Climate change is driving and altering migration in a variety of ways. Patterns of human movement often differ in the face of fast-moving environmental disasters such as floods and wildfires, versus slow-onset changes including extreme heat, drought, and sea-level rise. Other factors, including the resilience of a community’s infrastructure and their dependence on agricultural livelihoods, can help determine whether, when, and how people migrate. 

At the same time, leaving home can be a way for individuals to adapt to a more precarious climate. The money that migrants earn and send back can help families and communities invest in defenses against changing climates and ultimately help them stay in place long term. As the effects of climate change increase globally in the coming years, the ramifications for human migration—as well as forced immobility—will only grow. 

On this webinar, speakers discuss on-the-ground experiences of climate change and migration in East Africa, South Asia, and other global contexts.

Speakers:

Opening Remarks:  Andrew Selee, President, MPI

Moderator:  Lawrence Huang, Policy Analyst, MPI 

www.migrationpolicy.org

Africa may be the most climate-vulnerable region of the world, with drought, extreme heat and storms, and other impacts affecting millions across the continent. These environmental events have forced people from their homes and in some cases even contributed to conflict between different groups. By far, most climate-affected individuals who migrate stay either within their own country or go elsewhere on the continent, rather than migrating beyond Africa.

How prepared is the continent for a future of increased displacement? Governments are making some strides to accommodate displaced people—although there is often a gap between official rhetoric and the realities on the ground. This episode discusses climate-linked migration issues across Africa with Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo, a senior research consultant at the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies.

During the first year of his second term, President Donald Trump and his administration moved to enact sweeping changes to all corners of the U.S. immigration system. A mass deportations campaign that touched cities across the United States with an unprecedented show of force. Pause to refugee resettlement and asylum case processing. Bans and restrictions on legal immigration from 39 countries. Creation of a Trump “gold card” for wealthy individuals. And a repointing that forced immigration to the top of the foreign policy agenda with many countries.

Collectively, the administration’s actions and the resulting impacts on individuals, U.S. communities, job sectors, and the perception of the United States globally will be felt for years, if not decades, to come.

On this webinar, MPI analysts and a veteran journalist assess the actions taken during the administration’s first year back in office, sifting through what is signal and what is noise. They detail the legal picture and analyze the actual effects of the most consequential policy agenda that has been advanced in decades, including its effects on the labor market, U.S. communities, and future immigration to the United States. The conversation accompanied the release of a new analysis of the immigration actions taken during the first year of the second Trump term: Unleashing Power in New Ways: Immigration in the First Year of Trump 2.0

Speakers include: 

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, Policy Analyst, MPI

Muzaffar Chishti, Senior Fellow, MPI

Doris Meissner, Senior Fellow and Director, U.S. Immigration Policy Program, MPI

Nick Miroff, Staff Writer covering immigration, The Atlantic

Counselling and reintegration assistance have become central tools for European governments aiming to incentivize and support the uptake of assisted return among migrants facing a return order. In recent years, the European Union has allocated more resources to strengthening these mechanisms, and Dutch policymakers have similarly undertaken efforts to encourage assisted return. Yet the actual influence of actions on migrants’ return decisions remains widely debated. New evidence from the Netherlands offers a clearer picture of how these forms of support function in practice, what shapes migrants’ decision-making, and what kinds of interventions make a meaningful difference.

This Migration Policy Institute Europe webinar explores the findings of its study for the Research and Data Centre (WODC) of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. The study analyses nearly 118,000 case files from the Dutch Government’s Repatriation and Departure Service (DTenV), combined with interviews with dozens of experts as well as Iraqi and Nigerian migrants who left the Netherlands after receiving a return order. 

Speakers discuss how timing, counselling approaches, and partnerships shape the potential for counselling to create space for meaningful conversation and results in the returns space. They also focus on practical steps to strengthen investments in this area. 

Speakers include: 

Moderator: Camille Le Coz, Director, MPI Europe

More information: www.migrationpolicy.org

Related Report: To Leave or Stay? Examining the Role of Counseling and Reintegration Assistance in the Return Decision-Making of Migrants Ordered to Leave the Netherlands

Foreign aid budgets have been slashed significantly by governments in the United States, Europe, and beyond, raising questions about what humanitarian assistance will look like in practice. Recent and abrupt funding cuts by major donors are already affecting refugee-hosting countries, where resources were strained even before these changes.

In this episode of World of Migration, host Lawrence Huang speaks with Micheal Gumisiriza, a program lead based in southwest Uganda for COHERE, an international NGO that works with refugee-led organizations, about how funding cuts by international donors are being felt on the ground—from food assistance and access to essential medicines to education. They discuss what the immediate impacts reveal about the humanitarian system’s capacity under pressure, and what “localization” could realistically mean as humanitarian response efforts adjust to a period of shrinking resources.

It is not guaranteed that someone harmed by a natural disaster or other environmental change will leave their home. A complicated web of factors affects whether climate-vulnerable individuals want to—or even can—move. One of these factors is financial: How much money or other resources someone has at their disposal.

In this episode, we speak with Kelsea Best of The Ohio State University about climate (im)mobility and the economic and other factors that help shape futures amid changing climates. We also discuss the notion of “climate gentrification,” which occurs when wealthier people move into traditionally lower-income neighborhoods that are better shielded from natural disasters and other environmental harms.

Europe’s demand for workers is growing across a wide range of skill levels, with more than three-quarters of small- and medium-sized enterprises struggling to find workers with the right skills. Meeting these labor needs will be essential to sustaining economic growth and competitiveness yet will prove even more challenging as workforces shrink and the digital and green transitions reshape which skills are most valued. At the same time, countries worldwide are competing to attract talent in critical sectors such as health care and construction, making it more important than ever that strategies to attract workers are designed to benefit both migrant-receiving and sending countries. 

To ensure that labor migration works for everyone involved, the European Union has promoted a "quadruple win" approach, aiming to benefit employers, workers, and sending and receiving countries. In addition to targeted mobility partnerships with sending countries, European governments are expressing a broader interest in the lessons from existing labor migration corridors to expand opportunities for partnerships that combine support for the movement of talent with investments in local skills development. 

This webinar features discussion of a study by the Migration Policy Institute and MPI Europe, commissioned by the European Commission, which examines best practices for designing and managing labor migration corridors between EU Member States and partner countries. Experts discuss findings from the research, which examines the Bangladesh-Portugal, India-Germany, Peru-Italy, Senegal-Spain, and Vietnam-Hungary corridors and offers insights on how to connect employers and workers, promote skills development, protect migrant workers, and maximize benefits for countries of origin and destination alike.

Report is available at:  https://bit.ly/migrationcorridorsEU

More information is available at: www.migrationpolicy.org

Backlogs in the nation’s immigration courts have reached record levels in recent years, with nearly 4 million removals cases pending—adding new pressures to longstanding challenges that have overwhelmed the courts. With it now taking an average of four years for an asylum applicant to get a hearing, the delays are undermining the goals of both the U.S. asylum and immigration enforcement systems.

This discussion draws on an MPI policy brief that examines how the immigration courts have reached a point of crisis, with panelists focusing on how the courts have been shaped by the policies of the current administration and its predecessor.

The conversation also touched upon the administrative and legislative reforms that are urgently needed to transform the system, key among them increased funding for the courts, commensurate with the historic spending on immigration enforcement included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

Speakers: 

Report available at https://bit.ly/immig-courts

More information at www.migrationpolicy.org 

Children are especially vulnerable to displacement linked to climate change. Each year, millions of young people are displaced by weather-related disasters, as schools and other services break down and adults send children away to find safety. Forced from their homes, children often face new challenges, including being unable to access education or medical care, and even heightened risk of violence and other dangers. Despite the unique challenges that children face in displacement, there are relatively few international laws or systems particularly designed to assist those forced to move because of environmental factors. We speak with UNICEF’s Laura Healy about this reality and the opportunities to better protect children in a warming world.

Within the next few decades, rising sea levels could wipe some small Pacific Island nations off the face of the earth. The prospect that the physical territory of countries such as Kiribati and Tuvalu is no longer habitable raises the prospect that their nationals could lose their citizenship, becoming stateless. It also poses profound questions for international law and the obligations of other countries.

How likely is this possible outcome, and what can countries do to protect their sovereignty and their citizens? Join our discussion with Mark Nevitt, an international law scholar at the Emory University School of Law.