The Inaugural Alfred Dubs Lecture on Migration and Refugees

The Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement is proud to launch a new lecture series on Migration and Refugees named after Lord Dubs, a renowned and tireless campaigner for refugee rights, famous for the two ‘Dubs Amendments’ to allow unaccompanied and separated refugee children in Europe to be reunited with family members in the UK.

The series is being introduced by Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

The Speakers:

Lord Dubs

Alf Dubs is a British Labour politician, former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and a Life Peer. He was born in Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia, and was one of 669 Czech-resident, mainly Jewish, children saved from the Nazis on the Kindertransport in 1939. He is best known for the two ‘Dubs amendments’, aimed at enshrining the right of safe passage to the UK for unaccompanied refugee children in the Immigration Act 2016 and EU Withdrawal Agreement 2020. Lord Dubs is a patron of Humanists UK and was named as their Humanist of the Year in 2016.  He will be speaking on:

‘Migration and refugees: The hostile environment’:

Europe is facing its greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War. How to manage this crisis represents a challenge for European nations and for the EU as a whole. Some countries, most notably Germany, have risen to this challenge successfully, but other governments have been left wanting. Despite some initial positive moves by the UK government, the mood has now changed and a hostile environment towards refugees, including child refugees, has replaced the limited humanitarian policies that were in place. Public opinion is key. In order to secure a more humanitarian approach to the refugee crisis, we must continue to make the argument that a humane immigration policy is not only the right thing to do, but it brings economic and cultural benefits that enrich communities.

Professor Bhabha

Jacqueline Bhabha is a human rights lawyer and academic. Her publications include Children without a State, and Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age. She holds multiple positions at Harvard, as Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and as Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She will be speaking on:

‘A better future: The urgent imperative to promote safe and legal child migration’

Across the globe children and young people are compelled by current state practice to embark on life-threatening and abusive journeys just to realize rights long proclaimed internationally - health, education, family life, safety. These hardships are not inevitable or hidden; rather they are a deliberate product of our increasingly exclusionary and securitized approach to migration. But a better future is possible, one where youthful migration is treated as a valuable social good to be protected and nurtured, just as the migration of already skilled and successful workers is. My lecture in honour of Lord Dubs will explore these themes.