In the last 20 years, developed countries have struggled with what seemed to be an ever rising tide of asylum seekers, a trend that has now gone into reverse. This paper examines what happened and why. How have oppression, violence and economic conditions in origin countries shaped worldwide trends in asylum applications? And has the...

The third Lowy Lecture on 'Australia in the World' was given in Sydney on 19 November by Lord May of Oxford. It deals with one of the most urgent problems we face - the consequence for the international system of the range of environmental challenges facing the planet. Informed by his deep scientific and public...

How do standard economic theories of migration perform when confronted with evidence drawn from more than a century of world migration experience? How do inequality and poverty influence world migration? Is it useful to distinguish betwen migration pressure and migration ex-post, or between the potential demand for visas and the actual use of them? Timothy...