Articles - Refugee & Asylum Policy

For two decades, Australia has experimented with different asylum policies in response to an increase in refugees and asylum seekers entering the country. A look at the country's challenges in managing a hotly contested political and public debate.

In the United States, asylum on the basis of sexual orientation was first granted in 1994. Swetha Sridharan of the Council on Foreign Relations explains why U.S. immigration law focuses on sexual identity rather than sexual conduct, and what this distinction has meant for asylum seekers.

Migrants' networks and relatively small travel distances help explain migration from one developing country to another. Dilip Ratha and William Shaw of the World Bank look at these and other reasons for and effects of South-South migration.

Not long after the United States passed the 1980 Refugee Act, thousands of people began fleeing civil war in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Their treatment in the United States, linked to U.S. foreign policy, spurred the Sanctuary Movement and efforts to grant them refugee status, as Susan Gzesh of the University of Chicago explains.

In the early 1990s, Ethiopians who had been living in refugee camps in Sudan began to return home. As Laura C. Hammond of Clark University explains, they created a new community in an unfamiliar part of Ethiopia that is thriving 12 years later.

In addition to post-September 11 security concerns, the U.S. is dealing with less predictable refugee flows. David Martin of the University of Virginia School of Law reports.

MPI Director Kathleen Newland provides an overview of the latest asylum numbers and insights as to why they are declining.

MPI's Joanne van Selm analyzes the EU's latest effort to guarantee rights, protect refugees, and regulate migration flows and borders.