Understanding Global Migration

World Science Forum 2015 banners at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in BudapestTRACY VENCEIn light of the ongoing refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe, Hungarian Academy of Sciences President László Lovász called upon experts from his own nation—which this fall enhanced border-control efforts in an effort to keep additional migrants out after allowing several thousand people to seek asylum in the country—and elsewhere to outline how scientists can better understand what makes some people decide to move, and help those who have recently been forced from their homes. While the agenda of this year’s World Science Forum, underway in Budapest this week, had been set for months, Lovász convened an extra panel to discuss refugee research and resettlement; during the session, held today (November 4), he called global migration “a topic the scientific community could not ignore.”

Indeed, “at no point have the challenges that we...