Mixed Migration Review ’25

In 2025 the world faces profound political shifts, a strained humanitarian and multilateral system, widening inequality, and accelerating technological change and climate crises. This year’s Mixed Migration Review (MMR) explores migration in the context of intensified geopolitical turmoil.

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mmr 2025
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Migration in the context of geopolitical turmoil

Essay

When the extreme is normalised: shifting boundaries in ‘acceptable’ migration policy

What once seemed unthinkable in migration policy has become increasingly accepted, reflecting a major shift in political and social norms. This “normalisation of the extreme” illustrates how ideas once outside the mainstream can enter the realm of political acceptability. An essay by Chris Horwood and Bram Frouws.

People near crowded border fence with barbed wire.
Photo credit: David Peinado Romero / Shutterstock.
Essay

On a collision course? Labour shortages and anti-immigration stances

Essay

The far-right and migration politics in the aftermath of the 2024 ‘year of elections’

Essay

AI, surveillance and the privatisation of migration management

Thematic Focus

Trump targets the Refugee Convention: a fundamental shift in asylum norms

Thematic Focus

How offshore asylum processing and migration management went global in 2025

Essay

The end of development aid? How aid cuts may reshape migration management

Man with sacks of grain for distribution.
Photo credit: Richard Juilliart / Shutterstock
Essay

The erosion of migration multilateralism and the ‘new world order’

United Nations building in Genevawith international flags displayed.
Photo credit: Mathias Reding / Unsplash.

More articles

Interview Volker Türk

Embracing human mobility as an issue to tackle, not a crisis to solve

Thematic Focus

Spain’s divergent path in an increasingly right-wing anti-immigration EU

Interview Charlotte Slente

Funding cuts and crises: struggles and hopes of humanitarian NGOs

Voices on the move

Endless violence leaves Rohingya youth without hope

Interview Hafsar Tameesuddin

From violence and exclusion to resistance and freedom: lived-experience is key

Thematic Focus

ICE wars: tension between US state and federal immigration policies in 2025

Interview Kenneth Roth

The future of human rights in an era of conflict, populism, and climate change

Voices on the move

Stuck in limbo: a bleak future for Sudanese refugees in Kenya

Interview Tammam Aloudat

A people-centred, decolonised approach to humanitarian narratives

About the mixed migration centre (mmc)

MMC is a knowledge centre engaged in data collection, research, analysis, and policy and programming on mixed migration.

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Regions on the move

This section examines mixed migration trends across Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, Europe, and Asia in 2025. Each region includes a Keeping Track overview, expert insights, thematic snapshots, and an interview with a migrant or refugee offering a firsthand view of life amid geopolitical turmoil.

Report

Keeping track in Africa

In 2025, across Africa, intersecting factors of conflict, climate change, weak governance and poverty continued to drive migration and displacement. Increasing securitisation of migration within Africa — from surveillance to mass arrests, pushbacks and deportations — has resulted in greater risks for migrants and refugees.

Read the full Africa overview
  • Voices on the move

    The plight of Sierra Leonean migrants perpetually on the move

  • Interview Ottilia Anna Maunganidze

    Migration: the urgent shift from local conversations to concerted global efforts

  • Thematic Focus

    DR Congo’s endless war and its impact on mixed migration in 2025

  • Voices on the move

    Stuck in limbo: a bleak future for Sudanese refugees in Kenya

  • Interview Tareke Brhane

    Protecting people, not borders: recognition of lives lost at sea

Busy city street with traffic and pedestrians.
Photo credit: Mahmoud Sulaiman / Unsplash, 2024.

Emerging perspectives

Each year, the Mixed Migration Centre runs an essay competition for young and emerging writers, researchers and thinkers from the Global South. Here we showcase five essay winners from the 2025 competition selected for their unique perspectives on current mixed migration issues.

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Resisting or Normalising the extreme

Each year, the Mixed Migration Review features two companion reports — Normalising the extreme and Resisting the extreme. In 2025, the former is crowded with harmful migration practices, while the latter offers only a handful of positive actions amid an increasingly restrictive landscape.

Read “Resisting the extreme” Read “Normalising the extreme”
Protesters hold banners against racism and the far right.

London, summer, 2025.

Photo credit: Loredana Sangiuliano / Shutterstock

Debate: Have we reached a tipping point in hardline migration policies?

Would today’s practices been considered unthinkable or extreme only a few years ago?

Panellists: Jacqueline Baylon, Filmmaker & Journalist; Pedro Rios, Director, U.S./Mexico Border Program (AFSC); Catherine Woollard, Adjunct Professor of Law, Free University of Brussels; Professor Carlos Vargas-Silva, University of Oxford.

Moderator: Roberto Forin, Deputy Director, Mixed Migration Centre (MMC).

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Mixed Migration Review 2025

Explore in‑depth analysis, data, and stories on mixed migration dynamics, featuring regional overviews, migrant voices, and expert insights.

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