professor & Rebecca Cook Chair in Human Rights Law, University of Toronto Faculty of Law), Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Enlisting states of origin or transit to prevent exit from their own territory has become a tool of extraterritorial migration control for industrialized liberal democratic states. This article first explores the practical erosion of the right to leave any country since the demise of communism, focusing on arrangements between EU member states and select African states of origin or transit. The author then documents the legitimating function performed by the anti-smuggling and search and rescue regimes in effacing the human right to leave. They conclude by situating exit restrictions in a wider European project of promoting, building and supporting border infrastructure in the name of development and capacity building in select African countries. This permits reflection on what the contemporary use of exit restrictions signifies for the equation of border control and sovereignty, and for mobility more generally. Taking place at the University of Oxford, this seminar will be on February 6, 2025, 5 PM to 6 PM.

Research Methods in the Refugee and Forced Migration Field. Refugee Law Initiative, University of London. This one-week in-person short course, run by the RLI, covers research methods and ethics relating to the interdisciplinary study of refugees and forced migration. The intensive research methods course provides high-quality training in methodology and ethics, by drawing on the extensive teaching experience and networks of the RLI. The course is aimed at PhD students working on forced migration issues in the fields of social and political sciences and law, more senior academics keen to expand their research skills, researchers, humanitarian and development workers, civil society, and consultants working on issues relating to displaced persons. The deadline to apply is February 2nd, 2025. The course will run from March 3 – March 7, 2025, 10 AM to 5 PM.

The Changing Landscape of Immigration and Refugee Policies in Canada. National Newcomer Navigation Network. This webinar seeks to inform health care providers and settlement workers about recent policy changes and their impact on access to health care, anticipated future policies, and the reasons behind these policies. It will draw on examples of past challenges in accessing health care for individuals with precarious status as a way to reflect on how to manage future issues. This event will be on February 6th, 2025, 1:00 PM EST.

What would be a fair distribution of refugees in Europe? National Center of Competence in Research – The Migration-Mobility Nexus. An IT tool developed by a team of researchers at the University of Neuchâtel makes it possible to map the geographical distribution of asylum seekers and beneficiaries of temporary protection in Europe. The tool can calculate what a “fair” geography of protection would look like, taking into account population size, GDP and various other factors. It is particularly relevant in light of the recent influx of Ukrainian refugees and of the responsibility-sharing provisions of the 2024 EU Asylum Pact. It could form the basis for discussions on a common protection policy at European level.

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

Goltz, J. von der. (2024). The labor market impact of forced displacement: Jobs in host communities in Colombia, Ethiopia, Jordan, and Uganda. World Bank Group. Communities that host refugees are often concerned about how their labor markets will change. Although high-income countries attract most policy attention, low- and middle-income countries host three of every four refugees worldwide. “The Labor Market Impact of Forced Displacement: Jobs in Host Communities in Colombia, Ethiopia, Jordan, and Uganda” seeks to address some of the key questions that arise in these host countries: How does forced displacement affect job outcomes for hosts? What effect do work permit schemes have? How does labor market competition influence attitudes? And what policies can support better job outcomes for hosts and refugees? The book explains how labor market restrictions rarely prevent refugees entirely from working but shape the type and quality of work they do, their contribution to the economy, and the effects of their participation on hosts. It shows that refugees matter not only as competitors but also as consumers, and it explains the importance of access to capital for hosts and refugees alike in economies where self-employment is key. It also discusses how hosts’ concerns over labor market competition influence their attitudes toward refugees.The book seeks to provide a basis for more confident jobs policy making in host communities. It offers lessons on how to analyze local labor market characteristics that shape outcomes for refugees and hosts alike and on how to think about the likely effects of policies. It encourages policy makers to support workers who face negative impacts—and to proactively seize the opportunities likely to arise.

Cheong, A. R., Thomas, N. C., & Baltazar, M. A. (2025). Territorial claims, unclaimed people: The postcolonial geopolitics of statelessness in Sabah, Malaysia. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1–18. This article connects the contemporary phenomenon of statelessness among populations of Filipino descent in Sabah, Malaysia, to historical geopolitical contestations over territory, sovereignty, and nationhood in the region. Drawing on household interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and years of civil society engagement, the researchers argue that the possibility of citizenship pathways for these communities is conditioned by postcolonial geopolitical struggles over, more broadly, the very territorial constitution of the Malaysian and the Philippines nation-states. Inter-state diplomatic conflicts regarding sovereignty over Sabah materially trickle down through the everyday governmental practices of registration offices, consular bodies, and border security forces, producing: (1) nonviable, in a practical sense, citizenship pathways into the Philippines; and (2) legally absent citizenship pathways into Malaysia. In addition to providing an in-depth qualitative portrait of people’s lived experiences of statelessness, this article theoretically elucidates the constructivist affordances of the citizenship pathways framework.

Correa-Salazar, C., Amon, J. J., Page, K. R., Groves, A. K., Agudelo-Avellaneda, E. N., Torres-Benítez, D. S., & Martínez-Donate, A. (2025). Navigating trauma: Venezuelan women’s and adolescent’s experiences before and after migration amidst the humanitarian crisis. Journal of Migration and Health, 11, 100299. Migrant and refugee women and adolescents are extremely vulnerable in humanitarian crisis and armed conflict contexts. The Venezuelan crisis has unleashed the largest exodus of migrants/refugees in recent Latin American history, most of whom have relocated to Colombia. There is a scarcity of research addressing how adverse and traumatic experiences related to violence affects mental health amidst the Venezuelan-Colombian humanitarian crisis context and how it affects communities in relocation communities. This study sought to explore how traumatic experiences pre-, during and post-migration might relate to mental health risks for Venezuelan migrant and refugee women and adolescents and assess feasible mechanisms that can protect and promote these populations upon relocation in Colombia. Key findings suggest that parental abandonment in origin contexts, experiences of household and community violence before and after migration, and structural barriers to access services are main factors impacting this population. Feasible strategies to promote and support wellbeing and better mental health access ought to include community leaderships and community-based support networks post-migration that can support trust in services, disseminate information, and engage vulnerable groups in services.

Edler, H., Krause, U., & Segadlo, N. (2024). Making sense of peace in exile? Displaced people’s intersectional perceptions of peace. Peacebuilding, 1–18. This article enquires into how people with lived experiences of conflict and displacement make sense of peace in exile. For the analysis, the article focuses on displaced individuals in Kenya and Germany and theoretically complements the varieties of peace framework, situated knowledge and an intersectional approach. Findings reveal multifaceted perceptions revolving around the three dimensions of structural, collective and individual peace, outlooks shaped by gender-specific experiences, religious beliefs and familial relations. Interlocutors associate structural peace with experiences of sociopolitical, economic and legal conditions in exile, collective peace with support systems and harmonious interactions in communities, and individual or inner peace with desires for and feelings of happiness, hope and healing. Although analytically distinguishable, these three dimensions are inherently intertwined in interlocutors’ daily lives due to their lived experiences prior to and once in exile.

Okorie, M. M., & Okeja, U. (2024). Leaving at all costs: Implications of the Italy-Libya border-externalization policy on migrant smuggling and Trafficking Facilitation. Perspective Politice, 17(1–2). The literature on EU’s border-externalization practices in Africa is ample but the case of Italy-Libya’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and its implications on African lives has received insufficient attention. Between 2014 and 2016, Nigerian nationals were the second-highest number of boat arrivals in Italy via Libya – a number that significantly reduced following the implementation of the MoU and related EU migration management initiatives in Africa. Inlight of the above, an important question arises: has this extra-territorialization of EU borders in Africa merely prevented Nigerians from arriving their destination or has it also stopped them from initiating the perilous journey? The findings of the study suggest that while border externalization measures have reduced the odds of successfully arriving the destination country – Italy – they do not prevent irregular migration and trafficking facilitation from Nigeria to Libya.

Perrin, P. C. (2025). Applying a dignity lens in migration and displacement. Journal on Migration and Human Security. Recognizing that migration and displacement are longstanding elements of human history, the paper emphasizes the critical role of respecting the inherent dignity of migrating persons as an important part of the right-to-stay dialogue. Although international frameworks, such as the Sphere Handbook, the Paris Declaration, and UNHCR’s Durable Solutions, have provided a critical foundation for addressing many of the basic needs of migrating populations, they largely focus on material aspects of well-being, overshadowing the equally essential need for other aspects of one’s dignity — a recognition of the inherent equal value that each human being possesses — to be respected and upheld. This approach positions dignity as a luxury to be addressed only after other basic needs are met. However, evidence shows that ensuring physical safety, food, and shelter alone does not fulfill the complex needs of migrating individuals, who often experience emotional distress and social marginalization when their dignity is ignored. By framing dignity as an intrinsic human right that is not contingent on external conditions or something that can be distributed out of the back of a truck, the paper argues that organizations can foster deeper engagement with migrant communities.

Spit, N., Tonkens, E., & Trappenburg, M. (2025). The emotional costs of Solidarity: How Refugees and volunteers manage emotions in the integration process. Social Inclusion, 13. While emerging right‐wing populist voices are calling to prevent the arrival of refugees and their integration, volunteers perform solidarity by performing activities to support refugee integration. Most studies on these forms of solidarity in diversity focus on the quality and effectiveness of the activities. The emotional labor involved has received limited attention. To consider this emotional labor in more detail, we use Arlie Hochschild’s concept of feeling and framing rules and relate these rules to prevailing citizenship regimes, distinguishing between the self‐reliance regime and the community regime. Based on in‐depth ethnographic research of volunteer solidarity work in a deprived urban neighborhood and a middle‐class commuter town in the Netherlands, we show that volunteers are strongly aligned with the community regime, which involves navigating a multitude of feeling rules they struggle with. Refugees are more aligned with the self‐reliance regime, which also gives way to emotional struggles. We argue that to promote solidarity in diversity, scholars and policymakers should pay more attention to these different forms of emotional labor and the painful and joyful emotions involved.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Central Asia commits to end statelessness with Ashgabat Declaration. (2024). UNHCR. Central Asian States have reaffirmed their commitment to eradicate statelessness, adopting the Ashgabat Declaration on Ending Statelessness in Central Asia. Adopted by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Ashgabat Declaration highlights eight strategic directions to sustain and build on the progress achieved across the sub-region to reduce and prevent statelessness. The Declaration is a key outcome of the Ending Statelessness in Central Asia Ministerial Conference, co-convened by the Government of Turkmenistan and UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, in Ashgabat on 8 November 2024. Over the last decade, Central Asia has made significant progress in reducing and preventing statelessness, supporting more than 200,000 people to confirm or acquire a nationality. One in every three cases of statelessness resolved worldwide is in Central Asia.

Gender Alert: Gender and Displacement in Lebanon at the Juncture of the Ceasefire (December 2024). (2025). ReliefWeb. Between October 2023 and late November 2024, Lebanon experienced the largest escalation of hostilities with Israel since the 2006 War. Following the ceasefire reached on 27 November 2024, around 80 per cent of internally displaced persons (IDPs) are estimated to have returned to their places of origin. However, many others are unable to return to their communities due to damage and destruction, as well as restrictions imposed by the Israeli Army. Of the 20 percent that remain internally displaced, 52 per cent are women and girls. Despite the ceasefire, the impact of the escalation remains deeply felt across Lebanon. The mass displacement has challenged host communities already struggling to cope with the prolonged and multi-layered social and economic crisis in Lebanon since 2019. UN Women collected and analysed data to deepen understanding of the gender dimensions of the conflict and derive gender-focused recommendations to inform humanitarian response and recovery efforts.

House of Commons Library releases updated briefing on UK’s immigration schemes for Afghans. (2025). Electronic Immigration Network. There are two immigration routes for people affected by the situation in Afghanistan: the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme and the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy. Around 30,000 people had come to the UK under these schemes by the end of September 2024. The briefing highlights several issues, including the narrow scope of the schemes, the slow pace of decision-making, and practical obstacles faced by applicants. It also addresses concerns about the handling of applications from former members of Afghan specialist units who served alongside UK forces.

Earlier last month, the Defence Secretary set out the Labour government’s plans to improve the schemes. 

The Sudan Crisis: How Over a Year of Violence and Humanitarian Access Restrictions Have Produced Famine Conditions, January 2025. (2025). ReliefWeb. This report – part of a series examining the links between conflict and hunger – focuses on reported conflict-related incidents involving food-related violence in Sudan between 15 April 2023 and 31 November 2024. These incidents included the damaging and destruction of markets and food production factories by explosive weapons use and arson; the looting of markets, food aid and livestock; and incidents of violence directly affecting people at markets and travelling to and from markets. Other factors undermining food security included blockades disrupting food supply chains and humanitarian food aid deliveries, and restrictions on access to agricultural land due to insecurity. The report indicates how over a year of persistent violence and severe humanitarian access restrictions directly led to the famine conditions declared in parts of Sudan in July 2024. The repetition of violent incidents directly affecting objects that are indispensable to the survival of the civilian population suggests that conflict parties have, in some cases, taken limited – or even no – precautionary measures to protect these objects.

Towards the More Effective Use of Irregular Migration Data in Policymaking by Jasmijn Slootjes & Ravenna Sohst. (2024). Migration Policy Institute. Across Europe, concerns about irregular migration have dominated media headlines and shaped recent elections. Discussions of and policymaking related to irregular migration are often a numbers game, fueled by the latest estimates of changing migration trends and migrant populations. Data on irregular migration also influence decision-making, advocacy, and strategic and operational planning of a wide range of governmental and nongovernmental actors. This MPI Europe policy brief explores obstacles that hinder the effective collection and use of irregular migration data, how this affects policymakers and other actors, and potential avenues for strengthening the evidence base. This study, which is part of the Measuring Irregular Migration and Related Policies (MIrreM) project, draws on insights shared in workshops and interviews by policymakers, subject matter experts, NGO representatives, and other stakeholders.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Malawi sees influx of refugees from post-election violence in Mozambique by Charles Pensulo, January 8, 2025. The Guardian. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Manase Madia, 50, shows his Mozambican identity card. Once a sign of pride, he does not know what to believe in any more. Over the past few weeks he has seen houses being burned down, and shops and businesses looted, including his own. He now fears for his family, which has scattered. At a community ground where officials are processing new arrivals before being transferred to a shelter, Madia is one of about 13,000 people who have crossed into Malawi in the past two months, seeking refuge from post-election violence in Mozambique. The arrival of the refugees, albeit in smaller numbers, is reminiscent for people here of the civil war when almost a million Mozambicans sought refuge in the neighbouring southern African nation in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Syria: how the fall of Assad has affected the asylum debate in Europe by Morgiane Noel, January 10, 2025. The Conversation. After the fall of Bashar al-Assad and his family’s 50-year dynasty of fear, several European countries announced a suspension of asylum application procedures. Germany, France and Sweden are among the countries which have paused all pending asylum requests from Syrians. Austria, meanwhile, has signalled it will soon order refugees to return. Across Europe, Syrians are presently make up one of the largest groups of asylum seekers. As the primary host country for Syrian refugees within the European Union, Germany has provided shelter to nearly 1 million Syrian nationals. So its decision to declare a halt to processing asylum applications from Syrians the day after the Assad regime collapse was a major step. This sudden shift in stance from several European countries raises questions about how attitudes have changed.

The truth about asylum in Canada by Yvonne Su, January 9, 2025. Policy Options. Canada’s robust asylum system is largely misunderstood. Many Canadians don’t actually know how asylum works, and the lack of understanding has allowed for a moral panic to develop around asylum seekers, particularly international students. The panic is being fuelled by misinformation, disinformation, sensational media narratives, and political rhetoric.

But asylum isn’t automatic. Many asylum seekers are rejected because they don’t meet stringent criteria for protection. This is something that Canadians need to understand. Systemic issues are driving asylum claims but legal frameworks ground the asylum system.

The moral panic around asylum seekers, particularly international students, ignores reality: asylum is not automatic, and many claims are rejected.

The UN says Australia violated human rights law, but it’s unlikely to change the way we treat refugees by Sarah Moulds, January 9, 2025. The Conversation. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has ruled that Australia breached international human rights law by detaining a group of young asylum seekers in immigration detention in Nauru.

The committee found the asylum seekers were subject to prison-like conditions, potentially indefinitely, and without knowing what was going to happen to them in the future. This, the committee found, was in breach of their human rights. It also found that although the “cruel and degrading” treatment happened in Nauru, Australia was responsible. This was because Australia was in “effective control” of the detention facilities and authorised the transfer and detention of the asylum seekers. Human rights advocates have been making these points for many years, but they often go unheard by governments of all persuasions. Will this UN ruling have an impact on Australia or other countries that copy its offshore processing policies?

What’s shaping aid policy in 2025 by Irwin Loy & Will Worley, January 9, 2025. The New Humanitarian. Whether it knows it or not, the humanitarian system is in a struggle to stake its relevance. Faith in multilateralism has fractured, if it ever existed at all. Last year, we said that humanitarians have a trust problem; this has deepened over the last 12 months amid double standards on Gaza, unmet promises, and imbalanced power and influence. The challenge in 2025 and beyond will be for humanitarians to redefine what they do and why it matters. The article sets out five humanitarian policy trends that could play a role. There are obstacles to aid and disruptions to the system – but also opportunities for change.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Costa Rica – Why is it important to include refugees to enhance development? Factsheet. UNHCR. This report presents new evidence on why it is important to include refugees to enhance development. This, based on a study published by the Economic Sciences Research Institute at the University of Costa Rica (IICE-UCR) and supported by UNHCR, on the living conditions of Nicaraguans vis a vis the Costa Rican population.

CRS Seminar: Questions of Privileged Migration to North America in the Second Half of the 20th Century. Centre for Refugee Studies. When millions of people were forced to flee from Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, discussions were waged both in academia and the wider public if the Ukrainians were privileged in comparison to other groups of refugees (compare Şahin Mencütek 2022; Chishti/Bolter 2022; Pardy 2023). It seemed to have been forgotten, however, that similar accusations have been made earlier, ranging from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s with regards to refugees arriving in the United States and Canada from countries like Cuba, Kosovo, Poland and Vietnam. But by taking a close look, we can see that back then the situation too was much more complicated and nuanced, because privileges are relative as well as relational (Robertson/Roberts 2022). Why is it then that certain groups garnered a reputation of being preferentially treated while they mostly didn’t feel favoured? Is there something that we can learn in hindsight from these historical cases? And last but not least is there a way to overcome the spiral of mutual accusations and distrust in order to forge alliances? This is a virtual event that be on February 5th, 2025, 11:00 AM – 12:30 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 Colleagues and Friends,

Thank you for your continued readership this fall. This will be our last issue before the winter break; we will resume our bi-weekly digest in the new year. We wish everyone a happy and safe holiday!

The RRN Team

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Sangalli, L. C. (2024). Migrants from Sudan in Germany and Jordan: Changing Belongings in the Context of Life and Family Histories. Göttingen University Press. Migration often intensifies both how people construct a sense of belonging and how they are labelled or categorised by others. However, the ways in which power transformations shape these processes across generations and throughout a person’s life are rarely analysed in relation to experiences of different forms of violence. This book – winner of the 2024 prize for the best dissertation at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Göttingen – provides an analytical framework for studying the transformation of autobiographical constructions of belonging through empirical cases of individuals and families who have migrated from Sudan. Through a transnational comparison of Sudanese diasporas and different generations of migrants, the book demonstrates that belonging for migrants and their descendants is shaped not only by their experiences and processes of remembering but also by sociohistorical power inequalities, different forms of violence and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge.

Asanov, A.-M., Asanov, I., & Buenstorf, G. (2024). A low-cost digital first aid tool to reduce psychological distress in refugees: A multi-country randomized controlled trial of self-help online in the first months after the invasion of Ukraine. Social Science & Medicine, 362, 117442. Armed conflicts increase distress levels among affected populations, particularly impacting refugees who often face barriers to accessing psychological support. We evaluate an online version of a previously tested in-person and endorsed for online adaptation by the WHO Self-Help Plus (SH+) program among Ukrainian refugees dispersed across 17 countries, internally displaced and not displaced Ukrainians. The findings suggest that Self-Help Online is an effective psychological intervention for reducing stress among geographically dispersed refugees at a low cost. We also find that the online delivery format of psychological interventions is feasible for internally displaced and non-displaced conflict-affected populations.

Byelikova, Y., & Taukeer, M. (2024). Return intention outcomes of forced migrants. Border Crossing, 14(2), 150–165. Why do some forced migrants intend to remain in their new location, while others plan to return? The study is based on in-depth interviews and focus groups with forced migrants from South Asia in Greece in 2017 and collected 423 responses to open-ended questions from Ukrainian refugees in Germany in 2022. For Ukrainian refugees, return intention outcomes are defined by the image of their country of origin and the temporality of their status. For forced migrants from South Asia, returning intention outcomes are connected to risky and often illegal ways of reaching the EU, their asylum status, and their attempt to recreate their cultural practices in the destination country. Therefore, the findings of the study help develop an understanding of the study of forced migration under the agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 of the United Nations. It would encourage researchers, policymakers and academicians to further research in the area of forced migration and refugees.

Koirala, S., Mekonnen, G. T., Deller, B., Arinaitwe, G., Kezabu, K., Swabey, K., & Kember, D. (2024). Implementing a migrant and refugee mentoring program through action research. Heliyon, 10(22). This article reports an implementation, through action research, of the mentoring of recently arrived refugee and migrant children in secondary school years 9 and 10. The mentoring, by education students, was in: English language skills; literacy skills for other subjects; and, planning pathways for further education. There was a very positive reaction to the program from the mentees, coordinating teachers, schools and mentors. There was strong evidence of improvements in English language skills. This enabled the mentees to successfully complete reading, writing and speaking activities and assignments across the whole range of subjects. As the mentees developed greater fluency and confidence in the use of English, they felt more able to participate in class activities and discussions. This led to better integration into the school community. There was also evidence of integration into the broader Australian society, as the migrants were taught to write resumes and some obtained part-time jobs.

Pearce, J., Verstraete, L., Mutswenje, M., Katsi, L., Magara, P., Goyol, K., Butterworth, J., Mondorf, D., & Henrike Klau-Panhans, D. (2024). Water supply for refugees and their host communities in protracted situations: Costs and financing options for sustaining services in Ethiopia and Uganda. Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development. This paper reports on a study to identify the actual costs of water supply in two contexts with long-term refugee populations: Itang in the Gambella region of Ethiopia and Rwamwanja in the Kamwenge District of Uganda. Following the initial rapid, overwhelming demand for services at these locations, the water services have evolved through different phases of investment with concerted efforts made to both improve services and reduce costs. Most recently, this has included the adoption of utility management models. This paper seeks to provide evidence to support the discussion on how water services can be financed to meet the needs of refugees and their host communities on a sustainable basis.

Pruysers, S., Banerjee, K., & Blais, J. (2024). Fear of crime and anti-refugee sentiments: Evidence from Canada. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 40(2), 1–19. Many states have witnessed growing xenophobia and hostility towards refugees alongside the framing of refugees as a serious security or criminal threat in public discourse. Making use of an original cross-national survey of adults in Canada, this article explores the link between fear of crime and negative views of refugees. Its results reveal that even after controlling for alternative explanations, people with more fear of crime are significantly more likely to express anti-refugee sentiments. These results have implications for understanding ongoing challenges in maintaining domestic support for refugee protection and the importance of dispelling myths that refugees are sources of criminality.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Community sponsorship for refugees in Poland: social attitudes and comparisons with other asylum and refugee policies by Partycja Hryciuk-Ziółkowska, Aleksandra Grzymała-Kazłowska, Maria Nawrocka, & Renata Stefańska. (2024). Centre of Migration Research. In the context of rising social tensions around migration, searching for new solutions regarding hosting refugees becomes especially important. There is a particular need for programmes that facilitate the reception and support of refugees and their integration, which would gain wider public acceptance. In this issue of CMR Spotlight, the COPOCS team presents the results of their survey in Poland on social attitudes towards one such potential programme – community sponsorship – compared to other forms of support for refugees.

Complementary Pathways: Key Factors in Future Growth by Susan Fratzke & María Belén Zanzuchi. (2024). Migration Policy Institute. Complementary pathways have grown in popularity in recent years. These programs—which include humanitarian admission, sponsorship, and education- and employment-based mobility programs for refugees and others in need of protection—promise to better engage receiving communities in welcoming newcomers, promote public support for arriving refugees and capitalize on available private resources to sustain and expand protection-based pathways. This MPI Europe report explores the elements needed to build this supportive ecosystem, drawing on interviews, expert roundtables, and lessons from the three-year Complementary Pathways Network (COMET) Project. The study then offers strategies and recommendations for addressing these challenges and, in doing so, strengthening protection pathways.

Digital Innovation for Migrants and Displaced Communities: Emerging Humanitarian Approaches. (2024). IFRC Network. This scoping study aimed to improve understanding of where the IFRC Network is integrating digital tools into programmes for migrants and displaced people, including at Humanitarian Service Points (HSPs). The research documents different examples of the use of digital tools in Red Cross and Red Crescent programmes supporting people on the move globally. It also highlights sector-wide good practices and provides recommendations to enhance digital integration in humanitarian services for migrants and displaced persons, including addressing its opportunities and risks.

Internal Displacement in Africa: An overview of trends and developments (2009-2023). (2024). Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Fifteen years ago, Africa was at the forefront of progress towards comprehensive responses to internal displacement. The African Union adopted the Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, known as the Kampala Convention, in 2009. It was the first – and is still the only – legally binding regional instrument that addresses all causes and phases of displacement. It reflected the determination of African countries to address the phenomenon and set international standards for its management.

Secondary Education and Child Marriage in Forced Displacement and Crisis Settings. (2024). Secondary Education Working Group. The brief presents an overview of actions and approaches to address child marriage within secondary education in forced displacement and crisis-affected settings. It showcases how gender-responsive and inclusive secondary education can support adolescent girls who are at risk of marriage, ever married, pregnant and/or young mothers. The brief is structured through the lens of the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergency Minimum Standards for Education: Preparedness, Response, Recovery to highlight how education actors can, and must, take more intentional action to tackle child marriage in humanitarian programming. The brief includes a series of initial recommendations generated through discussion with SEWG members to advance secondary education programming, innovation and learning on child marriage.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Armenia to reduce housing aid for Nagorno-Karabakh refugees by Ani Avetisyan, December 2, 2024. Eurasianet. The Armenian government has announced it is scaling back a program that provides housing subsidies to refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, casting the decision as a move to promote self-sufficiency and stimulate the integration of refugees into society. But for the tens of thousands of Karabakh refugees receiving assistance, the announced reduction in benefits is likely to cause a spike in discontent. Armenia since November 2023 has provided a monthly stipend of 50,000 drams (about $125) to refugees from Karabakh without housing or government shelter. This assistance has supported most of the estimated 105,000 Armenians who fled Karabakh after Azerbaijan reconquered the entire region in September 2023.

Catastrophic Flooding and its Impact on Displaced People in Chad by Julia Davatzes, December 5, 2024. Wilson Center. The forcibly displaced people in Chad are experiencing magnified flooding impacts and require prioritized, targeted assistance to meet their expanding needs. Since July 2024, catastrophic flooding in Chad has severely impacted an estimated 2 million people, including refugees and other displaced people. This year’s floods exceed the “worst in a decade” floods of 2022, when 56,000 homes were destroyed. To date, the five months of recurring floods have destroyed over 200,000 homes and decimated 430,000 hectares of cropland. Over 13,000 people are displaced and nearly 600 fatalities have resulted from the immediate impacts of the floods, although the indirect excess mortality is hard to estimate. While these floods continue to drive internal displacement of Chadian nationals, the country already hosts over 1.2 million refugees and asylum-seekers. Chad hosts 45% of all Sudanese refugees in the world and other refugees from neighboring Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Nigeria.

Immigration: the Nuts and Bolts of a Complex Issue | Guest Column by Susan Martin, Donald G. Herzberg Professor Emerita of International Migration, November 27, 2024. The Journal of the San Juan Islands. A self-described immigration policy wonk for forty-plus years and is an internationally renowned scholar now living on San Juan Island in Washington State, Susan Martin writes about what can be expected with the new US administration led by incoming President Trump including a ban on migration from Muslim countries and the decimation of the refugee resettlement program. She then sets out five strategies that residents of the State can pursue to cushion the effects of Trump’s policies. She concludes: “We are not without power to stop bad things from happening. Although it will be difficult, it is well worth trying.”

Syria: More than 280,000 uprooted in northwest escalation, December 6, 2024. United Nations. More than 280,000 people have been uprooted in northwest Syria in a matter of days following the sudden and massive offensive into Government-controlled areas led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is sanctioned by the Security Council as a terrorist group. Aid has continued to flow from Türkiye across three border crossings into the embattled northwest and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said that it had opened community kitchens in Aleppo and Hama – cities now reportedly occupied by HTS fighters.

Tamils arriving in UK after three years stranded on Diego Garcia speak of relief by Diane Taylor, December 3, 2024. The Guardian. Dozens of people stranded in hellish conditions for more than three years on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia have arrived in the UK and told of their relief that their journey is over. Lawyers and campaigners hailed the arrival of 47 Sri Lankan Tamils on Monday night as a “big day for justice”, with a further eight arriving on Tuesday morning from Rwanda, where they had been receiving medical treatment. Twelve children were among them. They are staying in a hotel on the outskirts of London, where some of the children were seen running around excitedly on Tuesday. The group seemed relaxed about the freezing temperatures and unfamiliar surroundings.

US: Agents Block, Mistreat Mexican Asylum Seekers Next Administration’s Policies Would Worsen US Abuse at the Border, December 5, 2024. Human Rights Watch. United States Border Patrol agents are denying access to asylum to families fleeing violence in Mexico, in violation of US and international human rights law, Human Rights Watch said today. The agents have expelled asylum seekers to Mexico, where many said they feared persecution, as well as mistreated and ordered them to discard their belongings. US and international human rights law guarantee the right to seek asylum, and to humane treatment when in government custody.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Helton Fellowship Program. American Society of International Law. Funded by contributions from ASIL members, interest groups, and private foundations, Helton Fellowships provide financial assistance in the form of “micro-grants” for law students and young professionals to pursue field work and research on significant issues involving international law, human rights, humanitarian affairs, and related areas. The deadline to apply is January 17, 2025.

Participate in THE’s and UNHCR’s higher education survey on opportunities for refugees. Times Higher Education. Times Higher Education (THE) has partnered with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, to produce the largest global mapping of higher education opportunities for refugees. This survey will allow us to collect the information needed to undertake this mapping exercise. This mapping will serve as an essential piece of information for governments, relevant ministries, higher education institutions (HEI), and refugee and asylum seeker students to explore and access higher education pathways, and as a vital advocacy tool for raising awareness and solidarity for refugee and asylum seeker inclusion in higher education. This survey will collect data on refugee and asylum seeker enrolments, scholarship opportunities, and practices on empowering refugee and asylum seeker higher education and will support the UNHCR’s strategy to achieve 15% enrolment of refugees in higher education by 2030. The survey will close on January 31st, 2025.

Refugee Marketplace. Jumpstart Refugee Talent. The Refugee Marketplace is Canada’s first online platform dedicated to showcasing and selling products made exclusively by refugee entrepreneurs. This initiative by Jumpstart Refugee Talent offers a thoughtfully curated selection of high-quality gifts, apparel, home décor, specialty foods, and more. Every purchase directly supports these talented entrepreneurs, fostering economic independence and sustainable growth for refugee-led businesses.

Women on the Frontlines: Adapting to Climate Change in Kenya and Nigeria. Migration Matters. Women are disproportionately affected by climate change and immobility, yet they are often at the forefront of finding solutions. This episode features stories from Kenya and Nigeria, where women share how climate challenges have reshaped their roles and livelihoods. Experts Dr. Nassim Majidi (Samuel Hall) and Priscilla Achakpa (Women Environmental Programme) discuss the importance of a gender-sensitive approach to climate policy, emphasizing the need for cultural, economic, and political changes to support women’s resilience and adaptation.