By Györgyi Mácsai and Maria-Margarita Mentzelopoulou

Child migration takes many forms, from family reunification and moving in the hope of finding a better life to forced and traumatic migration caused by conflict, poverty or climate change. Overall, the number of migrant children has been rising globally since the turn of the century. In 2020, there were an estimated 35.5 million international migrant children globally, the largest number ever recorded. This infographic focuses exclusively on forced and irregular movements of migrant children to the EU. According to Eurostat, on 1 January 2023 around 7.4 million children in the EU under the age of 18 did not have the citizenship of their country of residence.

  Brussels: EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service, 2024. 6p.

By Alexandra Gannoni and Samantha Bricknell

The Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery National Minimum Dataset (HTMS NMDS) is a national data collection on suspected victim‑survivors and perpetrators of modern slavery in Australia. This report describes the findings of the HTMS NMDS pilot data collection, conducted over six months from 1 July to 31 December 2022.  

Statistical Report no. 48. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.2024. 41p.

Edited by Santino Regilme, Salvador F.

More than three decades have passed since the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, yet children's rights and dignity still confront profound challenges worldwide. This book delves deep into this complex issue, meticulously examining the causes and consequences of contemporary crises in children's rights and welfare. Distinguishing itself from conventional literature and public discourse on human rights, this multidisciplinary volume offers an unparalleled global and interdisciplinary perspective. It defies traditional disciplinary boundaries, embracing an analytically eclectic and interdisciplinary approach to comprehending the intricate challenges faced by children today. This book wholeheartedly acknowledges that the issues affecting children are intricately interwoven within an intricate web of social, cultural, and historical factors, thereby requiring a holistic and problem-centric viewpoint. Far from the mainstream narrative, this anthology spotlights the frequently overlooked crises in children's rights, bringing to light those thematic and policy blind spots that have languished in obscurity. It champions an unyielding global and transnational outlook, recognizing that the contemporary predicaments confronting children are not solely products of local or national influences but are profoundly shaped by the forces and interactions of a global scale. This book uniquely contributes to children's rights scholarship by exploring children's rights and dignity through a broader lens, emphasizing the impact of politics, culture, social conflicts, and geographic variations. This timely and indispensable work serves as an invaluable resource for scholars, policymakers, and advocates dedicated to advancing the cause of children's rights on the grand stage of global governance.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2024.

By Michael Krennerich

The book offers a comprehensive and clear introduction for students and those interested in human rights, written by a renowned human rights expert. It not only provides an introduction to the diversity of issues, actors, and institutions in human rights policy and politics but also offers assistance and suggestions on how the complex reality of human rights politics can be described and analyzed with the help of political science and related disciplines. It deals with civil society engagement in human rights as well as state obligations and international efforts to protect human rights. This is an open-access book.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2024. 180p.

By Sotoudeh, Nasrin

The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal, presented by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. Nasrin Sotoudeh is an Iranian lawyer and human rights activist who has been called "Iran's Nelson Mandela." Sotoudeh is a longtime opponent of the death penalty, an advocate of improving imprisonment health conditions, and an activist dedicated to fighting for the rights of women, children, religious and ethnic minorities, journalists and artists, and those facing execution. As a result of her advocacy, Sotoudeh has been repeatedly imprisoned by the Iranian government for crimes against the state; she served one sentence from 2010 to 2013 and was sentenced again in 2018 to thirty-eight years and six months in prison and 148 lashes. Her work has been featured in the 2020 documentary Nasrin, by filmmakers Jeff Kaufman and Marcia S. Ross. For this important work, she is the recipient of the 2023 Brown Democracy Medal from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, marking the award's tenth year.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023. 83p.

By U.S. Department of Justice,  Office of Justice Programs,  Bureau of Justice Statistics

This report details ongoing and completed efforts to measure and analyze the nationwide incidence of human trafficking, to describe characteristics of human trafficking victims and offenders, and to describe criminal justice responses to human trafficking offenses. The report provides information on human trafficking investigated and prosecuted by U.S. attorneys, human trafficking defendants convicted and sentenced to federal prison, and admissions to state prison for human trafficking.

Highlights

• A total of 1,912 persons were referred to U.S. attorneys for human trafficking offenses in fiscal year 2022, a 26% increase from the 1,519 persons referred in 2012.  

• The number of persons prosecuted for human trafficking more than doubled from 2012 to 2022 (from 805 to 1,656 persons). The number of persons convicted of a human trafficking offense increased from 578 persons in 2012 to 1,118 persons in 2022. 

• Of the 1,070 defendants charged with any of the three types of human trafficking offenses in U.S. district court in fiscal year 2022, 91% were male, 58% were white, 20% were black, 18% were Hispanic, 95% were U.S. citizens, and 71% had no prior convictions. 

• Of the 203 defendants charged with peonage, slavery, forced labor, and sex trafficking, 69% were male and 53% were black. In comparison, of the 523 defendants charged with sexual exploitation and other abuse of children, 94% were male and 71% were white.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics 2024. 7p.   

By John Power,  Sean Phillips, Stuart Carroll

The scale and volume of challenges facing the new ministerial team at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) necessitates a significant turnaround operation to enhance NHS productivity and performance. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care used his first public statement to reflect that “the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken”. Amid operational pressures (including long waits for care), poor patient satisfaction (at its lowest levels since the early 1980s), high-profile cases of abuse and anaemic productivity growth since the pandemic, the way that the NHS is managed and led is back firmly in the spotlight. The work of managers – particularly non-clinical, operational managers – working across the NHS is often invisible to the public, but touches almost every aspect of health and care delivery from the implementation of electronic patient records and upgrading the hospital estate to planning rotas for doctors and nurses. Yet the present debate concerning health and care management is often driven by a weak or anecdotal evidential basis. In a recent interview, the Health Secretary reflected he was “unconvinced by the majority of research…which suggests the NHS is under-managed”. A recent study concludes that “there is little existing evidence to support either this narrative or counterclaims.” As the 2015 Smith Review noted, management capacity and capability is “under examined” in healthcare planning. Politicians (of all stripes) alongside commentators in the media have in recent years blamed poor performance on “NHS managers”, whilst holding more positive opinions about “front line” staff. A recent analysis from the Policy Unit at King’s College London reveals half of the public believe there are “too many managers in the NHS”.. Some healthcare professionals also reflect this view, perceiving non-clinical managers to be a challenge to professional autonomy and authority. In the public policy debate, too much emphasis is placed on discussion about the volume of managers working in the NHS: the narrative that either simply expanding the headline numbers of ‘managers’ or in scaling back a ‘bloated bureaucracy’ will deliver the necessary service improvement and efficiency gains. A greater focus on management capability is needed, as is a deeper understanding of the permissions and incentives which enable or inhibit improved performance and productivity. We also need to re are employed between NHS England (NHSE) and DHSC. In addition to this, the recently-published Independent Review of NHS Performance, authored by Lord Darzi, finds that “regulatory type organisations now employ some 7,000 staff, or 35 per provider trust, having doubled in size over the past 20 years”. The “right balance of management resources in different parts of the structure” is needed, he concludes. Such an assessment must not fix its attention solely upon the management of hospitals (as important as this is) but must also consider the requirements of the healthcare system as a whole – particularly primary and community healthcare services whose management and leadership requirements are less frequently discussed in policy debates, but where expectations for the transformation of services are great and there are unique challenges and circumstances to be addressed given these are far more devolved and dispersed care settings. Moreover, we should not solely investigate roles, but must also consider the architecture and “organisational culture” which influences activity within the NHS as well as the NHS’s interaction with Government departments and arms-length bodies. The focus and purpose of this report, therefore, is two-fold: 1. Firstly, to present a more detailed portrait of the state of NHS management today to inform the discussion around about future reform. How is management distributed across the country and across organisations? Would a greater volume of managers overall deliver improved performance? Are there particular skillsets we are lacking? 2. Secondly, to set out the case for change and to make a series of recommendations for reform.  

London: Policy Exchange, 2024. 62p.

By Vinícius Venancio

Inspired by Lélia Gonzalez’s essay “Racism and Sexism in Brazilian Culture”, this working paper turns to another post-colonial nation, Cape Verde, and analyzes two case studies that shed light upon how the intersection between race and gender produces specific forms of violence in the bodies and souls of men and women from continental Africa living in the capital, Praia. The first case examines personal stories of young women who are exploited for their domestic labor; while their relationship with their employer is presented using the discourse of kinship, their situation is more akin to slavery. The second case looks at attacks on and murder of Bissau-Guinean men; the brutality of the violence and the lack of public attention demonstrate how some lives are considered more valuable than others. Both cases illustrate the degree to which race and gender continue to operate as social markers of domination in the lives of immigrant populations who are seen as blacker than the locals in Cape Verde.

Working Papers v. 213 (2024): 1-24.

By Andrea Nichols and  Erin Heil

The current academic discourse examining human trafficking is lacking in focus on survivors with a disability. The increased likelihood of abuse experienced by people with a disability is well documented in the research literature, and a small body of research indicates heightened sex trafficking victimization of minor girls with a disability. Yet, very little research specifically examines sex and/or labor trafficking of people with a disability, and no systematic research analyzes prosecuted cases of trafficking with disability as the focal point of analysis. Drawing from a content analysis of 18 federal and 17 state cases of human trafficking, the current study specifically aimed to increase our understandings of sex and labor trafficking involving survivors with a disability. The findings revealed the following patterns and themes: 1) the type of trafficking experienced (sex, labor, or both), 2) whether state level or federal cases 3) the types of disabilities identified among trafficking survivors, 4) the nature of the relationship between traffickers and survivors, 5) methods of recruitment, 6) case outcomes; and 7) demographic characteristics of traffickers and survivors (e.g., gender/citizenship). Implications include prevention efforts in the form of developmentally grounded sex education and healthy relationships curriculum for survivors with an intellectual disability, as well as specialized anti-trafficking training for those in legal, healthcare, and social services that is inclusive of people with a disability  

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 1.

By American Immigration Council

Under United States law, any person who is physically present in the United States or who “arrives” at the border must be given an opportunity to seek asylum. Despite this clear command, in recent years U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) officers stationed at the southern border have turned away thousands of people who come to ports of entry seeking protection, including through a practice known as “metering” (or “queue management”). This has occurred even as officials issued pleas to asylum seekers to go to ports of entry and request asylum, rather than crossing the border between the ports of entry to ask for asylum. Under metering, CBP officers assert a lack of capacity to refuse to inspect and process asylum seekers, requiring them to wait for weeks or months in Mexico just for the opportunity to start the asylum process. This practice began as early as 2016 at certain ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border but its use expanded significantly border-wide during the Trump administration. Metered individuals followed the U.S. government’s instructions to wait to seek asylum without crossing the border between ports of entry but have been left to languish in Mexico indefinitely or return home and abandon their hopes of applying for asylum in the United States.

Washington, DC: American Immigration Council, 2021. 5 p.

By The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, September 2024

This report is authored by the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (Florence Project) a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that was founded in 1989 and provides free legal and social services to adults and unaccompanied children facing immigration removal in Arizona. In 2023, the Florence Project served 17,514 unaccompanied immigrant children detained in federal facilities referred to as shelters in Arizona. This report summarizes 314 complaints made by unaccompanied immigrant children ages 5 to 17 in the span of 15 months about conditions they experienced while in U.S. Border Patrol custody, a subagency of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Children reported experiencing a broad range of abuse and mistreatment, including verbal and physical abuse, hunger, a lack of hygiene products and lack of access to medical care. The report makes concerning findings, including a continuation of severe verbal and physical abuse of children. Nearly 4 in 10 children in this report experienced verbal abuse and 1 in 10 experienced physical abuse. Children reported they were subjected to vile language, derogatory names, and threatened with deportation or jail. Children also reported being pushed, kicked, and punched, and that some agents brandished weapons to instill fear. U.S. law defines unaccompanied immigrant children as persons under 18 who lack lawful immigration status and who do not have a parent or legal guardian in the U.S. available to provide care and physical custody.ii In our decades of experience, unaccompanied immigrant children leave their homes and travel to the U.S. for a variety of reasons, including to seek protection from gang or government warfare, violence within their own home, extreme poverty, and/or to reunify with family. Unaccompanied children are generally apprehended by CBP near the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2002, Congress charged the U.S. Department of Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) with the care and custody of unaccompanied immigrant children in order to comply the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA).iii The FSA requires that unaccompanied children not be placed in adult detention centers and instead must be held in the less restrictive ORR shelters with a prompt process to be placed in the least restrictive setting through reunification with sponsors. In 2008, Congress expanded and codified the rights, including that CBP “shall transfer” an unaccompanied immigrant child to ORR custody “no later than 72 hours” after identifying them.iv Congress understood that CBP, a law enforcement agency, is not equipped to care for children. The Florence Project has long been alarmed by reports of abuse and mistreatment while in Border Patrol custody. We have assisted children in filing hundreds of individual complaints and authored three prior extensive reports in 2009, 2014, and 2022. vi Despite hundreds of complaints about this abuse, the agencies charged with  oversight of CBP have failed to make meaningful change and to stop the ongoing abuse.

Tucson, AZ:  Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project.,  2024. 13p. 

By Alexandre Bish, Hervé Borrion, Ella Cockbain, Sonia Toubaline,

Since the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ in 2015, there has been intense policy interest around irregular migration along the Central Mediterranean Route to Europe. Despite increased research focus on this route, the details and geographical intricacies of these migration journeys have scarcely been examined. In this study, we investigate the what, where, and how of the journeys of 71 people who traveled from Libya across the Mediterranean Sea to Malta. To do so, we break down their journeys into scripts (i.e. sequences of activities) and represent them as a composite script graph. We find that journeys were long – 18 months on average – and circuitous, involving diverse and complex geographical paths. Smuggling, brokerage, and working during transit were key aspects of most journeys. Worryingly, two-thirds of participants experienced detention and/or forced labor before reaching Malta. By pinpointing where and how harm occurs, the composite script graph can support policymakers in reducing harm, including by accounting for the possible harm that interventions may cause, directly or as a result of displacement.

Criminology & Criminal Justice, Oct. 2024.  Online first.

By Jesús de la Torre 

In September 2023, US and Mexican officials, joined by business leaders from the Mexican train company Ferromex, met in Ciudad Juárez to agree on new measures to curtail irregular migration. “We are continuing to work closely with our partners in Mexico to increase security and address irregular migration along our shared border,” said Troy A. Miller, a top U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official. Considering still increasing encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.S. redoubled its pressure on Mexico to deter asylum seekers. In turn, Mexico implemented more aggressive enforcement measures against people seeking safety, work, and family reunification. In a call to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in February 2024, President Biden “expressed his appreciation for Mexico’s operational support and for taking concrete steps to deter irregular migration while expanding lawful pathways.” In the same vein, CBP touted a decrease in encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in early 2024 as a success. Too often, the U.S. and other high-income countries measure migration policy success according to the number of migrants arriving at their borders, including asylum seekers. Fewer encounters at borders are often equated to policy success while increasing encounters prompt narratives of “crisis.” However, this reasoning masquerades the conditions leading people to migrate in the first place, migrants’ experiences during transit, and, most importantly, the influence that the U.S. immigration policies exert over those who haven’t crossed its borders yet. One of the most significant policies impacting people on the move is border externalization: the expansion of one country’s migration policy preferences to other third states through a multi-layered web of public and private actors and agreements to prevent migrants and asylum seekers from arriving and staying in its territory. From agreements with Mexico to host asylum seekers (Migrant Protection Protocols, MPP) to policies that forcibly return or expel nationals to countries others than theirs (Title 42, Safe Third Country Agreements) or force countries to deter asylum seekers, the externalization of borders is becoming the option by default when it comes to migration governance This report problematizes the U.S. externalization of its border toward Northern Central America and Mexico (Mesoamerica from now on) from a global critical perspective, highlighting patterns of policy diffusion and grassroots resistance. For that purpose, it conducts a comparative case study with Spain. The U.S. and Spain have been paradigmatic cases of cross-country comparison to find similarities and differences between a long-term net-receiving country and a “latecomer” to net-receiving migration. It would be expected that these two countries, with significant differences in their migration histories, would have developed diverse strategies to manage migration. Based on 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews with practitioners accompanying people on the move in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Morocco, Senegal, and Mauritania,5 6 this report will how both countries have developed similar border externalization strategies with similar impacts on people on the move. The reasons lay in similar securitized and racist perspectives of migration and asylum based on sanitized and reified conceptions of who belongs to the “nation.” Ultimately, this report shows that the U.S. border externalization practices cannot and mustn’t be understood in isolation but rather as about a larger web of global practices that respond to similar policy goals and narratives. Therefore, actions to challenge these policies from below demand transnational solidarity and coordination. The subsequent sections are structured as follows. The first section reviews the dynamics and functioning of the U.S. and Spain’s externalization policies in Mesoamerica and Northern Western Africa through the lived experience of practitioners. The second section explores the impacts of such dynamics on local populations and people on the move in these countries. The final section offers advocacy and policy alternatives based on practitioners’ perspectives. Conclusions are finally drawn.       

El Paso.The Hope Border Institute (HOPE), 2024.  28p.

By Jonathan Miaz · Evelyne Schmid · Matthieu Niederhauser · Constance Kaempfer · Martino Maggetti

Making human rights a reality requires that various types of domestic actors take measures, which is often demanding, all the more so in federal systems. This open access book, Engaging with Human Rights: How Subnational Actors use Human Rights Treaties in Policy Processes, shows that an important part is played at the subnational level, with repeated back-and-forth between and within levels of governance rather than a ‘top-down’ trajectory. The dynamics of implementation at national and sub-national level is an emerging area of study. This book explores how actors use human rights treaties in the policy process, sometimes leading to an engagement that increases human rights implementation, and at other times not. Treaties provide both opportunities and constraints. Switzerland, as a highly decentralized federal state, offers a perfect setting to study the processes at work. Using legal, political, and sociological analyses, the authors draw on over 65 semi-structured interviews and focusses on two topical case studies: violence against women, including domestic violence, and the rights of persons with disabilities. This book provides a blueprint for other researchers and practitioners who wish to study the concrete implementation and impacts of human rights obligations.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. 144p.

Edited by Ingrid Muenstermann

This book demonstrates the tide of change of immigration and emigration. Societies of the northern part of the globe, which had previously sent people to developing countries in the southern hemisphere, are experiencing a never-ceasing influx of registered and unregistered people from the southern part of the globe. In thirteen chapters written by experts from all over the world, this book explores emigration and immigration during the last three centuries.

London: InTechOpen, 2023. 223p.

Edited by  Maria Pohn-Lauggas, Steve Tonah, Arne Worm

Experiences, processes and constellations of exile, flight, and persecution have deeply shaped global history and are still widespread aspects of human existence today. People are persecuted, incarcerated, tortured or deported on the basis of their political beliefs, gender, ethnic or ethno-national belonging, religious affiliation, and other socio-political categories. People flee or are displaced in the context of collective violence such as wars, rebellions, coups, environmental disasters or armed conflicts. After migrating, but not exclusively in this context, people find themselves suddenly isolated, cut off from their networks of belonging, their biographical projects and their collective histories. The articles in this volume are concerned with the challenges of navigating through multiple paradoxes and contradictions when it comes to grasping these phenomena sociologically, on the levels of self-reflection, theorizing, and especially doing empirical research.

Göttingen : Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2023. 267p.

Edited by Sabine Bauer-Amin, Leonardo Schiocchet, Maria Six-Hohenbalken

Multiple refugee regimes govern the lives of forced migrants simultaneously but in an often conflicting way. As a mechanism of inclusion/exclusion, they tend to engender the violence they sought to dissipate. Protection and control channel agency through mechanisms of either tutelage and victimisation or criminalisation. This book contrasts multiple groups of refugees and refugee regimes, revealing the inherent coercive violence of refugee regimes, from displacement and expulsion, to stereotypification and exclusion in host countries, and academic knowledge essentialisation. This violence is international, national, society-based, internalised, and embodied - and it urgently needs due scholarly attention.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2022. 289p.

By Ray Jureidini and Said Fares Hassan

Migration and Islamic Ethics, Issues of Residence, Naturalization and Citizenship contains various cases of migration movements in the Muslim world from ethical and legal perspectives to argue that Muslim migration experiences can offer a new paradigm of how the religious and the moral can play a significant role in addressing forced migration and displacement Readership: All interested in migration movements including residence, naturalization, and citizenship; Islamic Ethics and Islamic legal debates on movements in and out of the Muslim world, including asylum seekers and refugees.

Leiden: Brill, 2019. 240p.

By Anna Ball

Forced Migration in the Feminist Imagination explores how feminist acts of imaginative expression, community-building, scholarship, and activism create new possibilities for women experiencing forced migration in the twenty-first century. Drawing on literature, film, and art from a range of transnational contexts including Europe, the Middle East, Central America, Australia, and the Caribbean, this volume reveals the hitherto unrecognised networks of feminist alliance being formulated across borders, while reflecting carefully on the complex politics of cross-cultural feminist solidarity. The book presents a variety of cultural case-studies that each reveal a different context in which the transcultural feminist imagination can be seen to operate – from the ‘maternal feminism’ of literary journalism confronting the European ‘refugee crisis’ to Iran’s female film directors building creative collaborations with displaced Afghan women; and from artists employing sonic creativities in order to listen to women in U.K. and Australian detention, to LGBTQ+ poets and video artists articulating new forms of queer feminist community against the backdrop of the hostile environment. This is an essential read for scholars in Women’s and Gender Studies, Feminist and Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Studies, and Comparative Literary Studies, as well as for those operating in the fields of Gender and Development Studies and Forced Migration Studies.

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge, 2021. 223p.

Edited by Christina R. Clark-Kazak

Forced migration shaped the creation of Canada as a settler state and is a defining feature of our contemporary national and global contexts. Many people in Canada have direct or indirect experiences of refugee resettlement and protection, trafficking, and environmental displacement. Offering a comprehensive resource in the growing field of migration studies, Forced Migration in/to Canada is a critical primer from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Researchers, practitioners, and knowledge keepers draw on documentary evidence and analysis to foreground lived experiences of displacement and migration policies at the municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal levels. From the earliest instances of Indigenous displacement and settler colonialism, through Black enslavement, to statelessness, trafficking, and climate migration in today’s world, contributors show how migration, as a human phenomenon, is differentially shaped by intersecting identities and structures. Particularly novel are the specific insights into disability, race, class, social age, and gender identity.  

2024.