Open research questions in Migration, Refugees, and Integration

What the literature leaves open

• Future research should examine how the 2025 framework is implemented across municipalities, how migrants experience assessment and integration plans, and whether social, cultural and well-being-related support differs by region, immigra- tion pathway, gender, family situation or language background.

  Broad in legal scope, selective in policy design: a five-dimensional document analysis of Finland’s 2025 integration reform · 2026 · DOI

• Some constraints attempted to limit the generalisability of the study's results; however, these were effectively mitigated. The study provides significant insights into the gendered governance of migration along the Nigeria-Libya-Europe route. Despite the considerable distance involved, primary data for the research were gathered through open-ended questionnaires and key informant interviews, which are well-suited to qualitative case study research. Traumatised returnees, or survivors, were excluded from participation to prevent re-traumatisation or exacerbation of post-traumatic stress disorder. Only consented returnees/survivors participated, alongside government officials, relevant migration institutions, and other stakeholders. The scope of the study is extensive, encompassing transnational and intercontinental contexts. Consequently, logistical challenges, particularly financial constraints, emerged; however, the study successfully addresses these issues while maintaining its quality. Collecting data in Libya was complicated due to the country's security situation, leading to the adoption of online qualitative questionnaires and telephone interviews as viable alternatives, which proved effective in yielding robust data from participants in Libya.

  Mobility risks and the gender questions in migration governance: Refocusing the Nigeria-Libya-Europe route · 2026 · DOI

• While this study offers significant insights into passport discrimination, there are few limitations. The sample was limited and purposively chosen with constrained diversity of experiences, memory issues, influence of social desirability and personal interpretations, subjective and self-reported data. The experiences of individuals from various countries, socio-cultural and immigration statuses may not be fully captured. Also, the study focuses on passport discrimina- tion faced in Western countries lacking generalizability to other regions.

  Paradox of Passports Privileges and Prejudices: Unfolding the Socio-political Dimensions and Typology of Global Discrimination Across Nationalities, Identity, Status, and Power · 2026 · DOI

• Future research can expand the scope of the study geograph- ically, by including non-Western countries, diverse racial and ethnic groups, and employ quantitative research to offer explanation of phenomenon on a global scale. Longitudinal studies can identify how passport discrimination evolves over time and its long-term socio-economic outcomes. Cross-cultural and comparative studies could compare passport discrimination with other forms of discrimination and experiences of individuals from various racial/ethnic groups and countries, e.g., Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa. Quantitative research such as surveys, experi- ments, and analysis of foreign employment and immigration data can provide generalizable findings on causes, effects, and outcomes of passport discrimination on a larger scale. Policy and action research could evaluate the design and effectiveness of policies and practices aimed at reducing passport discrimination. With the onset of digital identities and e-passports, future research may explore the impact of new technologies and digital mobility frameworks on pass- port discrimination and global mobility.

  Paradox of Passports Privileges and Prejudices: Unfolding the Socio-political Dimensions and Typology of Global Discrimination Across Nationalities, Identity, Status, and Power · 2026 · DOI

• Notwithstanding insights from this scoping review, some methodological shortcom- ings need to be considered. While study quality assessment was not required by the JBI methodology on scoping reviews (Peters et al., 2020), not considering it might have resulted in bias cumulation across the included studies (Paré & Kitsiou, 2017). The descriptive approach we adopted might have mitigated such risk though. Furthermore, this review did not highlight the extent to which different factors contribute to migrant integration, which could have enabled prioritization of the emphasis that migration policies need to place on different factors. The undifferentiated inclusion of qualitative and quantitative studies furtherly complicated such an assessment. Indeed, quantitative and qualitative study designs evaluate a factor’s influence on a given phenomenon dif- ferently (Noyes et al., 2019). Therefore, it would be preferable for literature reviews to distinguish the influences shown by prior studies according to their research design, to avoid confusing their type of impact. In this scoping review, however, a thematic cat- egorization of factors was preferred to optimize their potential operationalization and transferability to migrants’ everyday life situations.

  Informing Integration Policies Through Research: A Scoping Literature Review on Factors Influencing Migrants’ Integration in Switzerland · 2026 · DOI

• Politically, issues of cultural diversity, community cohesion and nuisance and distressing behaviour are often linked (Collic-Peisker and Robertson, 2014), however, despite this, there has been limited research linking these two issues.

  “We know we are outsiders”: migrant experiences of antisocial behaviour victimisation · 2026

• This study presents a critical interpretation of hospitality in crisis by concentrating on food insecurity resulting from government and non-government food policies in England, that are inhospitable towards forced migrants – contributing to an area of enquiry with limited research in food and hospitality studies.

  Hospitality in Crisis: Deciphering Food Insecurity Among Migrants from a Derridean Perspective · 2026

• First, we will focus on the trends of pacification and conflictualisation of borders at the global and African level; Second, we will return to the historical conditions of formation of African borders and subsequent developments which are certainly determining due to colonial divisions and societal fractures; however, they remain insufficient to explain the perpetuation of forced migrations after independence.

  Contemporary genealogy of forced displacement in Africa in the light of border conflicts · 2025 · DOI

• The study covers new empirical ground regarding how and why EU Member States govern migration within a free movement space and the understudied politics of emigration and return.

  Please come back! How and why European governments try to reattract emigrated citizens · 2025 · DOI

• However, state approaches to the recognition of victims of domestic trafficking via administrative procedures and in judicial proceedings have not been analysed in the literature, warranting an inquiry into the determinants of inclusion of exploitation of citizens onto national anti-trafficking agendas.

  Citizens as victims of human trafficking: Approaches to domestic trafficking in Spain, Ukraine and the United Kingdom · 2025 · DOI

• DeGooyer thus makes a case for the long eighteenth century as a crucial and understudied period for theorizing voluntary allegiance, positioned between earlier modes of allegiance and the increasingly rigid allegiances of the nation state in the nineteenth century.

  Denaturalizing Naturalization · 2025 · DOI

• Already a notion defined in myriad ways, yet still suffering from an utter lack of consensus around what it actually means, is and does, integration was thrust into European public and policy discussions after the "death" of European multiculturalism -a problematic narrative that has endured despite Schinkel's (2013;2017;2018;2019) admirable correctives.

  Editorial: Exploring the links between social connections, care and integration · 2024 · DOI

• Abstract Can changing how refugees and asylum seekers are narrated in public debates help citizens reassess their prejudices? Which narratives would garner support from ordinary citizens and promise to generate an attitude shift? While hate speech and far-right narratives targeting forcibly displaced people, refugees and asylum seekers are reported extensively, little is known about how citizens would respond to alternative narratives that portray them as rights-bearing agents.

  Overcoming prejudices and stigmatization towards refugees: A novel approach through deliberative citizen dialogues in Turkey · 2024 · DOI

• On the other hand, the ability to conduct screening and preliminary identification of victims of trafficking among asylum seekers is still limited to the “victim model” in terms of gender (women) and form of exploitation (sexual), and to certain stages of the asylum procedure (the first instance before the asylum authorities).

  Toward effective protection of victims of human trafficking in mixed migration flows: referral mechanisms shaped on individual need. The Italian experience and the European perspective · 2024 · DOI

• If US immigration policing operates, to a large extent, through holes distributed across borders and long‐distance spaces, then any mapping of this power that centers national borders or bounded nation‐states alone is insufficient.

  Immigration Policing as Holey War: Rings of Connection, Deadly Gaps, and State Loopholes in the Struggle for Asylum · 2023 · DOI

• However, the status of SSA women and girls remains uncertain while they are subjected to medical examination and the application range of PSG could be reconsidered.

  Female genital mutilation/cutting as a ground for asylum in France · 2023 · DOI

• Despite a burgeoning literature on refugee integration and a focus on institutional integration programmes, little is known about the early insertion of RAS into informal and precarious employment as an alternative to subsidised integration programmes, when these are available.

  Refugees and asylum seekers in informal and precarious jobs: early labour market insertion from the perspectives of professionals and volunteers · 2023 · DOI

• Nevertheless, publications that relate these three approaches of integration – theoretical, political and statistical – are scarce, primarily due to limited communication between these fields in most countries, a lack of covenant between theoretical, political and methodological concepts and indicators, and the multidimensional and dynamic nature of migrant integration.

  The integration of immigrants: Transitions between research, policy-making and statistical monitoring in the Portuguese case · 2022 · DOI

• It highlights a gap in research about the intersection between humanitarian borderwork and migration management in transit sites, the importance of understanding the particularity of the transit context and the implications of this work for NGOs in general given the growing demands to work in transit sites within migration management schemes.

  Advocates, Implementers or Allies? NGOs between Humanitarian Borderwork and Migration Management in Libya · 2022 · DOI

• Comparing Catholics and non-Catholics before and after the Pope’s visit in a difference-in-differences setting, we show that the papal message persuaded exposed Catholic individuals that EU action on the issue of migration is insufficient.

  The unexpected influencer: Pope Francis and European perceptions of the recent refugee crisis · 2022 · DOI

• Abstract Although Washington state sanctuary policies of 2017 prohibit collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement in noncriminal cases, compliance with sanctuary policies has not been systematically studied.

  The information practices of law enforcement: Passive and active collaboration and its implication for sanctuary laws in Washington state · 2021 · DOI

• Although experiences of discrimination, violation, disrespect, and denial of rights are consistently and repeatedly experienced by visa applicants across time and space, as evident from the literary and non-literary examples discussed in this paper, only limited research exists on how visa law and policy impinge on human rights and dignity.

  Guilty, until Proven Innocent: The Fossilization of Discriminatory Practices in Visa Law and Policy as portrayed in Anna Segher’s <i>Transit</i> and Juan de Recacoechea’s <i>American Visa</i> · 2021 · DOI

• We introduce the concept of biographical circumstance to demonstrate how immigrant participants in a Norwegian labor activation program draw on different references from their personal histories as they make meaning of their labor integration—and how meaning-making is dialectically shaped and delimited by the structural effects of changing policy opportunities, rules, and regulations.

  Taking Time Seriously: Biographical Circumstance and Immigrant Labor Integration Experience · 2021 · DOI

• The arrival of over six million asylum seekers in Europe since 2011 has engendered profound and ongoing governance transformations, which this article examines through the understudied perspective of asylum seekers’ accommodation.

  Deservingness and Uneven Geographies of Asylum Accommodation · 2021 · DOI

• It concerns the understudied yet widespread phenomenon of boredom in the detention centers and other places where people wait several months/years to obtain permits to stay in a given state (EU) and cannot work.

  Strategic Boredom: The Experience and Dynamics of Boredom in Refugee Camp. A Mediterranean Case · 2021 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Migration, Refugees, and Integration

• Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life · Annual Review of Anthropology · 2002 · 2,266 citations
• Bright vs. blurred boundaries: Second-generation assimilation and exclusion in France, Germany, and the United States · Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2004 · 929 citations
• Politicized Places: Explaining Where and When Immigrants Provoke Local Opposition · American Political Science Review · 2010 · 863 citations
• Transnationalization in international migration: implications for the study of citizenship and culture · Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2000 · 580 citations
• The Configuration of Symbolic Boundaries against Immigrants in Europe · American Sociological Review · 2008 · 342 citations
• The Effectiveness of Immigration Policies · Population and Development Review · 2013 · 329 citations
• Challenging the Liberal Nation‐State? Postnationalism, Multiculturalism, and the Collective Claims Making of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Britain and Germany · American Journal of Sociology · 1999 · 251 citations
• Contact versus Exposure: Refugee Presence and Voting for the Far Right · The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2020 · 204 citations
• The UK’s hostile environment: Deputising immigration control · Critical Social Policy · 2021 · 166 citations
• The Mexican State and Transmigrant Organizations: Negotiating the Boundaries of Membership and Participation · Latin American Research Review · 2002 · 160 citations

Most recent work

• The Physical and the Passable: Immigrant Anxiety, Fulbright Becoming, and the Invisible Trials of the Ordinary Body · Culture Studies &#x2194 Critical Methodologies · 2026
• Where Now for Migration Studies? Problems, Purpose and Potential · Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie · 2026
• Extracting care from women on the move: Nuances of exploitation in bordering and marketized care in the EU · Economy and Society · 2026
• An Endogenous ‘Refugee Crisis’: Exploring Frame Drain and Emerging Conflicts in Migration Politics · JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies · 2026
• Neo-Ethnicisation of Citizenship: The EU’s Internal and External Governance of Citizenship by Investment · Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences · 2026
• Deportation by Design: How Political Entrepreneurs Engineered Crime-Based Deportation in the United States · Polity · 2026
• A Migration Studies Manifesto? · Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie · 2026
• From Impact to Abolition: For an Unruly Migration Studies · Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie · 2026
• Searching for Hope in Nativist Times · Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie · 2026
• Host state’s policy and institutional challenges in addressing transnational repression within their borders: the case of the Egyptian diaspora in the UK · Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2026

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