"What is Forced Migration?" An interactive definition
Broadly speaking, forced migration is what it sounds like: being forced to move, to migrate, to uproot oneself and one’s life and relationships. Forced migration is a much broader and far-reaching phenomenon (or set of phenomena) than what someone might gather from a scan of the headlines.
Some key questions to ask: who is considered “deserving” of the term refugee and the protections it can provide? What forms of force are considered to “justify” migration? Typically, war and genocide come to mind, but what about political persecution? climate change? incarceration? As a society, we have to pay more attention to the structural similarities between displacement due to war and displacement due to climate change rendering a place unlivable, to give just one example. Both of these “causes” of migration are themselves results of social, economic, and political violence that have emerged from the current world order, even though our laws and conventions currently privilege one “cause” over the other.
Here are several of the research sections under the “Explore” tab that offer helpful, new lenses for understanding the complexities and range of experiences that fall under forced migration:
Counting Forced Migrants: Methods, Impact, and Improvements
Recognizing that forced migrants are more than their numbers, this bibliography section aims to interrogate the methods and impact of counting forced migrants by compiling sources that ask: who quantifies forced migration and how do they do it? Compiled by Elijah Appelson.
Labels and Media Framing: “Refugee” and “Migrant”
This section investigates the terms “refugee” and “migrant” in their social and legal constructions, demonstrating the impact of those labels on our thinking and questioning the distinction between both words. Compiled by Naima Nader.
What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Forced Migration?
What is visible about forced migration and those who experience it is not always the full picture. This section uses a transnational collection of books, articles, and films – some produced by people who’ve experienced displacement themselves – to present a more nuanced image of displacement.Compiled by Matthew Brill-Carlat.
Frequently Asked Questions About Forced Migration
We invite you to dig into recurring and deceptively simple questions: what is life like for people on the move? What are refugee camps? What has COVID-19 meant for people forced to migrate? Explore the resources below, and the rest of the themed bibliography sections linked to below, to learn more.
- UNHCR, “Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2019”
- For a much more comprehensive understanding of how governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) count how many people are displaced, read this thematic section on “Counting Forced Migrants: Methods, Impact, and Improvements”
- The labels of “refugee” and “migrant” can determine how much assistance someone gets to rebuild their life after being forced to move, but the terms themselves often reflect preconceptions held by media outlets and everyday people. Read more in this collection of resources on Labels and Media Framing: “Refugee” and “Migrant”
- Forced migration is not a new phenomenon, as the narratives of descendants of Indigenous Americans forced from their lands in the 19th century remind us.
- The “Forced Migration of Enslaved People in the United States, 1810-1860” project (through the University of Richmond’s “American Panorama”: full authorship credits here) uses firsthand accounts and data visualization to commemorate the 850,000 enslaved people forcibly relocated (taken by owners or bought and sold) to the American West and South after the legislated end of the international slave trade in the US but before the end of slavery.
- As climate change continues to wreak havoc on people’s lives and livelihoods, more and more communities will be forced to move in order to survive. Can our current system of international law, with its rigid categories of “refugees,” “migrants,” and “displaced persons” accommodate this reality? Read scholar Maxine Burkett’s thoughts: “In Search of Refuge: Climate-Induced Migration and the Legal Frontier,” Analysis from the East-West Center (January 2011)
- Climate-related displacement is disproportionately impacting indigenous communities around the world, including in the United States, and the whole community on Isle de Jean Charles community, of mostly Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw people, is being relocated. Coral Davenport and Campbell Robertson, “Resettling the First American ‘Climate Refugees’,” New York Times, May 2, 2016
- Let’s connect the dots between two more of the most pressing challenges of our time: mass incarceration and forced migration. Learn more about how they are connected in this section of our bibliography: The United States Prison System Viewed as a System of Forced Migration.
- Kate Morrissey and Lauryn Schroeder, “Who gets asylum? Even before Trump, system was riddled with bias and disparities,” LA Times, August 4, 2020. The title of this article says it all; the authors break down different treatments and outcomes for asylum seekers in the US based on detention status, nationality, judge, and other factors.
- Gender is another important factor that can shape a person’s experience of forced migration. Read more in this collection of resources on Migration and Gender-Related Issues: Sexual/Reproductive Health and Violence in Forcibly Displaced Populations
- Crossing Over (2015), directed by Isabel Castro
- For a description of this documentary film about transgender women migrating from Mexico to the United States, click here.
- To learn more about the particular challenges that women and girls face in displacement, explore this section on “Migration and Gender-Related Issues: Sexual/Reproductive Health and Violence in Forcibly Displaced Populations.”
- Didier Fassin makes a case for understanding the roots of the 2015-16 “refugee crisis” as European, rather than in Syria, Afghanistan, or elsewhere. Didier Fassin, “From Right to Favor: the Refugee Question as Moral Crisis,” The Nation, April 5, 2016
- On the Stories of Migration page of our website, browse films, novels, graphic novels, poetry, theater, and other narrative forms, with a heavy dose of content created by people who have themselves experienced forced migration.
- Check out our “Bearing Witness: Stories of Migration Through Art” page as well.
- Check out our section on “What Makes a Place a Home?: Protracted Refugee Situations and Refugee Camp Design”
- Peter Decherney, “Glimpses of Kalobeyei” (video), 2017. Short 360º film on the Kalobeyei, Kenya refugee settlement.
- For further reading, see this architectural perspective on the urbanization of refugee camps.
- Kirsten McConnachie, “Security and status determination for urban refugees in Malaysia,” OpenDemocracy, 2014. Scholar McConnachie discusses how Malaysian society is stratified based on access to residency documents, focusing on Rohingya refugees living in cities.
WHAT IS REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT LIKE IN THE US AND ABROAD? HOW ABOUT FOR MIGRANTS WHO ARE NOT REFUGEES?
- One way to answer this question is to read reflections from people who have experienced forced migration themselves. The “Refugees in Towns” project compiled reflections on experiences of resettling and “integrating,” and all the complications therein: Refugees in Towns, “Reflections”
- International refugee and migration law is complicated. Break it down with the help of this thematic section, “On Forced Migration, International Policy, and Existing Outside of the Law.”
- Mostafa Hassoun, “I Went Through America’s Extreme Vetting,” Politico, January 28, 2017. Even before US President Donald Trump began talking about “extreme vetting,” the screening process for refugees entering the US was formidable — just ask Mostafa Hassoun, who resettled in the US from Syria.
- For an explainer of legal requirements to obtain refugee status in the US, check out Breanna Cary and NOLO, “Asylum or Refugee Status: Who Is Eligible?” NOLO.
- Black asylum seekers and others from non-European countries face additional burdens when trying to resettle in the United States. Read more here: Sydney Greene, “‘Why did I come to America?’ Black asylum-seekers from Africa face unique challenges in the U.S.,” Texas Tribune, July 24, 2018
- This Is Home (2018), directed by Alexandra Shiva. The film follows four Syrian families resettling in Baltimore, MD, and discusses “integration,” “self-sufficiency,” and the challenges of the resettlement process.
- Learn more about “Challenges of German Bureaucracy for Syrian Refugees.”
- What is the relationship between food and migration? Check out “Food and Migration: Community, Diaspora, Politics.”
- How did the situation at the US-Mexico border come to be? What is it like to be a child trying to live, go to school, and migrate in the border region? And how to explain it all to younger audiences? Start with this thematic section, “What Is It Like To Go To School at the US-Mexico Border? An Introduction for Young Adults Interested in Border Studies.”
- Headlines about violence or controversial policies playing out near the US-Mexico border sometimes hide another side to the story: the continual development of cross-border communities with deep ties to both the US and Mexico. Learn more in this thematic section: “US-Mexico Borderlands, Identity, and Community Engagement.”
- This episode of This American Life, “The Out Crowd” (November 15, 2019) won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of the Trump administration’s “Remain In Mexico” policy.
- Will Coley and Freedom for Immigrants’ “Indefensible Podcast Series” brings stories of detained migrants fighting to stay with their loved ones.
- To take a step back and think about borders and belonging (especially in the United States) from a critical, historical perspective, read Chris Mato Nunpa, Immigration: An Indigenous Perspective, Twin Cities Daily Planet, September 6, 2010
- How did European border enforcement come to be located in Africa? Corallina Lopez Curzi explains in: “The externalisation of European borders: steps and consequences of a dangerous process,” OpenMigration, July 12, 2016.
- For a scholarly version of this analysis, see Martina Tazzioli, “Which Europe?,” Movements (2015)
- To read about mobility and exclusion in Europe, check out this thematic section on Free Movement and Belonging in Europe: the Situation of the Romani Peoples
- For a deeper dive into some of the themes explored so far, check out this thematic section: A Re-Introduction to Forced Migration: When the Facts Change section (especially this essay by Luis Fernández and Joel Olson)
- UNHCR, “Covid-19 and refugees,” (storymap). This website offers data and clear graphs and visualizations of the worldwide impacts of COVID-19 on those who have been forced to find a new home.
- The pandemic has reversed the direction that migrants take along certain routes, heading from cities to outlying rural areas, for example. Joanna Slater, Kareem Fahim, Katie McQue, and Lauren Tierney, “Migration, in reverse,” Washington Post, October 1, 2020
- See also Rosa Chávez Yacila and Julie Turkewitz, “Highways of Peru Swell With Families Fleeing Virus,” New York Times, April 30, 2020
- Read this short summary essay to understand the effect of the pandemic on the treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers in Greece in Summer 2020.
- Karen Jacobsen and Charles Simpson, “Refugees tell stories of problems – and unity – in facing the coronavirus,” The Conversation, April 30, 2020
- To read more about how migrants and refugees innovated to help the world respond to the pandemic, check out this thematic section: Loving Minds and Caring Hands: Displaced People Building Compassionate Communities During COVID-19
- For more on how displaced people are responding to the pandemic and the challenges of forced migration without the involvement of humanitarian organizations (and on moral complications of humanitarian marketing and fundraising campaigns), check out these thematic sections: “The Marketing of Refugees: Humanitarian Photography and the Politics of Donation” and “Forgetting Humanitarian Aid: Mutual Aid for and by Refugees.”
FAQs compiled by Matthew Brill-Carlat (Winter 2021)
