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Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
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9

Wrap-Up

In the final session of the workshop, Katharine Donato (Georgetown University), Mark VanLandingham (Tulane University), and Holly E. Reed (Queens College, City University of New York) provided additional thoughts on the subjects discussed by presenters and participants in the preceding sessions.

SESSION HIGHLIGHTS

Donato shared highlights from the first five technical sessions, followed by VanLandingham’s summary of the last two sessions.

Global, National, and Ethical Issues

Donato emphasized the importance of establishing clear metrics and of indicating, when data are presented, who is included and who is excluded. At the same time, she pointed to the ambiguities of the categories used in forced migration research. The distinctions between, for example, “migrants” versus “refugees” and “voluntary” versus “forced” are dubious, but she noted the categories continue to be used. Thought needs to be given to how analytical bridges can be built across them, she suggested.

Donato also raised the issue of the politics of institutional review boards (IRBs), which tend to interpret foreign-born people as vulnerable and therefore not suitable subjects for research. New guidelines, such as the ones developed in Canada, address this issue, but she questioned how to scale them up globally, and whether IRBs are protecting respondents’ rights or protecting their own organization’s liabilities.

Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
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Analytical and Conceptual Issues

As Donato observed, the complexity of concepts such as integration reflects complementarity, difference, and a lack of difference. However, longitudinal data do not exist to measure many aspects of this complexity, despite the conceptualization work that has been done on integration and other issues.

Global governance processes offer new foundations for research and practice, she noted. For example, an increasing number of countries are offering humanitarian visas that are temporary but can be renewed, though what happens after renewal is often unclear. These visas create a new category of people who in turn have a spectrum of experiences that researchers can study, such as how these temporary visas link to integration.

Among the complicated issues raised by conceptualizations of forced migration and integration is that of selection. Donato asked whether selection and integration mean that social scientists are looking only at migrants who have made it. One way to approach this and other questions would be through the use of panel data from multiple sites. However, it will be necessary to consider how drivers and effects differ across people in different categories, including internally displaced persons (IDPs), those seeking asylum, those fleeing conflict and violence, those fleeing rapid onset versus slowly shifting environmental conditions, those who are stateless, and the children of immigrants.

More broadly, Donato observed that demography has and continues to contribute to studies about forced migration, but it has done more with migration than with forced migration.

Registration and Administrative Data

The discussion of the steps to generate registration documents on a regional basis is exciting, said Donato, and long overdue. However, including refugees and IDPs across national statistical data systems is a big goal and will become more daunting as forced migration rises. She wondered whether a “global identity document” were possible, and whether national sovereign states would agree with the idea that everyone in the world should have some sort of identification document, even if such a document would not entitle someone to remain in a place permanently.

Technology can help answer some questions, such as how to improve the flexibility of civil registration systems for more vulnerable people, she continued. Demographic surveillance, despite the challenges it raises related to legitimacy and efficacy given the drive for profits, has at least the potential to be scaled up for national civil registration. Donato urged social scientists to become involved in such efforts. Finally, she asked to

Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×

what extent multilateral actors drive the cultural and normative context around data generation systems. How much cultural change is needed to convince people that life events should be registered, she questioned, suggesting that a life-course approach to identity documents could help solve this problem.

Survey Research

The presentations on survey research featured two types of data collection, Donato noted: survey and administrative data. Considering which type is best is the wrong question, she said; rather, a combination is needed in every part of the world in order to answer questions with specificity and high-quality data. Stratified sample approaches that overrepresent those at risk of migration or becoming an immigrant could be combined with random samples of people and households who might need to migrate in the future, and administrative data then could be integrated with these data. That would establish baselines and track shifts if drivers of forced migration emerge, Donato noted. It also could help capture subsequent moves, about which little is known.

Donato also said that, ideally, research should not wait for a forced migration event to occur. Some of the strength of the existing work is that an event happened while the work was ongoing, making it possible to create pre- and postcomparisons.

As an example of an approach the United States could usefully adopt from elsewhere in the world, Donato briefly described the Migration between Africa and Europe (MAFE) project, which focuses on migration between Africa and Europe (both from Africa to Europe and returning). The project involved collaboration among 10 institutions in Europe and Africa using the same survey protocols, and it adopted innovative data collection in origins and destinations, including migration and livelihood histories and robust information about motives for migration and intentions to migrate. In particular, some of the data about intentions to move mapped well with the risk of making a first trip, Donato said.

She suggested a particular need for panel data on refugees and other forced migrants in the largest receiving countries, where it would be possible to obtain administrative identifying information on forced migration households and then follow them. She cited a longitudinal/panel survey of IDP households in Iraq that relied on a full enumeration of such households done by the International Organization for Migration in late 2014. Calling on participants to “think big,” she also asked whether it might be possible, for example, to work with the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and the Ugandan government to obtain administrative data and follow forced migrant households from Uganda.

Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×

Research Design and Analysis of Migrant Integration

The three projects described in the session on research design and analysis addressed issues that are central to forced migration, Donato pointed out. Selection and culture were key issues in this session, she noted. Selection complicates studies of integration, with both positive and negative selection having the potential to produce paradoxical outcomes. She commented that both factors suggest that some attributes of forced migrants offer protection, at least temporarily, and that these protective factors are part of “culture,” which is a difficult concept to define and study. Donato suggested a need to unpack the cultural foundations of communities and people to better understand the role of culture but to do so away from the influence of selection and “culture confounders.” This is a big challenge, she said, but researchers should not shy away from it.

Incorporating Demographic Research in Program Design, Monitoring, and Evaluation

VanLandingham continued the recap. Research and practice do not completely overlap, he observed as a takeaway from the workshop session on the topic. Some of what researchers do is actionable, but much of what practitioners do in the field does not need much research to inform it. In context-specific places, what is especially needed, he said, is for senior leaders to develop a mentor/mentee relationship so that more junior colleagues can learn how to be most effective on the ground. Research for its own sake is important, and not all or even most of it has to have pragmatic applications, he commented. Nevertheless, both researchers and practitioners can take concrete steps to make their relationships productive. Most important, he said, everyone needs to understand what the other party is after, and everyone needs to benefit from these relationships. Programs need evidence that evaluates their degree of effectiveness, and they also need data that can help them improve. Researchers need data with which they can further their studies and advance the state of knowledge on complex topics. Both sides have both overlapping and independent interests. As another of his takeaways from the session, he said partnerships should acknowledge these realities and require clear negotiations up front about how research will be organized, how new knowledge will be applied, and how data will be handled.

Population Modeling and Projections

The use of models in population science highlights the complexity of the problems being studied and the tools used to study those problems. One challenge with models involves assessing their validity and reliability,

Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×

VanLandingham said. He wondered how to establish a system of independent checks on the methods so that data could be rerun with a different set of assumptions. A related challenge is that models can become so specialized that only a small cadre of specialists has the training to apply them, which makes independent evaluation of results more difficult.

Demographers are good at developing clever analytic tools to extract value from data, even if the data were developed for different purposes and are not ideally suited to the task at hand. VanLandingham expressed hope that, moving forward, demographers will provide input to people who are collecting data on forced migration.

THINKING ACROSS CATEGORIES

Planning committee co-chair Holly E. Reed concluded the workshop by returning to issues of conceptualization. She suggested that one way to better understand the experiences of forced migrants is to stop treating them as separate from other types of migrants. She said refugee studies has been a separate field from migration or immigration studies for too long, especially in the U.S. context. Refugee studies have been very policy-, humanitarian-, and migrant-focused, she noted. Similarly, immigration scholarship in the United States has been highly focused on integration research, especially for Mexican immigrants. As a result, she said, research has, with a few exceptions, overlooked what happens before arrival and resettlement. Research has not investigated in depth such factors as coercion, natural disasters, or environmental factors as drivers of migration.

Remedying this research gap could entail adding questions to surveys, increasing subsample sizes, talking to nonmigrants as well as migrants, broadening geographic coverage, leveraging administrative data, and analyzing data in new ways, she suggested. Research techniques could include focus groups, mapping techniques, key informant interviews, participatory action research, and modeling. She also asked whether a network of researchers could work with nongovernmental organizations and communities, particularly at the local level, to analyze data and assist with program evaluations.

Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×

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Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×
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Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×
Page 78
Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×
Page 79
Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×
Page 80
Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×
Page 81
Suggested Citation:"9 Wrap-Up." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Forced Migration Research: From Theory to Practice in Promoting Migrant Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25584.
×
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In 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated 70.8 million people could be considered forced migrants, which is nearly double their estimation just one decade ago. This includes internally displaced persons, refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless people. This drastic increase in forced migrants exacerbates the already urgent need for a systematic policy-related review of the available data and analyses on forced migration and refugee movements.

To explore the causes and impacts of forced migration and population displacement, the National Academies convened a two-day workshop on May 21-22, 2019. The workshop discussed new approaches in social demographic theory, methodology, data collection and analysis, and practice as well as applications to the community of researchers and practitioners who are concerned with better understanding and assisting forced migrant populations. This workshop brought together stakeholders and experts in demography, public health, and policy analysis to review and address some of the domestic implications of international migration and refugee flows for the United States. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

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