Migration is one of the defining policy and political challenges of the 21st century, yet researchers in academia and beyond who study the issue often struggle to have their voices heard. Even as the scale and urgency of managing migration grows, amid political instability, economic inequality, and rising climate risks, scholars are often unable to influence governments to make policies more effective, evidence-based, and humane.

One reason for this disconnect is that many research studies remain fragmented, siloed, or inaccessible. Others reflect a narrow set of voices or an absence of answers to key questions that policymakers face, reducing the opportunity for real-world application. Although scholarly research has the potential to help identify what types of policies work, in which contexts, and for which people, these gaps make it more difficult for policymakers to access timely and relevant evidence at the moments when it is most needed. The lack of impact is all the more unfortunate given the interdisciplinary nature of migration research, which involves scholars from multiple disciplines examining various questions, including the drivers of movement, the outcomes of integration approaches, the impact of remittance systems, the effects of legal pathways, and the risks of displacement.

When asked, researchers identify three systemic issues as being responsible for blunting the policy relevance of much of their work: persistent fragmentation across disciplines and geographies, uneven access to reliable data and methodological training, and deep structural inequalities in whose voices are represented. Each challenge narrows the evidence base and limits the ability of research to better inform policy.

Those findings were contained in the results of a survey led by the authors involving more than 1,800 migration researchers working in more than 100 countries. The survey, which is one of the largest ever of its kind, sought to better understand why migration research often falls short of its policy potential. This article analyzes findings of that survey and compares structures of the migration studies field with others, particularly climate science and global health.

Limited Collaboration: Why Silos Weaken Migration Evidence

Migration is not a single-issue domain. Researchers approach it from a range of disciplines, including sociology, economics, anthropology, geography, political science, and public health. Each offers critical insight into the causes, consequences, and lived experiences of human mobility. Yet scholars in these fields often work in isolation. A sociologist studying refugee integration may never interact with an economist analyzing remittance flows or a geographer mapping climate-induced displacement. As a result, findings remain fragmented, making it harder for policymakers to draw on a cohesive body of evidence.

Data from the Migration Platform Survey confirm this fragmentation. Most researchers said they find collaborators through academic conferences (66 percent) or within their own institutions (55 percent; see Figure 1). Conferences have the potential to expand networks and diversify collaborations across disciplines and borders. Yet in practice, this potential is often unfulfilled. A separate, more general survey conducted by the researcher Kalle Hauss, published in 2021, found that fewer than one-quarter of postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students in Germany reported meaningfully growing their networks by attending national or international conferences. Research networks tend to reflect existing hierarchies that are shaped more by geography, seniority, and institutional resources than by shared research needs. Collaborating within one’s own institution, meanwhile, is often convenient and familiar. It requires less effort to build trust, involves fewer logistical or bureaucratic hurdles, and is reinforced by institutional norms that reward internal partnerships. These dynamics help explain why networks remain fragmented, even when researchers express interest in broader collaboration.

This siloed structure has real consequences for decision-making. Policymakers designing refugee integration programs, for instance, may consult sociologists working on social cohesion or legal scholars specializing in asylum frameworks, but miss economists’ insights about labor-market impacts or psychologists’ knowledge on trauma recovery. Without these perspectives in conversation, policies are less likely to be holistic or effective.

Professional networks, which 45 percent of researchers said they use to find collaborators, often reinforce these disciplinary boundaries. When policymakers or others ask researchers to suggest additional experts, researchers are more likely to recommend peers within their own field, given existing patterns of collaboration and familiarity. As a result, the flow of knowledge into policy spaces tends to mirror academic silos rather than bridge them.

Mechanisms to break down these barriers and systematically integrate migration research’s inherently multidisciplinary perspectives into policy remain limited. Other fields have experimented with structures to connect evidence across disciplines. For instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) are high-level groups that seek to gather insights from across the fields of climate science and global health, respectively. Migration research has few comparable platforms. While some organizations convene diverse perspectives, the field as a whole lacks large, consistent scaffolding to ensure these collaborations are broad-based and sustained.

More Data, but Hard to Use

The amount of migration data has grown significantly in recent years, and scholars now have theoretical access to statistics from individual household surveys, censuses, and administrative files, as well as more expansive satellite imagery and mobile phone records, among many other sources. But availability does not guarantee usability. Many datasets are fragmented across platforms, released without sufficient explanation, require expensive software to analyze, or are costly to access.

These limitations are not just about a lack of technical knowledge but reflect structural inequalities. When datasets are fragmented, lack relevant metadata, or are behind paywalls, people without institutional support face significant barriers to accessing and utilizing them.

The Migration Platform Survey found 67 percent of respondents said easier access to curated datasets was a top research need, and 41 percent wanted repositories where researchers could share and access each other’s data. Several noted that, in practice, much of their time is spent locating, cleaning, or reformatting existing data. For many researchers, this burden can be prohibitive, requiring significant time or funding for research assistants. Some reported having to shelve promising research because data were too difficult to obtain or verify, even if they exist.

Because these data challenges affect who is able to conduct research, it dictates whose work reaches decision-makers. When migration data are incomplete or difficult to access or interpret, policy tends to be skewed by research from better-resourced regions and institutions. For example, detailed displacement mapping using satellite imagery is increasingly common in parts of East Africa and Ukraine, where international organizations have invested in this data infrastructure. But similar migration dynamics in places such as northern Cameroon or parts of Central America often go under-analyzed—not because the situations are less relevant, but because researchers in these regions cannot work with the same types of data. As a result, policy responses in under-resourced areas may be slower, less targeted, or not driven by evidence.

Other fields have addressed similar challenges by creating centralized infrastructures that make data broadly usable. For example, WHO’s Global Health Observatory curates and documents datasets that are easily accessible and widely used. Migration research has valuable resources, such as the Migration Policy Institute’s Migration Data Hub or IPUMS’s census collections, but it still lacks a comprehensive, integrated system for geospatial and subnational data.

Structural Inequalities: Whose Voices Shape Migration Evidence

The ability to manipulate data is not the only way in which opportunities to contribute meaningfully to migration research are not distributed evenly. Scholars based in Europe and North America, especially at well-resourced institutions, are significantly more likely to access advanced training, funds for fieldwork, analytical tools, and protected time for publishing. These advantages accumulate, shaping both the pace of research and whose voices enter policy spaces.

Findings from the Migration Platform Survey illustrate this disparity (see Figure 2). Respondents’ most commonly cited barriers to exploring new research methods were a lack of funding (72 percent) and time constraints (54 percent). These challenges disproportionately fall on early-career scholars, faculty at academic institutions that require lots of teaching, and those in the Global South. These obstacles limit who can build new methodological expertise or take on ambitious research.

Importantly, researchers across contexts insisted they were eager to expand their methodological toolkit. Qualitative methods were the most widely used, yet more than one-third of respondents conducting qualitative research reported not using qualitative analysis software. This suggests they do not have access to this kind of software (which tends to be expensive), lack the technical skills to use it, or are relying on other researchers to conduct the analysis, a workaround that still leaves them excluded from parts of the analysis process.

These hurdles underscore the broader inequalities shaping how migration research is supported. Limited access to software and analytical tools slows down projects and narrows the scope of questions researchers can pursue. Just as significant are institutional barriers: When there is little recognition or incentive to build new skills—such as geospatial analysis—researchers may struggle to justify the investment of time and resources, even when those skills would be directly relevant to their work.

The result is a skewed evidence base with blind spots that have real consequences on policymaking. A government designing refugee integration programs, for instance, may rely mostly on studies from high-income countries, simply because those are the most numerous and readily available, while overlooking the limited amount of research on the drivers of displacement in fragile or conflict-affected states. Policies based on this narrow evidence risk misdiagnosing needs, reinforcing flawed assumptions, or overlooking the structural drivers of migration.

Other fields have taken concrete steps to counter similar problems. In global health, donors have funded early-career researchers and those from low-resource backgrounds in order to diversify the evidence base. Leading climate scientists have developed open-access repositories and shared training to expand participation. In education, particularly in North America and Europe, peer mentoring networks have bridged gaps between senior and early-career researchers, helping to create more inclusive knowledge communities. Migration research also has examples of these kinds of initiatives, particularly in the Global North, but they are limited in scale.

As a result, migration research lacks the kind of consistent and field-wide support structures that have helped other domains advance. Without targeted investment in training, funding, and collaboration opportunities, the field will likely continue to reflect entrenched inequalities. That means the policies derived from it will remain incomplete, risking misalignment with the realities they aim to address.

Making Knowledge Count

Migration pressures are rising worldwide, yet research often fails to keep pace with the decisions governments must make. This is not necessarily due to a lack of expertise; thousands of scholars are working to understand the causes, consequences, and trajectories of migration across diverse settings. Instead, the problem is often that collaboration is siloed, access to data and training is uneven, and research support is unbalanced in favor of institutions and individuals with significant resources and in high-income countries. These constraints narrow the evidence base, delay the uptake of findings, and limit scholars’ ability to weigh in on urgent policy needs.

As such, when policymakers confront fast-moving situations, they are forced to act with incomplete or outdated information, and the consequences ripple across migration systems. Integration programs may misread local needs. Legal frameworks may ignore informal pathways. And entire policy approaches may be misaligned with on-the-ground realities.

Addressing these gaps will require more than additional research. It will require infrastructure that expands who can contribute, what evidence is available, and how easily it can be used. That means rethinking how training, collaboration, and infrastructure are distributed, and investing in an ecosystem that supports a more inclusive and diverse research community.

One option is a new centralized platform that would enable researchers, particularly those in the Global South, to access curated, well-documented datasets, view funding opportunities, and connect with high-quality collaborators through a customized matching system. Allowing for shared discussion spaces and peer exchange could make it easier to build trust across disciplines, regions, and institutions.

Other global research fields have built these kinds of scaffolds to make knowledge production more inclusive and usable. Migration research can do the same. But doing so will require intentional investment not only in research but also in the systems that support those who produce and apply it.

Sources

Goodman, Seth, Ariel BenYishay, Zhonghui Lv, and Daniel Runfola. 2019. GeoQuery: Integrating HPC Systems and Public Web-Based Geospatial Data Tools. Computers & Geosciences 122: 103-12. Available online.

Hauss, Kalle. 2021. What Are the Social and Scientific Benefits of Participating at Academic Conferences? Insights from a Survey among Doctoral Students and Postdocs in Germany. Research Evaluation 30 (1): 1-12. Available online.

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). 2025. Global Report on Internal Displacement 2025. Geneva: IDMC. Available online.

Knight, Rodney, Narayani Sritharan, and Kelsey Marshall. 2025. Transforming Migration Research: Insights from the Migration Platform Survey on the Creation of an Online Research Platform. Williamsburg, VA: AidData at William & Mary. Available online.

Paez-Deggeller, Veronica. 2025. Top Statistics on Global Migration and Migrants. Migration Information Source, August 26, 2025. Available online.

UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. 2025. International Migrant Stock 2024: Key Facts and Figures. New York: United Nations. Available online.