Global Migration

Global Migration at the Kenan Institute for Ethics combines faculty and student-led research, innovative educational programs, and partnerships with practitioners and communities.

Global Migration students, researchers, and practitioners aim to create a better understanding of displacement, voluntary and forced migration, and refugee camp life and third-country resettlement, as well as shape debates about immigration and citizenship policy in the United States and abroad.

The newest partnership for the program is connected to Bass Connections, Duke’s newest interdisciplinary research initiative composed of vertically-integrated working groups. The “Displacement, Resettlement and Global Mental Health” working group is a joint effort of The Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Global Health Institute, and Asian & Middle Eastern Studies. The group will examine archived refugee research from DukeImmerse: Uprooted/Rerouted as well as conduct new research, expanding to new populations of displaced peoples.

A unique partnership with UNHCR has allowed Institute researchers over the past two years to interview Bhutanese refugees in refugee camps in Nepal and to follow up with some of these refugees in Durham, North Carolina, where they have resettled. Institute researchers have also worked with Iraqi refugees living throughout the greater Cairo area.

Current research, educational programs, and community engagement endeavors include the Refugee Resettlement Project, DukeImmerse Uprooted/Rerouted, DukeEngage Dublin, Ethics, Leadership & Global Citizenship, student-taught ESL courses, and a refugee-women-led start-up company.

Last year, we partnered with the UN Refugee Agency to install Nowhere People: The Face of Global Statelessness, a photography exhibition by Greg Constantine. As part of of the opening events, a panel on the ethics of photography was held with Constantine, Charity Tooze of the UNHCR. Global Migration also formed partnerships to hold several events in Spring 2013. In January, a symposium was organized together with Duke Law School, “Perspectives on Migration, Governance, and Citizenship.” Also in January, Post-doctoral Fellow Nadia El-Shaarawi organized a day-long event on the ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention in contexts of migration and conflict, “Conflict, Migration and Humanitarianism: The Ethics and Politics of Intervention.” In February, a Campus Grant supported an evening of conversation with North Korean refugees. Global Migration partnered with International Comparative Studies and others in a three-day conference on international migration to feature a film, performance, and panel symposium, Movements and Exchanges in an Unequal World. In April, students in the DukeImmerse: Uprooted/Rerouted program recited dramatic narratives culled from their field interviews with refugees in Egypt and Nepal, which you can watch on Youtube.

Recent past projects and events include the Brookings-Duke Immigration Roundtable, which addressed the implicit trade-offs and assumptions underlying the current immigration debate and generated policy recommendations that better reflect the wide range of views Americans have on immigration; Moralities of Migration, a global series of workshops and conferences exploring ethical aspects of migration past, present, and future, and Refugees, Rights, Resettlement, Duke’s 2012 Winter Forum, a three-day conference involving students, academics, government and NGO leaders, and the local refugee community.