E.g., 04/23/2024
E.g., 04/23/2024
International Program

International Program

Image of female worker at the Boqueria market in Barcelona making a crepe
Marcel Crozet/ILO

Spain and the United States both receive their greatest number of immigrants from Latin America, and have worked collaboratively together on displacement crises and other migration issues. As shared immigration challenges dominate debate on both sides of the Atlantic, Spain can serve as a vital bridge in the policy conversation, this commentary notes.

Volunteer hands out food to migrant workers returning to their hometowns in Vietnam
IOM/Red Cross Vietnam

The COVID-19 pandemic both shocked the global mobility system and reaffirmed the centrality and resiliency of human mobility. Four years on, public and political attention to COVID-19’s unprecedented consequences for cross-border movement has waned. Yet if countries are to manage mobility more effectively in future public-health crises, this is an important moment for reflection and learning, as this issue brief explores.

A woman in Nigeria smiles while using her mobile phone
iStock.com/Wirestock

Remittances are a vital lifeline for migrants’ families around the world and an important source of revenue for many low- and middle-income countries, especially in times of crisis. As more people turn to digital financial technologies for these money transfers, this shift holds the potential to shake up the rigid remittance industry and boost development benefits. But it also brings new challenges, as this report explores.

Three refugee students at airport security check
© UNHCR/Alessandro Penso

Travel documents are critical facilitators of mobility. But for refugees, who cannot safely use a passport issued by their origin country, the lack of a usable travel document can shut them out of work, study, or other opportunities beyond their first country of asylum. This policy brief examines alternative documents that can facilitate refugees’ movement, key barriers to acquiring them, and strategies for overcoming these challenges.

Ukrainian adults and children arrive at a train station in Hungary
IOM/Muse Mohammed

The massive and rapid displacement of Syrians, Venezuelans, and Ukrainians presented neighboring countries with an impossible task: providing legal status and assistance, even though their asylum systems lacked the capacity to handle such a large influx. This report examines the costs and benefits of the flexible approaches taken to providing status in these three cases, identifying lessons for future crises.

A migrant worker cuts through a metal rod at a construction site in Qatar
Apex Image/ILO

With more people moving abroad for work and events such as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar highlighting the risks migrant workers can face, questions about how international recruitment occurs have received increased scrutiny. This policy brief explores the notable progress that has been made in establishing fair and ethical recruitment standards, and identifies key areas for future attention by governments, employers, and recruiters.

Recent Activity

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MoriaReceptionCenter

Faced with absorbing vast numbers of asylum seekers who headed to Europe during the 2015-16 migration crisis and the ongoing arrival of much smaller, but steady flows of Central Americans at the U.S.-Mexico border, EU Member States and the United States in 2018 took or explored significant steps to narrow asylum and harden policies.

City view in Marrakech

The world’s first international agreement on migration was approved by 164 countries in December 2018, but not without turbulence. U.S. withdrawal from the nonbinding Global Compact on Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, on grounds it could impinge on sovereignty, triggered similar actions by others, particularly in Eastern Europe. Amid ongoing political ripple effects, attention now turns to implementation of the deal's goals.

Theresa May speaks to reporters

With the United Kingdom’s scheduled March 2019 departure from the European Union around the corner and approval of an exit deal by the UK Parliament in deep disarray, the future for approximately 5 million EU nationals living in the United Kingdom and Britons resident in the EU-27 remained unresolved. This article examines the citizens' rights issues that have arisen and what Brexit, hard or otherwise, might bring.

South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia.

Despite the major focus by media and publics on a handful of refugee crises around the world, displacement situations worsened during 2018 in a number of countries that received much less attention, including the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan—where unending conflict, new displacement, rising starvation, and an Ebola outbreak made already complex situations even more dire.

SwedenImmigrants

Swedish asylum policy has taken a restrictionist turn since the country received a record-breaking number of asylum seekers in 2015 and after electoral gains by the nationalist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats pushed the governing coalition to a harder line. Still, other aspects of the country’s migration policy remain welcoming, as this country profile explores.

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International vs. National Protection for Refugees Event - David Fitzgerald
Video, Audio
April 10, 2019

MPI's Kathleen Newland, Refugee Council USA's Mary Giovagnoli, and David Scott FitzGerald, author of Refuge beyond Reach, discuss how and why international and national responses to the rising challenge of refugee displacement are diverging.

Demetrios Papademetriou and Antonio Vitorino
Video, Audio
March 6, 2019

In his first public address during his inaugural formal visit to Washington, DC, IOM Director General António Vitorino discussed his vision for the agency, reforms in the UN system designed to address migration matters better, and the operational steps IOM is taking to respond to forced migration and displacement in hotspots around the world.

Interior Secretary for Web
Video, Audio
February 28, 2019

Durante su primera visita oficial a Washington, DC, la Secretaria de Gobierno Olga Sánchez Cordero presento un discurso público sobre la nueva política migratoria de México en el Instituto de Políticas Migratorias.

Olga Sánchez Cordero
Video, Audio
February 28, 2019

On her first official trip to Washington, DC, Secretary of the Interior Olga Sánchez Cordero offered a public address on Mexico’s new approach to migration policy at MPI. Her remarks and the event discussion were mostly conducted in Spanish, and this recording is of the simultaneous English interpretation. 

flicrk CIDH visita la frontera de Colombia con Venezuela
Audio
January 31, 2019

Convocamos un seminario en línea en la ocasión del lanzamiento del informe que describe donde se han radicado los migrantes venezolanos; las medidas que han utilizado los gobiernos latinoamericanos para regularizar el estatus legal de los migrantes venezolanos; y los esfuerzos por integrar a los recién llegados en sus nuevas comunidades de residencia.

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Recent Activity

Reports
November 2021
Dentro de América Latina, Costa Rica es uno de los principales destinos para migrantes y refugiados de una amplia gama de países y con características e intencionalidades migratorias diferentes. Este informe examina el marco institucional y la capacidad del sistema migratorio del país, con un enfoque en la integración de inmigrantes en cuatro áreas de políticas: registro y regularización, salud, empleo y educación.
Reports
November 2021

Within Latin America, Costa Rica is a top destination for migrants and refugees from a range of countries and with different characteristics and migration intentions. This report examines the institutional framework and capacity of the country’s migration system, with a focus on immigrant integration in four policy areas: regularization and registration, health, employment, and education.

Expert Q&A, Audio
November 24, 2021

With migration a dynamic phenomenon in the Americas, the U.S. government increasingly is realizing that migration management should be viewed in a regional context. This requires a new set of policies and ways of engagement with countries in North and Central America, and beyond, as MPI President Andrew Selee discusses with colleague Andrea Tanco in this episode of our World of Migration podcast.

Reports
November 2021

Influenced by a mix of factors—from economic and humanitarian protection needs to family reunification and climate change—Central American migration is a dynamic phenomenon. This report draws on unique survey data to examine the conditions that drive people in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to migrate, as well as the costs and implications of migration for households and communities throughout the region.

Video, Webinars
November 15, 2021

MPI’s 20th Anniversary Conference featured the Director-General of the International Organization for Migration, António Vitorino, in an armchair conversation with MPI co-founder and President Emeritus Demetrios G. Papademetriou, as well as a panel discussion with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and MPI co-founder Kathleen Newland and KIND President Wendy Young.

Articles

South Africa hosts the most immigrants of any African country. Yet it faces conflicting pressures, including the legacy of apartheid, a steady outflow of well-educated South Africans, and the need to juggle bilateral labor mobility schemes at a time of economic insecurity and high unemployment. This article traces these pressures and how they have developed over time.

Video
November 8, 2021

As MPI celebrates two decades of providing essential research, policy analysis, and data on important immigration and immigrant integration issues, hear from members of the MPI community about what the institute has meant to them and how it has evolved.

Articles

Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans have fled their country since 2018, amid repression and a renewed government crackdown. In neighboring Costa Rica, many migrants have encountered a robust system for protection and integration, yet they still face stigma and discrimination in their daily lives. This article explores this dynamic along one of Central America's most important migratory routes.

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