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Open research questions in Migration, Refugees, and Integration

568 gap statements mined from Migration, Refugees, and Integration papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 10,167 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

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What the literature leaves open

  • National systems are functional, but joint case definitions, alert thresholds, laboratory referral pathways, and information-sharing protocols remain inconsistent, with continued reliance on informal channels.

    Health Security as Catalyst in Migration Governance: A Practice-Based Case Study Building Trust Through Cross-Border Cooperation in North Africa · 2026 · DOI

  • Important questions remain to be explored regarding what is next for electronic monitoring and data-based surveillance as AI and data analytics become ubiquitous in immigration enforcement.

    Extract, Violate, and Scare: Data Mining Tools Take Over the Immigration Surveillance State · 2026 · DOI

  • Yet whether this mechanism operates uniformly across diverse Eastern European origin contexts and residence countries remains an open empirical question. In this respect, our finding of a positive effect of Eastern European origin on turnout in the residence country still warrants closer scrutiny and cannot be readily generalised.

    Political socialisation before and after migration: How origin-country political culture shapes immigrant voting in Europe · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research may focus on deepening the research of discrimination of post-Soviet migrants in the Central European countries. This research focus remains understudied and scholars may focus on how post-Soviet migrants experience their situation also in other Central European countries.

    Highly Skilled Migration from Post-Soviet Countries to Czechia: Experiences of Discrimination and Exclusion · 2026 · DOI

  • In the situation that prevailed until the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, UNHCR, the organization that EUrope seemed to defer to in order to determine potential refoulement, did indeed only have limited knowledge on deportations.

    The agnopolitics of refoulement: Migration diplomacy and the un/knowing of regional refugee deportation to Syria · 2026 · DOI

  • Future studies could explore this variable as a mediator or examine other psychological factors, such as psychological resilience, perceived economic opportunities, family pressure, peer influence, and emotional intelligence, to broaden the psychological understanding of the migration decision-making process among youths.

    Life Satisfaction, Hopelessness, and Attitudes Toward Irregular Migration Among Young Adults: The Moderating Role of Risk-Taking · 2026 · DOI

  • The study highlights the need for digital communication technologies to address these challenges. The study notes the importance of mentors and intermediaries in mitigating the limitations of formal, hierarchical communication channels.

    Navigating Integration in The Netherlands: Syrian Refugees, Digital Practices, and Inclusive Communication · 2026 · DOI

  • The study identifies the challenge of digital exclusion, where migrants with limited digital skills face barriers in accessing digital services and participating in the civic integration programme. The researchers highlight the challenge of bureaucratic discretion, where digitalisation transforms the role of street-level bureaucrats and limits their ability to mediate policy effects.

    The Digitalisation of Dutch Civic Integration: How Digital Technologies Shape Inequality and Bureaucratic Discretion · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research could address these limitations by incorporating a broader demographic range, including older individuals, men, and those navigating different social contexts. Additionally, examining how Afro-Dutch Muslim women form peer groups or adopt coping strategies—an aspect already hinted at by the participants—could be explored in more depth.

    “You Are My Brother, You Are My Sister… You Should Know Better…”: Racialised Experiences of Afro-Dutch Muslim Women: Navigating Intra-Muslim Anti-Blackness · 2025 · DOI

  • Their absenteeism was driven by a combination of three main factors: feelings of non-integration in society, limited knowledge about voting procedures, and negative attitudes towards politics. The notion of limited knowledge about voting procedures sheds light on a new type of access to resources that can impede turnout.

    Migrants away from the polls: explaining the absenteeism of people with sub-Saharan African origins in the 2022 French presidential elections · 2024 · DOI

  • Both points remain underexplored in the literature, specifically in relation to non-religious refugees, and would be a fruitful area for further study.

    Conceptualising Identity Transformations of the Apostate Refugee through Un/Learning · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research should examine the role and strategies of nonstate actors in other domains (of the law and beyond) and how they shape the lives of everyday subjects.

    Lawyers as domestic counselors: Curating legitimate immigrant families · 2026 · DOI

  • The Greek Council for Refugees believes that these reports should be examined thoroughly and verified for accuracy and that all practices which violate national and international law and are not in compliance with the democratic rule of law in Europe should cease in the future.

    Pushbacks in Greece as enemy under-criminalization · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research should examine closely how digital identity systems and artificial intelligence will shape the next generation of citizenship procedures.

    Genealogy and Law Without Borders: Comparative Nationality Regimes and the Global Circulation of Descent · 2026 · DOI

  • The cultural adaptation of displaced populations in host nations is a critical yet under-researched aspect of African community development, particularly concerning the resilience strategies employed by migrant communities within the continent.

    Navigating Displacement: Cultural Adaptation and Resilience among Migrant Communities in Uganda, 2021–2026 · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research should examine the lived experiences of migrants to provide a more comprehensive understanding.

    Settlement service provision and social capital among humanitarian migrants in Australia: a service provider perspective · 2025 · DOI

  • Yet it remains unclear whether European publics agree on what share of protection responsibilities each country should take and which principles should guide that allocation.

    Fair enough? Citizens’ preferences on refugee distribution in the EU · 2026 · DOI

  • It highlights the need to distinguish between remigration and integration or reimmigration.

    Italy's "Complementary Protection" Debate: Why "Integration or ReImmigration" Is Not the Same as "Remigration" · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research should further explore the concept of neo-ethnicisation and its implications for the governance of citizenship by investment programmes. Future research should examine the impact of the EU's governance of citizenship by investment programmes on the rights of individuals and the concept of citizenship.

    Neo-Ethnicisation of Citizenship: The EU’s Internal and External Governance of Citizenship by Investment · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a gap in the literature on the EU's governance of citizenship by investment programmes, particularly in relation to the concept of neo-ethnicisation. The existing literature on citizenship by investment programmes does not fully capture the complexities of the EU's governance of these programmes.

    Neo-Ethnicisation of Citizenship: The EU’s Internal and External Governance of Citizenship by Investment · 2026 · DOI

  • The major limitation of this study is that the sample comprised refugees mainly from the western part of the country, and only those refugees who were sponsored Immigration by Design: Factors Affecting Ukrainian Refugees’…

    Immigration by Design: Factors Affecting Ukrainian Refugees’ Relocation to the United States · 2026 · DOI

  • Although the exact membership of the organization remains unknown due to the absence of official documents, it is estimated that approximately 80% of the Hmong population in the United States during the 1980s were members of Neo Hom…

    Competing Faces of Citizenship Beyond Naturalization: Hmong Refugees and the Politics of Recognition in the United States After the Vietnam War · 2026 · DOI

  • In doing so, it invites further research on how whiteness acts and helps people negotiate statuses, identities, and belongings not only in London or Paris, but also in places like Sibiu, Sebeș, or the Transylvanian Highlands.

    “For me, Germany is here.” German “Superiority,” Migration, and the Promise of a Better Society in Transylvania, Romania · 2026 · DOI

  • Models with natives as the control group, which yield more mixed results, confirm watermelon effects on income in random-effects specifications.

    The watermelon effect: How immigration policies affect migrant political support · 2026 · DOI

  • This research addresses a critical gap in the literature by generating context-specific knowledge that advances social work…

    A Human Rights-Based Perspective on the Integration Experiences and Vulnerabilities of Zimbabwean Migrants Living in Johannesburg, South Africa · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Migration, Refugees, and Integration

Most recent work

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Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) Important questions remain to be explored regarding what is next for electronic monitoring and data-based surveillance as AI and data analytics become ubiquitous in immigration enforcement (“Extract, Violate, and Scare: Data Mining Tools Take Over the Immigration…”, 2026); (2) Future research may focus on deepening the research of discrimination of post-Soviet migrants in the Central European countries (“Highly Skilled Migration from Post-Soviet Countries to Czechia: Experiences of…”, 2026); (3) Both points remain underexplored in the literature, specifically in relation to non-religious refugees, and would be a fruitful area for further study (“Conceptualising Identity Transformations of the Apostate Refugee through…”, 2026); (4) Future research should examine the role and strategies of nonstate actors in other domains (of the law and beyond) and how they shape the lives of everyday subjects (“Lawyers as domestic counselors: Curating legitimate immigrant families”, 2026); (5) Future research should examine closely how digital identity systems and artificial intelligence will shape the next generation of citizenship procedures (“Genealogy and Law Without Borders: Comparative Nationality Regimes and the…”, 2026). 568 gap statements have been mined from Migration, Refugees, and Integration papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 10,167 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

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