A guest post by Philip Pollak, alumnus of the 2021-22 MPP cohort   Pushbacks, according to The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, ‘entail a variety of state measures aimed at forcing refugees and migrants out of their territory while obstructing access to applicable legal and procedural frameworks. In doing so, States circumvent safeguards governing international protection (including minors), detention or custody, expulsion and the use of force.’ Translated into practice,...

By Soha Youssef, Learning and Development Coordinator at UNU-MERIT and alumna of the 2018/19 MPP cohort (specialised in Migration Studies) In October 2023, the Dutch Migration Minister Eric van der Burg met with several Egyptian government officials (including the Development Minister and the Minister of Immigration)[1] to enhance cooperation between the two countries and address the various challenges and opportunities related to migration in both Egypt and The Netherlands. This cooperation des...

A guest post by Veerle Joosen, recent graduate of the Sustainability Science, Policy & Society (SSPS) master’s degree at Maastricht University, whose thesis was supervised by Sonja Fransen, lead researcher of UNU-MERIT’s Comprehensive Innovation Team on Migration. Throughout my teenage years, my passion for sustainability-related issues has driven me to advocate for the well-being of our planet for future generations. In this blog, I outline the motivations behind the research in my ma...

A guest post by Betsabé Vásquez Martínez, current student in our 2022-23 MPP cohort   The CBP One app was launched in 2020 as a portal that provides migrants with a variety of US Customs and Border Protection services. With the introduction of Title 42 (a legal clause invoked by the Trump administration to allegedly stop the spread of COVID-19 across borders), the app became the only pathway to schedule asylum application appointments. This policy allowed the United States to turn away asyl...

A guest post by Anne Droste, current student in our 2022-23 MPP cohort With the introduction of the Opportunity Residence Act (which came into force in Germany on 31 December 2022), many long-term ‘tolerated’ migrants now have the chance to receive a residence permit. However, due to the Act’s strict conditions and failure to recognise the lived realities of tolerated migrants, Germany has once again missed an opportunity to permanently end the state of legal limbo known as ‘chain toleration’. &...

A guest post by Giulia Mori, current student in our 2022-23 MPP cohort The Italian agricultural sector relies heavily on migrant workers, who accounted for almost 400,000 workers in 2020, corresponding to more than 30% of Italy’s agricultural labour force. Migrants working in the Italian fields (braccianti, or ‘a pair of arms’) are subjected to exploitation and abuse and are often trapped in the mafia-like system of caporalato, a phenomenon that involves the recruitment and exploitation of migra...

Participants share their key takeaways from UNU-MERIT’s Migration Management Diploma Programme The Migration Management Diploma Programme (MMDP) is a capacity development programme which has been offered by UNU-MERIT since 2013. This programme is designed for government officials working in migration and asylum. Running for three months full-time, the course uses various teaching and evaluation methods, including lectures and interactive sessions with participants. We interviewed two MMDP ...

A guest post by Sterre Naaktgeboren, alumna of last year’s 2021-22 MPP cohort   Curious to learn more about the “wicked problem” of migration, I chose the Migration Studies Specialization of UNU-MERIT’s Master of Science in Public Policy and Human Development programme, where I decided to focus on the interconnections between migration and health. Since April 2023, I have been working as a PhD candidate and project management assistant at Radboud University in Nijmegen. During t...

Our quarterly newsletter rounds up the latest news and events from UNU-MERIT and its School of Governance. We explore the push and pull of international development: innovation through science and entrepreneurship, and governance through public policy analysis. ...

In April 2022, UNU joined other UN entities in endorsing a UN System pledge on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). In this blog series, members of the United Nations University Migration Network (UNU-MN) and guest contributors reflect on the equitable and evidence-based implementation of the GCM in policy and practice. In this first blog of the series, Dr Elaine Lebon-McGregor (UNU-MERIT) reflects on what we can really say about progress in implementing the GCM.  Ne...