Why do people leave home and seek asylum? Conflict, war, and persecution, living in fragile states, being trafficked, and climate change may all play a part.Global statistics of forced displacement are reviewed.

Types of journeys and attendant experiences are considered, and reasons for how and why people may come to the United Kingdom.

We then review developments in international refugee policy and law, and problems with the current approach, including the role of socioeconomic status, the difficulties in how initiatives are funded, and the lack of long-term perspectives.There are barriers to resettlement in wealthier third countries.Restrictive and punitive asylum policies have a high human cost.There are limits to international cooperation.

This all matters to health professionals because understanding someone’s context explains much about individual behaviour.It enables relevant enquiries to be made, and appropriate help offered. Some possible misapprehensions are considered.

This chapter sums up the book’s key theoretical claims and empirical findings and then explores the extension of its argument beyond the cases examined in the empirical chapters. It first applies the argument to additional migration-related policy areas, including asylum, refugee resettlement, migration control, immigrant integration, and citizenship policy. The chapter then ventures beyond the national level of policy making by using the insulation framework to shed light on the logic of immigration policy making in the European Union, followed by subnational policy making. The chapter concludes with an appraisal of the future politics of immigration policy.

This essay places the narrative of Salvadoran migration to the United States within the broader context of Reagan-era anti-Communism, US immigration and border restrictions, and civil society. It first assesses the varied reasons for Salvadoran migration to the United States during the 1980s and the Reagan administration’s response. It then examines responses by civil society, focusing on the role of social service and grassroots advocacy organizations in both challenging the US government’s Cold War narrative and aiding in the social, economic, and cultural integration of refugees. This essay draws upon case studies from the metropolitan Washington, DC, area, home to the third-largest Salvadoran population in the world. Ultimately, it argues that the Reagan administration’s refusal to grant asylum status to Salvadoran immigrants in the 1980s both galvanized civil society in the United States in support of the refugees and severely retarded the ability of Salvadorans to gain social acceptance and political legitimacy in their new country.

This chapter analyzes the ways the terms “refugee” and “crisis” have been used in discussion of large-scale forced migration movements since 1945. It outlines a framework for comparing the ways that societies around the world have handled the sudden influx of large numbers of individuals seeking asylum.

Reviewing the other chapters in the book, this chapter identifies six key topics that must be taken into account in comparing how societies have responded to refugee crises: the framing of refugees in terms of belonging; the legal and social opportunity structures in the receiving countries; refugees’ agency; the rise of international NGOs; the attitudes of state and civil society; and migration as a factor in social change. The author concludes that some of the case studies in this collection and more recent events point to the spread of more restrictive asylum policies on the part of more affluent nations and a move away from the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 follow-up protocol.