The University of Oxford is a world-leader in terms of the study of international migration, whether forced or voluntary. Migration research within Oxford shares common imperatives, including: ensuring independence, pioneering new theoretical, methodological, and interdisciplinary approaches and delivering research findings and knowledge beyond the academic world.
Oxford boasts five major research centres (Border Criminologies; Centre on Migration, Policy and Society; Refugee-Led Research Hub; Refugee Studies Centre; Transport Studies Unit) and several researchers working on incisive and innovating research projects on migration and mobility across divisions and departments brought together by Migration Oxford.
The five main research centres on migration and mobility in Oxford have complementary, interconnecting research agendas but each has a particular research focus within this complex area of study.
Border Criminologies
Border Criminologies brings together academics, practitioners and those who have experienced border control from around the world. Showcasing original research from a range of perspectives, Border Criminologies contributes to the understanding of the effect of border control, while exploring alternatives and bringing to light the lived experience of law and policy.
COMPAS
COMPAS research covers a spectrum of global migration processes and phenomena, from conditions in places of migrant origins, through to institutions and activities affecting mobility, to social and economic effects in receiving contexts. In particular, COMPAS has developed expertise in relation to migration and the labour market, and migration and urban change.
Refugee Studies Centre
At the Refugee Studies Centre, scholars examine forced displacement of populations, with a strong focus on developmental and humanitarian aspects of forced migration in the Global South. More recently, work has also covered northern regimes and perspectives on asylum, and the ways in which national agendas can better respond to the increasingly complex flows of mixed migration.