World Refugee Day 2025

World Refugee Day honours those who have been displaced from their country because of conflict or persecution. Forced migration is a local, regional, national, and global challenge with profound political and social implications.

The purpose of the McGill-Queen’s Refugee and Forced Migration Studies Series is to advance in-depth examination of diverse forms, dimensions, and experiences of displacement, including in the context of 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 forced migration in global, national, and local contexts, including Canada, the perspectives of displaced individuals and communities, and the connections to broader patterns of human mobility.

Explore more of the books in the series here.

La migration forcée au Canada

Edited by Adèle Garnier, Sarah Dubuc and Christina R. Clark-Kazak, Translated by Lyse Hébert

La migration forcée au Canada met en lumière les expériences vécues de déplacement et les politiques migratoires aux paliers municipal, provincial, territorial et fédéral, avec une attention particulière pour l’expérience québécoise et les minorités francophones.

Hearts of Freedom

Stories of Southeast Asian Refugees

By Peter Duschinsky, Colleen Lundy, Michael J. Molloy, Allan Moscovitch and Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe

Between 1975 and 1997 some three million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians fled atrocities in their home countries, with over 210,000 resettling in Canada. Hearts of Freedom is an oral history based on interviews with 175 former refugees, documenting their moving accounts of oppression, perilous escapes, and evolving impressions of their new country.

Unequal Access

Categorising Refugees in European Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission Programmes

By Natalie Welfens

Unequal Access explores the politics of categorization practices in European resettlement and humanitarian admission programs and the complex boundaries of inclusion and exclusion they produce.

Knowledge, Power, and Migration

Contesting the North/South Divide

Edited by Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Mireille Paquet and Ethel Tungohan

Knowledge, Power, and Migration asks how research practices can change the conversation on immigration, encouraging curiosity about how scholarship in this field can shape global, social, and epistemic justice.

Sanctuary in Pieces

Two Centuries of Flight, Fugitivity, and Resistance in a North American City

By Laura Madokoro

Sanctuary in Pieces documents the evolving nature of sanctuary in settler societies. Drawing on archival research and interviews in Montreal/Mooniyaang/Tiohtià:ke, Madokoro explores the history of protection and hospitality over two centuries and the shifting political terrain upon which sanctuary has been sought and, on occasion, received.

Forced Migration in/to Canada

From Colonization to Refugee Resettlement

Edited by Christina R. Clark-Kazak

Covering a broad swathe of time, from colonization to the present day, Forced Migration in/to Canada examines human displacement in a variety of contexts: Indigenous dislocation and settler colonialism, Black enslavement, human trafficking, statelessness, climate migration, and newcomer settlement.

The Politics of Refugee Policy in the Global South

By Ola G. El-Taliawi

While scholarship on refugee migration tends to center on the Global North, most refugees actually reside in the Global South. This book shifts the focus, revealing how governments in the Global South make refugee policy, including a decade-long account of how two small states responded to the Syrian refugee crisis.

Write to Return

Huguenot Refugees on the Frontiers of the French Enlightenment

By Bryan Banks

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 led to over 200,000 Huguenots fleeing France. Bryan Banks directs our attention to four authors who advocated for the Huguenots’ right to return. Write to Return shows that by presenting themselves as loyal French subjects, Huguenots were at the forefront of constructing a French national identity.

Migration Governance in North America

Policy, Politics, and Community

Edited by Kiran Banerjee and Craig Damian Smith

Migration Governance in North America engages the complex dynamics of mobilities across the continent. Situating North America within the global migration landscape, it unpacks such issues as temporary labour mobility, border security, asylum governance, refugee resettlement, and the role of local actors in coping with changing policies and politics.

Urban Refugees and Digital Technology

Reshaping Social, Political, and Economic Networks

By Charles Martin-Shields

Urban Refugees and Digital Technology explores refugee communities from Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia’s growing cities to build a new understanding of how technology reshapes the ways refugees contribute to social, economic, and political networks in urban areas.

Kingdom of Barracks

Polish Displaced Persons in Allied-Occupied Germany and Austria

By Katarzyna Nowak

Kingdom of Barracks depicts the texture of everyday life in refugee camps in postwar Europe. Taking a bottom-up perspective, Katarzyna Nowak examines the experiences of Polish Displaced Persons in the shadow of the mounting Cold War and explores the formation of cultural identity in exile through the lenses of class, gender, body, and nationality.

The Right to Research

Historical Narratives by Refugee and Global South Researchers

Edited by Kate Reed and Marcia C. Schenck

Refugees and displaced people rarely figure as historical actors, and almost never as historical narrators and historians. The Right to Research offers a critical reflection on what history means, who narrates it, and what happens when those long excluded from authorship bring their knowledge and perspectives to bear.