By Andrés Dae Keun Kwon

Los Angeles County has a proud history of providing public defenders to people who cannot afford a lawyer to defend them in criminal court. On January 9, 1914, the county opened the first public defender office in the United States. In addition to being first, this office is the biggest in the nation. The Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office (LACPD) currently employs about 700 public defenders, who handle approximately 300,000 criminal cases a year. And yet there is a crisis today in our county’s public defender system. In particular, LACPD has been grossly under-resourced as measured against recommended staffing ratios and compared to other California public defender offices. As a result, LACPD underserves a large and vital segment of the Los Angeles population: the immigrant community. This report, Defend L.A., examines the failures of the county’s public defender system and demands legal representation that, at a minimum, meets the standards of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S Constitution for all Los Angeles community members— including immigrants. The report documents many cases in which LACPD’s noncitizen clients pleaded to criminal dispositions triggering severe immigration consequences when more immigration-favorable alternative dispositions were available. Uninformed and unaware, LACPD’s noncitizen clients have pleaded guilty only to face mandatory deportation and permanent separation from family, community, and home—the loss “of all that makes life worth living.

Los Angeles: American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, 2018. 80p.

ByEnrico Michelini

Drawing on original research, this book looks at what sport can tell us about the social processes, patterns and outcomes of forced migration and the ‘refugee crisis’. The book explores four key aspects of sport’s intersection with forced migration. Firstly, it looks at how the media covers sport in relation to the ‘refugee crisis’, specifically coverage of refugee elite athletes. Secondly, it examines the adaptation of sport organisations to the ‘refugee crisis’, including the culture, programmes and structures that promote or obstruct sport for refugees. Thirdly, the book looks at sport in refugee sites, and how sport can be used as therapy, an escape or empowerment for refugees but also how it can reinforce the divisions between staff and the refugees themselves. Finally, the book looks at how forced migration influences and is influenced by participation in elite sport, by examining the biographies of elite migrant athletes.

London: Routledge, 2023. 142p.

By Bruce Ravesloot, Tanay Amirapu, Chandler Smith, Sehdia Mansaray ; TANGO International, Inc.

This research report critically assesses the risks and needs of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia across three thematic domains: refugee protection, human trafficking, and human smuggling. The research draws from three national contexts: Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

The research explores the following questions: What is the regional and national policy landscape for refugee protection, anti-smuggling, and anti-trafficking? What are the risks and opportunities in these domains?

Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2022. 97p.

By  Hui Yin Chuah

This briefing paper highlights the key findings from the Research Report, “Refugee Protection, Human Smuggling, and Trafficking in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia”. The research aims to assess the risks and needs of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia across three thematic domains, with particular focus on the national contexts of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The three domains are: protection; human trafficking; and human smuggling.

Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 9p.

Edited by Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi and Vinh Nguyen

This Handbook presents a transnational and interdisciplinary study of refugee narratives, broadly defined. Interrogating who can be considered a refugee and what constitutes a narrative, the thirty-eight chapters included in this collection encompass a range of forcibly displaced subjects, a mix of geographical and historical contexts, and a variety of storytelling modalities. Analyzing novels, poetry, memoirs, comics, films, photography, music, social media, data, graffiti, letters, reports, eco-design, video games, archival remnants, and ethnography, the individual chapters counter dominant representations of refugees as voiceless victims. Addressing key characteristics and thematics of refugee narratives, this Handbook examines how refugee cultural productions are shaped by and in turn shape socio-political landscapes. It will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners committed to engaging refugee narratives in the contemporary moment.

London; New York: Routledge, 2023. 528p. 

Edited by Matthew Frank and Jessica Reinisch  

 Refugees in Europe, 1919-1959 offers a new history of Europe’s mid-20th century as seen through its recurrent refugee crises. By bringing together in one volume recent research on a range of different contexts of groups of refugees and refugee policy, it sheds light on the common assumptions that underpinned the history of refugees throughout the period under review. The essays foreground the period between the end of the First World War, which inaugurated a series of new international structures to deal with displaced populations, and the late 1950s, when Europe's home-grown refugee problems had supposedly been ‘solved’ and attention shifted from the identification of an exclusively European refugee problem to a global one. Borrowing from E. H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis, first published in 1939, the editors of this volume test the idea that the two post-war eras could be represented as a single crisis of a European-dominated international order of nation states in the face of successive refugee crises which were both the direct consequence of that system and a challenge to it. Each of the chapters reflects on the utility and limitations of this notion of a ‘forty years’ crisis’ for understanding the development of specific national and international responses to refugees in the mid-20th century. Contributors to the volume also provide alternative readings of the history of an international refugee regime, in which the non-European and colonial world are assigned a central role in the narrative.

London; New York : Bloomsburgy Academic, 2017. 269p.

By Nicole Vidal & Bryony Nisbet

  This study builds an understanding of the quantity and quality of refugees’ social networks, and their role in influencing public perceptions and engagement with the police. It applies the Social Connections Mapping Tool (SCMT) methodology, combined with in-depth interviews with refugees, asylum-seekers, police personnel, and associated services to identify refugee and asylum-seeker experiences, trust and confidence with Police Scotland and associated services. Findings: • Visibility, trust & confidence: Some participants had limited knowledge of Police Scotland or how to contact them. Confidence in Police Scotland is good despite negative experiences in their countries of origin. Most agreed increased police visibility is important. • Resources & Engagement: Officers recognised the importance of engaging with refugees and asylum-seekers but highlighted the challenge of operational demands and resourcing. • Language: Limited English language makes engaging with the police difficult, and ineffective interpretation and translation impacts on trust and confidence in the service. Police personnel agreed that language barriers can increase call and response times. • Gender: Efforts are being made to improve the gender imbalance in the police workforce. • Racism and hate crime: There was a general concern surrounding racism both at the hands of the community and the police, exacerbated by anecdotal accounts from others. Recommendations: • Engage with refugees and asylum-seekers to gain familiarity of their social networks. • Increase community support and empower communities to develop solutions to problems. • Utilise police officers’ cultural insights to assist with understanding community issues. • Equip all officers with community policing information and resources (e.g. cultural awareness training, working with interpreters, agreeing methods to support inclusion). • Enlist support of refugee-related organisations, local community organisations and/or faithbased organisations; these can serve as a bridge between the police and communities. • Work with the wider community to encourage knowledge sharing and mutual understand  

Edinburgh: Queen Margaret University, 2023. 53p.

Edited by Andrea Rea,  Marco Martiniello. Alessanro Mazzola and  Bart Meuleman

The refugee question occupied centre stage at every political debate in Europe since 2015. Starting from the "long summer of migration", the polarization of opinions and attitudes towards asylum seekers among citizens of the EU has grown increasingly. The divergence between hospitality and hostility has also become evident in political reactions.

Bruxelles: Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 2019. 256p.

By Joseph Nevins

By 1994 American anti-immigration rhetoric had reached a fevered pitch, and throngs of migrants entered the U.S. nightly. In response, the INS launched "Operation Gatekeeper," the centerpiece of the Clinton administration's unprecedented effort to "regain control" of our borders. In Operation Gatekeeper, Joseph Nevins details the administration's dramatic overhaul of the San Diego-Tijauna border-the busiest land crossing in the world-adding miles of new fence and hundreds of trained agents.

New York: London: Routledge, 2002. 296p.

By Michelangelo Landgrave and Alex Nowrasteh

Illegal immigration and the crimes illegal immigrants commit are notoriously difficult to measure. This policy analysis is the latest paper in a series that attempts to answer that question by estimating illegal immigrant incarceration rates in the United States by using the American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample from the U.S. Census. This analysis goes beyond previous studies in the series as it updates our residual estimation method based on new research. Furthermore, we apply the updated methods to estimate the illegal immigrant incarceration rates in earlier years.

Washington, DC: CATO Institute, 2020. 16p.

Mixed Migration Centre and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

This snapshot focuses on how smugglers and refugees and migrants make contact in West and North Africa. It draws on 3,602 surveys of refugees and migrants who had used a smuggler or smugglers, conducted in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Libya and Tunisia from February 2021 to March 2022. It also draws on 356 smuggler surveys conducted in the same countries over June-October 2021. It provides analysis of the channels and the timing of contact between migrants and smugglers.

Mixed Migration Centre, 2022. 7p.

Edited by Erol Balkan and Zümray Kutlu Tona

Refugees on the Move highlights and explores the profound complexities of the current refugee issue by focusing specifically on Syrian refugees in Turkey and other European countries and responses from the host countries involved. It examines the causes of the movement of refugee populations, the difficulties they face during their journeys, the daily challenges and obstacles they experience, and host governments’ attempts to manage and overcome the so-called “refugee crisis.”

New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2022. 344p.

Edited by Jordana Silverstein And Rachel Stevens.

Histories of resettlement, representation and resistance. Refugee Journeys presents stories of how governments, the public and the media have responded to the arrival of people seeking asylum, and how these responses have impacted refugees and their lives. Considers possible ways to break existing policy deadlocks, encouraging readers to imagine a future where we carry vastly different ideas about refugees, government policies and national identities.

ANU Press (2021) 258 pages.

By Markus Gehrsitz and Martin Streng.

Millions of refugees made their way to Europe between 2014 and 2015, with over one million arriving in Germany alone. Yet, little is known about the impact of this inflow on labor markets, crime, and voting behavior. This article uses administrative data on refugee allocation and provides an evaluation of the short-run consequences of the refugee inflow. Our identification strategy exploits that a scramble for accommodation determined the assignment of refugees to German counties resulting in exogeneous variations in the number of refugees per county within and across states. Our estimates suggest that migrants have not displaced native workers but have themselves struggled to find gainful employment. We find moderate increases in crime and our analysis further indicates that while at the macro level increased migration was accompanied by increased support for anti-immigrant parties, exposure to refugees at the micro-level had the opposite effect.

Mannheim: ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, 2016. 56p.