Welcome to GRS - Global Refugee Studies

Global Refugee Studies focus on forced migration in a broader context. It relates to policies by western governments of addressing problems of refugees and forced migrants from many areas of the world. Development aid is increasingly directed at initiatives related to refugees. The idea is that development aid should be directed to the countries and regions that ‘generate’ migrants and refugees in order to create new circumstances to ensure that refugees and forced migrants remain in the close neighbourhood either in the countries of origin or the surrounding countries. There is a serious lack of knowledge about the impact of this and many other initiatives on the actual situation of global, regional and local refugees. The Danish debate regarding refugees has changed radically in the past few years. From an almost exclusive focus on assimilation and integration it has now turned into both a security and foreign policy issue and is regarded as a development problem. It is interesting to note that the new policy consensus which has emerged denotes more emphasis on exploring possibilities of “assisting refugees in their close environment”. It is a term used to describe the fact that the majority of the world’s forced migrants are defined either as being internally displaced or with “external” refugee status - their location is either in the domestic context or in neighbouring countries. As such the majority of the world’s refugees and displaced people are found in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and in Latin America.