Understanding politics across borders and divides
Published: July 30, 2026 New Zealand’s foreign minister told a member of parliament born in China to leave the country, and China’s ambassador answered him in public. Both parts of that sentence are unusual. The second is close to unprecedented in New Zealand politics. During Parliament’s general debate on Wednesday, Winston Peters was attacking the … Read more
Last Updated: July 2026 Overview Asian migration policy is built around employment, not protection. Most of the region’s major destination countries have never signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, so there is often no legal category for a person fleeing persecution at all. What exists instead is a dense architecture of temporary work permits tied to … Read more
Last Updated: July 2026 Overview Migration in the Americas is organized around one displacement event and a set of national responses to it. Roughly 7.9 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015, and about 6.9 million of them live elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean, not in North America. That distribution is the … Read more
Last Updated: July 2026 Overview Europe’s migration argument in 2026 is happening against falling numbers, which is not what most political rhetoric on the continent would suggest. Eurostat recorded 669,400 first-time asylum applications in the EU in 2025, down 27% from 2024, and Frontex counted irregular crossings falling by a further 37% in the first … Read more
Overview More people live outside their country of birth than ever recorded, and more governments are tightening how they cross. A record 304 million people, about 3.7% of the world’s population, were international migrants in 2024, nearly double the figure of 1990. Most move for work and family, not flight, and most movement is between … Read more