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Begin New Search Author Samuel Davidoff-Gore Publication Year within 1 Year

1. Funding Climate Mobility Projects: Key Players and Strategies for Growth

Author:
Lawrence Huang and Samuel Davidoff-Gore
Publication Date:
03-2025
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
While international donors have long supported responses to displacement driven by natural disasters, climate change is reshaping the challenge at hand. It can worsen extreme weather events such as storms while also posing slower-onset threats such as desertification and sea level rise, which can directly and indirectly force people to move. The growing scale and complexity of climate-related mobility thus requires a paradigm shift in global funding for responses. This issue brief provides an overview of how development funders are responding to climate mobility issues, highlights entry points for donors interested in engaging on this issue, and outlines common barriers and strategies to overcome them. It examines development assistance provided via both bilateral cooperation and multilateral funding, through multilateral development banks, global climate funds, and more. This research draws on insights shared by representatives of donor governments, philanthropic foundations, and multilateral development banks as part of a multi-year Donor Community of Practice on Climate Mobility.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Migration, Governance, Mobility, and Climate Refugees
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Expanding Protection Options? Flexible Approaches to Status for Displaced Syrians, Venezuelans, and Ukrainians

Author:
Andrew Selee, Susan Fratzke, Samuel Davidoff-Gore, and Luisa Feline Freier
Publication Date:
01-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
Faced with displacement crises that have stretched asylum systems to their limits, countries have increasingly begun to use alternatives to traditional protection tools to provide displaced individuals with legal status and access to certain rights and forms of assistance. Often, the status offered is temporary and does not rely on adjudication of individual cases. While such approaches are not completely new, they have gained prominence through national responses to three of the largest displacement crises of the post-World War II era: displacement from Syria, Venezuela, and Ukraine. The principal host governments in these three crises—Turkey, various South American countries, and EU Member States—chose to provide legal status to millions of protection seekers by using existing immigration policies or new temporary statuses, rather than refugee or asylum systems. This report—part of the Beyond Territorial Asylum: Making Protection Work in a Bordered World initiative led by MPI and the Robert Bosch Stiftung—examines each of these three cases, identifying similarities in the approaches taken to offering protection while recognizing the differences between the cases. The study explores the factors underpinning government decisions and their medium- to long-term implications, concluding with thoughts on what can be learned for future international displacement crises.
Topic:
Governance, Refugees, Displacement, Asylum, Integration, and Protection
Political Geography:
Ukraine, Syria, and Venezuela

3. The Mobility Key: Realizing the Potential of Refugee Travel Documents

Author:
Samuel Davidoff-Gore
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
Governments are increasingly experimenting with new mobility pathways for refugees, beyond traditional resettlement operations. These include complementary pathways that connect refugees with work or study opportunities in a country other than the one in which they first sought safety—expanding their future prospects while easing pressure on top refugee-hosting countries. Refugees’ ability to take up these and other opportunities abroad depends to a significant extent on their access to the travel documents required to reach their destination. Yet refugees are generally unable to safely use the most common travel document: a passport issued by a person’s country of origin. This policy brief—part of the Beyond Territorial Asylum: Making Protection Work in a Bordered World initiative led by MPI and the Robert Bosch Stiftung—outlines the different types of travel documents that can facilitate refugees’ movement and key barriers to acquiring and using them. It also identifies steps that countries of asylum, transit, and destination, along with donors and international organizations, can take to overcome these challenges.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Organization, Border Control, Refugees, Asylum, and Protection
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Diverging Paths: The Impacts of COVID-19 on Migration in the Middle East and North Africa

Author:
Samuel Davidoff-Gore
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
The shutdown of mobility at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic had drastic effects on movement throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Migrant workers comprise much of the workforce in Arab Gulf states, Jordan, and Lebanon, and many lost their jobs and returned to their countries of origin. Tourism and travel, which represent a sizeable share of GDP for many countries, largely halted. And border closures stranded irregular migrants along many major routes. Looking back, the global public-health crisis may have been less of a disruptor of existing trends, instead reinforcing and accelerating them. The Gulf has continued its shift away from petrowealth and toward more diversified economies that aim to depend less on migrant workers, and North Africa and Lebanon have become increasingly unstable. This report is part of a series of studies by MPI’s Task Force on Mobility and Borders during and after COVID-19 that explores opportunities to improve international coordination regarding border management during public-health crises. Other regional case studies in this series look at Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and South America. Thematic studies consider the role of digital health credentials in facilitating movement, the use of risk analysis to shape border policies, and the rise of remote work and “digital nomads.” A final capstone policy brief reflects on lessons for future public-health crises.
Topic:
Migration, Borders, Public Health, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Middle East and North Africa

5. The End of Asylum? Evolving the Protection System to Meet 21st Century Challenges

Author:
Susan Fratzke, Meghan Benton, Andrew Selee, Emma Dorst, and Samuel Davidoff-Gore
Publication Date:
07-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
The international protection regime is under increasingly untenable pressure, and the obsolescence of the policy architecture on which it relies is becoming more and more apparent. The territorial asylum system, which requires asylum seekers to reach another country’s territory in order to seek protection, has proven itself to be a blunt tool with which to address the protection challenges of the 21st century. New crises, protracted displacement situations, and expanding norms about who merits protection have created a growing population of individuals in need of humanitarian protection. At the same time, other mobility pressures—including those rooted in demographic shifts, economic inequality, and climate change—have produced high levels of mixed migration, adding to the strain on border and asylum adjudication systems. This report, which concludes the Beyond Territorial Asylum: Making Protection Work in a Bordered World initiative led by MPI and the Robert Bosch Stiftung, sets out a vision for the ongoing evolution of the international protection system, with a focus on the future of asylum. It analyzes promising developments and best-in-class ideas around facilitating orderly entry, ensuring system efficiency, and building regional capacity, and how these elements could foster a system that is better at providing protection for those who need it and at securing public trust by reducing chaos at borders and within public systems that must manage migration.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Governance, Borders, Asylum, and Protection
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Displacement and International Protection in a Warming World

Author:
Samuel Davidoff-Gore and Lawrence Huang
Publication Date:
09-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
Most climate-related displacement occurs within a country’s territory, but when people cross borders, it poses particular challenges. Policymakers in destination countries face the task of simultaneously managing borders and addressing arriving migrants’ emergency assistance and protection needs. Yet, the migration and refugee policy tools available are rarely, if ever, designed with climate displacement in mind. There is no consensus, for example, on what status climate-displaced people should receive, what rights and benefits they are entitled to, and how states should respond if climate change has rendered their homes uninhabitable. And unless policymakers proactively manage climate displacement, these movements can further weaken already fragile migration management and asylum systems. This issue brief explores what role the international protection system can and should play in responses to cross-border climate displacement and highlights steps policymakers could take to diversify the policy toolkit beyond the protection realm.
Topic:
Climate Change, Migration, Refugees, Displacement, Protection, and Climate Refugees
Political Geography:
Global Focus