Topic description and stories

Immigration and migration, and the issues that surround them, have become symbolic of the 21st century.

Asylum seekers on a small boat

“It's not one single trauma, it’s hundreds of traumas”

09 Nov 2023

Policies aimed at addressing the migrant crisis need to take into account the serious mental health issues faced by refugees and asylum seekers, say...

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Devínska Kobyla Forest steppe in Slovakia

Drought encouraged Attila’s Huns to attack the Roman empire, tree rings suggest

15 Dec 2022

Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in...

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iris

The gift of identity

13 Apr 2022

Technology that recognises people’s unique iris patterns is giving a means of identification to millions of individuals across the globe.

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Displaced lives: Investigating Europe's handling of the refugee crisis and giving voice to asylum-seeking migrants

30 Nov 2020

For the last three years, the RESPOND project has been investigating migration governance in 11 countries by foregrounding the insights of asylum-...

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Medical workers in Syria

Syrian refugee health workers can help Europe cope with COVID-19

16 Sep 2020

Employing displaced Syrian healthcare workers is a 'win-win' for both host communities and refugees as it would strengthen national health services...

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A cannabis setup inside a residential premises in the West Midlands. Image: West Midlands Police.

Cannabis farms are a modern slavery 'blind spot' for UK police, study suggests

15 Sep 2020

Migrants arrested for tending plants in the flats, houses and attics where cannabis is grown in bulk are often victims of trafficking and 'debt...

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Subfossil trees preserved in Iceland

Silent witnesses: how an ice age was written in the trees

27 Feb 2018

What connects a series of volcanic eruptions and severe summer cooling with a century of pandemics, human migration and the rise and fall of...

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Migrants arriving on the island of Lampedusa.

Human smugglers operate as ‘independent traders’, study finds

22 Jan 2018

First study to model the organisation behind trade in illegal border crossings shows no “Mafia-like” monopoly of routes from Africa into Europe via...

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Refugees on a boat crossing the Mediterranean sea, heading from Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, 29 January 2016

Trading on human tides – the 'free market' of people smuggling

31 Jul 2017

Cambridge criminologists are using emerging sources of information – from court records to Facebook groups – to analyse the networks behind one of...

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Action Against Hunger team deliver hygiene kits to Iraqi refugees

Opinion: Aid workers get a bad rap – but too often they’re thrown in at the deep end

21 Mar 2017

The media are quick to criticise humanitarian organisations as inefficient and expensive, writes Corinna Frey (Cambridge Judge Business School), in...

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Right: Exterior of Devil’s Gate, the cave in the Primorye region near the far eastern coast of Russia. Left: One of the skulls found in the Devil’s Gate cave from which ancient DNA used in the study was extracted.

Ancient DNA reveals 'genetic continuity’ between Stone Age and modern populations in East Asia

01 Feb 2017

In contrast to Western Europeans, new research finds contemporary East Asians are genetically much closer to the ancient hunter-gatherers that lived...

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Aubrey Lynch, elder from the Wongatha Aboriginal language group, who participated in the study.

Unprecedented study of Aboriginal Australians points to one shared Out of Africa migration for modern humans

21 Sep 2016

The first significant investigation into the genomics of Aboriginal Australians has uncovered several major findings about early human populations...

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