The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.
You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest
No. 184 | September 17, 2026
Dear readers, we’re thrilled to welcome you to another year of the RRN Research Digest! Thank you so much for your continued support and contributions. As always, if you would like to include a submission for one of our issues, please email us at rrndigest@yorku.ca.
Warmly,
RRN Research Digest Team
NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS
Gül Ince-Beqo. (2026). Diasporic marginalities and the second-best destination. Springer Nature Singapore. Open access book. This open access book examines Turkish and Kurdish settlement in Italy, an under-studied “second-best destination” within Europe’s stratified mobility regime. Centering a context long overshadowed by Northern European hubs, it shows how border governance, legal status, segmented labour markets, and welfare arrangements combine to shape migrant lives at the margins of the continent’s more resourced receiving societies. Drawing on decade-long ethnographic fieldwork and more than 100 interviews with families and second-generation young adults, the book traces trajectories of arrival, through asylum, irregular transit, family reunification, and work networks, and the gradual consolidation of lives in which onward-migration remains a live horizon.
Krause, U., Joshua, G. N., & Schmidt, H. (2026a). Refugee-led organizations in Uganda: Agency, Gender, and politics of self-organizing in exile. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Open access book. Self-organization plays an essential yet often overlooked role in the everyday lives of refugees in exile. By self-organizing, they challenge restrictions, claim political representation, foster social relations and belonging, and create ongoing economic opportunities. While government authorities and aid organizations are supposed to provide protection and assistance, refugees often continue to face adversities, restrictions, and risks, prompting them to establish and maintain their own support systems. Refugee-Led Organizations in Uganda offers nuanced insight into the problems arising from the aid system and especially the significance of the spectrum of informal and formalized self-organizations.
Dziadyk, N. (2026). Displaced citizenship: War-driven political action and temporalities of displacement among Ukrainians. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–18. Open access. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to the displacement of millions of people, many of whom fled abroad, grappling with survivor guilt and seeking ways to remain part of Ukraine’s fight. To capture these dynamics, the article develops the analytical lens of displaced citizenship. Rather than approaching displacement as a background condition, displaced citizenship foregrounds how urgency, rupture, and uncertainty become constitutive of political subjectivity. It shows how the immediacy of forced movement, grief, separation, and enduring concerns for those left behind generate moral and political obligations, while uncertainty about protection, return, emplacement, and societal reception shapes how displaced persons navigate political action in receiving societies. In doing so, the article contributes to debates on migration, citizenship, and political participation by recentring the temporalities of displacement in the study of political engagement.
Noor, A. & Yunis, M. (2026). From data to power: centring displaced women in climate and humanitarian decision-making. Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, 87. Open access. Climate-related disasters are becoming more frequent and severe, increasing displacement in fragile, conflict-affected areas. In refugee-hosting regions such as Dadaab and Hagadera in Garissa County, Kenya, extended periods of drought, unpredictable rainfall and flooding directly influence daily survival. Nevertheless, humanitarian interventions are impeded by inadequate data-collection systems and the ongoing marginalisation of the most severely impacted populations, especially displaced women and girls. The lack of gender-specific and intersectional data transcends technical issues, revealing fundamental structural inequalities in the processes of knowledge creation, validation and application. By referencing examples from Kenya, this article explores how refugee women-led organisations are innovating climate response strategies through co-design, participatory data systems and genuine engagement.
Schulz, P. (2026). Love in a “hopeless” place? courtship, intimacy, and Romance in displacement. Journal of Refugee Studies. Open access. Even in the midst of war and displacement, love persists. Yet, these lived realities remain mostly absent from refugee studies and from the vast body of literature on mass internal displacement and encampment in northern Uganda specifically. In this article, the author documents different narratives of romance, intimacy, love, and compassion in the context of Ugandan IDP camps and situate those accounts alongside a recognition of the harms caused by a decade of mass forced displacement, including their profound disruption of social-moral-intimate orders.
REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS
New UNDP assessment charts a path towards more accessible legal aid systems for forcibly displaced people. (2026). UNDP. A new regional assessment released today by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with support from the German Government, finds that Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have made important progress in strengthening access to state-guaranteed legal aid for forcibly displaced people. However, significant barriers continue to prevent many from fully exercising their rights.
Jurisprudence related to LGBTIQ Applicants in International Protection. (2026). European Union Agency for Asylum. This fact sheet provides an overview of recent case law related to the assessment of international protection claims based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC).
Thailand Accepts Its Status as a Migrant Hub, but Workers Face Precarious Conditions. (2026). Migration Policy Institute. Thailand is a regional magnet for migration and the most popular destination for labor migrants in the Mekong subregion of Southeast Asia. As several sectors of its economy have grown reliant on workers from neighboring countries, the government has tried to formalize its labor migration system. While providing rights and protections on paper, however, policies have deepened migrant workers’ marginalization without offering access to permanent settlement or eliminating barriers to social and political integration.
The Humanitarian Funding Gap in Chad: Implications for Vulnerable Populations. (2026). SIPRI. In 2024, SIPRI and its partner BUCOFORE carried out research showing that refugee women and girls in the Chad–Sudan border region face considerable threats to their safety, and existing protection measures are inadequate. The research also found that humanitarian funding in Chad remains insufficient to match the scale of need. Incorporating insights from seminars held in 2026, this fact sheet expands on three key findings from the research: the humanitarian funding gap in Chad compromises the transition to resilience; it weakens protection mechanisms; and it undermines the safety and dignity of refugee women. The fact sheet aims to guide donors in their decision making and support targeted, effective interventions that boost local resilience and refugee integration.
Transition of Refugee Services in East Africa. (2026). International Rescue Committee. Across East Africa, governments and their partners are transitioning the delivery of refugee health services from parallel humanitarian systems toward national health systems. This shift reflects commitments under the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), and is driven by protracted displacement, mounting pressure on humanitarian budgets and ambitions for the socioeconomic inclusion of refugees. The recommendations set out how donors, governments and partners can safeguard predictable financing, workforce continuity and specialized care before responsibility shifts, so that integration strengthens national systems.
NEWS AND BLOG POSTS
AI age assessment: why it puts child asylum-seekers at risk by Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Carmen Leon-Himmelstine, Rachel Marcus, September 3, 2026. ODI Global. Age assessment of unaccompanied young asylum-seekers is one of the most controversial aspects of the asylum system. Immigration officers have life-changing decisions to make – asylum-seekers deemed under the age of 18 receive additional support and safeguarding provisions, while those assessed as adults face stricter accommodation dispersal and standard immigration controls.
Between Protection and Precarity: Progress, Limits and Deficiencies of Asylum Governance in Taiwan by Yen-Rong Lai and Lili Song, September 9, 2026. Refugee Law Initiative. In conversations about refugee protection in Asia, Taiwan rarely comes up. Yet Taiwan has a long history of hosting refugees and asylum seekers, including those fleeing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1949, Indochinese refugees in the 1970s and 1980s and Hong Kong activists seeking refuge since 2019. Today, the largest group seeking protection in Taiwan are Myanmar nationals. Taiwan has proactively incorporated major UN human rights treaties; however, to date, it has not established a formalised, predictable framework for refugee protection.
Can Haiti Handle an Influx of Deportees From the U.S.? by Gene Kuleta, Daniel Maffey, and Luiza Franca, September 2, 2026. The Dialogue. A U.S. district judge in Washington confirmed on Aug. 5 that Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants was no longer shielded by the court order that had kept it in place. The Trump administration resumed deportation flights two weeks later and can now strip legal status and work authorization from as many as 350,000 Haitians. The developments came as Haiti continues to grapple with gang violence, political instability and food insecurity. How realistic is it for Haiti to absorb a large-scale return of its citizens given the current security and humanitarian situation in the country? What capacity does the Haitian state have to receive, resettle and protect returnees amid gang control of large parts of the capital? What risks does the situation pose for Haiti’s stability in the months ahead?
What 13 minutes in Nepal can teach us about acting before disaster strikes by Jessica Alexander, September 9, 2026. The New Humanitarian. Rajendra Dawadi had to make a decision in an instant. Warned that floodwaters were racing towards his school in Nepal’s Trishuli Valley, the headmaster had no way of knowing how much time he had, nor whether the floodwaters would reach his school. He did not hesitate and evacuated more than 900 students and 16 staff to higher ground.
18,500 Displaced in 72 Hours as Fighting Flares Across Yemen West Coast, September 7, 2026. IOM UN Migration. Renewed hostilities along Yemen’s western coast and in parts of Taiz and Al-Hodeidah have forced thousands of people from their homes, with civilians reportedly among those killed and injured as clashes intensify.
EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Podcast: Forced From Home Episode 10: A Seat at the Table: Advancing Meaningful Inclusion of Refugee Leaders with Dr. Hourie Tafech. Refugees International. In this episode, we hear from Refugees International’s own Dr. Hourie Tafech about her own refugee leadership journey and the evolution of the global refugee-led movement. She discusses the crucial role refugee leaders have played in shaping international humanitarian policy decisions and the UN Refugee Agency’s operations. She offers ideas to advance meaningful refugee participation across global platforms and measure the impact of refugee inclusion.
Podcast: Rethinking Humanitarianism | Somalia’s plan to break free from aid dependence. The New Humanitarian. For Abdihakim Ainte, a senior Somali government official, the international humanitarian system’s sudden contraction has been both a “cataclysmic” shock – with devastating immediate consequences – and a reckoning that could ultimately accelerate Somalia’s path towards greater self-reliance.
Podcast: Rethinking Humanitarianism | Will aid-for-hire become the new normal? The New Humanitarian. In the previous collaborative episode between Rethinking Humanitarianism and Start Network, Fogbow CEO Brook Jerue questioned why the aid sector was so “infatuated” and critical of his company – a small private American firm delivering aid in high‑conflict contexts like South Sudan and Gaza. In this follow‑up episode, host Tammam Aloudat speaks with Beatrice Lindstrom – co‑author of a recent policy brief on the rise of privatised, militarised, and politicised aid actors – to situate Fogbow within the larger context of these emerging operators, and to examine why their growing “subsumption” of professional humanitarian roles deserves closer scrutiny.
Event: CRS/CERLAC/YCAR Floor Party. Start the academic year by connecting with the vibrant communities at the Centre for Refugee Studies, the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean and the York Centre for Asian Research! Join us for an afternoon of conversation, connection and community. Come meet fellow students, faculty and researchers-light snacks will be served! This will be on September 23, 2026 at 2:00PM-3:00PM ET at Common Area, Eighth Floor, Kaneff Tower, Keele Campus, York University.
Event: CRS Film Screening: When the water horse seeks a new home. This film is part of a project on Theorising (im)mobilities at sea: Challenging the terra firma bias in Refugee Studies through human maritime movements. This will be on September 24, 2026, at 1:00PM – 2:30PM at HNES 140 (note: this is an in person event only), Keele campus, York University. The guest speaker will be Antje Missbach, Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University.