2026
Just published
The Spotlight Report on Global Migration 2026 (SRGM26) examines progress and emerging issues for migrants from a human rights perspective, and aims to inform advocacy efforts at the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) – held in New York from 5 to 8 May 2026 – and beyond.
Report overview
Multiple and interlinked challenges
Migrants today face a range of interconnected threats: the impact of environmental exploitation on Global South countries; visa apartheid which blocks many from easily crossing borders; and populist leaders who villainize people born elsewhere. These threats also include violence committed by security forces and vigilantes; overly bureaucratized and exclusionary migration pathways; and highly profitable surveillance and detention industries.
Envisioning a better future
The Spotlight Report on Global Migration 2026 presents alternatives to a punitive, rights-averse status quo: positive initiatives by governments and by civil society. Migrants must be understood first and foremost as rights holders – with their human rights remaining intact regardless of whether or when any border is crossed. Governments must cease treating migrants as default threats, and instead reflect on the threats that their own policies and practices have posed to migrants – taking measures to transform them.
Migrant rights are human rights
Xenophobic narratives now dominate our world. From “citizens-only” initiatives to physical harm, politicians and policymakers have normalized the idea that human rights do not apply to non-nationals, especially those with irregular migration status. But the threats faced by migrants today are not only interlinked. They are a close-up of those faced by everyone: expanded surveillance, climate crises, and the rollback of long-won human rights.
Topic overview
The report addresses six key issues in the context of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM).
Regular pathways
Migration governance has become increasingly extractive – designed more to exploit than to protect. Migrants are often treated as disposable labor, recruited to fill low-wage jobs under restrictive conditions that deny them basic rights, mobility, and – crucially – any meaningful path to permanent residence or citizenship. Regular pathways must be expanded to benefit migrants of all nationalities, incomes, skills and sectors. Their labor should not come at the expense of their rights to political participation and family life.
Care economy
Though governments and societies depend heavily on the labor of migrant domestic workers, policies and legal frameworks deny them basic rights. In many countries, they are excluded from labor legislation altogether, and their rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining are often denied due to their temporary or irregular status. The abolition of employer-tied visas is among the measures needed to empower migrant domestic workers and reduce the potential for abuse and exploitation.
Climate crisis
The climate crisis is driving unprecedented migration worldwide, displacing millions through both sudden-onset disasters and slower ecological shifts, such as drought and sea-level rise. Existing international legal frameworks lack clear pathways for people displaced due to climate factors, but two promising developments mark a shift toward formalizing international climate migration pathways in the Pacific. These new frameworks for climate mobility present an opportunity to model care and collective sovereignty for communities who migrate and those who remain.
Regularization
Irregular migration is due to structural barriers, not personal choice, as restricted access to pathways for legal status perpetuates structural inequalities. Regularization recognizes migrants as an integral part of society, contributing to economic and social growth with dignity, and facilitates the design of more efficient public policies. Case studies from Thailand, Colombia and Spain offer some examples of good practice but also identify gaps which should not be replicated. Regularization mechanisms should be simplified, reflect migrants’ realities, and ensure that pathways to permanent residence and citizenship are available to all.
Criminalization
Global migration governance has shifted toward punitive, securitized approaches, treating migrants as threats rather than rights-bearing individuals. Policy is dominated by dehumanizing and ineffective measures such as externalization of borders, detention, and mass deportations – undermining migrants’ rights, liberty, and safety. However, the criminalization of migration is a choice, not an inevitability, and around the world examples can also be found of rights-based, pragmatic and humane approaches which collectively point to a better way forward.
Digital World
Borders are being shaped as a network of surveillance that stretches across time and space, and that migrants experience as a continuous presence. Particularly troubling is the role of technology and security companies in providing border technology to governments: as private, for-profit actors, with policies not rooted in human rights standards, abuses are less accountable, while state responsibilities are eroded. The scope and use of surveillance technologies must urgently be limited, and safeguards put in place to avoid misuse or overcollection of personal data. Technology can also be a force for good, as already demonstrated by migrants who are using, repurposing, and building digital tools to create counter-networks of resistance and care.
Spotlight Report on Global Migration – 2022
The Spotlight Report on Global Migration 2022 (SRGM22) focused on regular migration pathways; access to services, social protection and economic, social and cultural rights; criminalization and detention; migrant workers’ rights; protection at the borders; and climate-related displacement. It is available in Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish.