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Publications (64)
Despite the converging agreement on the linkages between climate and broader environmental change and human (im)mobilities, evidence gaps persist that often relate to data challenges. It remains necessary to improve knowledge and data to better map, understand, project, and address environmental migration, displacement, planned relocation, and immo...
This paper explores the use of big data in understanding population movements in the context of environmental change, with particular attention to publicly available information from social media and newspapers. After discussing causal factors, the paper discusses the benefits and challenges of using big data, and mathematical models that may help...
Immigration makes America what it is and is formative for what it will become. America was settled by three different models of immigration, all of which persist to the present. The Virginia Colony largely equated immigration with the arrival of laborers, who had few rights. Massachusetts welcomed those who shared the religious views of the founder...
This paper focuses on an important pre-condition for effective forecasting—a theoretical model that captures the full range of drivers that are implicated in decisions to move from one location to another. The paper first reviews the academic literature on the drivers of displacement. It also discusses the corollary of displacement—immobility that...
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global human mobility dynamics. This IMR Dispatch examines the historical, bidirectional links between pandemics and mobility and provides an early analysis of how they unfolded during the first nine months of the COVID-19 emergency. Results show, first, that international travel restrictions to combat the spread...
Absftract
Elizabeth Ferris’ review of research on environmental change and human mobility in this colloquium points to the important role that development actors play in identifying potential solutions for affected persons. She mentions in particular the work of the World Bank’s Climate Change Group and the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration...
In December 2018, the UN General Assembly adopted two Global Compacts: The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). These two compacts, while non‐binding and aspirational in nature, offer the first widely‐accepted new normative frameworks on the movement of people since the ratification...
Worldwide displacement due to war and conflict is at all-time high. Unfortunately, determining if, when, and where people will move is a complex problem. This paper proposes integrating both publicly available organic data from social media and newspapers with more traditional indicators of forced migration to determine when and where people will m...
In light of global reforms to speed up local integration in protracted refugee settings, refugees and host communities need more capacity-building support around natural-resource management and resource-sharing. This article presents the findings of research conducted in Ethiopia and Djibouti focused on refugees and environmental resource managemen...
Interdisciplinary perspectives on the role of new information technologies, including mobile phones, wireless networks, and biometric identification, in the global refugee crisis.
Today's global refugee crisis has mobilized humanitarian efforts to help those fleeing persecution and armed conflict at all stages of their journey. Aid organizations ar...
This chapter focuses on international, regional and national legal norms, policies, organizational roles and relations and good practices that are applicable to a broad range of humanitarian crises that have migration consequences. These crises and the resulting displacement differ by their causes, intensity, geography, phases and affected populati...
All working papers from this project are available at
https://isim.georgetown.edu/research/current-projects/natural-resource-management/
This article examines the role of the United States in the international refugee regime. It argues that the United States generally leads in assistance and protection of refugees and displaced persons when three conditions are present: A strong link to US foreign policy; clear and highly visible humanitarian needs and important domestic constituenc...
In June 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that more than 65 million persons have fled conflict and persecution. While certainly large in its own right, the number actually underestimates displacement in today's world. Many millions more are displaced each year and cumulatively from a much broader range of lif...
A menacing context has emerged when a dread threat persists and requires a community to reorganize its life to help mitigate consequences of threat. This article explores how menacing context links drivers of forced migration, the perception of threat among local families and domestic decision-making about remaining in place, fleeing or combination...
Given the prominence of migration today and its potential growth in the future, it is noteworthy that migration studies have
only recently become an area of serious research and study, dating back just to the 1980s. U.S. universities have lagged far
behind those in Europe and elsewhere in establishing Migration Studies programs. This article argues...
In June 2015, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees announced a landmark event in the history of his organization. UNHCR estimated that there were more refugees and displaced persons than it had counted since its establishment in 1950--almost 60 million who fled conflict and persecution. While certainly large in its own right, the number actually u...
This article discusses: current trends in international migration, highlighting why global governance of international migration
is needed; explores reasons why this form of global governance has lagged behind others; and reviews the steps that have been
taken since the early twentieth century to foster greater international cooperation. In recent...
Comprehensive immigration reform is the exception, not the rule, in American politics. Major changes in immigration policy generally require years of preparation and negotiation. Even the imprimatur of blue ribbon panels helps but does not ensure quick passage of new approaches. Today, there appears to be considerable consensus as to the contours o...
States have long been wary of putting international migration on the global agenda. As an issue that defines sovereignty-that is, who enters and remains on a state's territory-international migration has called for protection of national prerogatives and unilateral actions. However, since the end of World War I, governments have sought ways to addr...
This article examines a multiyear project funded by the Teagle Foundation to assess student learning in humanitarian studies. It explores outcomes derived from developing a collaborative learning approach to humanitarian action that emphasizes both cross-campus and cross-institutional peer-to-peer learning and exchange. Faculty, staff, and students...
Whether it is the stranding of tens of thousands of migrant workers at the Libyan-Tunisian border, or the large-scale displacement triggered by floods in Pakistan and Colombia, hardly a week goes by in which humanitarian crises have not precipitated human movement. While some people move internally, others internationally, some temporarily and othe...
Immigration policy between Mexico and the U.S: Unilateralism or Cooperation?
This article starts out with a brief historical overview of immigration between Mexico and the United States. It then moves on to the study of current issues, especially illegal immigration and underlines the necessity for both partners to work together to solve the crisis...
With this paper I focus on international legal norms and organizational roles and relations applicable to migration induced by environmental change. I examine movements stemming directly and indirectly from environmental factors related to climate change- including, for example, movements resulting from intensified drought and desertification aff e...
Climate change is relatively new to the international discourse on migration and development. The impacts of climate change on migration have been variously debated for almost 20 years now, but there continues to be insufficiently informed debate on the links with development, both as cause and effect. The chapter reviews current knowledge and disc...
2011 marks the anniversary of two important events in refugee protection. In 1951, the United Nations adopted the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Forty years later, in 1991, the Executive Committee of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) adopted Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women. Since 1991, ther...
Human trafficking is the third largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world. It affects millions of people around the globe and reaps billions in profits. Trafficking is generally thought of as the movement of a person from one country to another. However, trafficking within countries is also common, and perhaps occurs to an even grea...
The ageing population of the United States is generating an increasing demand for care and foreign-born workers will supply
an important part of that demand. This article discusses the ways in which U.S. healthcare and immigration policies affect
the supply of the foreign born to professional and lesser skilled, direct care jobs. The U.S. market fo...
Forced migration has many causes and takes many forms. People leave because of persecution, human rights violations, repression, conflict, natural and human-made disasters, and environmental hazards. Through most of the 20th century, international protection was focused—if at all—on persons who had crossed international borders in seek of refuge fr...
Immigration makes America what it is and is formative for what it will become. America was settled by three different models of immigration, all of which persist to the present. The Virginia Colony largely equated immigration with the arrival of laborers, who had few rights. Massachusetts welcomed those who shared the religious views of the founder...
Migrant rights were put squarely on the agenda of the Global Forum on Migration and Development when it met in Manila in 2008, as the principal theme of the governmental and civil society discussions. The Forum proceeded with the assumption that migrant rights are a development issue, as well as a fundamental human rights issue. This article begins...
This chapter systematically describes and analyzes how Labor Departmentcertified immigration of the skilled is handled in the United States differently to the points system of Australia and Canada. It presents an analysis of U.S. policies on legal immigration, with particular focus on the admission of highly skilled migrants for work and study. As...
An estimated 35 million people worldwide are displaced by conflict, and most of them are women and children. During their time away from their homes and communities, these women and their children are subjected to a horrifying array of misfortune, including privations of every kind, sexual assaults, disease, imprisonment, unwanted pregnancies, seve...
The 19-member Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) released a six-chapter consensus report on 5 October 2005 calling on all nations to respect the human rights of migrants and recommending a new Interagency Global Migration Facility to help coordinate migration policies at the regional and eventually global level. The GCIM mandate wa...
The number of long-term international migrants (that is, those residing in foreign countries for more than one year) has grown steadily since the 1960s. According to the UN Population Division, in 1965, only 75 million persons fitted the definition, rising to 84 million by 1975 and 105 million by 1985. There were an estimated 120 million internatio...
In The Price of Indifference , Arthur Helton proposed establishment of an intergovernmental mechanism for Strategic Humanitarian Action and Research (SHARE) to prod the United Nations into improving its capacity to assist, protect and find solutions for refugees and displaced persons. This article takes Helton's challenge to the United Nations as i...
The US is the target for international migration, now more than ever. Population growth and economic stragnation in the Third World are increasing the pressures for out-migration, and current immigration law is wholly incapable of responding to the ever increasing flow of illegal immigrants. Border apprehensions of illegal aliens in the US were up...
SUMMARY The US and Mexico during the 1990s embraced closer economic integration as well as increased cooperation on migration management. In 2001, that culminated with a joint Presidential initiative to establish a new migration management frame- work. That effort stalled in 2001, and the authors have explored ways to revive cooperative migration m...
With a global crisis of approximately 15 million refugees and an estimated 20 to 25 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in need of protection, the current protection regime is under increased scrutiny. “Practical Protection” is a fairly new concept. Those pursuing it aim to expand understanding and responsibilities for protection beyond tho...
Mali, a poor country that embraced democracy in 1991, is considered a democratic role model for francophone Africa. It is grappling with several migration issues, including well–established networks that move thousands of Malians abroad, often with false documents, for $2,000 to $3,000; the dependence of the Kayes region, with 1.5 million residents...
The Cooperative Efforts to Manage Emigration (CEME) site visit to Italy and Albania – organized in cooperation with the Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale (CeSPI), an Italian independent research institute – took place in June 2002. Albania is a country of 3.1 million people with a GDP of $4.1 billion that switched in the early 1990s, after 45...
Many countries of emigration are in transition from conflict to peace and from authoritarian to democratic governments. Addressing population movements from these countries requires more than economic opportunities; equally important is the establishment of the rule of law, respect for human rights, and, in countries recovering from conflict, recon...
Several Cooperative Efforts to Manage Emigration (CEME) members visited the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in early June 2001 to examine the new Government’s approach to migration issues. We found that both the Federal Government and the Serb Republic are faced with three principal issues related to immigration and refugees that require subst...
Human trafficking for forced labor and sexual exploitation is one of the fastest growing areas of international criminal activity
and one that is of increasing concern to the international community. Human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation,
harboring, or receipt of people for the purpose of exploitation. That exploitation takes many va...
Events since Arthur Helton's death - including the change in leadership of the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli proposal for disengagement from Gaza make it even timelier to examine some "practical solutions." For improving Palestinian lives in the short term, much can be learned from the approaches taken in other refugee situations. This Arti...