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Introduction and Overview
Forced migration and its consequences are major issues at the national, regional, and international levels. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has estimated that 70.8 million people could be considered forced migrants in 2018, a number that had risen from 43.3 million a decade earlier (UNHCR, 2019a). People subject to forced migration include internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless people.
The increasing number and dire conditions facing forced migrants has demonstrated an urgent need for a systematic policy-related review of the available data and analyses on forced migration and refugee movements. The Committee on Population (CPOP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a 2-day public workshop May 21–22, 2019, in Washington, DC, designed to bring fresh and innovative approaches in social demographic theory, methodology, data collection and analysis, and practice and applications to the community of researchers and practitioners who are concerned with better understanding and assisting forced migrant populations. Box 1-1 provides the statement of task for the workshop.
OPENING REMARKS
Karabi Acharya (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) emphasized that health is determined by much more than the health care people receive—it is also determined by how people experience life and how and when they are able to live, learn, work, and play. When viewed through that lens,
migration and forced migration have important implications for physical and mental health, she added. Acharya also noted the interests of the Global Ideas for U.S. Solutions team at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in finding ideas from around the world and applying them within the United States in order to improve health and well-being.
Holly E. Reed (Queens College, City University of New York) noted that there is still a long way to go in terms of fully integrating knowledge of forced migration into the mainstream demographic literature and in fully integrating knowledge of demography into the programs, policy, and practice of forced migration response and prevention. She said that the workshop was designed to create an ongoing dialogue between demographic researchers and those who work directly with forced migrant populations to improve the health and well-being of forced migrants and to promote sustainable and just humanitarian solutions to forced migration.
OVERVIEW AND HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WORKSHOP AND THIS PUBLICATION
The workshop combined presentations and discussion on research issues relevant to the well-being of people who undergo forced migration. As further context for each topic, the planning committee suggested background reading by the presenters or other experts. (See Appendix A for the workshop agenda and links to the background reading.1) This proceedings
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1 Presentations from the workshop are available at https://sites.nationalacademies.org/DBASEE/CPOP/Demography-of-Forced-Migration-and-Refugee-Movements/index.htm.
follows the structure of the workshop. Each one of the chapters in this proceedings corresponds to one of the sessions at the workshop. The following chapter descriptions provide an overview of the organization of the workshop and of the range of issues highlighted by the presenters.
Chapter 2 provides an overview of global, national, and ethical issues involved in studying forced migration. The numbers of forced migrants are large and increasing; migrants make rational choices about whether and where to migrate, and many people who migrate have mixed and often interconnected motives for leaving their home countries; low- and middle-income countries host many more forced migrants than do high-income countries; many refugees are in situations of protracted displacement, with few able to access durable solutions; and the regulation of irregular migrants and border control are becoming increasingly restrictive. U.S. policies on forced migration are in a state of flux, changing very rapidly, and becoming more exclusionary; research will be needed for understanding the long-term consequences of these changes. Also, many ethical issues arise in forced migration research, including power inequities between researchers who are largely from the Global North studying refugees from the Global South, the dominance of English-speaking researchers and policy makers, the risks to refugees of participating in research, and the problem of “voluntary” consent when refugees are in perilous situations. The dynamics, diversity, and complexity of migration through space and time were themes introduced in this session that reappeared throughout the workshop.
Chapter 3 presents conceptual issues in conducting forced migration research. Shifting conceptualizations around forced migration require flexibility in data collection and analysis. For example, as more has become known about the multiple drivers of migration, demography has been asked to take into account more complex interactions, such as the full range of migrant motivations and behaviors and the cultural and normative context. The conceptualization of “integration,” discussed at length in this session, is a good example of the thorny relationship between concepts and measurements. Integration of a migrant population can be conceptualized in multiple ways, including as a gap, a process, a boundary, or a discontinuous trajectory. In turn, these conceptualizations affect the kinds of measurements made and the data gathered.
Chapters 4 and 5 turn to issues and innovations related to data collection and measurement. Using operational data to assess population numbers, characteristics, and flows of forced migrants has always posed challenges, including those associated with privacy protection, informed consent, data protection, and misuse by authorities. The use of registration and administrative data can reduce these challenges, and a strategic pivot from operational humanitarian information to official statistics is placing more emphasis on harmonization, validation, reliability, timeliness,
and quality metrics in the area of refugee and IDP statistics. However, the collection of these data can be difficult for forced migrants—for example, documents can be lost, forged, or never logged. The presenters in this session discussed the use of census data and administrative data in several countries—most notably, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon—and noted that valuable opportunities exist to link such data and to assess and improve their completeness.
Chapter 5 focuses on survey research. Surveys of migrants and of people in the areas from which migrants originate can produce valuable data, although it can be difficult to plan and conduct surveys in host societies due to political, economic, and legal conditions. The limitations of survey data also must be kept in mind, although well-designed probability samples can overcome some of the difficulties of traditional surveys. A promising example of survey research is the Mexican Migration Project, which began in 1982 and was subsequently supplemented by the Latin American Migration Project; these studies have not focused specifically on forced migration, but the methodologies are nevertheless relevant. Key strengths of these projects have included the gathering of life histories and the use of an ethnosurvey that blends quantitative and qualitative methods in an informal and nonthreatening context that produces standardized data. The surveys are done in multiple sites and gather data about characteristics of individuals, households, and communities. The same approach is now being taken in other countries, including China, Germany, and Bangladesh.
Returning to issues around migrant integration, Chapter 6 examines three research topics and their broader implications for population science: (1) the health trajectories of immigrants in the United States, using Hispanic-origin immigrant health as an example and tying it to forced migration integration in particular; (2) the role of in-school newcomer programs combining English acquisition and social support components in adolescent migrants’ educational and social adjustment in the United States; and (3) the role of culture in the recovery of a Vietnamese community in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Measuring the integration of migrants into a new country benefits from the use of panel data—that is, following the same immigrants over long time periods—but there are challenges to this approach, such as attrition. Any assessment of migrant integration also means taking selection into account, which generally requires data from both origins and destinations to statistically correct for differences. Furthermore, it is often difficult to assess the degree to which people migrated due to displacement-like/forced conditions, as surveys used to assess migrant integration generally do not include questions on forced migration; for this information, data following people between sending areas and destinations—or otherwise comparing the experiences of people with similar backgrounds in both places—are needed.
The case study on newcomer programs discussed the use of two empirical strategies (difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity) to estimate causal impacts even though newcomer students could not be randomly assigned to such programs, illustrating an innovative use of administrative data to assess public educational investments. The New Orleans case study asked more broadly how resilience, culture, and integration interacted to affect recovery trajectories after Hurricane Katrina. Overall, the recovery of the Vietnamese community has been faster and more complete than for other communities with comparable baseline levels of affluence and similar levels of damage, raising the question of how the more abstract and complex concept of “culture” contributes to migrants’ vulnerability and resilience.
The session on incorporating research into program design, monitoring, and evaluation, summarized in Chapter 7, similarly looked at three case studies to draw broader lessons on the value of research to practitioners and vice versa: the outcomes and evidence framework created by the International Rescue Committee, research partnerships developed by the New York Immigration Coalition, and participatory approaches to work with children in Africa who have been subjected to the horrors of war. An underlying issue was how to engage researchers and practitioners with each other.
The final set of presentations, highlighted in Chapter 8, turned to modeling and simulation as ways to estimate, predict, and understand the complex dynamics of forced migration. These approaches include system dynamics, discrete events, indirect migration estimation methods, multistate population projections, and agent-based modeling. In addition to prediction, modeling and simulation can facilitate discussion, explore solutions, structure thought, and communicate ideas. Models are especially valuable to explore a wide range of varying scenarios and can produce useful results with less-than-ideal data.
In the final session of the workshop, as summarized in Chapter 9, the workshop concluded with two presenters and one of the planning committee cochairs who reviewed points covered in the previous sessions.
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