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Welcome to the archives of Refugees Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on April 1, 2019, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on refugees and migration. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors and contributors.
We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].
Exploring the economics of forced displacement.
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In the second of a series of interviews with private-sector leaders who pledged to help address the refugee crisis, we speak to Jane Meseck of Microsoft Philanthropies about the technology company’s work with refugees.
Lucy Mayblin Assistant Professor, Warwick University
Welfare support for asylum seekers is being held below poverty levels on purpose. Researcher Lucy Mayblin calculated the cost of changing this and found that giving people the right to work could lower the bill.
Jonas Gamso Assistant Professor of International Trade and Global Studies, Arizona State University
Farhod Yuldashev PhD Candidate in Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
The popular idea that development aid can curb migration has come under fire from economists. But researchers Jonas Gamso and Farhod Yuldashev found that one type of aid does have a deterring effect on migration – aid directed toward government and civil society.
Better understanding the unique economic position held by displaced peoples could transform policy concerning them, write authors Alexander Betts, Louise Bloom, Josiah Kaplan and Naohiko Omata in an extract from the pioneering study “Refugee Economies.”
In the first of a series of interviews with private sector leaders who pledged to help address the refugee crisis, we speak to Matthew Bauer, CEO of Sparrow Mobile, which provides refugees with smartphones and apps designed to ease their integration into the U.S.
Michael Clemens Economist, Center for Global Development at IZA Institute for the Study of Labor
A wave of new migration-linked aid deals ignore evidence that development assistance cannot reduce overall emigration from poor countries within our lifetimes, argues development economist Michael Clemens.
Austin Schiano Partnerships Manager, Give Me 5 Campaign
With “nation-building” and “development” the buzzwords at the Brussels Conference on Afghanistan, Austin Schiano calls for more coordinated efforts from the U.S. to aid internally displaced Afghans and inject resources into rebuilding their local economies.
World leaders are increasingly calling on businesses to play their part in meeting the global displacement crisis. Amid criticism that corporate social responsibility is merely reputational, we look at the evolving forms of private-sector engagement.
As the World Bank steps up its involvement in response to the global refugee crisis, its president, Jim Yong Kim, tells Refugees Deeply why a development institution wants to involve itself in forced migration.
Bill Frelick and Stephanie Gee Director, the Refugee Rights Program at Human Rights Watch
Ahead of the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees that will aim to put 1 million refugee children in school and get 1 million refugees into work, Human Rights Watch researchers call for greater support for host countries.
Zaheera Jinnah Anthropologist and Researcher, the University of the Witwatersrand’s African Centre for Migration and Society
Amid a spate of xenophobic attacks against migrants in South Africa, anthropologist Zaheera Jinnah defends their presence, arguing that they contribute to the labor market with their mixed skills and informal employment.
Thousands of Syrian refugees are now employed as migrant farm workers across Turkey, and they are particularly vulnerable to exploitation – especially as the government has effectively sanctioned using them as cheap labor.
As debates around the economic consequences of migration make headlines in Europe and the U.S., the second installment of our ‘Experts to Watch’ series looks at prominent people studying this field.
Evan Easton-Calabria and Naohiko Omata Researcher, Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford
Urban refugees often fall between the cracks of aid organizations, but are ideal candidates for microfinance. But their circumstances need to be carefully vetted, say Evan Easton-Calabria and Naohiko Omata, authors of a global survey on microcredit.
Policy experts are hoping that a small patch of desert in Jordan can provide global answers to the refugee crisis by giving displaced Syrians the right to work.
Daniel Masterson PhD Candidate in Political Science, Yale University
In the second part of our series with the Issam Fares Institute on sustainable futures for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, researcher Daniel Masterson argues that cash aid frees refugees from dependence and enables them to become active contributors to local economies.
Brexit was powered by fantasies of border control, the Leave campaign playing to fears of too many migrants in the U.K. Lawyer Simon Cox argues that the costs of making those border controls a reality would be unprecedented.
Paul Currion Consultant
As part of his series “This Age of Migration,” humanitarian commentator Paul Currion examines why more states than ever are erecting walls in reaction to migration, and the dangerous emergence of a migration-industrial complex.
Jessica Hansen Global Engagement Manager, Kiva Microfunds
Many refugees are displaced due to conflicts over land and resources. Jessica Hansen, global engagement manager at Kiva – a microfinance NGO – explains how pooling resources for members of disadvantaged groups prevents their becoming future refugees.
Christine Mahoney Director, Social Entrepreneurship Department of the University of Virginia
In the final installment of her series on barriers to advocacy, University of Virginia professor Christine Mahoney proposes advocacy campaigns that secure funds to create “social entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency.”
During his final stop of our series “Route Mediterranean,” journalist Eric Reidy visits support groups struggling to provide regular services in the refugee camps of Idomeni, northern Greece, where people are living in complete limbo.
While the E.U.-Turkey deal jeopardized the onward journeys of many Syrian refugees, South Asians do not stand a chance of admission to Europe, despite having legitimate grounds to claim asylum. Lesvos is the fourth stop in our series Route Mediterranean.
For the third stop of our series “Route Mediterranean,” journalist Eric Reidy takes a detour to visit an informal encampment in Torbali,Turkey, where several Syrian families, including children as young as 14, work in the fields to make a living.
During the early years of the Syrian conflict, Mersin was considered “the best place to be Syrian in Turkey” and thousands of middle-class Syrians fled to the port city. With few allowed to work and their resources now exhausted, most now struggle to survive. Mersin is the second stop in our series “Route Mediterreanean”.
Hanne Beirens & Paul Clewett
With Germany reporting another 6,000 missing child refugees, researchers at the Migration Policy Institute ask if arrangements under the current E.U.–Turkey deal are affording children a fair hearing and whether Turkish laws protect returned minors in practice.
Embarking in Tripoli, Lebanon, where desperate Syrian refugees have sought shelter in embattled neighborhoods reminiscent of the war at home, journalist Eric Reidy traverses one of several refugee trails that ends in Idomeni, Greece. Tripoli is the first stop in our series “Route Mediterranean”.
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