About the Mixed Migration Review 2025

This year’s Mixed Migration Review (MMR) examines how migration dynamics are reshaping in response to a context of intensified geopolitical turmoil. 

One year after the 2024 ‘year of elections’, the world faces marked political shifts, a transforming humanitarian and multilateral system, an escalation of conflicts and an acceleration of critical forces including economic inequality, technological advancement, and climate crises 

Drawing on feature interviews with leading migration thinkers, essays from established experts alongside those emerging from the Global South, thematic snapshots, 4Mi survey data, and in-depth personal migrant stories, the MMR 2025 explores how this turbulent landscape is reshaping migration across the globe.  

The MMR 2025 reveals how political rhetoric is translating into practice and investigates the fundamental paradox of capitalism’s clash with anti-immigration stances – while governments increasingly frame migration as an existential threat and implement hardline border regimes, migration is a continued necessity for both migrants and the countries who receive them. It explores the double-edged impact of technology on migration – from enhanced connectivity to intensified surveillance – and assesses how cuts to development aid and the erosion of multilateral systems are reshaping global migration dynamics.

Through documenting the worst practices in contemporary migration governance, the review provides an overview of the ongoing ‘normalisation of the extreme’. The review offers survey data from people on the move based on MMC’s 4Mi programme, providing compelling evidence about the Trump administration’s early policy impacts and in-depth interviews with migrants worldwide outlining how current geopolitical turmoil is shaping their daily lives and futures. Five essays from young Global South writers also offer important analytical perspectives often absent from migration discourse.  

Through its comprehensive documentation of policy impacts, migrant testimonies, and emerging trends, the MMR 2025 provides essential insights to understand the major geopolitical shifts that are underway in 2025 and how these will shape current and future mixed migration dynamics.