While the ISIS insurgency creates new flows of refugees, rejected asylum seekers and Kurds with European passports continue to return. Five very different encounters in Iraqi Kurdistan in the last week illustrate the contradictions and complexities of migration. This is our second blog post in a series for World Refugee Day. The humanitarian and the researcher On the plane to Iraq, where I will interview rejected and returned asylum seekers, I meet my former employer. As the director of an NGO f...

June 20th is World Refugee Day; a day intended to draw attention to the plight of refugees worldwide. This year attention is likely to focus on Syria. Within just three years Syria has become the single largest origin country for refugees worldwide. Over three million refugees have fled the country, including perhaps one million children. Most are in camps or settlements in neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey; relatively poor countries which are struggling to cope. A further six million Syr...

A new UNU policy brief examines immigration experiences in eight diverse cities around the world: from Auckland (New Zealand), to Buenos Aires (Argentina), Chicago (USA), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Lisbon (Portugal), Nairobi (Kenya), Rotterdam (The Netherlands), and São Paulo (Brazil). The brief is based on a larger research report, launched in Maastricht on 21 May 2014, the fruit of a joint project between The Hague Process on Refugees and Migration (THP) and UNU-MERIT and its School of Governanc...

Local governments are key points of contact for refugees and migrants — especially when they are faced with deportation. For the launch of The Hague Process report on Migrant and Refugee Integration in Cities, 21 May 2014, this blog looks at a new campaign for a fairer children’s amnesty. Discontent is stirring once again in the Netherlands because of the kinderpardon, or children’s amnesty, scheme. The long-term residency scheme for children was lauded in 2012 as a shining example o...

At what point do people start identifying themselves as refugees? What are the differences between refugee and migrant diasporas? Should we even make a distinction? Use of the terms “refugee diasporas” and “migrant diasporas” is shaped by various academic, funding and political issues. In academia, we investigate the different linkages between diaspora populations and their homelands in order to provide more context-specific and nuanced insights. The next question is, how far do labels help or h...

International migration is frequently discussed in terms of development. We often hear that there are some 214 million international migrants, and that one in seven people is a migrant when internal mobility is included. According to the World Bank, these migrants will send more than half a billion US dollars in remittances this year, the lion’s share going to developing countries. Yet beyond the numbers lies a complex and messy reality, one that calls for urgent policy responses at all levels o...

The United Nations University (UNU) announces the launch of the UNU Migration Network. Responding to the need of policymakers and scholars to better understand and cope with migration-related issues, the new network — coordinated by the UNU Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNU-GCM) — integrates UNU system research on migration. Migration is a major global trend. Some 232 million people (3.2 per cent of the world’s population) are now living outside the country of their birth, wh...

The final conference of the IS Academy Migration and Development project was held in Maastricht from 22-24 January 2014, with sessions focusing on Afghanistan, Burundi, Ethiopia, Morocco and the Netherlands, and themes such as remittances, entrepreneurship and diasporas. Under the banner “A World in Motion”, the aim was to share analysis of project data and examine results from other research conducted around the world. The conference kicked off on Wednesday 22 January with welcome s...