Introduction

Scholarship on refugee policy has grown substantially over the past decades, reflecting the increasing complexity of forced displacement and policy responses worldwide. This reflects the realization that state responses to refugees are not only shaped by legal and humanitarian considerations, but also by broader policy processes. It also invites deeper engagement with the field of policy studies and the insights it can offer to refugee and forced migration studies.

Refugee studies has long benefited from insights from different disciplines and, as forced displacement continues to pose complex governance challenges, it is crucial that the field maintains and expands this interdisciplinarity. Engaging with policy studies can advance scholarly analysis by shedding light on the institutions, actors, and ideas that shape refugee policy.

This paper examines the extent to which policy studies and refugee and forced migration studies have intersected in recent scholarship. In particular, it investigates how issues of refugee policy have been dealt with, looking into the theoretical and methodological approaches scholars employ.

The authors also explore what policy issues and themes are most prominent in recent research. Further, building on previous analyses conducted by LERRN, the paper also addresses key questions about which disciplines and institutions are shaping this subfield.

To explore these dynamics, the paper presents findings from a bibliometric and content analysis. By mapping key dimensions of refugee policy research, this study provides insights into the state of this subfield and highlights the potential for deeper cross-disciplinary engagement with policy studies

]]> /lerrn/2022/jrs-analysis/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jrs-analysis Thu, 12 May 2022 17:54:28 +0000 /lerrn/?p=5305 By Lilly Neang, Rachel McNally, and Nadeea Rahim

Original version published 25 March 2020. Revised version published 12 May 2022.

Introduction

In 2019, the editors of the journal embarked on a self-reflection process about the geography of submissions to the journal, resulting in a blog post asking the critical question: They concluded that the “vast majority of migration research seems to be originating in high-income countries.” Inspired by this blog post and the reality that today , LERRN began to investigate the authorship and content of some of the most recognized academic journals in the field of refugee and forced migration studies. LERRN published the original version of this analysis of the in March 2020. Since then, LERRN has published an analysis of Refugee Survey Quarterly and an analysis of Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. LERRN also hosted a webinar involving the editors of these two journals to reflect on the results of the analyses and questions of access and representation in academic publishing. In 2021, “to work towards further diversifying the journal in terms of themes and approaches, as well as in terms of attracting more publications by emerging researchers and scholars from the Global South.” As academic journals in the field of forced migration studies consider various initiatives to reduce barriers for authors based in the global South and authors with lived experience of displacement, we hope that these analyses can continue to inform the conversation.

In the spirit of continuing this conversation, this blog post presents a revised version of ł˘ˇĄ¸é¸éąˇâ€™s analysis of the , considering the geographic focus and authorship of the published articles and book reviews. Compared to the original version, it broadens the scope to include the 305 articles and 141 book reviews that were published over the 10-year period between 2010 and 2019 (the same time period as ł˘ˇĄ¸é¸éąˇâ€™s Refugee Survey Quarterly analysis). The celebrated its 30^th anniversary in 2018 and is arguably the leading journal in the field. The journal is clearly aware of some of the issues surrounding global imbalances in knowledge production, publishing several related articles in the last decade.[1] There have also been several changes at the journal since 2019 when the time period of this analysis ends, including a . The Book Reviews section of the journal was that welcomes reviews of other material in addition to academic books (such as autobiographies and creative literature), texts published in any language, and historical texts.

Methodology

Using the  (“developed regions” as global North and “developing regions” as global South), we analyze global North and global South participation through categorizing the articles based on the authors’ institutional affiliations at the time of publication and the countries where these institutions are located.  A limitation of this approach is that it relies on the information about authors that is published along with the articles/book reviews and does not consider other forms of geographic identification, such as nationality data or connections to the region, which were not available for this research. Instead, this analysis considers the question of whether scholars from the global South require either a co-author from the global North or an institutional affiliation in the global North to be published in some of the most-cited journals in the field. The North/South classification is a vast simplification that obscures significant differences within these categories, but it is a useful shorthand to examine questions of geographic representation and to represent some of the dynamics involved in the political economy of knowledge production (such as access to research funding). For the book reviews, authorship refers to the person who wrote the review, not the author(s) of the book. This analysis only considers the articles and book reviews that were selected for publication, so the results may be different looking at all the articles and book reviews submitted to the journal. However, this information was not available to the researchers. All the refugee and displaced persons population figures in the rest of this blog post come from  and reflect the numbers of forcibly displaced persons at the end of 2019 (in line with the time period of the analysis).ĚýWithin this time period, the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide nearly doubled: from 41.1 million at the end of 2010 to 79.5 million at the end of 2019.

Results

Global South vs. Global North Authorship

As countries in the global South host the majority of refugees and other displaced persons, it is important to consider the representation of global South voices in the academic literature on forced migration. Of the 305 articles, 15 (5%) were written by single author based in the global South and an additional 26 (9%) included global South authors through co-authorship (Figure 1). A similar trend was noted in book reviews, with only 5 (4%) of the 141 reviews written by global South authors (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Articles Global North/South Authorship

Figure 2: Book Reviews Global North/South Authorship

Collaboration and Co-Authorship

Nearly half of the articles (47%) in the Journal of Refugee Studies are co-authored, where collaboration between different countries is common. Although these partnerships are primarily between authors based in the global North, 15 (10%) articles involve North-South partnerships, and 11 (8%) of co-authored articles only include authors based in the global South (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Articles Co-Authorship

Authors by Country

The JRS authors are based in many different countries. In the articles, 45 different countries were represented, including 23 countries in the global North and 22 countries in the global South. However, 17 of these 45 countries only have one article each. In addition, authors based in countries in the global South produced less articles per country overall, with an average of two articles per country, compared to an average of 14 articles per country for countries in the global North. These statistics are nearly identical for book reviews, with averages of 1.1 articles per country in the global South and 13 articles per country in the global North.

Authors based in the United Kingdom lead with the most publications, as 74 (24%) articles and 73 (52%) book reviews include at least one author based in the UK (Figure 4). All of the top 10 countries for both articles and book reviews are in the global North. However, countries are not necessarily directly comparable because of vastly different populations, economies, and size of the postsecondary sector or number of scholars studying forced displacement. Considering some of these differences, another way to look at the data is to consider articles by country population. When the figures are adjusted to the number of articles per capita, the top 10 are still all from the global North, but there are slight changes in which countries lead in publications. In this case, Norway has substantially more articles than any other country with 41 articles per 10 million people. However, the book reviews show a different pattern, as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, both countries located in the global South, make it in the top 10 for book reviews per capita.

Figure 4: Articles Per Country

Geographic Focus

The articles published cover issues related to forced migrants hosted in every region of the world. However, refugees and other forced migrants are distributed unevenly around the world. Despite hosting a lower percentage of the world’s refugees and forced migrants, some countries and regions are the focus of a high percentage of the articles published in JRS. Of the 305 articles, 48 (16%) focus on globally relevant topics such as international refugee law, forced migration history, and multilateral humanitarianism. The remaining 257 were then sorted into 12 different country/regional categories. Australia, Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe (excluding Germany) are over-represented as the geographic focus in the journal. Collectively, these countries in the global North hosted only 12% of the world’s refugee population at the end of 2019 but more than half (54%) of the articles focus on displaced persons in these countries. In contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa hosted 31% of the world’s refugees and 39% of UNHCR’s population of concern at the end of 2019, but only 42 (16%) of the articles discussed forced migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa (Figure 5).

Among the book reviews, 72 (51%) do not have a country/regional focus and discuss global topics such as climate-related migration. The book reviews that do focus on a particular country or region generally show similar patterns to the articles, with one major exception. Unlike the journal’s articles, the Middle East and North Africa region (excluding Turkey and Lebanon) is also overrepresented in addition to those previously mentioned from the global North (Figure 6).

Figure 5: Geographic Focus of Articles

Figure 6: Geographic Focus of Book Reviews

Type of Displacement

Each article and book review was coded according to the group or groups of forced migrants it discussed: refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs), stateless persons, or “other” to capture groups of (forced) migrants who fall outside UNHCR’s population of concern. For both articles and book reviews, refugees were the primary focus, with 182 (60%) articles and 75 (53%) book reviews talking specifically about refugees. Since the founding of the Journal of Refugee Studies, the field of refugee studies has expanded to consider forced migration more broadly and to consider the experiences of those people who may not have the legal status of ‘refugee’. Asylum seekers or asylum systems were discussed in 43 (14%) articles and 16 (11%) book reviews. It is that scholars have paid limited attention to Internally Displaced Persons. This gap is reflected in the journal, as only 19 (6%) articles and 3 (2%) book reviews discuss Internally Displaced Persons. Very few articles or book reviews (less than 1%) discussed issues related to stateless persons.

Public Accessibility

JRS is a subscription-based journal. Among the articles published from 2010 to 2019, access to nearly all of them (98%) is restricted. Only 5 of the 305 (2%) articles are open to the public. Since the time period of the analysis, there has been an increasing number of articles published open access or available for free (14 articles in 2020 and 33 articles in 2021).

Conclusions and Future Directions

Like ł˘ˇĄ¸é¸éąˇâ€™s previous analyses of other journals in the field, the results show a significant imbalance between where refugees and other displaced persons are located versus where journal authors are located. There is a similar imbalance in the geographic focus of the articles and book reviews, which more often discuss the much smaller number of refugees and asylum seekers who have reached the global North. In the broader international context, these results reflect structural imbalances in access to refugee-related research funding, an issue that and in a recent LERRN webinar. There are also some unique challenges for refugee researchers in certain countries, such as a political context that makes it difficult to criticize government policy.

This analysis lends further support to ongoing conversations at forced migration journals about ways to reduce barriers for potential authors based in the global South and authors with lived experience of displacement. Journals in the field may consider initiatives such as mentorship programs offering one-on-one support to potential authors, writing workshops for potential authors, and additional editing or other supports within the publication process. Other initiatives beyond the journals, such as direct funding for local institutions and researchers, may also be helpful in addressing some of these barriers.

Given the very limited number of articles that are available to the public without a subscription, JRS could consider increasing open access content to make its articles more accessible for readers, particularly those readers from practitioner communities, people with displacement experience, or readers in the Global South who do not have access to institutional journal subscriptions. As noted above, in the last two years many more articles have been available open access than during the time period of the analysis.

The new approach to the Reviews section of the journal, as mentioned above and , aims to diversify both what gets reviewed and who writes reviews. However, as the Review Editor also notes, writing a review is primarily a service to the field overall. It may not be fair to expect academics in the global South or people with a lived experience of displacement to do the time-consuming work of writing reviews without compensation and with limited benefit to their own careers. In this context, the JRS Review Editor has suggested that established scholars based in the global North can play an important role in writing reviews that bring attention to the work of refugees and of scholars in the global South.

For over 30 years, the Journal of Refugee Studies has published high-quality research on issues related to forced displacement and has made a significant contribution to the development of the field of refugee and forced migration studies. Going forward, the journal can play an equally significant role in facilitating a truly global academic conversation and in publishing articles and reviews that together show a representative picture of forced displacement around the world.

[1] Including “” by Loren Landau (2012), “” by Richa Shivakoti and James Milner (2021), and “” by Maha Shuayb and Cathrine Brun (2021).

See also the recording and event report from ł˘ˇĄ¸é¸éąˇâ€™s recent webinar involving Refuge editor Dr. Dagmar Soennecken (ł˘ˇĄ¸é¸éąˇâ€™s Analysis of Refuge and RSQ: Knowledge, Access and Representation)

In 2019, the editors of the journal Migration Studies embarked on a self-reflection process about the geography of submissions to the journal, resulting in a blog post asking the critical question:  They concluded that the “vast majority of migration research seems to be originating in high-income countries.” Inspired by this blog post, LERRN began to publish analyses of some of the most-cited journals in forced migration studies, including a blog post on the Journal of Refugee Studies and a blog post on Refugee Survey Quarterly. [1]

This blog post analyzes .ĚýRefuge is “a non-profit, open access, peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of forced migration” that has published interdisciplinary work in both English and French since 1981. Over the 6-year period between 2015 and 2020 analyzed for this blog post, Refuge published 55 single-authored articles and 48 co-authored articles, for a total of 103 articles.

With 85% of the world’s 26 million refugees and 3.6 million Venezuelans displaced abroad currently hosted in the Global South, and 73% hosted in neighbouring countries to their countries of origin, this blog post considers the geographic focus and authorship of the published articles. All the refugee and displaced persons population figures in this blog post come from and reflect the numbers of forcibly displaced persons at the end of 2019.Ěý Using the (“developed regions” as Global North and “developing regions” as Global South), we analyze Global North and Global South participation through categorizing the articles based on the authors’ institutional affiliations at the time of publication and the countries where these institutions are located. This approach is limited as it does not consider other forms of geographic identification (such as nationality data, which was not available for this research) or connections within the region that it is the focus of the research. Instead, this analysis considers the question of whether scholars from the Global South require either a co-author from the Global North or an institutional affiliation in the Global North to be published in some of the most-cited journals in the field. Evidently, the Global North/South classification is a vast simplification that obscures significant differences within these categories, but it is a useful shorthand to examine questions of geographic representation and to represent some of the dynamics involved in the political economy of knowledge production (such as access to research funding).

Canada and beyond

was established as a Canadian journal in 1981 at a time of significant growth in research relating to the resettlement and integration of Indo-Chinese refugees in Canada. Since the beginning, it has continued to publish important and critical analysis of Canada’s resettlement programs and Canada’s refugee determination (asylum) system. The journal is based at York University in Toronto, Canada and receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). As a result, it is not surprising that nearly half (47%) of articles include at least one author based at a Canadian institution: 23 single-authored articles are written by authors based in Canada, while 25 co-authored articles include at least one author based in Canada. In addition, of the 90 articles with a regional focus, 40% of them focus on refugees, asylum seekers, or other groups of migrants in Canada. Although the journal is Canadian focused – with an emphasis on Canada’s Journal on Refugees in the title – the reach of Refuge has extended well beyond Canada, both in terms of authorship and in terms of the geographic focus of the articles. Authors were based in 21 different countries, with the largest numbers based in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. For 12 of the countries, there was only one article written by an author or co-authors based in that country (Israel, Qatar, Portugal, Iceland, Slovakia, South Africa, Uganda, Mexico, Croatia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Switzerland).

Global North and Global South authorship

For the purposes of this analysis, countries in the Global North are those designated as “developed regions” by the United Nations Statistics Division, while countries in the Global South are those designated as “developing regions.” Given that 85% of the world’s 26 million refugees and 3.6 million Venezuelans displaced abroad are currently hosted in the Global South, it is important to consider the representation of Global South voices in the forced migration academic literature. As these countries host large numbers of displaced persons, they have significant first-hand experience responding to displacement, and this experience is important to include in the global conversation around forced migration. Of the countries where Refuge authors are based, 13 are in the Global North and 8 are in the Global South. While voices from the Global South are clearly included in the journal, the vast majority of articles (89%) do not include a Global South-based author.

Most co-authorships (85%) also take place within the Global North, either within one country or across countries. Only six co-authored articles (13%) involved collaborations between authors based in the Global North and the Global South.

Geographic focus of articles

The articles published cover issues related to displacement in every region of the world. However, when compared to the percentage of refugees hosted in specific countries and regions, as well as to the percentage of UNHCR’s population of concern hosted in that country or region, some regions are under-represented while others are over-represented. As mentioned above, of the 90 articles with a regional focus, 40% of them focus on refugees, asylum seekers, or other groups of migrants located in Canada, but less than 1% of the world’s refugees are located in Canada. Other countries in the Global North are also over-represented compared to the percentage of displaced persons they currently host. In contrast, looking to a region in the Global South, Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented, since 5% of the articles are about displaced persons in this region, but it hosts 31% of the world’s refugees and 39% of UNHCR’s population of concern. A similar pattern of under-representation is evident with the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Asia and Pacific regions.

Population of concern

Each article was coded according to the population of concern to UNHCR: refugee, asylum seeker, internally displaced persons (IDP) or “other” to capture groups of (forced) migrants who fall outside UNHCR’s population of concern, with some articles covering multiple groups. As expected, most of the articles (77%) focus on refugees and 16% of the articles focus on asylum seekers. Only four articles look at internally displaced persons (IDPs), reflective of a of research related to internal displacement. Reflecting the expansion of refugee studies to include other groups of (forced) migrants, 27% of articles look at migrants who are not refugees, asylum seekers, or IDPs, including forms of migration that sometimes overlap with asylum-seeking.

Bilingualism

Refuge is a bilingual (English/French) journal given that those are the two official languages in Canada. Thus, it is notable that all abstracts are available in both languages. However, in practice the journal is mostly in English. Only 5 out of 103 articles published in the last six years were in French. Except for one author based in Switzerland, all the authors writing in French were based in Canada. Given that there are many other French-speaking countries that also host significant numbers of refugees, particularly in Africa, there may be potential to expand the journal’s French content to feature some of these perspectives.

Open Access

Unlike or , where only a few articles are open access, Refuge is an entirely open access journal. An open access journal would certainly increase access for readers, particularly those from practitioner communities, people with displacement experience, or readers in the Global South who do not have access to institutional journal subscriptions. However, it is not clear what effect open access may have on the decisions of authors to submit to the journal or on the patterns identified above.

Conclusions and future directions

The purpose of ł˘ˇĄ¸é¸éąˇâ€™s series of journal analyses is to provide a starting point for conversation within the journals and in the forced migration studies field more broadly on questions related to knowledge production, access, and representation. There remain many unanswered questions, including whether the published articles reflect the same patterns as submissions, what patterns might be revealed by additional demographic data about authors (such as nationality), and why authors choose to submit to specific journals. Refuge is clearly aware of the questions raised in this analysis. It is notable that the most recent issue in 2020 was co-edited by LERRN partner Dr. Maha Shuayb from Lebanon and featured both Global North and Global South perspectives. It is also notable that the recent on the theme of “Refuge in the Time of Pandemic” explicitly invited “contributions of authors from the Global South as well as both refugee support workers and other frontline practitioners (e.g., health workers).” For several decades, Refuge has served as a critical publication outlet for Canada’s vibrant forced migration studies community and as a platform for critical analysis of issues related to refugees and asylum seekers in Canada. It has since expanded beyond Canada, but it has great potential to expand even further into a more global journal featuring a wider diversity of perspectives.

[1] We would like to thank the additional authors from the blog post on Refugee Survey Quarterly for their contributions to the methodology that guides this post.

Do you want to continue the conversation?

Join LERRN for our upcoming webinar:

ł˘ˇĄ¸é¸éąˇâ€™s Analysis of Refuge and RSQ: Reflections on Knowledge Production, Access, and Representation

Authors: Kathryn Hampton (University of London), Rachel McNally (ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University), Michael Joel Nabugere (University of London) and Nadeea Rahim (ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University).^[1]

Who publishes in Refugee Survey Quarterly and where do they live? How global is the content? Building on ł˘ˇĄ¸é¸éąˇâ€™s previous analysis of the Journal of Refugee Studies, a team of researchers from ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University (LERRN) and the University of London (RECAP) examine these questions in a new analysis of all the journal articles published in RSQ from 2010-2019. The analysis raises important questions to consider for the journal and for the forced migration research community as a whole, around representation of Global South voices and the dynamics of knowledge production.

This article constitute an output of the , and has been supported by UK Research and Innovation as part of the Global Challenges Research Fund, grant number ES/P010873/1 as well as the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN), a partnership funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

This blog post was also published by the Refugee Law Initiative .

Introduction

This article aims at contributing to the debate on the politics of knowledge production in the forced migration discourse and it does so through an analysis of the Refugee Survey Quarterly (RSQ) journal as a point of departure. For one to contribute to recognised academic literature on forced migration, it is commonly necessary to be published in a widely read journal, such as the RSQ. Representation of different voices in these journals, therefore, matters in terms of representation of different voices in the academic discourse on forced migration overall. All knowledge can be used for multiple purposes,^[2] and the political economy of knowledge production has a bearing on the direction of the academic discourse on forced migration.

With 85% of the world’s 26 million refugees and 3.6 million Venezuelans displaced abroad currently hosted in the Global South and 73% hosted in neighbouring countries to their countries of origin, this article analyses the global coverage of articles published by the RSQ between 2010 and 2019 considering their geographic focus, themes and authorship. All the refugee and displaced persons population figures in this article come from UNHCR’s 2019 Global Trends report and reflect the numbers of forcibly displaced persons at the end of 2019.^[3] Within the time period covered by the analysis, the number of forcibly displaced people has nearly doubled: from 41.1 million at the end of 2010 to 79.5 million at the end of 2019.

Although author nationality data was not available, the analysis we present considers the geographical distribution of authors by looking at their institutions of affiliation.Ěý Using the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) Classification of countries (developed or otherwise),^[4] we analyse Global North and Global South participation through categorising the articles based on the authors’ institutional affiliations and the countries where these institutions are located. This approach presents an opportunity to analyse which articles we consider to have emerged from the Global North and the Global South. We then consider the content and themes of the published articles, as well as collaborations and partnerships through co-authorships. We conclude the article with questions to consider for the journal and the forced migration research community more broadly.

Global South and Global North

For the purpose of this study, the Global North refers to countries classified as “developed” and Global South refers to countries classified as “developing” by UNSD.Ěý There is a possibility of authors being nationals of Global South countries but working in the Global North. Similarly, with technological improvements, for example the improvement in internet access globally, authors might be affiliated to institutions but operating in other areas. For this reason, taking the institution of affiliation does not determine author nationality or exact location. These issues present a limitation in the methodology.

The analysis, however, shows that knowledge generation on forced displacement has been monopolised by institutions in the Global North. An analysis of 210 articles published by the RSQ from 2010 to 2019 indicated that the authors of 89% (184) of the articles published were affiliated to Global North institutions.Ěý Only 7% (15) of 210 articles published by the RSQ featured at least one co-author affiliated to Global South institutions while 4% (11) articles were solely authored by scholars affiliated to Global South institutions.

27% (57) of articles published in the period of research focused specifically on forced displacement in the Global South. 44% (92) of RSQ published articles in the period of analysis were focused on issues affecting forced migrants globally or in one or more of the Global South regions. An important question for discussion brought to mind by the findings is whether the academic discourse generated considers issues most pertinent to the majority of the forcibly displaced population. A conclusion on this point, however, is beyond the limits of this particular paper.

These figures are indicative of the broader imbalance in knowledge generation between Global North and South visible in academic journals^[5], with authors writing from the Global South having less representation overall in the RSQ. Meanwhile the Global North hosts only 15% of forced migrants yet generates the vast majority of knowledge on this topic.

Authors by country

Authors are from a total of 39 countries, where 59% (23) are based in the global North and 41% (16) are based in the Global South. The United Kingdom leads with 53 articles, 85% (45) of which are single-authored and 15% (8) are co-authored. The UK has the highest number of single-authored articles compared to other countries in the Global North. For comparison, the US is the second leading country with a total of 34 articles, 62% (21) of which are single-authored and 38% (13) are co-authored. As an outlier in the global North, Norway has more co-authored articles (5) than single authored articles (3). Most authors based in the Global South are included in co-authored articles, with the exception of authors based in UAE, Iraq, and Fiji who each contributed single-authored articles.

A per capita analysis was also conducted to compare the countries’ population size and the number of articles produced. The per capita calculation was based on the number of articles produced per 10 million people. Co-authored articles were counted by assigning the article to each country involved. This calculation would allow us to see if countries with a larger population (e.g. India) would produce more articles than countries with smaller populations (e.g Norway). The assumption is that countries with larger populations would produce more articles. This is referring to the general population size of a country provided by the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in 2019^[6].

The top five countries leading in per capita are: Switzerland, Norway, Fiji, the UK, and Australia. Switzerland leads in per capita with 21 articles per 10 million people while India and Nigeria represent the lowest values with 0. There is a general divide between the Global North and South, where the Global North leads in per capita. This points to the opposite of the per capita assumption as smaller populated countries of the Global North produce more articles compared to the larger populated countries of the Global South. However, there are two outliers in the Global South as part of the top 10 in per capita. For example, Fiji is the third in per capita due to their small population of 890 000 with 1 article.

In terms of per capita and authors by country, the UK leads in the number of articles but is third in per capita (7.8 articles/10 million people) due to the population size. The USA places second in number of articles, but places much lower in per capita (1 article/10 million people) at 20^th place due to its large population size. Other than Fiji, Lebanon is an outlier in per capita at 8^th place, but is 17^th for number of articles (4) 2 of which are co-authored. Lebanon is an outlier and has a rather small population in comparison to other countries in the Global South. With their population at 6 856 000 it produced 4 articles giving the value of 5.8 for per capita. However, it is important to consider that 20% of Lebanon’s population are refugees (1 395 000 refugees/6 856 000 total population). Details about the per capita for refugee populations in countries are discussed later on.

Content and themes

This section classifies articles based on different categories of displaced persons, according to the categories included in UNHCR’s population of concern: refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), asylum seekers and stateless persons. It also adds an “other” category for groups of migrants who fall outside of UNHCR’s population of concern, such as migrant workers. This section also examines the geographic focus of articles, coding them with at least one country or broader region, or alternatively, a designation that the article is about an international topic without a regional focus or country case study. Given that refugees and other displaced people are hosted largely by certain countries and in the Global South, the geographic focus of the articles was compared to the percentage of refugees and the percentage of displaced persons (all categories included in UNHCR’s population of concern) currently hosted in each country or region. Certain specific countries were counted separately from their broader regions because they currently host a large refugee population (Turkey, Germany) or because of a large number of affiliated authors (UK, the United States, Canada and Australia).

The journal retains a strong focus on refugees and asylum seekers, as the journal’s name would suggest, but it also includes articles on other populations. The majority, 79% (166) of articles look at refugees, asylum seekers or both. Another 7% (15) look at IDPs, including 4 articles from a 2010 special issue on “New Challenges of Migration in Africa,” while 3% (7) articles were about stateless persons, including 6 articles about stateless Palestinian refugees. 20% (41) of articles  look at “other” groups of migrants – a heterogeneous group that includes people displaced for environmental reasons, migrant workers, people in immigration detention, and people who have been trafficked, as well as articles about mixed migration – categories that often overlap with asylum-seeking.

RSQ has a wide geographic focus, with articles that examine case studies in every region of the world. Most articles, 80% (168), have a regional focus (including country-based case studies or regional case studies such as European asylum law), while the other 20% (42) look at international issues with no specific country case study, such as international refugee law. The graph below shows the geographic focus of the articles with a regional or country-specific focus.

Although the UK is the country with the highest number of affiliated authors, with 25% (53) of articles including a UK-based author, a much smaller percentage of articles 4% (6) of articles with a regional focus study refugees and other migrants in the UK. That means that most authors based in the UK are not writing about the UK, and are more commonly writing about international issues with no regional focus 9% (18), the European Union and mainland Europe 5% (11), or a variety of other countries and regions. Without nationality information, it is difficult to tell if some of the UK-based authors are scholars from other countries who have taken positions at UK universities, while continuing to write about their countries of origin. Compared to articles about refugees and other groups in the UK, there are more than double the number of articles focusing on refugees in Australia 9% (15) and the United States 8% (14).

Although the journal has a global focus, comparing the percentage of articles about each region to the percentages of displaced persons currently hosted by each region, Global North countries are overrepresented, while Global South countries are underrepresented. Although the distribution of refugees around the world has changed within the last decade, with major new displacement situations like Syria and Venezuela, it has remained consistent that the majority of refugees seek refuge in countries neighbouring their countries of origin, which are primarily countries in the Global South. The graph below compares the geographic focus of the articles to the percentage of refugees and the percentage of UNHCR’s population of concern (displaced persons) hosted by each country or region.

More than one third of the articles, 38% (63) with a regional focus study refugees and other migrants in Europe, yet this region only hosts 15% of the world’s refugees (9% without Germany) and 9% of UNHCR’s population of concern. The number of articles that focus on the UK, Canada, the United States, and Australia are all significantly overrepresented compared to both the percentage of refugees in each country and the percentage of UNHCR’s population of concern in each country.

In contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa are both underrepresented. While 18% (30) of the articles focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, the region hosts 31% of the world’s refugees and nearly 40% of displaced persons. Similarly, the Middle East and North Africa are the subject of 9.5% of articles, but host 13% of the world’s refugees and 18% of displaced people. Turkey, which now hosts 3.6 million refugees – the most in the world – is the focus of three of the articles – half the number of articles as Canada and the UK who each host less than 1% of the world’s refugees respectively. The number of articles about the Asia and Pacific region (excluding Australia) is similar to the percentage of displaced persons in the region, at about 10%. In Latin America, where the recent mass displacement of Venezuelans led the region to host 17% of the world’s displaced persons by the end of 2019, the percentage of articles stands at 8%.

Another way to compare the geographic distribution of articles to the distribution of the displaced population is to calculate the number of articles per 100,000 displaced persons in a country at the end of 2019 (not including stateless persons), assuming that countries with larger displaced populations would have a larger number of affiliated authors contributing articles. Based on these calculations, many Global South countries with large displaced populations have less than 0.5 articles per 100,000 people displaced, including India, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Sudan, Cameroon, Iraq, Nigeria and Yemen. In contrast, the UK has 27 articles per 100,000 displaced persons.

Co-authorship

Co-authorship is a type of collaboration where each partner is recognized as meeting criteria for authorship, that is, contributing to the design or data collection, analysis, write-up and final review of the article. Authorship has significant academic, social and financial implications, including credibility, visibility and career advancement.Ěý Co-authorship between Global North and South institutions is one indication of how knowledge and expertise are validated across regions, as well as the resources available to scholarly communities in different regions.

Almost a third of articles (28%, 59 articles) were co-authored. Among co-authored articles (59), most were co-authored in the Global North (44), of which most (31) had multiple authors from within the same Global North country. 4% (8) of articles were co-authored between North-South collaborators, while another 3% (6) were co-authored within the Global South. In the Global South, co-authors came from 12 different countries. Similar to North-North co-authorship, most Global South co-authored articles (5) involved multiple authors within the same country, but there was one international South-South co-authorship between two Global South countries.

Conclusions and future directions

The RSQ is globally diverse, with contributions from authors based in institutions in 39 countries, and a wide geographic focus, with articles that examine case studies in every region of the world. Although the journal retains a strong focus on refugees and asylum seekers (79% of articles), it has also branched out to include articles on IDPs, stateless individuals and other migrants.

As in similar analyses of the Journal of Refugee Studies and , the analysis of ten years of articles published in RSQ indicates a disproportionate concentration of knowledge production about forced migrants far from where most forced migrants live. This discrepancy mirrors global inequities in economic, social and political spheres between the Global North and the Global South.

Although 85% of the world’s 79.5 million forced migrants reside in the Global South, almost all of the authors of articles in the RSQ over the past 10 years (89%) were affiliated to Global North institutions. This can have implications for the content of the research, with only 27% of the articles focused on forced displacement in the Global South, a figure which might change significantly if the journal had more articles by Global South authors.

Questions to consider for the RSQ board

These findings are relevant for the RSQ board, institutional subscribers, and individual researchers. The board may consider initiatives such as: offering discounted access to historical online content in addition to OUP’s for institutions in developing countries for print and current online content (just 6% of RSQ articles are Open Access); ensuring that the editorial board and reviewers which assesses articles reflect diverse perspectives, knowledges and lived experiences; and encouraging submissions for special issues proposals and paper on underrepresented regions, topics or displaced groups.

Questions to consider for the forced migration research community

Global North institutions and scholars may consider this analysis as a call to action to proactively seek co-authors in the Global South and to partner with Global South scholars in developing new research projects which offer meaningful partnerships, given the potential for inequities in scholarly partnerships. Global South institutions and scholars may consider this analysis as an encouragement to continue to submit articles to the RSQ in order to amplify their important voices in the academic discourse. The forced migration research community may also initiate a virtual convening among Global North and Global South scholars to foster networking to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing, as well as to discuss and reflect on how inequities may be perpetuated in scholarly partnerships and in research.

Questions to consider in future analyses of migration journals

Future analyses of journal publications may examine the content and authorship of RSQ and other journals in more detail, such as incorporating nationality of authors into the analysis to get a better picture of who is writing for the journal, or further examining the content and topics of articles.

Moving forward, further efforts can ensure that the important scholarly work of the RSQ continues to proactively and meaningfully contribute to political, social and economic movements which are seeking to address Global North-South inequities.

[1] The authors would like to acknowledge the supervision and guidance of Dr. Diana Martin and Bethan Mathias, researchers with the RECAP project at the Refugee Law Initiative.

^[2] BS Chimni, ‘The Birth of a “Discipline”: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies’ (2009) 22 Journal of Refugee Studies 11 <https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fen051>

^[3] UNHCR, 2019 Global Trends Report < >

^[4] ‘UNSD — Methodology’ <https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/> accessed 24 August 2020.

^[5] See “How global is the Journal of Refugee Studies?” </lerrn/2020/how-global-is-the-journal-of-refugee-studies/> and “Does the gap in migration research between high-income countries and the rest of the world matter?” <>.

^[6] UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, ‘World Population Prospects 2019’ <https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_DataBooklet.pdf>