Asylum Update – July 23rd 2008

Research
The House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee has published Community Cohesion and Migration – the results of its inquiry into the effects of migration on local communities and cohesion in England and actions to address these effects.
See also BBC coverage
Integration and Diversity in the UK is a summary of work to date and [...]

Refugees and home country politics

To what extent do refugees and asylum seekers in the UK maintain interest in the political situation ‘back home’? A great deal, if the impassioned contributions from the floor at a recent public debate on the state of the war in Colombia are anything to go by. But research on this question currently appears thin [...]

Asylum Update – 25th June 2008

Research
The UNHCR Statistical Online Population Database  provides data and trends on the “Population of concern to UNHCR” at country, regional, and global levels. Updated along with the recent 2007 Global Trends report, data up to 31 December 2007 can be downloaded.
Structure and Operation of the KhAD/WAD in Afghanistan 1978-1992 is a recent UNHCR Note examining [...]

Asylum Update – 18th June 2008

Research

UNHCR has released its annual report “2007 Global Trends: Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons”, showing refugee numbers rising for second year running.

See also: UNHCR press release, Guardian interview with the High Commissioner, 2007-8 increase in Afghan minors at Dover

The Red Cross have publicized the findings of a survey of British perceptions of refugees [...]

In-country processing in Iraq

The US has begun processing claims for asylum in Bagdad and resettling the successful applicants. This article in the New Yorker tells the story. Before this change in policy, Iraqis that had worked for the US in some capacity had to, like all other displaced Iraqis, flee to neighbouring countries and become embroiled in local [...]

Enforced removal in the US

We have discussed several times on this blog the complexity of removing failed asylum seekers that have exhausted all rights of appeal, particularly to areas of the world where the political conditions or social relations are unstable. While removals is the unpalatable aspect of any functioning asylum system, actually carrying them out runs up against a [...]

Asylum Update – 14th May 2008

Research
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is gathering evidence for its Human Rights Inquiry into how human rights works in Britain. The deadline is 21 June for both employees and users of the public and voluntary sectors to submit evidence.
Journal article: The Human Rights of Failed Asylum Seekers in the United Kingdom by J.A. Sweeney [...]

Iraqi interpreters and resettlement

The Home Office has revealed a resettlement plan for 2,000 Iraqis that had been involved with providing assistance to the British Army over the last five years. This represents some success those campaigning on behalf of these individuals yet the criteria attached to the way in which the resettled will be selected raises questions about [...]

Climate change and migration

This time it is the turn of the EU to offer warnings of the migration effects of climate change. Two senior foreign policy advisors have suggested that Europe needs to brace itself for what the Guardian confusingly calls ‘a new kind of refugee – the environmental migrant’.
I have discussed at length the legal complexity and [...]

Refuge in Israel

This article provides further insight into the situation of sub-Saharan African refugees in Israel. We have blogged previously on this issue and the plight of refugees in countries that are both geographically adjacent to asylum-migration routes out of African conflicts but also underdeveloped in terms of service provision and institutional protection for refugees. This leads [...]