Rethinking refugee migration in Eurasia

This special issue examines how successive geopolitical crises, from Syria and Afghanistan to Ukraine and Gaza, have produced overlapping waves of forced displacement that now define Eurasia’s migration landscape. The articles in this issue advance a reconceptualization of refugee mobility by dissolving the migrant–refugee binary, foregrounding refugee agency, and acknowledging the overlapped phenomenon from international, regional, and domestic levels of analysis. Across cases, displacement emerges from cascading geopolitical vacuums, while institutional architectures mediate divergent protection outcomes. Refugees act as strategic navigators, pursuing mobility, legality, and livelihood within highly constrained environments. The contributions demonstrate that refugee governance in Eurasia is not determined by law or norm alone but by the contingent intersection of power politics, regional regime complexity, and state-level political incentives. By tracing these dynamics across Poland, South Korea, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Jordan, the issue repositions Eurasia as a critical site for rethinking global refugee paradigms.