Worldwide international migration is a large and growing phenomenon. Approximately 272 million people (or 3.4 percent of the world’s population) now lives outside of their home countries. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 70 million persons worldwide were forcibly displaced from their homes. Understanding these trends, their drivers and consequences, is critically important to improving policies and programs designed to minimize the impacts linked to such displacement and migration. 

This certificate programs offers deep knowledge and information about the different groups of people on the move (labor migrants, refugees, internally displaced, asylum seekers, and others), and  the multiple causes and consequences of such movements of people. It also provides a global overview of displacement and migration numbers and trends; drivers of population movements; impacts on origin, transit and host countries; and policy responses to population movements. 

Specifically, the certificate program will cover the major theoretical explanations underpinning displacement and international migration; global migration and refugee governance; differences and trends in national policies, especially refugee resettlement and labor migration; integration experiences of immigrants in host countries; and connections between migration and displacement and other issues as security, development and environmental change. Finally, the certificate will illustrate how research questions are answered in an effort to enhance existing knowledge and improve policies and practices.

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