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Does AI have a role to play in mapping and predicting climate migration trends? This episode of the Changing Climate, Changing Migration podcast speaks with John Aoga, a postdoctoral researcher at UCLouvain in Belgium.
In its bid to ramp up deportations, the Trump administration is granting ICE access to a swath of government databases that were previously off limits for immigration enforcement, including sensitive tax and Social Security records. This article details the growing digital arsenal of government and commercial databases that ICE can tap to identify and arrest removable noncitizens, and how this unprecedented data sharing has its roots in the post-9/11 era.
Passports are powerful documents that can either open the world to international mobility or signify the limits of one's citizenship. Yet passports are relatively recent inventions, and often operate with a nuance that is rarely appreciated. This article examines the international law of passports and the legal framework for issuing and recognizing travel documents.
A significant and growing body of research at U.S., state, and local levels demonstrates that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S.-born population. This explainer delves into the key takeaways and also looks at the screening process for new arrivals.
A quiet political realignment has taken place in the United States. As unauthorized crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border have reached record levels in recent years, Democrats have begun to embrace restrictions at the border that they once reviled, including limits to asylum and expansion of the border wall. This article examines the pivot and how it might affect future U.S. immigration politics and policy.
Turkey is engaged in wide-ranging efforts to halt irregular migration and break up migrant smuggling networks. In recent years, the government has installed a three-meter-high wall along much of its borders with Syria and Iran, arrested thousands of smugglers, and engaged in agreements and cooperation with the European Union. This article explains the motivations behind the enforcement and how the strategy is evolving.
Over the last decade, the international community has been roiled by crisis after crisis—from Syria and Rohingya displacement, to Venezuela, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Sudan. Territorial asylum, the backbone of the international protection regime, has been unable to keep pace. This report explores what an evolved protection system could look like, one that is orderly, highly efficient, and leverages regional cooperation.
Border management is complex, and particularly so amid high levels of mixed migration. It entails rapidly determining new arrivals’ identity, screening for security risks and protection needs, and moving cases into the appropriate procedural pipelines, such as asylum or return processes. This report explores the key elements of an effective and protection-sensitive border system.
The international humanitarian protection system built amid the ashes of World War II has come under increasing strain, as record numbers of people flee internationally and travel farther distances. New barriers to protection in destination countries have captured public attention, but governments are also experimenting with ways to offer sanctuary, which could signal a remaking of the global system, as this article explains.
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.
Some of the strictest COVID-19 pandemic-era limits on human mobility occurred in the Asia Pacific region. Border closures started in East and Southeast Asia in early 2020 and quickly spread through the entire region, in some cases remaining in place for more than two years. This report examines the approaches countries took and reflects on the immense costs and benefits of using border measures to tackle public-health risks.
The story of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe is chiefly one of challenges to solidarity and coordination. Cross-border movement—even within Europe’s Schengen Area—ground to a halt, and countries took varied approaches to using travel measures in an attempt to slow the virus’s spread. This report explores the pandemic’s impacts on mobility to and within Europe, its challenges to European solidarity, and lessons for future public-health crises.
Rising tensions between Texas and the federal government have sparked fears of a constitutional crisis after the state deployed its National Guard to prevent the U.S. Border Patrol from conducting operations in a city park in Eagle Pass, with Texas Governor Greg Abbott saying the “invasion” of migrants triggered the need for action. This article provides an overview of the standoff and the larger context of current and past state-federal tensions over immigration enforcement.
Unauthorized migration at the U.S.-Mexico border has been a high-profile and politically divisive issue for decades. But as the nature of migration at the border has changed profoundly, U.S. policy responses have struggled to keep up. This report explores the changing nature of migration flows and migration policy at the border from the early 1990s until today, highlighting key lessons for contemporary policy-making.
All eyes are on the U.S.-Mexico border, where shifting migration trends and record migrant arrivals have stretched the U.S. border management system beyond its capabilities. As the Biden administration continues to implement its new regime of incentives for orderly arrivals and disincentives for unauthorized crossings, this report analyzes the rapidly changing policy and migration realities and outlines recommendations for a more effective, durable system of border control.
With EU migration systems under strain, many observers have high hopes that the New Pact on Migration and Asylum will be able to help Europe address pressing challenges. This policy brief explores how digital technologies could support the implementation of the pact, should it be approved, as well as areas where caution is merited.
Travel documents play an important role in international mobility, and for refugees serve as an essential gateway to a world of opportunities, from pursuing education and employment to reuniting with family. This episode unpacks the complexities around travel documents and their pivotal role in refugees' livelihoods.
The $13.6 billion border emergency supplemental spending bill the Biden administration is seeking lays out the elements for resourcing immigration functions to full capacity across the entire border enforcement system. Without resourcing the system across all its parts, including adjudications and management, no administration, present or future, will be able to effectively manage spontaneous border arrivals, this commentary argues.
While smartphones and other technologies can assist decision-making, they do not always improve migrants’ journeys or lives. Forcibly displaced populations can face barriers in the form of limited internet access and low levels of digital literacy. Digital tools may also expose them to government surveillance and raise anxiety about social relations with loved ones. This article underscores refugees' complex relationships with technology.
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.