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
Dahinden, J., & Pott, A. (2025). Reflexivities and knowledge production in migration studies pitfalls and alternatives. Springer. Open access book. This open access book brings together cutting-edge work on reflexive approaches within migration studies and emphasizes the boundedness and political character of knowledge production. Beyond presenting a state-of-the-art of the problematic aspects of knowledge production in migration studies, this volume is innovative insofar as the contributions all formulate alternatives. They should lead to transform knowledge production in relation to migration and therefore contribute to alter our ways to do research and tackle established power relations. By discussing a diverse range of topical subjects – among others, epistemology, power, ethnocentrism, racism, decoloniality, gender and methodology – this volume is a great resource to students, to junior and senior academics in migration studies and social sciences more general as well as to policy-makers in European countries.
Adamson, F. B., & Greenhill, K. M. (2025). Geopolitical uses of organised forced migration. International Migration, 63(6). Open access. State use of organised forced migration has played a central role in geopolitics and foreign policy. In this piece, the authors draw attention to its prevalence, including its widespread use as a tool in contemporary migration management policies. In order to effectively tackle questions of forced migration, it is necessary to first recognise that it is frequently purposefully perpetuated by states.
Colley, J. Irreparable Harm: How the United States Fails to Remedy Unjust Deportations, 53 Ga. J. Int’l & Compar. L. 166 (2025). Open access. When the United States wrongfully deports individuals, the harm is often irreversible. This piece explores the systemic gaps that leave those unjustly deported without meaningful remedies or recourse.
Godinho Nascimento, H., Abdulkarim, S., Arikati, G., & Meyer, S. B. (2025). The nature and extent of migrants, immigrants, and Refugees’ Trust in the social institutions of their host countries: A scoping review. Frontiers in Political Science, 7. Open access. One of the most significant drivers of the public’s decision-making is trust. Trust is a critical factor when making decisions in the face of uncertainty and risk. This same principle applies to trust in our social institutions, which is the topic this paper explores. Institutional trust may be especially important for migrant groups whose vulnerabilities are furthered by the decrease in institutional trust. As such, this review aims to investigate the nature and extent of immigrants, migrants, and refugees’ institutional trust (and adjacent concepts) in social institutions.
Johnson, J. (Jay) G. (2025). Urban aesthetics, nuisance, and refugees: local business litigation and urban law in South African cities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1–19. While there has been important attention to the interconnections between urban inequalities and migration politics and middle-class residents as urban political actors, there remain opportunities to analyse how local businesses utilize urban law and aesthetics concerning migrant governance in the Global South. The author argues that local businesses in South African cities utilized legal strategies related to concepts of embodied nuisance and transposed informality against Refugee Reception Offices (RROs) in their vicinities. Given ambivalent court mandates to uphold private property law and confront social inequalities, legal interpretations of municipal zoning and bylaws become particularly important for legal arguments concerning nuisance and informality. Consequently, local businesses were able to utilize urban law to pursue instrumental and symbolic interests concerning control over urban space, highlighting the importance of middle-class actors and interconnections of urban politics and migration governance in shaping and reproducing social, temporal, and spatial geographies of cities of the Global South.
Koo, G. Y. (2025). Middle Eastern migrants in East Asia. Anthropology of the Middle East, 20(2), 1–6. Open access. This special issue of Anthropology of the Middle East, titled ‘Middle Eastern Migrants in East Asia: Navigation of Identity, Religion and Belonging’, explores the complex dynamics of Middle Eastern migration to East Asia, centring primarily on South Korea and Japan. Through a collection of empirically grounded studies, this issue provides a comprehensive analysis of how Middle Eastern migrants navigate their identities, religious practices and sense of belonging within East Asian societies. The contributors illuminate the multifaceted nature of contemporary migration experiences, state responses and social adaptation within the East Asian context.
REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS
Breaking the Cycle of Dysfunction at the U.S. Immigration Courts by Kathleen Bush-Joseph, Doris Meissner and Muzaffar Chishti. (2025). Migration Policy Institute. The immigration courts have long faced high caseloads, but the backlog has seen considerable growth in recent years. With nearly 3.8 million pending deportation cases as of mid-2025, delays in the courts hamper core functions of the broader U.S. immigration system—including leaving individuals who are in need of protection waiting years for a decision in their asylum case, while those who are ineligible are not ordered removed in a timely manner. To understand how the courts reached this point, this policy brief provides an overview of policies under the Biden administration and early actions during the second Trump term. Many of the most pressing issues have been the focus, in different ways and to different extents, of executive branch actions and proposed legislation, but these efforts have failed to produce a well-functioning immigration court system. The brief concludes by highlighting concrete administrative and legislative actions that could transform the immigration courts, making proceedings fairer and more efficient and enabling judges to focus on high-priority cases—those affecting national security and public safety.
International Migration Outlook 2025. (2025). OECD. This publication constitutes the 49th report of the OECD’s Continuous Reporting System on Migration. The report is divided into six chapters plus a statistical annex. Chapter 1 provides a broad overview of recent trends in international migration flows. It also analyses recent changes on the labour market inclusion of immigrants in OECD countries. Chapter 2 monitors recent changes in migration policies, while Chapter 3 looks at the recent changes in policies that support the integration of immigrants and their children. Chapter 4 looks at the role of firms in immigrant integration, Chapter 5 is the result of a co‑operation between the OECD and the WHO in the context of the “Working for Health” programme, and Chapter 6 presents succinct country-specific notes and statistics on developments in international migration movements and policies in OECD and selected non-OECD countries in recent years.
The Prevention of Migrant Deaths and Disappearances – Insights from the Missing Migrants Project in the MENA Region (Technical Brief 1). (2025). International Organization for Migration. Migration across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is a defining feature of regional mobility but remains marked by danger, uncertainty, and loss of life. The inadequacy and restricted accessibility of regular migration pathways leave many migrants with few safe options, leading some to undertake irregular journeys marked by serious risks to their safety and lives. The International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project (MMP) has recorded over 73,000 deaths and disappearances worldwide between 2014 and 2024, and it is important to underscore that these tragedies are preventable.
Mixed Migration Review ’25. (2025). Mixed Migration Centre. In 2025 the world faces profound political shifts, a strained humanitarian and multilateral system, widening inequality, and accelerating technological change and climate crises. This year’s Mixed Migration Review (MMR) explores migration in the context of intensified geopolitical turmoil.
Voices that shape humanitarian responses: Advancing accountability to affected people in northern Syria. (2025). UNFPA. This brief is intended for practitioners and policymakers aiming to strengthen accountability to affected people (AAP) and community engagement in humanitarian responses. It captures key lessons and promising practices from northern Syria – one of the first settings globally to implement a comprehensive interagency AAP system. In light of the ongoing “Humanitarian Reset” initiated in 2025, the AAP system initiated in northern Syria in 2024 offers a timely model to localize response efforts, reduce duplication and promote collective accountability. It was subsequently recognized as a best practice in the 2024 UN Secretary-General’s report on strengthening the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance.
NEWS AND BLOG POSTS
Aid interrupted: what Myanmar’s crisis reveals about humanitarian system’s fragility by Amélie Bernard Beeckman. November 2025. Alternatives Humanitaires. This article is an extension of our special issue “International aid under threat: What consequences? What responses? What reconfigurations?” published in November 2025. According to the author, forty years after their creation, refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border reveal their Achilles heel: a deadly dependence on external funding. American budget cuts are causing a health crisis there and forcing a rethink of a sclerotic humanitarian model.
Caribbean Immigrants in the United States by Allison Rutland and Jeanne Batalova, November 12, 2025. Migration Policy Institute. The Caribbean, which is known for high emigration rates, has been the source of steady migration to the United States over the past several decades. Immigrants from Caribbean island nations have a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and educational backgrounds, with the vast majority coming from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, or Haiti. The 5.3 million immigrants from the region in the United States in 2024 accounted for 10 percent of all 50.2 million U.S. immigrants. This Spotlight provides information on the Caribbean immigrant population in the United States, focusing on its size, geographic distribution, and socioeconomic characteristics.
From Haiti to Ethiopia: voices of climate displacement at COP30 by Felipe de Carvalho, November 13, 2025. United Nations. At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) is pressing negotiators to make climate mobility a core part of adaptation plans. Floods, heatwaves, droughts and storms are forcing millions from their homes every year. Most never cross a border; they remain internally displaced yet uprooted all the same. But experts warn that in the not-so-distant future, entire nations could disappear beneath rising seas or become uninhabitable through drought.
Migration Crisis or Crisis of Migration Management? Syrian Refugees’ Rights in the EU and Türkiye by Berfin Nur Osso, Çağla Ekin Güner, Ana Margheritis, November 10, 2025. Refugee Law Initiative. Migration crises tend to have significant effects on the governance mechanisms that regulate migrant access to rights. As sudden, overwhelming processes that call for extraordinary measures, migration crises tend to be linked with the on-and-off switching of the exercise of rights to free movement across borders, legal residence, access to protection and services, integration opportunities, etc. This is particularly the case when specific junctures, or even specific migrant populations, are portrayed as a threat that overwhelms expectations and response capacities.
Thailand: Vietnamese Refugees at Risk from Hanoi – Collaboration with Vietnam Police Facilitates Threats, Abuses, November 13, 2025. Human Rights Watch. Increased cooperation between Thai and Vietnamese authorities is putting Vietnamese refugees and asylum seekers in Thailand at heightened risk of forcible return to Vietnam. By facilitating Vietnamese cross-border abuses, known as transnational repression, Thai authorities are violating international refugee law protections. Thai police have carried out several large-scale operations in 2025 detaining scores of Vietnamese nationals, many of whom are recognized by the United Nations as refugees and asylum seekers. Many of those arrested have reported encountering Vietnamese officials inside jails or immigration detention facilities and during check-in meetings with Thai immigration authorities.
EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Fall 2025 Issue of CARFMS/ACERMF Newsletter. CARFMS. The Association works to foster an independent community of scholars dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of Canadian refugee and forced migration research by establishing active partnerships and collaborations among researchers, teachers, practitioners, policy makers, advocating and supporting publications, conferences, and other fora that contribute to open and inclusive communication and networking around issues relating to refugee and forced migration studies in Canada and elsewhere.
Rethinking Humanitarianism | Security Council backs Trump’s Gaza plan. What could go wrong? The New Humanitarian. World powers are fighting over the future of Gaza. The stage for that battle: the UN Security Council. In October, Hamas and Israel agreed to a peace plan, brokered in part by US President Donald Trump. Israel has killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians since a ceasefire began. On 17 November, the Security Council passed a resolution backing the so-called 20-point plan. It authorises an “international stabilisation force”, and approves a “board of peace”, overseen by Trump. Essentially, this would govern Gaza, and direct reconstruction and humanitarian aid efforts. There are red flags all over this – not to mention an absence of voices from Palestine and from Gaza. The podcast examines the implications of the Security Council decision from the perspectives of three guests: Shahd Hammouri, a Palestinian-Jordanian lecturer in International Law and Legal Theory at the University of Kent, Gazan poet and writer Nour ElAssy, and journalist Riley Sparks.
Rethinking Humanitarianism | Why emergency education saves lives. The New Humanitarian. One in seven of the world’s students had their education disrupted by climate disasters last year. One in six children live in a conflict zone. But when aid funding is tight, emergency education is often cut first. That’s what’s happening now as donor governments shrink budgets: Teachers are going unpaid, programmes and schools are closing, and dropouts are rising. Podcast guest Faiza Hassan, director of the Inter-agency Network for Education, wants to reframe the discussion: Education is life-saving.
Webinar on procedural rights of migrant and refugee children in legal proceedings. International Commission of Jurists. Organized by the International Commission of Jurists, this recording of the webinar examines “international and EU frameworks ensuring the procedural rights of migrant and refugee children in legal proceedings, including their effective participation in asylum and migration-related proceedings.