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...

Migrant returnees arrive to El Salvador from Belize, with the support of the IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return Program. © IOM 2020 / Elena MONTOYA It is commonly understood by return and reintegration practitioners that the type of return, namely whether a person returned voluntarily or not, can influence the overall reintegration process and, above all, its sustainability. As underlined in IOM’s Policy on the Full Spectrum of Return, Readmission and Reintegration, “voluntary returns are always pr...

Recent years have seen the topic of migration rise to the top of political agendas in many parts of the Global North, propelled by images of overcrowded boats on the Mediterranean and migrant caravans in Central America. In recent weeks tragic events have been unfolding a stone’s throw from the Netherlands, in the English Channel, and on the borders of Belarus. For better or worse, policymakers at different levels of governance have responded to these events. Migration was a central feature of t...

Prof. Melissa Siegel received the Distinguished Alumna Award from the College of Charleston, USA on 20 November 2021. This award was established to recognise those alumni who have made significant contributions to their professions or to their communities over a long period of time, thus reflecting favourably on the College of Charleston. Prof. Siegel received her Bachelors in Economics with a Minor in Business from the College of Charleston and graduated from the Honors College in 2003. Prof. M...

A joint post by Ortrun Merkle, Loes van Heugten and Ashleigh Bicker Caarten … This year’s International Anti-Corruption Day has the hopeful motto: ‘Your right, your role: Say no to Corruption’, highlighting the important role that each individual, from politician to activist to citizen has in fighting corruption. The big question is, though, when it comes to saying #NoToCorruption, can everyone actually do so? Activists often pay a high price for their fight against corruption, and while m...

Our Master’s alumna Claire Tan Sze Eng has won the best thesis award at the Dutch Demography Day 2021 for her dissertation entitled, ‘Returning to a home without a future: The effect of migrant trajectories and experiences on the reintegration of Albanian rejected asylum-seekers’. Based on some 40 in-depth interviews carried out under the EU-funded ADMIGOV project in the first quarter of 2020, the study found strong intersectionality between economic, psychological and security reintegration out...

There were seven women and three children among the 27 people who tragically lost their lives in the English Channel this week. Women and children are frequently among those seeking a new life in Europe: as of November 21, this year 27.1% of migrants arriving by sea in the Mediterranean are women or children. The channel presents a final dangerous crossing after what is normally a long, treacherous and often violent journey. News broke of these recent tragic deaths on the eve of November 25, the...

For many researchers working on projects that spanned international borders, the imposition of travel restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a rapid change in ways of working. Drawing on their own experience and those of colleagues of carrying out fieldwork during the pandemic, UNU-MERIT researcher Talitha Dubow and PRIO researcher Marta Bivand Erdal propose practical recommendations to support a more collaborative mode of fieldwork, which might be among the building bloc...

Our quarterly migration newsletter aims at keeping you up-to-date on our migration activities, events and publications at UNU-MERIT and its School of Governance. You can read the newsletter online or subscribe to the e-zine. Find out more...