Search Results (1,488)

Building the capacity of health and social care professionals in health and migration is essential for the East and Horn of Africa region, which, according to UNHCR, hosted 23.6 million forcibly displaced people who have fled conflicts and climate change-related floods and droughts by the end of 2024. There is a high demand to build a critical mass of expertise and experts on health and migration that can engage in policy, programme and practice development. To contribute to the building of a community of experts, an online course on health and migration was developed and five courses were implemented from 2021 to 2024 with the participation of international experts in migration and health, universities and international institutions (WHO; UNAIDS, IGAD), in collaboration with the UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Makerere University, Uganda, and the Center for Health and Migration Vienna, Austria (CHM), and with funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior. The courses lasted nine weeks each, offering two three-hour sessions per week, and were complimented by discussion forums and webinars on topics of special interest, e.g., climate change. Participants were working in policy development, programme coordination, research, and service delivery in health and social care in communities affected by migration, cross-border settings, refugee and IDP settlements in the East and Horn of Africa geographic region. The importance of the course for capacity building in the respective countries as well as for personal development is underlined by continuous high numbers of applications from highly qualified people and highly positive evaluations from participants, and the demonstrated impact on the practice of service provision for refugees and IDPs. Future considerations should concentrate on developing sustainable frameworks for courses, including intergovernmental collaboration and community development. Full article

Background: Sexual health research with migrant and refugee communities presents unique challenges, shaped by cultural sensitivities, stigma, and the under-representation of these populations in health research. However, lived experiences insights are essential for the development of appropriate and useful research and health initiatives. It is important to learn from researchers’ experiences to expand the representation of migrant and refugee community voices. Method: This paper draws on two qualitative studies conducted in South Australia: one exploring the sexual and reproductive health perspectives of refugee and migrant women, and the other of men. We reflect upon the methodological and ethical considerations in conducting research in this sensitive field and provide recommendations for future researchers and healthcare providers when working with migrant and refugee communities. Results: Both studies encountered difficulties in relation to participant recruitment, cross-cultural communication, and addressing taboos surrounding sexual health. At the same time, they highlighted opportunities for generating meaningful insights through culturally safe, gender-sensitive approaches and collaboration with community stakeholders. Conclusions: By synthesising experiences from both projects, we identify practical strategies for building trust, overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers, and creating supportive environments for discussing sensitive topics. These reflections offer guidance for researchers and clinicians aiming to advance culturally responsive sexual health research and strengthen healthcare provision for migrant and refugee populations. Full article

This paper analyses the existing international refugee framework in light of the emergence of alternative so-called ‘safe and legal routes’ devised by the UK government—in particular, the bespoke Ukraine visa schemes—and considers the practical implementation of a Safe Passage Visa programme in the UK. It will consider how safe routes may benefit at-risk people when provided alongside the protection afforded under the Refugee Convention. It will also evaluate the persistent failure of UK government policy that focuses on deterrent-only aims but has been unsuccessful in reducing irregular journeys to the UK. The paper will then explore the case for a ‘Safe Passage Visa’, focusing on the practical challenge of implementation and the potential impact of its development on the workings of the asylum system in the UK, including the potential reduction in irregular entry and other benefits. The paper argues that there is an imperative need to take action to safeguard and protect human lives in transit whilst asserting that this must be conducted in a way that complements and enhances the principles enshrined in the Refugee Convention. Full article

This article deals with the attitudes of residents of the border village of Ubľa toward the arrival of foreign nationals in the Slovak Republic, with a particular focus on individuals who left Ukraine because of the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The aim of this research is to assess the impact of this migratory movement on the perceived quality of life of local inhabitants living near the border crossing and to identify potential measures for improvement. This study is based on a review of the current state of the issue in both national and international contexts, serving as a theoretical foundation for the empirical part of this study. This study was conducted using the Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI) method to examine residents’ attitudes toward foreign nationals in general, toward arrivals from Ukraine specifically, and toward the management of the crisis declared in 2022 in response to their arrival. Data were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics. The results indicate significant differences in respondents’ attitudes depending on their level of education, with university-educated respondents being approximately twice as likely to express more positive attitudes toward the arrival of foreign nationals and refugees from Ukraine compared to respondents with secondary education, who tended to hold more negative views. Full article

Recent geopolitical events have led to an increased research focus on the experiences of female refugees. As careers play a crucial role in socio-economic integration, this study aims to examine the scope and characteristics of research findings on the careers of refugee women in host countries. Following the general research questions for bibliometric analysis, the major trends and intellectual structures of the research field of women refugees’ careers were identified. Four hundred and fifty-three articles selected from the Web of Science database (search by title, abstract, and keywords) for the period 2000–2023 were analyzed using VOSviewer (1.6.20). The results show that key challenges faced by forcibly displaced women include mental health disorders, language barriers, discrimination, downward career mobility, and pressure of traditional gender roles. The research reveals that critical enablers for female refugees’ workforce participation and economic independence are language training, culturally sensitive healthcare, and access to childcare. Simultaneously, empowerment strategies, including entrepreneurship and participation in professional networks, are proved to foster resilience and create pathways for successful career steps. Full article

The interplay between the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is of particular importance, as children today make up around 41% of all refugees. The Refugee Convention grants subsidiary international protection for persons who have legally or de facto lost the protection of their home state because it either persecutes them or exposes them to persecution by non-state actors. The Convention contains various substantial guarantees for recognized refugees and persons seeking refugee status. However, it does not contain any explicit provision on refugee children. This is precisely where Article 22 CRC comes into play, which states that refugee children are entitled to “appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance”. The essay delineates the definition of what is meant by a “refugee child” in the light of both Article 22 CRC and Article 1A(2) of the Refugee Convention. Furthermore, it works out that Article 22 CRC can strengthen the Refugee Convention’s scant commitment to children’s rights. This is particularly evident in the CRC’s requirements for the treatment of children in asylum procedures, which are not addressed at all in the Refugee Convention. Full article

In this article, I will use the ecological approach to explore the recent videos of Pinar Öğrenci. I will focus on two works: Agit (2022) and Cemetery of the Nameless (2025). In the latter work, there is a complex examination of the interplay between the precarious paths taken by refugees and the climate change crisis. She also explores the multiple layers of history and memorialization in sites that have been scarred by genocide. In Cemetery of the Nameless (2025), Pinar establishes an analogy between missing bodies and the contamination of the water of Lake Van. However, this connection is not linear and there is no direct cause and effect; Lake Van was meant to be a transit zone for the refugees, not a cemetery. I will argue that the function of analogy is in its suggestion of comparisons, rather than the establishment of equivalence. Öğrenci thereby puts the analogy to work in a dual manner—it both amplifies and concentrates our attention. We listen to the narratives of migration while looking at the scenes caused by climate change. The image broadens the horizon of the narrative, and the voice sucks the gaze into a dark hole. In this manner, Öğrenci’s art of witnessing, which both combines and separates voice and image, amplifies and concentrates the transfer of information. I will also frame this commentary on the artworks with a broader discussion on the politics of care and memorialization. Full article

Introduction: Health literacy enables refugees to assess, understand, and utilize health information effectively. This investigation aims to identify factors influencing health literacy levels among Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Methods: A cross-sectional survey using a multistage sampling approach was conducted to collect data from 1185 refugees. Health literacy levels were measured using the pre-validated All Aspects of Health Literacy tool in five districts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces that met the inclusion criteria. We used logistic regression models to analyze the dichotomous dependent variables. Results: A significant proportion of Afghan refugees demonstrated low functional health literacy and required assistance with reading and completing health documentation. Afghan refugees in the younger age group, male gender, higher monthly income, and access to healthcare information and clean water were more functionally literate in health. More than two thirds of the Afghan refugee population had adequate communicative health literacy with health care professionals in Pakistan. Most refugees believed that healthy lifestyles information and encouragement were more crucial for health than housing, employment, education, and local infrastructure. Conclusions: Afghan refugees in Pakistan lacked functional health literacy, critical health literacy, and overall health literacy. However, they have adequate communicative health literacy. This initial survey added new data on Afghans’ health literacy levels, which could help stakeholders strengthen health promotion initiatives within the healthcare system to improve health outcomes. Full article

This paper explores the ‘criminalisation’ of asylum in recent UK law and policy, most notably the 2022 Nationality and Borders Act (NABA) and 2023 Illegal Migration Act (IMA), and the ways in which this framework has fed through into recent legislative and policy measures. Whilst the development and expansion of criminal offences relating to irregular entry and arrival may be considered the most overt form of ‘criminalising’ people on the move, in this paper it is argued that the criminalisation of asylum in the UK today should not only be understood through the prism of crimmigration measures which are expressly penal in nature, but also through an array of measures which, although framed as administrative and civil, are similarly punitive in character and serve the criminal punishment rationale of retribution and deterrence. The legislative framework of the NABA 2022 and IMA 2023 has paved the way for this progressive ‘criminalisation’ by sanctioning those arriving irregularly to the UK to claim asylum. This trend has been continued in recent law and policy, and progressively expanded in a manner that increasingly sanctions refugees for the very fact of having claimed asylum in the UK. Full article

This scoping review critically synthesizes 34 studies (2015–2026) examining the metaverse’s role in fostering six core STEM competencies, moving beyond descriptive reporting to interrogate whether these technologies constitute genuine pedagogical transformation, whose learners are served or excluded, and how isolated interventions connect into lifelong learning pathways. Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, our analysis reveals that while technology literacy and collaboration appear in 91.2% of our selected studies, mathematical application is addressed in fewer than half (44.1%), raising unanswered questions about whether this pattern reflects an equitable distribution of mathematical learning opportunities across diverse learner populations—a question the current evidence base cannot answer but one that warrants urgent investigation. The evidence demonstrates substantial immediate learning gains through embodied presence and risk-free experimentation, yet a deeper reading suggests this often represents technological optimization of traditional goals rather than epistemological transformation. More troublingly, the concentration of inclusivity evidence on select populations—while rendering students with physical disabilities, Indigenous learners, and refugee students entirely invisible—reveals an equity paradox where immersive technologies may inadvertently amplify existing disparities. The absence of any longitudinal data linking short-term engagement to sustained STEM participation leaves the field’s claim to transformative impact unsubstantiated. This review argues for moving beyond fragmented interventions toward designing coherent, equitable learning pathways that fulfill the metaverse’s potential for all learners. Full article

Considerations of gender have long been overlooked in legal discourses and public debates on asylum. In more recent years, the right-wing narrative has taken a strategic U-turn, instead misappropriating gendered concerns including gender-based violence for the purposes of promoting racialised border controls on the grounds of cultural incompatibilities, and by painting refugees as a threat to British values, economy and security. This paper calls out the hypocrisy of such femonationalist framings for overlooking the ways in which Western institutions sustain refugee women’s ongoing vulnerabilities. Drawing from qualitative interviews and focus groups with refugee women survivors of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), this paper examines the continuities of harm in the lives of women who have fled gender-based persecution to Britain. The paper critically maps the way prolonged state control during the asylum process perpetuates a sense of violence as ongoing, and its damaging implications on survivors striving to navigate life after flight. In doing so, the findings contribute new insights into established scholarship on asylum harms by illuminating the gendered consequences of violence of waiting, and refugee women’s subtle individual and collective strategies to struggle against violent continuums. Full article

This study presents a bibliometric analysis of 461 studies on refugee and (im)migrant education governance, covering the period from 2015 to 2025. All studies were articles indexed in the Web of Science category. The analysis reveals publication trends, conceptual and intellectual structures, and the evolution of themes. Data were analyzed using the Bibliometrix R package. Document coupling and thematic analyses indicate a modular research ecosystem structured around policy governance, inclusion and diversity, refugee education, and access to higher education, with governance-focused scholarship playing a prominent connective role. A systematic review, guided by the PRISMA technique, was conducted to enhance these structural insights, focusing on the 25 most cited and conceptually significant studies identified during the bibliometric phase. The systematic review examined research features, participant demographics, educational settings, and analytical frameworks, with particular attention to the theoretical and operational aspects of governance, bordering, and surveillance themes. The findings reveal a pronounced geographic concentration in affluent Western contexts, especially the United States, alongside a smaller but conceptually significant body of work situated in refugee-hosting regions of the Global South. Education systems are consistently described as mechanisms of migratory governance, in which policies, accountability frameworks, and routine institutional activities establish borders and surveillance. This study combines extensive bibliometric mapping with comprehensive systematic synthesis to present a coherent overview of the conceptualization of refugee and (im)migrant education over the past decade, highlighting ongoing theoretical fragmentation and the need for more cross-scalar, integrative strategies in education governance within migration contexts. Full article

Public administrations increasingly seek to adopt digital tools for evidence-based policymaking, yet systematic frameworks guiding this adoption remain scarce. This paper aims to develop and apply a co-creation framework for technology adoption roadmaps in public sector policymaking. The objectives are threefold: (1) to systematically identify impacts, facilitators, and barriers through structured stakeholder engagement; (2) to structure these elements into Impact Pathways and Transition Scenarios; and (3) to derive actionable policy recommendations. Using a participatory action research design, a seven-step co-creation methodology was applied across all four cases addressing crisis management challenges: forest fires in Finland, floods and refugee reception in Italy, power outages in Greece, and wildfires in Spain. Through structured stakeholder engagement combining surveys, workshops, and online consultations, the study identified seven categories of policy support results; twelve impacts spanning technology adoption, policy process enhancement, public administration capacity, and citizen empowerment; nine facilitators across financial, organisational, legal, and technical dimensions; and eight frustrators assessed through a risk matrix. These elements were structured into Impact Pathways, visualising causal relationships among policy support tools, enabling factors, and transformation outcomes. Four Transition Scenarios were derived, aligned with the policy lifecycle stages of inception, negotiation, set-up, and operation, accompanied by fifteen actionable policy recommendations classified by thematic area, timeframe, and stakeholder responsibility. The findings reveal that evidence-based policies represent a central transformation target across all result categories, while effective stakeholder engagement and leadership commitment emerge as cross-cutting enablers. The integrated framework contributes to digital governance research by operationalising co-creation for strategic roadmap development and offers practitioners a decision-support tool for planning digital technology-assisted policymaking transformations. Full article

(1) Background: Colombia hosts one of the world’s largest mixed-displacement crises, combining longstanding internal displacement with the influx of Venezuelan migrants. This case study examines how the Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Hospital Barco San Raffaele (HBSR) adapted its service-delivery model to respond simultaneously to internal displacement in the Colombian Pacific region and the Venezuelan refugee influx. Using the WHO EMT Surge Capacity Framework, the study analyses how health services were adapted across two concurrent displacement contexts. (2) Methods: A mixed-methods comparative case study was conducted using mission reports, epidemiological surveillance data, policy reports and institutional documents collected between November 2020 and May 2021. Data were analyzed through a thematic analysis structured around the four domains of the WHO EMT Surge Capacity Framework (Staff, Structure, Supplies and Systems), to examine how service adaptation was operationalized across different geographic, sociocultural and legal environments; (3) Results: EMT HBSR adapted staffing composition, supply chains, infrastructure, and operational systems across both settings. Its hybrid model, combining a hospital boat platform with mobile outreach teams, enabled continuity of primary care, mental, maternal and child health, and community-based services in geographically isolated and culturally diverse communities; (4) Conclusions: The findings illustrate how flexible EMT operational models can support the adaptation of health services, and reduce health access inequalities in displacement contexts characterized by high mobility, confinement and limited health system capacity. Mobile platforms, such as hospital boats, appear to be a viable strategy for ensuring continuity of care along migratory routes and in geographically isolated areas affected by protracted instability. Full article

The 1923 Greek–Turkish Population Exchange (Mubadele in Turkish), formalized through the Lausanne Convention, remains one of the most consequential cases of compulsory migration in modern history. This systematic review synthesizes a century of scholarship across political, legal, social, cultural, and historiographical dimensions. Findings indicate that the exchange not only legitimized forced displacement under international law but also reinforced authoritarian state-building in Turkey and exacerbated political instability in Greece. The social consequences included trauma, marginalization, and the emergence of heterogeneous refugee identities, while cultural memory oscillated between nationalist silencing and transnational remembrance. Urban landscapes and demographic structures were profoundly reshaped, producing visible legacies in contemporary cities. Furthermore, assimilation policies formalized the integration of populations, influencing the development of national identities in both Turkey and Greece. Historiographical trajectories diverged, with Greek scholarship emphasizing refugee struggles and Turkish scholarship foregrounding nation-building. Recent studies highlight hybrid identities and transgenerational redefinitions of belonging. This review underscores the necessity of integrating political, social, and memory studies to capture the multi-layered impacts of the exchange, offering a comprehensive account of its enduring relevance for migration, nationalism, and memory studies in Southeast Europe. Full article