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

International Program

Border Security
Immigrant Profiles & Demographics
Employment & the Economy
Illegal Immigration & Interior Enforcement
Immigration Policy & Law
International Governance
Pause
Commentaries
March 2024

As Europe and the United States Face Similar Migration Challenges, Spain Can Act as a Bridge

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.

Continue reading

Policy Briefs
March 2024

Lessons from COVID-19: Managing Borders in the Next Global Public-Health Crisis

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.

Continue reading

Reports
February 2024

Leaving No One Behind: Inclusive Fintech for Remittances

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.

Continue reading

Policy Briefs
February 2024

The Mobility Key: Realizing the Potential of Refugee Travel Documents

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.

Continue reading

Reports
January 2024

Expanding Protection Options? Flexible Approaches to Status for Displaced Syrians, Venezuelans, and Ukrainians

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.

Continue reading

Policy Briefs
December 2023

Consolidating Gains: Lessons and Priorities for Promoting Fair and Ethical Recruitment

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.

Continue reading

A Haitian child looks over his mother's shoulder in Panama
Commentaries

Addressing the Next Displacement Crisis in the Making in the Americas

The next major displacement of people in the Americas is in the making, and it is going unnoticed. The response to the steady emigration from Haiti seen since a devastating 2010 earthquake has been largely haphazard and may not stand the test of new spikes as the country unravels further. This commentary suggests a way forward, based on a model used for the Venezuelan displacement crisis.

Image of passport page with variety of stamps
Articles

Top Statistics on Global Migration and Migrants

Looking for some of the most often-sought information on global migration? This statistics-rich article draws on the most current data sources to offer a primer on international migration, highlighting its types, the size of the migrant population and growth over time, and major sending and receiving countries and regions. Beyond looking at labor and humanitarian migrants and international students, the article examines remittances and more.

Recent Activity

A Haitian man hugs his daughter in Peru.
Articles
September 30, 2021
Haitian Migration through the Americas: A Decade in the Making
By Caitlyn Yates
Multimedia
September 14, 2021
How Will the Pandemic Reshape Public Health for Migrants?
Multimedia
September 13, 2021
Opening More Avenues for Protection for Refugees
Cover image for Migration Management and Border Security: Lessons Learned
Policy Briefs
September 2021
Migration Management and Border Security: Lessons Learned
By  Alan D. Bersin
A girl in Farah province, Afghanistan.
Articles
September 2, 2021
Will the Taliban’s Takeover Lead to a New Refugee Crisis from Afghanistan?
By Nasrat Sayed, Fahim Sadat, and Hamayun Khan
Multimedia
August 26, 2021
Labor Migration Governance in West Africa in the Wake of the Pandemic
A member of the MS-13 gang.
Articles
August 26, 2021
Gang Membership in Central America: More Complex than Meets the Eye
By Michael Paarlberg
Multimedia
August 24, 2021
Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan: How Could Europe Respond to Growing Displacement?

Pages

coverthumb TCM Protection CouncilStatement
Reports
June 2015
Beyond Asylum: Rethinking Protection Policies to Meet Sharply Escalating Needs (Transatlantic Council Statement)
By  Demetrios G. Papademetriou
coverthumb TCM Long
Reports
May 2015
From Refugee to Migrant? Labor Mobility's Protection Potential
By  Katy Long
coverthumb TCM Protection Aleinikoff
Policy Briefs
May 2015
From Dependence to Self-Reliance: Changing the Paradigm in Protracted Refugee Situations
By  T. Alexander Aleinikoff
coverthumb TCM Protection Newland
Reports
May 2015
Rethinking Global Protection: New Channels, New Tools
By  Kathleen Newland
coverthumb TCM Protection Syrians
Reports
April 2015
Syrian Refugees in Turkey: The Long Road Ahead
By  Ahmet İçduygu
coverthumb TCM Protection UAC
Reports
April 2015
Unaccompanied Child Migration to the United States: The Tension between Protection and Prevention
By  Marc R. Rosenblum
coverthumb MPI IOM Issue 12
Policy Briefs
March 2015
Women’s Labour Migration from Asia and the Pacific: Opportunities and Challenges
By  Bandita Sijapati
coverthumb TCM Protection Zetter
Reports
March 2015
Protection in Crisis: Forced Migration and Protection in a Global Era
By  Roger Zetter

Pages

MoriaReceptionCenter
Top Ten
December 13, 2018
Asylum Hangover? Governments Seek to Narrow Avenues for Humanitarian Protection

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
Top Ten
December 12, 2018
A Once-Smooth Path for the Global Compact on Migration Becomes Rocky

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
Top Ten
December 11, 2018
Threat of Hard Brexit Looms as Exit Date Nears

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.
Top Ten
December 10, 2018
“Silent” Refugee Crises Get Limited International Attention

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
Profile
December 6, 2018
Sweden: By Turns Welcoming and Restrictive in its Immigration Policy

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.

Pages

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

International vs. National Protection for Refugees: Diverging Trends?

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

A Conversation with António Vitorino, the Director General of the International Organization for Migration

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

Una nueva política migratoria para una nueva era: Una conversación con la Secretaria de Gobernación Olga Sánchez Cordero

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

A New Migration Policy for A New Era: A Conversation with Mexico's Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero

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

Creatividad Dentro de la Crisis: Opciones Legales para Inmigrantes Venezolanos en América Latina

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.

Pages

Recent Activity

Reports
June 2023

Migration Narratives in Northern Central America: How Competing Stories Shape Policy and Public Opinion in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have long histories of emigration, but are seeing increasing transit and return migration as well. This report explores the stories told within these three countries about migration in all its forms, how these narratives intersect with (and at times, contradict) each other, and how they influence policy decisions and public opinion.

Articles
May 31, 2023

Global Spending on Immigration Enforcement Is Higher than Ever and Rising

Budgets for border security and interior immigration enforcement have been on the rise in places including the United States and the European Union. The spending is a result of the heightened focus on securitization by the Global North and has led to a ballooning private industry. This article explains the trend.

Expert Q&A, Audio
May 23, 2023

The Curious Case of China – What Does the COVID-19 Response by China & Asia Pacific Mean for Future Public Health Crises?

MPI's Lawrence Huang discusses COVID-19 mobility restrictions in China and the Asia Pacific—and what this all means for future public health crises—with Dr. Karen Grépin, a health policy professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Reports
May 2023

Apuesta por la regularidad migratoria: Respuestas de América Latina y el Caribe frente a la crisis del desplazamiento venezolano

Los países de América Latina y el Caribe han aprovechado, de manera pragmática, una variedad de herramientas políticas para otorgar estatus legal a al menos la mitad de los más de 6 millones de venezolanos desplazados en la región. Este informe explora hasta qué punto los venezolanos desplazados han podido obtener un estatus legal en los 15 principales países receptores, su acceso al mercado laboral y a servicios públicos, y dónde persisten brechas.

Reports
May 2023

Betting on Legality: Latin American and Caribbean Responses to the Venezuelan Displacement Crisis

Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have pragmatically tapped a variety of policy tools to provide legal status to at least half and as many as two-thirds of the more than 6 million displaced Venezuelans in the region. This report explores the extent to which Venezuelans have been able to obtain legal status in the top 15 host countries, their access to labor markets and public services, and where gaps remain.

Articles
May 18, 2023

Tense Neighbors, Algeria and Morocco Have Divergent Migration Histories

Algeria and Morocco sit along a crucial migration corridor between Africa and Europe and have often been defined by their rivalry. Although both have been reluctant to welcome large numbers of sub-Saharan African migrants, their motivations have been different. And historically, their approaches to emigration have been a study in contrasts. This article explores the factors driving migration policy in these two countries.

Commentaries
May 2023

Regional Processing Centers: Can This Key Component of the Post-Title 42 U.S. Strategy Work?

Amid a potentially dramatic rethink in the U.S. approach to management of migration from the Western Hemisphere, the creation of Regional Processing Centers (now known as Safe Mobility Offices, or SMOs) across Latin America will be central to the post-Title 42 strategy, as this commentary explains.

Articles
May 3, 2023

Generations of Palestinian Refugees Face Protracted Displacement and Dispossession

Palestinians constitute the world’s longest protracted refugee situation and largest stateless community. Yet their plight has often been eclipsed by more recent displacement crises and dismissed as unsolvable. Other factors have contributed to Palestinian refugees’ situation, including the near impossibility of obtaining citizenship in many host countries and precarious funding for support, as this article explains.

Pages