Research and publications

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/38507

Scholarship and research submitted to the Forced Migration Research Archive.

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Access status: Open Access ,
Pink Tickets to Saheli Smart Cards: Gendered Mobility and Debates on Fare-Free Travel
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2025-12) Mukherjee, Procheta
This paper traces the evolution of the Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) scheme in Delhi since 2019 as a way to promote women’s mobility throughout the city and how policy revisions of the scheme...have affected the urban poor and migrant women disproportionately through an ethnographic study of bus route DTC523 that connects the working class neighbourhood and labour colonies (Bhatti Mines) to one of the centres of South Delhi (Dhaula Kuan) to understand the role of public bus as an essential transportation means for mobility and access to public place, safety and security needs during journey and experience of bus journeys as gendered bodies in public transportation system. The pink tickets are perceived as safety infrastructures by women commuters more than CCTVs.
Access status: Open Access ,
Fragmented Lives in Times of War: Displacement Within and From Ukraine
(transcript Verlag, 2026-06-30) Kuzemska, Lidia; Kuzemska, Lidia
What are the challenges faced by forced migrants within and from Ukraine due to the Russian invasion? The interdisciplinary contributors shed light on the lives of displaced persons, which are divided ‒ in terms of time, space, and social context ‒ into a »before« and »after« the war. They analyse the uncertainties faced by war migrants and those who have decided to remain in Ukraine, and how people navigate these uncertainties in everyday life. The volume presents case studies from various European countries that make an important contribution to the growing literature on forced migration from Ukraine and provides new insights into the under-researched areas of internal displacement and voluntary immobility in Ukraine.
Access status: Open Access ,
Visas in Migration and Asylum Law: The Key that Opens the Door
(Routledge, 2026-06-21) Gatta, Francesco Luigi; Savino, Mario; Gatta, Francesco Luigi; Savino, Mario
This book explores and discusses the different perspectives stemming from the visa as a tool of international mobility. A visa has a multifaced nature. It is a `key’ which allows foreign nationals to reach the door of the State. It is also a tool for the State to govern migration and border control. In humanitarian and international protection terms, it is also a tool for human rights protection. Against this background, this book assesses the legal and socio-political implications arising from the multipurpose nature and scope of visas. It is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the visa as an instrument for migration control, contextualizing the rationale behind its invention and the legal challenges it raises. The second part focuses on the visa as a tool for asylum, examining its use for humanitarian purposes, including resettlement schemes and emergency-related evacuation initiatives put in place in different legal systems. It will be of interest to academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of Migration and Asylum Law, International Human Rights Law and Political Science.
Access status: Open Access ,
Transit migration entrepreneurship: Explaining Nicaragua’s state-controlled, profit-seeking transit migration industry
(Oxford Academic, 2026-06-25) Shalaby, Alena; Thaler, Kai M.
How and why do governments develop profit-seeking migration industries around transit migration? Restrictive international migration policies, such as border externalization and migrant rentierism, compel migrants to transit through multiple countries to reach their final destinations, creating new dilemmas and opportunities for transit country governments. Between 2021 and 2025, thousands of migrants from across the globe arrived in Nicaragua via charter and commercial flights, aiming to then reach the United States. Nicaragua’s authoritarian Ortega-Murillo regime actively facilitated and profited from this influx by eliminating visa requirements and partnering with foreign brokers to coordinate flights, generating revenue amid economic instability and patronage needs. Using Nicaragua as a case study, we introduce the concept of transit migration entrepreneurship (TME), a phenomenon in which governments capitalize on migrants’ desires to reach nearby countries by proactively developing a profit-seeking transit migration industry. Engaging with research on weaponized migration, migrant and refugee instrumentalization, and the broader migration industry, we argue that TME is most likely to emerge in authoritarian or other illiberal contexts characterized by economic incentives for new revenue, indifference to international pressure, and a political will to exploit transit migration for economic gain. In an era of global migration, other countries may follow Nicaragua’s example.
Access status: Open Access ,
Scripts homosexuels et sport en contexte postcolonial : expériences sportives « au pays » d’hommes gays originaires d’Afrique francophone et demandant l’asile en France
(Université Laval, 2024-01-23) Bouchet-Mayer, Cyriac; Ferez, Sylvain
À partir d’entretiens sociobiographiques auprès d’hommes demandant l’asile en France au motif de leur orientation sexuelle ou de leur identité de genre, ou des deux à la fois, les auteurs explorent, dans cet article, le rôle pluriel des pratiques ludo-sportives dans les processus de socialisation sexuelle et genrée. Ils donnent à voir la manière dont les expériences sportives sont tantôt le lieu d’imposition d’un script culturel hétérosexiste hérité de la période coloniale et renforcé depuis, tantôt le lieu de construction de scripts interpersonnels et intrapsychiques homosexuels. Ces deux mouvements, a priori contradictoires, peuvent coexister et s’alimenter réciproquement. Ils sont subis ou maîtrisés par les enquêtés en fonction de leurs dispositions individuelles.
Access status: Open Access ,
Cross-effects of cultural and gay capitals in access to refugee status on the grounds of SOGI in France: Study of the formal and informal preparations of West African men for asylum trials
(Oxford Academic, 2024-07-30) Bouchet-Mayer, Cyriac; Ferez, Sylvain
According to literature, ethnocentric representations of homosexuality structure the decision to grant asylum, or not, on the ground of sexual orientation. This ethnocentric criticism has recently led to a technicalization of evaluation practices by asylum judges, which are now based on a narrative and discursive mastery, a field in which respondents are unequal depending on their cultural and gay capitals. While the assessment as such appears to be more equitable, Western norms of gender and sexuality, and practicing self-narrative through their prism, continue to impose themselves in different ways, particularly in formal associative accompaniment or in informal preparation for the refugee status determination process. A 2-fold ethnographic approach, attentive to associative backing and the daily experience of exile as formal and informal spaces of asylum preparation and identity formation, is used to analyse the manner in which cultural and gay capitals influence identity formation, preparation for asylum trials, and chances of obtaining refugee status.
Access status: Open Access ,
Care and Politics in Action: The Humanitarian Relief by Somali Businesswomen in Zambia to Puntland
(Sage Journals, 2026-02-04) Koshin, Sahra Ahmed; Kleist, Nauja; Kanyinga, Karuti
This paper examines the humanitarian engagement of Somali diaspora businesswomen in Zambia and it interacts with political and commercial interests. Focusing on a network of businesswomen in Lusaka and their chairwoman, Guddomiso Shamso Sheikh Ali, we investigate the gendered mobilisation, delivery, and communication of emergency relief in response to the 2020 Qardho flash floods in Puntland, Somalia. The ethnographic case study employs qualitative research methodologies, including in-depth life history interviews and observations. It draws on the analytical couplet of modes of being and belonging in transnational social fields, as well as feminist care ethics, to better understand Somali-Zambian businesswomen's humanitarian involvement, arguing that it constitutes care and politics in action. We challenge neat distinctions between “pure” humanitarian care to distant strangers and “partisan” care to loved ones, highlighting how diaspora humanitarianism may be linked with transnational businesses and political interests.
Access status: Open Access ,
Alternatives to Return: An Ideal-Typical Categorization of State Responses to Non-Repatriated Irregular Migrants
(Springer, 2026-06-24) Ambrosini, Maurizio; Ince-Beqo, Gül
While return occupies a central position in European migration policy discourse, it remains a loudly announced, weakly implemented, and strongly contested aspect of migration governance. The enduring “return gap,” the divergence between policy commitments and actual removals, underscores the limitations of a control-oriented framework. Drawing on a comparative study of 11 EU+ countries, the article develops an ideal-typical categorization of state responses to non-return, here termed “alternatives to return” to denote the full spectrum of formal and informal responses implemented when return does not occur, a governance reality that inevitably follows non-return. Organized across three axes, inclusive/exclusionary, explicit/implicit, and active/passive, these six governance forms reveal the coexistence of coercive and accommodating logics, challenging the assumption that return constitutes the normative endpoint of irregular migration control in Europe.
Access status: Open Access ,
De l’inégalité d’usage des dispositifs de prévention ciblés du VIH entre exilés homosexuels
(DREES Ministère de la santé, 2024-09-12) Bouchet-Mayer, Cyriac
La découverte de la fonction préventive des traitements contre le VIH, il y a une quinzaine d’années, réactive peu à peu les stratégies de ciblage populationnel. Les personnes migrantes et les hommes ayant des relations sexuelles entre hommes (HSH) font partie des populations auprès desquelles le dépistage et l’accès aux traitements sont promus dans le but de maîtriser l’épidémie. Cet article repose sur l’ethnographie multisituée d’un dispositif destiné à « aller-vers » les hommes demandant l’asile au motif de l’orientation sexuelle. Il étudie, entre autres, les représentations d’un dispositif étiqueté « LGBT+ migrant » par les personnes à qui il s’adresse, ainsi que le poids des contextes et trajectoires de vie sur les usages du dispositif. Cette analyse montre que les usages dépendent en grande partie des dispositions économiques, scolaires, homosociales et préventives construites au pays et de la manière dont ces dernières agissent à la fois sur les parcours migratoires et les conditions de survie pendant la demande d’asile une fois en France.
Access status: Open Access ,
Le poids des dispositions pour survivre et préparer les épreuves de l’asile. Enquête auprès des demandeurs d’asile homosexuels exclus du dispositif national d’accueil
(Université de Poitiers, 2024-01-01) Bouchet-Mayer, Cyriac; Ferez, Sylvain
Cet article s’intéresse aux hommes demandant l’asile au motif de leur orientation sexuelle ou identité de genre qui ne sont pas hébergés dans le dispositif d’accueil prévu à cet effet et qui, de fait, doivent compenser l’absence d’hébergement et de suivi socioadministratif sérieux. Les stratégies qu’ils mobilisent pour compenser ce déficit sont décrites à partir d’une enquête ethnographique dans deux associations accompagnant des requérants au statut de réfugié. Ces stratégies sont influencées par la diversité des statuts administratifs, mais aussi des ressources dont disposent les enquêtés. Cet article montre in fine comment les dispositions économiques, scolaires et sociocommunautaires pèsent sur les chances d’obtenir le statut de réfugié pour les requérants ne bénéficiant pas d’un hébergement.
Access status: Open Access ,
Migrations LGBT+ vers la France : appropriations et négociations des catégories migratoires
(Institut National de Recherche Scientifique (INRS), 2026-04-24) Bouchet-Mayer, Cyriac; Nzeyimana-Cyizere, Nancy; Chen, Cai
Cet article se distingue par son intérêt pour les effets des catégories migratoires sur les personnes LGBT+, sans se limiter au seul cas de l’asile. Il croise pour ce faire les terrains des trois auteur·trices en France hexagonale portant sur les expériences et trajectoires de vie d’(anciens) étudiants gays chinois, de personnes racisées comme noires et d’hommes originaires d’Afrique de l’Ouest demandant l’asile au motif de l’orientation sexuelle. Tout en rappelant que les personnes LGBT+ en mouvement se répartissent entre différents statuts régulant la présence sur le territoire français et circulent de l’un à l’autre, l’article souligne que certaines catégories sont davantage recherchées et que la distribution est socialement déterminée. Cette inégale répartition entre les catégories migratoires n’est pas tant due à une différence de niveaux d’agentivité que de ressources scolaires, économiques et sociales, qui contribue à définir le champ des catégorisations possibles. Enfin, l’analyse des implications de ces catégorisations sur les conditions de subsistance, les interactions sociales, les expressions identitaires, ou encore les risques psychosociaux invite à penser la construction systémique d’une politique de découragement renforcée à l’égard des personnes socialement moins dotées. En montrant les effets de classement des politiques de régulation des migrations et les traitements différenciés induits par les catégories migratoires, cette contribution permet de questionner les approximations auxquelles sont susceptibles de conduire les catégories d’action publique.
Access status: Open Access ,
Climate-Induced Exile in Latin America: Intersectionality, Refugee Women, and the Dynamics of Conflict and Negotiation
(MDPI, 2026-01-31) Lugo-Morin, Diosey Ramon
This study examines the social, economic and cultural impacts that Latin American women face due to climate-induced displacement, considering these impacts as arenas of conflict and negotiation. Using an intersectional framework, the study analyses how climate disasters exacerbate structural inequalities rooted in patriarchal systems, thereby constraining women’s adaptive capacity while simultaneously catalysing resistance strategies. Through a comparative analysis of Bangladesh and the Dry Corridor in Central America using a Gender Vulnerability Index (GVI), the study reveals that displaced women navigate contested spaces, disputing access to resources, legal recognition and territorial belonging, while constructing transnational solidarity networks and cooperative economies. The emergence of women climate refugees challenges international legal frameworks, exposing critical gaps in protection regimes. The findings emphasise the need for gender-responsive policies that recognise women as transformative agents who negotiate power asymmetries in contexts of environmental crisis, not merely as vulnerable populations. This research contributes to our understanding of the nexus between climate change, gender and migration by foregrounding the dialectic of domination and agency in Latin American displacement processes.
Access status: Open Access ,
“Invisible Workers, Visible Stereotypes”: Analysing the Complex Realities of Migrant Women in Kerala, India
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2025-12) Menon, Anjana
In this paper, the author finds that the representations of migrant workers in Kerala must be critically re-examined, not merely as reflections of economic necessity, but as complex cultural artifacts that reveal the interplay between historical prejudices and contemporary labour practices. This study calls for a more nuanced understanding of migration, one that acknowledges both the exploitative tendencies inherent in these representations and the potential for transformative change in the socio-cultural fabric of Kerala.
Access status: Open Access ,
Fleeing the Floods: Examining the Complex Realities of Climate Displacement in Thailand
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2025-12) Chaiyapa, Thida; Ruengvirayudh, Pornchanok; Pathan, Niranrak; Pooyongyuth, Karanyapas; Kanokjaros, Jarukit; Thansi, Lakchayaporn
Based on field research following the 2024 floods in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, the study reveals that decisions to stay or relocate are shaped not only by environmental hazards but also by social ties, livelihoods, access to support, and the needs of vulnerable groups. The findings underscore the importance of inclusive, community-centred policies that strengthen resilience and ensure equitable protection in the face of climate change.
Access status: Open Access ,
Facing the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries’ Illiberal Migration Regime: Making Sense of Kafala System and its Impacts on Migrant Workers
(Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2025-12) Adula, Negera Gudeta
This paper studies the kafala system and its socio-economic and human rights implications in the Gulf countries’ socio-economic and political governance architecture and its impacts on the migrant workers in the region. Methodologically and theoretically this paper is based on intersectionality theory to draw a nuanced understanding of how migrant workers in the Gulf region are exposed to layers of marginalities including gender, race, and class under the kafala migration governance regime. The paper also draws insights from Foucault’s analytical framework of biopolitics to offer a comprehensive account of how the authoritarian Gulf countries utilised kafala regime to regulate the migrant workers’ bodies and labour to protect the social order and exercise control. This paper explains the genesis of the kafala regime, and its rationalities that gradually evolved into illiberal migration governance regime affecting the migrant workers as the kafala becomes a regime of frontier production and consolidation of divides that are exclusionary and discriminatory migration governance regime.
Access status: Open Access ,
The rise of repatriation: Global South refugees and forerunners of the International Organization for Migration in the long 1970s
(Taylor & Francis, 2026-03-15) Szabla, Christopher
Contemporary international migration debates have been marked by a confrontation between the requirements of refugee and asylum law, on the one hand, and accusations they are being abused, concerns about illegal and excessive migration, and efforts to reverse migratory flows, on the other. How and when did this state of affairs arise? This article situates the ‘long 1970s’ as a decisive period, focusing on the policy cycle through which both donor state preferences and institutional agency remade the Intergovernmental Committee on European Migration (ICEM), later known as the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The organisation’s transformation from facilitating European emigration to managing refugees in and from the Global South in this period is critical for understanding how migrant repatriation arose as a permanent feature. This article demonstrates how its unique mandate and the growth of both humanitarianism and migration restrictionism led the organisation towards greater concentrations on refugees and then asylum-seeker deportations, contributing to what has become a central tool for migration management today.
Access status: Open Access ,
Return to what? Reimagining home and belonging after conflict and refugee status cessation among Liberians in Nigeria
(Taylor & Francis, 2026-04-15) Durodola, Tosin S.
This study examines how displaced persons conceptualise home and evaluate the possibility of return after the cessation of refugee status and the narrowing of mobility options. Drawing on fieldwork with first-generation Liberians in the defunct Oru Refugee Camp in south-west Nigeria, it analyses how shared histories of violence, prolonged exile, and the withdrawal of legal protection shape return decisions long after the formal end of conflict. Although the international refugee system promotes repatriation as the preferred durable solution, Liberia is no longer considered by many interlocutors as a viable future homeland following the termination of their refugee protection. Home is sustained through everyday social life in exile, while return is assessed through comparative and forward-looking judgements about safety, trust, and the durability of peace within a defunct camp environment characterised by long-term social continuity alongside legal and political precarity. This paper demonstrates that the loss of refugee status, when combined with decades of camp-based exile, recasts return from a presumed resolution into a strategic and frequently rejected outcome, providing a lens for understanding mobility decisions in other post-cessation settings where protection ends without secure pathways to belonging.
Access status: Open Access ,
Mental health impacts of climate migration: Urban adaptation and mitigation challenges in Southwestern Bangladesh
(Elsevier, 2026-03-28) Parvez, Khondoker Mahmud; Hasan, Rabita; Rushdi, Ibrahim Mahmud
This study explores the mental health impacts of climate migration in Khulna City, focusing on the urban adaptation and mitigation challenges faced by migrants. As climate-induced environmental changes like salinity intrusion, riverbank erosion, and flooding increasingly affect rural areas of southwestern Bangladesh, large numbers of people are migrating to urban centers in search of safety and stability. The study employs qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with 100 climate migrants in Khulna. The findings reveal significant psychosocial stress among migrants, manifesting in issues such as anxiety, depression, and ecological grief. Overcrowded living conditions, lack of green spaces, and limited social support exacerbate these mental health challenges, underscoring the need for urban adaptation policies that prioritize both physical infrastructure and psychosocial well-being. This research highlights the importance of integrating mental health services into urban planning to address the unique needs of climate migrants. Additionally, the study emphasizes the role of social networks and community-based support in facilitating migrants' integration and emotional recovery. The findings provide valuable insights for policymakers and urban planners to develop more inclusive and resilient urban strategies that address the multifaceted challenges faced by climate migrants.
Access status: Open Access ,
The Rohingya crisis and geopolitical tensions driving the failure of humanitarian governance and legal accountability among refugees in Bangladesh
(Elsevier, 2026-05-10) Parvez, Khondoker Mahmud
The Rohingya crisis represents a protracted humanitarian and geopolitical emergency shaped by structural statelessness, constrained international accountability, and evolving forms of humanitarian governance. This study examines how these macro-level dynamics are experienced at the micro level through a qualitative investigation of 100 Rohingya refugees residing in camps in Cox's Bazar District, Bangladesh. Adopting an interpretive research design and a geopsychiatric analytical lens, the study explores the intersection of displacement, identity, governance, and psychosocial well-being. The findings reveal that trauma among Rohingya refugees is not limited to past experiences of violence but is continuously reproduced through conditions of chronic uncertainty, restricted mobility, and indefinite encampment. Humanitarian governance, while essential for survival, has evolved into a system of containment that reinforces dependency and limits agency. Statelessness emerges as a central structural and experiential condition, shaping identity fragmentation, non-belonging, and diminished self-worth. Additionally, gendered vulnerabilities intensify exposure to insecurity and psychological distress, particularly among women living under conditions of constrained mobility and protection gaps. By integrating qualitative evidence with insights from international relations and humanitarian governance, the study demonstrates how geopolitical tensions transform humanitarian response into a substitute for political resolution. The analysis contributes to geopsychiatric scholarship by highlighting how structural conditions of displacement produce sustained mental health impacts. The study argues that durable solutions require a shift from containment-based approaches to rights-oriented strategies that link humanitarian assistance with legal accountability and pathways to citizenship restoration or safe repatriation. Without addressing these structural drivers, the Rohingya crisis will remain a persistent condition of managed displacement and institutional uncertainty.
Access status: Open Access ,
A “Distressed Class of People”: French Refugees and Mobility Control in Philadelphia, 1790s–1810
(Cambridge University Press, 2026-03-25) Maruschke, Megan
In the 1790s, hundreds of refugees arrived in Philadelphia from revolutionary Saint-Domingue. Though it is well known that the Alien Acts were promulgated at least in part in reaction to the large French presence on US soil and the threat of war with France, other barriers to entry and to remain on US soil are not often connected to the arrival and presence of French refugees. Using records of the Philadelphia courts, prison, and almshouse, this article situates the French refugee experience within the early United States’ broader kaleidoscope of restrictions on mobility, assistance, and rights to remain. For the French Black population, their race and class rendered them especially vulnerable to forms of mobility control focused on criminals and the mobile poor. Though the French were not ultimately deported for their political activities, a small number of French Black refugees convicted of theft were set on the move once again.

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