“Stepping UP” to Educate and Enlighten on Refugee and Forced Migration Issues

Forced migration is an urgent and complex global challenge that affects millions of people around the world. Today’s headlines tell stories of individuals and families setting out on perilous journeys to seek safety, and of the very limited protection they often receive.

There are now more than 117 million forced migrants in the world, almost double the number of just a decade ago. Forced migrants include refugees who must flee their countries and internally displaced persons who are compelled to move within their own countries due to violence and persecution. Some two-thirds of the world’s forced migrants are stuck in situations of protracted displacement, having spent decades, often generations, awaiting a solution.

The scale and visibility of forced migration over the past decade have spurred interest in research on the issue, especially following the 2015 crisis, when more than a million people sought protection in Europe but host countries failed to coordinate their resettlement efforts. There are now several book series on forced migration and a glut of submissions to leading journals in the field, such as OUP’s Journal of Refugee Studies and the open-access periodical Refuge.

Given this increase in scholarship on the issue, why did McGill-Queen’s University Press launch its Refugee and Forced Migration Studies series in 2018?

Simply put, the series exists to fill critical gaps in the topics being addressed, the perspectives being heard, and the sharing of knowledge. As series editors we believe that these gaps must be filled to provide a platform for knowledge that will motivate and inspire new forms of support and action, leading to better protection and solutions for the world’s forced migrants.

Beyond the headlines of refugee movements, which focus largely on the borders of Europe and North America, we know that forced migration is a local, national, regional, and global challenge with profound political and social implications. Understanding the causes and consequences of – and possible responses to – forced migration requires careful analysis from a range of disciplinary perspectives, as well as interdisciplinary dialogue.

To address the complexity of forced migration, the Refugee and Forced Migration Studies series advances in-depth examination of diverse forms, dimensions, and experiences of displacement, in contexts that include conflict and violence, repression and persecution, and disasters and environmental change. The series explores responses to refugees, internal displacement, and other forms of forced migration to illuminate the dynamics surrounding the phenomenon at the global, national, and local levels, the perspectives of displaced individuals and communities, and the connections to broader patterns of human mobility.

We know that 75 per cent of the world’s forced migrants are not in Europe or North America but remain in their regions of origin in the Global South. Despite this geographic concentration, some 86 per cent of the most cited literature on the topic comes from scholars based in the Global North. Forms of knowledge and localized perspectives that can provide new perspectives on the issue are less visible in the literature. This imbalance presents a biased understanding of forced migration, with an overemphasis on the minority of migrants that reach the Global North.

It also raises questions about what could be achieved if scholarship foregrounded the knowledge of those most affected by displacement. It is for this reason that a conscious priority of the series is to highlight the perspectives of researchers in the Global South, where the majority of forced migration unfolds, including the perspectives of those who have personally experienced displacement.

This emphasis results in vibrant new forms of collaboration and publications. For example, the 2023 collection The Right to Research was edited by Kate Reed and Marcia C. Schenck and includes nine chapters by refugee and host-community researchers from across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The work disrupts the notion of who constructs the narrative of displacement, offering a critical reflection on what history means and what happens when those long excluded from authorship bring their knowledge and perspectives to bear.

But we recognize that simply publishing a work of this nature is not sufficient to support and encourage change: many scholars and community activists do not have recourse to well-resourced institutional libraries. This is why the series also bridges a gap in access to scholarship. Funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), as well as collaboration with the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN) and the MacOdrum Library at Carleton University, has enabled us to make the series available in an ebook format without a paywall for readers located in the Global South and for under-resourced staff of non-profit or community organizations concerned with displacement.

In the world beyond the page, we organize webinars and in-person and hybrid events to extend the conversations hosted in the series and to engage with wider audiences. Our April 2023 online launch for The Right to Research, for example, was attended by more than one hundred participants from four continents; the recording of the event remains available on YouTube for new viewers to discover.

Forced migration is one of the most challenging issues of our day. We believe that publications that reflect the knowledge and experience of those most affected by displacement will shed new light on the issue and identify new solutions.

James Milner and Megan Bradley, series editors, McGill-Queen’s Refugee and Forced Migration Studies

To learn more about the series and join the conversation, please visit: https://carleton.ca/lerrn/mqup-refugee-and-forced-migration-studies-series/