Photograph of a prison
  • Blog
  • October 23, 2024

The Problem of California's Prop 36, Criminal Justice Reform, and the Social Justice Blind Spot

California voters are being asked to roll back a milestone criminal justice reform this election, in the form of Proposition 36. This initiative would elevate certain misdemeanors, like petty theft and non-violent drug crimes, into felonies. It would...
Migrants at the border
  • Blog
  • February 8, 2024

Migration Policy

In late 2023, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell forecasted that 2024 would be the year of fear. Borrell expressed his concern that Europeans’ fears would lead them to elect the far right en masse. In that respect, he is probably...
A flat collage of a multi-headed hawk
  • Publication
  • February 2, 2022

Belonging in Berlin

Berlin, Europe’s third largest city at the turn of the 20th century, evokes images of the cultural metropolis and industrial center of the Golden Twenties, the darkness and cruelty of the Nazi regime, and decades of Cold War tension.
A photo of three Kurdish women posing, all draped in vibrant reflective fabric
  • Publication
  • February 2, 2022

Creating belonging for migrants through human rights-based narrative change

“We need stories that show that the values we hold in common are stronger than what divides us.” With these words, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights launched the Toolbox on Migration Narrative Change.
Haitian refugees
  • Blog
  • September 23, 2021

Blog: The US Owes a Debt to Haiti and to Haitian Migrants

The scenes of Haitian migrants being herded like cattle and whipped like slaves by Border Patrol agents on horseback at the US-Mexico border at Del Rio, Texas are typical of how Haitians have been treated since the 1804 Haitian revolution. Haiti is...
climate refugees report cover
  • Publication
  • December 10, 2019

Climate Refugees

This report argues that a comprehensive framework for climate-induced displaced persons forced to cross international borders to be considered “climate refugees” is necessary.
Report infographic
  • Press Release
  • December 10, 2019

New report calls for international convention to protect climate refugees

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE A new report by UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute finds that temporary and permanent displacements caused by the climate crisis are increasing, but that no legally binding international mechanisms exist to protect...
Panelists seated on stage
  • Video
  • October 26, 2018

Video: Family Separations

In October, the Haas Institute and the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine co-organized a five-person panel discussion on family separations prompted by the federal government’s separations of immigrant children from their caregivers along the US-Mexico border this past summer.
2014 people's climate march
  • Blog
  • August 16, 2018

Blog: Immigration Justice is Climate Justice

The struggles for immigration justice and climate justice are inextricably linked. Their victories exist as a positive feedback loop, each imperative to the other’s success as trials of climate change, displacement, and anti-immigration efforts and violence ensue internationally.
image grab of presentation
  • Video
  • October 17, 2017

Video: A European Crisis, or a humanity crisis?

Elsadig Elsheikh, the head of the Global Justice Program at the Haas Institute, presented, on Oct. 10, on his recent report on the global refugee crisis, titled " Moving Targets: An Analysis of Global Forced Migration." The talk, hosted by the Center...
This image is a cover page for the Moving Targets: An Analysis of Global Forced Migration report.
  • Publication

Moving Targets: An Analysis of Global Forced Migration

Moving Targets: An Analysis of Global Forced Migration investigates the historical and contemporary causes of forced migration as well as both the challenges and capacities of national and international refugee protections and resettlement efforts.
  • Blog
  • June 29, 2015

Challenging Borders: Imagining an Inclusive Europe at a Time of "Migration Crisis"

In the past few months, tragic deaths of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean sea have propelled the European “migration crisis” to the centre of international attention. The drowning of over 800 migrants off the coast of Malta on April 23...
seth holmes headshot
  • Interview
  • November 20, 2014

Faculty Profile: Seth Holmes Discusses Migrant Workers, the US agricultural system, and Structural Inequality Exacerbated "through metaphors of ethnic difference"

Seth M. Holmes is a professor in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Graduate Program in Medical Anthropology and a member of the Haas Institute Diversity and Health Disparities Cluster . Holmes is the author of Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies...