Natural disasters and other impacts of climate change are already affecting migration, but often in complex ways. This episode, we speak with Julia Neusner, a lawyer and researcher with the International Refugee Assistance Project. She has conducted surveys and interviews with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border about whether, where, and how they have experienced climate impacts, and offers some of their stories here. More than 40 percent of respondents said they experienced climate-related disasters, but few said those factors were the primary reason why they moved—offering further evidence of the fact that the linkages between changing climates and migration are not always clearcut.

Immigration has been a central issue for the Biden presidency, with the administration challenged by record levels of arrivals of asylum seekers and other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border while also seeking to modernize the bureaucracy that manages the U.S. immigration system and rebuild a refugee resettlement system that had plunged to a record low under the prior administration. Sharply criticized by both the left and the right for its actions to manage the border—accused of being too hard and too soft—the administration was unable to tame the immigration issue, which became central to the 2024 national elections. This was despite a record number of immigration-related executive actions taken by President Joe Biden and federal agencies, outpacing what had been seen as the most activist presidency yet on immigration under Donald Trump.

Taking office amid a global pandemic that dramatically reshaped human mobility and economies and coming on the heels of an administration that viewed immigration chiefly as a threat, the Biden administration sought to set a new immigration agenda amid a rapidly changing global, regional, and national picture.

How did the administration meet this time of immense challenge? This MPI webinar examines the Biden record on border management, the legal immigration system, refugee resettlement, and other aspects of immigration. It featured findings from a new analysis of the Biden administration’s actions on immigration during its four years.

For the more than 25 million U.S. residents who have limited proficiency in English, language barriers can prevent or hinder access to critical public services such as education, health care, emergency response, and the legal system. Federal, state, and local government agencies also regularly need to communicate with linguistically diverse communities to conduct outreach, deliver services, and provide information. Removing language barriers to public services—commonly known as providing language access—has been a longstanding civil-rights requirement for state and local agencies and other entities that receive federal funding. These realities and growing U.S. linguistic diversity have made the provision of language access an important practical concern for all levels of government.

State governments, in particular, can play important and unique roles in expanding language access given key functions and services they directly oversee, such as elections, policing, and granting drivers’ licenses, as well as the broad powers they hold in receiving and administering funds for numerous federal programs and funding streams.

This webinar from the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy explores language access efforts in Colorado, Michigan, and New York—three states that provide important lessons for ensuring the effectiveness and long-term viability of state laws and policies that seek to ensure public services and information are accessible to all residents, regardless of the language they speak.

State leaders provide insights into how their language access efforts evolved, how they are structured, and innovative approaches undertaken to reduce language barriers across their states. This webinar also previews findings from an MPI report on recent language access work undertaken by Colorado’s state agencies.  

Successive displacement crises over the past decade, combined with limited growth in traditional resettlement, have highlighted the urgent need for alternative legal pathways for people in need of international protection. Civil-society organizations across Europe, often in collaboration with governments and other stakeholders, have launched various refugee sponsorship initiatives and complementary pathway schemes, including education and labor-based programs. While some of these initiatives have reached significant scale, many still struggle to expand.

On this webinar experts explore the steps that can be taken to unlock further growth and overcome obstacles to scaling these initiatives. They also outline the key components necessary for building a robust ecosystem for growth and long-term success, highlighting innovative tools and mechanisms that are driving progress. The event launched an MPI Europe report, Complementary Pathways: Key Factors in Future Growth, which features insights and recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders engaged in expanding legal pathways for people in need of international protection.

This conversation is convened under the Complementary Pathways Network (COMET) Project, which aims to develop a blueprint for complementary pathways in Europe by creating common tools and quality standards for matching, predeparture orientation, reception, and post-arrival support, and by building the capacity of receiving communities. Other COMET Project research and tools can be found at: www.cometnetwork.eu.

Despite the ongoing war and heavy destruction across Ukraine, some of the more than 6 million Ukrainians who fled after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 are already returning to Ukraine.

As of August 2024, an estimated 1 million Ukrainians had returned to their country from abroad, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). While most visit briefly, to see family or tend to their property, others return with the intention of staying permanently.

These actions raise questions for European and Ukrainian policymakers alike about the likely scale and drivers of future returns, and how to adapt their policies to prepare for these movements. For instance, do return intentions vary across host countries, and if so, how? What factors most influence Ukrainian refugees' intentions to return? What role does security in Ukraine play in shaping return decisions? Is more generous host-country support for refugees reducing intentions to return? Finally, what policy measures are necessary to support sustainable return or deeper integration in the host society?

This webinar, resulting from a research collaboration between IOM and MPI Europe, explores how personal circumstances and host-country and home-country conditions shape refugees’ intentions to return or remain abroad. 

A growing body of evidence links climate events such as sea-level rise or droughts to migration—both within and across borders. As climate change amplifies the risks and severity of disasters, policymakers should better understand their options for managing how environmental change interacts with mobility. Held ahead of the COP29 United Nations Climate Change Conference, this webinar offered concrete examples of how governments across the globe can respond to the nexus of climate change and migration.

Speakers discussed priorities on climate migration across a range of policy areas, from labor migration and entrepreneurship, to climate adaptation planning, to humanitarian and development cooperation. 

The discussion drew on a newly released series of MPI policy briefs that chart an agenda for policymakers to manage climate mobility. The briefs tackle questions such as how can governments, international organizations, and philanthropists work most effectively with local communities to design and implement programs to manage climate migration? How can immigrant workers fill jobs and promote innovation and growth in the green economy? What policy and legal tools are available for people displaced across borders by disasters and climate change? And what are the cues that will shape how receiving communities react to the arrival of climate migrants?

Many countries need more workers to fill jobs in clean energy and other sectors that are critical in the fight against a warming planet. Immigrants may be one part of the solution to the challenges posed by climate change. But governments have been slow to ramp up responses to recruit, train, or accredit foreign-born workers necessary for the green transition, with one model estimating a shortage of 7 million green workers globally by 2030. This episode discusses the labor picture and global trends in green sectors with Kate Hooper, a Migration Policy Institute senior policy analyst who focuses on global labor migration.

The international humanitarian protection system that was built in the aftermath of World War II does not offer protection for people displaced by climate change. In this episode, former UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees T. Alexander Aleinikoff, who is now Executive Dean of The New School for Social Research, calls the refugee system “broken.” Rather than expanding to accommodate climate migrants, he makes the case for starting over with a new paradigm focused on a right not to be displaced. Such a system would be designed to help people stay in their homes through climate adaptations and resilience, he argues, and provide a mechanism for seeking justice.

The ways in which people talk about climate migration can affect how individuals are treated. While many activists frame climate migrants as blameless victims of circumstance and even refer to them as “climate refugees,” this approach does not always lead to public sympathy. Moreover, highlighting the role of climate in displacement can unintentionally cause a backlash among host communities, who themselves likely are experiencing or expecting to face similar environmental challenges. In this episode, we speak with Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, who is deputy director of MPI's International Program and our in-house expert on public opinion and migration messaging, about the narratives and public attitudes towards climate migrants.

The Arctic region is warming much faster than other parts of the world. Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—have a reputation for being at the forefront of efforts to combat climate change. But does their track record also extend to helping people who have been displaced by environmental impacts, internally and internationally? In this episode, we discuss the impacts and responses in the Nordic region. Our guests are the researchers Miriam Cullen and Matthew Scott, who are among the leaders of the Nordic Network on Climate Related Displacement and Mobility.