As the world experiences record levels of forced displacement, with over 70 million migrants fleeing conflict and persecution, population scholars work to collect and disseminate information on how to address the current refugee crisis. In January 2020, the PSTC will co-sponsor the inaugural conference of the Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement, in U.N. City, Copenhagen. The Joint Data Center is a collaboration between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Bank, and aims to consolidate data and expertise on forced displacement from both groups. 

Andrew Foster, a professor of Economics and Health Services, Policy, and Practice and a former PSTC Director, is one of the conference organizers. “Forced displacement involves a variety of different sets of problems: there is a series of papers about the consequences of migration for the communities that host them, but also some interesting papers talking about the consequences for the migrants themselves, also important questions like what are some things you can do that make them more or less likely to return home,” he says. 

PSTC Predoctoral Trainee Shunsuke Tsuda was selected to present one of the fifteen conference papers (Foster recused himself from review of this submission). Tsuda, whose paper examines refugee inflow and surplus farm labor in Africa, will be the only PSTC graduate student to present as part of the program, although another PSTC Predoctoral Trainee, Giulia Buccione, also plans to attend the conference, due to its alignment with her own research in migration.

In addition to the potential for this research to influence policy, Foster anticipates that PSTC involvement in the conference will further strengthen Brown scholarship in the subject, which has been well-established through initiatives such as the PSTC Migration and Urbanization research theme and the Watson Institute’s focus on Migration and Displacement. 

Reflecting on the significance of using population studies and demographic approaches to address the refugee crisis, Foster says, “The tools that a demographer has in terms of not only migration, but also in terms of the consequences for human life, in terms of where people are living, who they’re living with, and the consequences for children, are all really central to the initiatives of the population center. The core of it is that the kind of things that we teach our students are really relevant in this world.”