- A new ESRC-funded four-year project examines humanitarian visas as a tool for addressing global migration challenges
- The project focuses on the use of humanitarian visas in Brazil, addressing imbalances in research on their role in the Global South
- This builds on previous work which set out recommendations to strengthen the coherence and equity of the humanitarian visa process
A new project explores the use of humanitarian visas within Brazil and the broader implications for global refugee protection.
Humanitarian visas offer an alternative to the asylum process and can be considered a faster solution to protect people fleeing conflict and persecution. Yet alternatively, they may be seen as a temporary fix that instead risks undermining wider protection for refugees.
Within these discussions, there is often a disproportionate focus on the experiences of countries in the Global North. A new four-year project, The Contested Politics of Humanitarian Visas (HUMANVISA), funded by the ESRC and FAPESP instead takes a focus on the Global South, examining the ways humanitarian visas are used in Brazil.
Countries such as Brazil have been facing increasing migration pressures, frequently with little financial and institutional support. This research seeks to explore the role humanitarian visas may play in alleviating or worsening pressures in the international asylum system.
The project builds on previous ESRC-funded work, led by Patricia Nabuco Martuscelli (PI) from the School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations, Svetlana Ruseishvili (co-I) from the Federal University of Sao Carlos, and Natalia Cintra (co-I) from the University of Southampton.
The research found that the Brazilian humanitarian visa policy is often applied in an ad hoc manner and is frequently driven by the political will of the Brazilian government. Their report also presented policy recommendations to strengthen coherence, predictability and equity in the process, including providing greater opportunities for direct participation in policy-making.
