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, this m...

Article co-authored by Mariajose Silva Vargas, full-time PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT [Reprinted by permission from VoxDev; Francesco Loiacono] Working together with one refugee worker for one week increases firms’ likelihood to hire more refugees by adjusting business owners’ beliefs about refugees’ skills. Addressing the pressing global challenge of integrating migrants, especially in the context of forced displacement, is crucial given that migrations are considered “one of the most important geop...

By Robert Oakes (Senior Researcher, UNU-EHS) and Talitha Dubow (postdoctoral researcher, UNU-MERIT) The UK’s home secretary, Suella Braverman – the minister responsible for setting immigration policy – has said the United Nations refugee convention is not “fit for our modern age” and should be renegotiated. As researchers of migration at the United Nations University, we know the importance of the convention – a landmark agreement that underpins the human rights of people around the world. Brave...

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 post by Alex Hunns, social protection researcher at UNU-MERIT New UNU research explores the extent to which climate crises affect 20 of the world’s largest refugee settlements  Encampment has defined refugee policy since the Second World War, and refugees fleeing conflict and persecution in their homelands are usually clustered into camps. These camps define a separation or segregation from host populations: physically, camps are located in isolated areas on low-quality land (often with moveme...

Ongoing war and conflict, starting in the late 1970s, have made Afghanistan a major emigrant country. For more than four decades, most Afghan families, including my own, have migrated either internally or externally, mainly for safety....

As a research institute, UNU-MERIT has some of the brightest minds investigating the topic of entrepreneurship. In this brief Q&A, PhD fellows Maria Tomai and Tamara Kool describe how entrepreneurs can drive positive change, particularly in the fields of migration and sustainability. Maria looks at the Circular Economy in cities of the Global South, before Tamara speaks about policies that are helping refugees rejoin the labour market. … How does your research relate to entrepreneurshi...

It is still unclear what circumstances led to the deaths of 39 people who were found in the refrigerated trailer in a lorry park outside London. It is not known how these 31 men and eight women, some of whom are thought to be Vietnamese nationals, ended up in the trailer, where they thought they were going, who put them there, and to what extent they went voluntarily or were forced. And why would migrants, refugees or other stowaways make the decision to travel like freight, and do they know the...

Uganda’s refugee policy is praised worldwide as it is different from other hosting countries: refugees can stay in settlements or they can decide to move to a city. In both cases, they can seek employment anywhere. Yet, only in the first scenario do they receive humanitarian assistance and a piece of land to farm. Nakivale refugee settlement, approximately 200 km away from Kampala, is one of the oldest settlements in the country. It currently hosts 119,587 refugees from the Democratic Republic o...

The United Nations University in the Netherlands (UNU-MERIT) is pleased to announce an agreement with the World Food Programme to provide long-term monitoring, evaluation, analysis and policy guidance in support of WFP’s work with refugee and vulnerable communities in Kenya. Worth USD $2 million over the next four years, this project will be led by Dr. Nyasha Tirivayi of UNU-MERIT. Her team of dedicated researchers will monitor and evaluate the effects of long-term aid programmes to Kenya’s popu...