How empowering is humanitarian aid in the 21st century? We welcome an expert panel to discuss past and present localisation efforts, and how they affect migration dynamics and community building. What does the future of humanitarian aid look like in the 21st century? How empowering can humanitarian efforts be for the individuals and communities they serve? And is it possible for this work to advance decolonisation in the migration-development sector?

In this episode, recorded in early 2025, we spoke with Danilo Angulo-Molina, MSc alumni in Global Governance and Diplomacy at the University of Oxford, and Ruta Nimkar, Co-Founder of Meraki Labs and DPhil candidate in Migration Studies at COMPAS, about the idea of the localisation of aid and how it contrasts with the image of large international organisations. How does the principle of localisation work in practice? What is the Grand Bargain, and why is it significant in shaping discussions about cross-border migration?

We draw on several project at COMPAS and the University of Oxford’s Department of International Development, including the MIGNEX project that examined the role of aid in migration decision making and found it to be multi-layered.

We also explore research undertaken in Colombia, Iran, Somalia and South Sudan with Meraki Labs to consider how local groups and initiatives can amplify the voices of migrants, often more effectively than national or international aid programmes.

This episode was recorded in early 2025. We would therefore like to acknowledge that the context discussed may since have changed.

In this episode, we explore how patterns of mobility to and from Mexico have changed over time, and how these shifts reflect the growing complexity of migration in the modern world. Mexico is a place of transit. It is a place where settlement, emigration, immigration, and internal displacement occur simultaneously and at an unprecedented scale within Latin America.

However, as both a border between the global North and South and a recipient of increasingly restrictive U.S. migration policies, Mexico also reflects the growing complexity of migration in the modern world and inequality across borders.

In this episode, recorded earlier last year, we spoke with Maria Elena Hernández, Regional Protection Coordinator at the Danish Refugee Council; Mara Tissera Luna, Research Fellow at Georgetown University; and Abril Ríos-Rivera, DPhil candidate in Migration Studies, about the politics of migration across the continent and within Mexico. Together, they discuss how patterns of mobility to and from Mexico have changed over time, and how these shifts reflect the growing complexity of migration in the modern world.

The episode is co-hosted by Jacqueline Broadhead, Director of the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, and Rob McNeil, Deputy Director of The Migration Observatory. You can find out more about the speakers, all of who bring lived experience, below:

Maria Elena Hernández is Regional Protection Coordinator at the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and holds a Master’s degree in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford. Originally a Mexican citizen, she is a humanitarian worker, leading humanitarian protection responses in the Middle East and Asia. Since 2019, she has worked for the DRC to protect the human rights of refugees, migrants, and displaced persons in Latin America.

Abril Ríos-Rivera is a DPhil candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford and an international consultant. Her doctoral research examines how migration experiences transform and expand the agency of women and gender-diverse migrants, investigating how oppressive border regimes and personal life journeys influence migrants’ agency. Abril is also a consultant on forced displacement and refugee well-being in Kenya.

Mara Tissera Luna is an independent researcher focusing on migration and protection in the Americas and currently serves as a Fellow at Georgetown University. She is an international consultant focused on understanding the root causes of forced displacement in Latin America and the Caribbean and improving protection responses for displaced populations (such as children, LGBTQI+ individuals, and women survivors of gender-based violence). 

Should we be optimistic about the future of welcoming in UK cities? In this feature episode, we navigate the policies, practices and perseverance essential to strengthen migrant welcoming and inclusion in the UK. What does it mean for a city to be genuinely welcoming? How can cities foster inclusive attitudes and how do local policies and practices shape the experiences of those who have newly arrived? Is optimism realistic and, ultimately, useful?

In this special episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast, we speak with Jacqueline Broadhead, Director of the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, the knowledge-exchange arm of COMPAS at the University of Oxford. Jacqui highlights that creating welcoming, inclusive cities is not simply an ideal; it is essential for the future of increasingly diverse urban spaces. Yet too often, policy and practice are not grounded in the research and theory needed to make this work meaningful and effective.

How can practitioners and academics bridge this gap? We explore the work of the Global Exchange (GEM) over recent years and take a closer look at the Inclusive Cities project, which applies an interdisciplinary, research-driven framework to explore the work of 12 UK cities and international partners. Together, we ask how cities can best develop and implement welcoming policies, and consider the challenges they face in navigating governance at both local and national levels.

Jacqui’s new book, Welcoming Cities, moves past critique to offer a constructive, action-oriented approach to integration and social cohesion. This conversation provides a preview of what the book offers UK policymakers, regional leaders, and scholars across sociology, political science, migration studies, and urban governance. Welcoming Cities (Bristol University Press, 2025) is available here.

Jacqui Broadhead oversees a wide portfolio of knowledge-exchange and research initiatives that aim to extend and deepen COMPAS’s international contribution to sharing expertise among academics, policymakers, practitioners, civil society, and others in the migration sector. Her work focuses on local government, integration and inclusion, and understanding how place-based narratives can facilitate the shaping of more inclusive communities.

Community, refugees, and urban life: what’s cycling got to do with it? We explore refugee women’s experiences in London through the ESRC Open City initiative and a participatory film with The Bike Project. In this episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast, we explore how mobility, belonging, and everyday urban life intersect in London, and how newcomers reshape the city through movement. Our focus is a participatory, arts-based collaboration with The Bike Project, an NGO that provides refugees with free bicycles. At its core, the initiative asks how movement - both physical and social - can create pathways to belonging, access, and agency for those newly arrived.

The Bike Project’s work is simple yet transformative: bicycles enable refugees to travel independently, connect with services, and build confidence navigating London. But beyond practical utility, cycling becomes an embodied way of claiming space, of becoming visible in the city, and of weaving new rhythms into urban life. Our discussion explores this duality - bikes as both tools of mobility and symbols of presence in urban spaces that are at once open and exclusionary.

We welcome Dr Eda Yazici, Senior Researcher at the University of Bristol, and Professor Michael Keith, Director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) and the PEAK Urban project. Together, they reflect on how collaborative, arts-based approaches can reveal the lived realities of migration and the permeability of the city itself.

The project invited refugee women connected with The Bike Project to co-produce short and long-form films documenting their experiences of arrival and adaptation. These films move beyond representation to highlight how everyday mobilities shape inclusion, resilience, and visibility in the city. Our conversation situates these narratives within wider debates about mobility at multiple scales. From the global journeys of displacement to the intimate routes traced through neighbourhoods and cycle lanes, mobility both enables and constrains urban life. Arts-based collaborations, as this project demonstrates, can shed new light on how these scales intersect and how cities might be reimagined as more open and welcoming.

Listeners can view the films co-created through this initiative online at Cycling Visibilities. Together with the discussion, they offer a powerful insight into the experiences of refugee women cycling through London - making themselves visible, claiming urban space, and reshaping the city in the process.

Who is the anti-migration agenda actually serving, and what are the alternatives? We welcome experts from the six-year-long MIGNEX project, which gathered a range of perspectives to explore questions of migration and global develo Over recent decades, there has been a growing emphasis towards stopping migration to the EU. Policy tools that focus on return and readmission aim to control migration flows from non-EU countries while development aid in countries of origin is oriented towards preventing migration.

Although early days, the aftermath of the European Parliament and UK elections suggest much of the same is yet to come; one case in point being the UK’s announcement to increase aid spending with the aim of reducing migration at source. But what are the (unintended) impacts of a narrow focus on the restriction of migration, on the EU, its member states, and countries of origin? And what implications does this have for migrants themselves?

How does this focus impact other policy agendas or, for instance, the ability to fill EU skills and labour shortages? And ultimately, are these ambitions even realistic? Is the assumption that migration can be prevented reflected in the evidence?

In this episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast, we welcome experts Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Senior Research Fellow and Head Migration and Displacement Hub at the Overseas Development Institute; Leander Kandilige, Associate Professor of Migration Studies at the Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana; and Carlos Vargas Silva, Professor of Migration Studies at COMPAS and a Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford. Together they draw on six years of research conducted with the MIGNEX project which gathered data on the migration-development nexus from across 25 local areas in 10 countries. Now concluded, MIGNEX gathered a range of perspectives to interrogate questions of migration and global development, ultimately asking who is the anti-migration agenda actually working for and what are the alternatives?

In a world obsessed with AI, what are robo-dogs and how are they deployed at border control? With the rise of “crimmigration” across the world, the lines between migration management and criminal law are becoming blurred. The rise of "crimmigration" on a global scale is seeing the lines between migration management and criminal law being blurred, often in an effort to exercise surveillance of people on the move. What does this mean for people at the border? Can border technologies be used for good?

In a world obsessed with artificial intelligence, why have private sector interests and the growing border industrial complex set the stage for new innovations?

Looking at the UK and North America, we examine new legislation and how they can fail to address the high-risk impacts of using technologies for border security and national security purposes to assist in detecting, identifying, apprehending, and removing individuals who are entering illegally. We examine how AI used at the border intersects with racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, and question if the COVID-19 pandemic has normalised widespread surveillance through data collection and movement tracking.

In this episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast, we welcome Petra Molnar, Harvard Faculty Associate, lawyer, anthropologist, and author of the forthcoming book The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence; and Dr Peter Walsh, Senior Researcher at The Migration Observatory and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford. We explore how border technologies impact every aspect of migration – from robo-dogs and DNA collection, to algorithms and iris recognition – to reveal the human issues beyond the digital frontier.

What does migration have to do with missionary work? We explore how Baptist and Presbyterian missionary work as socioreligious institutions have impacted and influenced mobility in Northeast India, both pre- and post-colonialism. What does migration have to do with missionary work? How do socioreligious collective institutions (Baptist and Presbyterian missionary work) and indigenous religious cosmologies impinge on the youth of Northeast India? As they leave home and embark on arduous journeys in search of employment and education in different parts of India, we discuss how migration is experienced not just as a singular or individual experience but also as a relational experience as identities of young migrant students are mediated by community-based organisations which represent and look out for them in Delhi. What role does religio-cultural groups play in supporting migrant youth? How do relationships and friendships amongst young individuals emerge within collective spaces?

In this episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast, we question how the term ‘migrant’ gets recast in light of changing sociopolitical dynamics in Northeast India. Examining contested land claims, histories of militarization and entangled ethnic and clan relationalities, we explore the impact of missionary interventions and the struggles for citizenship in the context of Mizoram, Nagaland, and Assam.

We welcome experts Dr. Zarzosanga Pachuau, Government Serchhip College, Mizoram; Dr. Tiatemsu Longkumer, Anthropology Department of the Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan; and Shivangi Kaushik, PhD candidate at Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Colonial and post-independence cartographic redrawing of the region continues to mediate movements of communities and individuals both within the Northeast and beyond. As individuals who have lived their lives in the region, they seek to connect mobilisations of identities back home and the entangled histories and movements that can be drawn from Mizoram, Nagaland and Assam.

Geopolitics, irregular movement, the rise of the far-right: these are just some of the buzzwords populating your morning news headlines. But where is the relationship between Europe and the U.S. heading? What are the implications for immigration policy? In this episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast we host a timely discussion on the shifting political landscapes in Germany and the United States, as both nations grapple with pre- and post-election changes that are reshaping approaches to immigration policy.

Germany’s Hesse and Bavaria provincial elections in 2023 have seen significant gains for the political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), expanding far-right influences beyond their traditional stronghold in eastern Germany. We explore how this surge has prompted mainstream parties to reconsider their stance on immigration, with the Green Party, currently a coalition partner in the national government, also signalling a potential shift towards stricter policies. As Germany continues to grapple with its immigration policies, what does this mean for the federal elections of February 2025 and beyond? If tighter border controls and expedited deportation processes are implemented across Germany, what might this mean in real time?

Looking to the United States, the recent presidential election of Donald Trump has thrown the future of U.S. global leadership into doubt, with questions of immigration policy at the helm of his administration. We discuss the implications of Trump's return for U.S. immigration policy, labour shortages and migratory routes. How is this affecting international agreements? What are the broader effects on EU-wide policies and transatlantic relations, especially between Germany and the U.S.?

We welcome Tarik Abou-Chadi, Professor of European Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations and Nuffield College; and Naika Foroutan, Professor at the Institute for Social Sciences (ISW) at Humboldt Universität, Berlin, and Director of Germany’s Federal Center of Migration research (DeZIM) to this episode. Guided by our experts, the conversation explores potential future scenarios for immigration policy in both countries, considering the gravitational pull towards right-wing politics in 2025. This episode was pitched by Dr Gokce Yurdakul and is supported by the Berlin University Alliance's Oxford-Berlin Research exchange between The Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford and the Berlin Institute for Migration and Integration Research (BIM).

Note: This episode was recorded on January 21 2025, and reflects the policies and political landscape as they stood at that time.

What does migration sound like? Migration Sounds features 120 sounds of migration across 51 countries from Argentina to Australia, with personal stories from diaspora communities and people who have migrated all over the world. Note: The sound at the beginning may seem like static, but it's intentional - don’t adjust your headphones!

In this special episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast marking the end of our 2024 series, we turn the microphone to Migration Sounds. A partnership between global sound project Cities and Memory and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, Migration Sounds is the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.

Migration Sounds features 120 sounds and stories of migration across 51 countries from Argentina to Australia, with personal stories from diaspora communities and people who have migrated all over the world. Every recording within the project’s digital library tells a story about the experience of migration - but Migration Sounds didn’t stop there. Each sound has been reimagined by an artist to create a brand-new composition that responds creatively to the original, offering a different perspective to each compelling story. How did the project begin? Where has it taken us?

We welcome Stuart Fowkes, a sound artist and field recordist from Oxford and the founder of Cities and Memory and Rob McNeil, Deputy Director of The Migration Observatory based at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). Hosted by Delphine Boagey, Communications Officer (COMPAS), the trio team discuss the efforts of curating this audio-based project in anticipation of the project’s 3-day pop-up installation amplified in the Pitt Rivers Museum and the roundtable panel event held during the installation.

We consider the project situated in wider research, teaching and communications of the University and city of Oxford, and invite listeners to question what migration sounds mean to them.

What does migration sound like? Migration Sounds features 120 sounds of migration across 51 countries from Argentina to Australia, with personal stories from diaspora communities and people who have migrated all over the world. Note: The sound at the beginning may seem like static, but it's intentional - don’t adjust your headphones!

In this special episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast marking the end of our 2024 series, we turn the microphone to Migration Sounds. A partnership between global sound project Cities and Memory and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, Migration Sounds is the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.

Migration Sounds features 120 sounds and stories of migration across 51 countries from Argentina to Australia, with personal stories from diaspora communities and people who have migrated all over the world. Every recording within the project’s digital library tells a story about the experience of migration - but Migration Sounds didn’t stop there. Each sound has been reimagined by an artist to create a brand-new composition that responds creatively to the original, offering a different perspective to each compelling story. How did the project begin? Where has it taken us?

We welcome Stuart Fowkes, a sound artist and field recordist from Oxford and the founder of Cities and Memory and Rob McNeil, Deputy Director of The Migration Observatory based at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). Hosted by Delphine Boagey, Communications Officer (COMPAS), the trio team discuss the efforts of curating this audio-based project in anticipation of the project’s 3-day pop-up installation amplified in the Pitt Rivers Museum and the roundtable panel event held during the installation.

We consider the project situated in wider research, teaching and communications of the University and city of Oxford, and invite listeners to question what migration sounds mean to them.