For more than thirty years, Donald Kerwin has been leading legal agencies and think tanks focused on migration. An attorney by training, he also is the founding editor of a peer-reviewed public policy journal, a sought-after expert on migration in both US and international legal circles, and the founder of a faith-based initiative that convenes migrant-serving groups from more than thirty countries.
Kerwin brings that expertise to Notre Dame as a research associate at the Keough School of Global Affairs for the 2023-24 academic year. While at the Keough School he will conduct a broad review of Notre Dame’s work on migration, examining the scholarship of faculty and researchers such as political scientist Abby Córdova, theologian Rev. Daniel Groody, C.S.C., public policy expert Tom Hare, social demographer Estela Rivero of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development and economist Eva Dziadula. He also will teach a new course titled Faith Communities, International Migration, and Refugee Protection for master of global affairs students, undergraduate global affairs students, and Notre Dame law students.
“I’ve been touched by the warm reception I’ve received at Notre Dame,” Kerwin said. “And I am very impressed with the research, scholarship, and experiential learning opportunities at Notre Dame, which cover the entire spectrum of the migrant experience.”
Prior to coming to the Keough School, Kerwin was executive director of the Center for Migration Studies of New York, a nonpartisan think tank focused on international migration and refugee protection. He continues to serve as executive editor of the Center’s Journal on Migration and Human Security, which he founded in 2013.
Though Kerwin is new to the Keough School, he is well acquainted with Notre Dame and its important work on migration. In 2020, along with political scientist Rev. Bob Dowd, C.S.C., he organized a major conference for the Catholic Immigrant Integration Initiative (held online because of the pandemic). The conference brought together migrant-serving Catholic institutions from thirty-seven countries: legal programs, refugee resettlement offices, migrant shelters, Catholic school systems, universities, parish-based ministries, charitable organizations, hospitals, health clinics, and other entities.
“We explore how these institutions work with immigrants, what works, and what more they might accomplish, both individually and collectively,” said Kerwin, the former executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the US bishops’ legal agency for immigrants. “It’s a process that allows us to connect these ministries and programs with researchers, and to take very siloed communities of service providers and link them in new ways.”
Kerwin said many institutions begin their research from the perspective of states by trying to solve a migration management challenge or policy problem that might be facing a government agency. While that is an important perspective, Kerwin said that universities like Notre Dame bring to their research not only a state perspective and a policy lens, but also a bedrock commitment to the people at the heart of the migration experience.
“With a values-driven lens, your starting point is the people who migrate,” he said. “There’s a real reverence for them that drives the work of researchers at the Keough School and Notre Dame. There’s no need to make a case for migrant-centered research because people are already approaching their work in this way.”
New research
Kerwin relies on his legal expertise to address the many formidable challenges related to migration. In a recent paper in the Journal on Migration and Security, for example, Kerwin and a colleague propose solutions to various situations of protracted displacement around the globe, including Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Syrians in Turkey, and Central Americans seeking protection in Mexico and the United States. (The paper was part of a special issue that included authors from a dozen countries, including two refugees.)
Kerwin recommends state action to combat the various crises, including conflict resolution by governments in countries of origin, better integration efforts in refugee-hosting countries, greater resettlement, and the creation of “complementary” opportunities such as legal migration for work, joining family members, or meeting humanitarian needs.
“Most of all, more attention and greater political will are needed to effect meaningful change for the millions of people who find themselves living in limbo for far too long,” Kerwin said.
Other new research by Kerwin addresses the massive backlog of pending cases—nearly two million—in the US immigration court system, which has only 170 judges. While this court system represents many immigrants’ first exposure to due process and the rule of law in the United States, this protracted process is untenable for most individuals.
“The broader immigration system just doesn’t work,” Kerwin said. “We have to change the legal immigration laws. As a mentor of mine puts it, ‘It’s not the migrants who break the laws; it’s the laws that break the migrants.’”
Kerwin often describes his research as a service to others. While the data it features can be discouraging, it also serves as a source of hope. He cites a large study of the US Refugee Resettlement Program that he conducted with colleagues, using data that covered thirty years.
“We were in this position where we had to remind people why the United States values resettling refugees and of the very significant contributions refugees make to the United States. And what we ended up finding is that they progress amazingly well after starting with virtually nothing. At the end of this long process, they’re faring better than most US citizens, and they’re more strongly committed to the ideals that we all profess to hold, such as faith, family, freedom, and opportunity.”
For anyone who seeks it, the Center for Migration Studies (Kerwin’s former agency) has the data and the statistics at hand. And yet, when asked what he most wants people to know about migrants and immigrants, Kerwin doesn’t cite statistics. He calls for compassion.
“The main thing to know about migrants and immigrants is that they’re people with all of the wisdom, gifts, agency, ambitions, and aspirations that anybody else has,” Kerwin said. “Forced migrants, in particular, are people who have been through terrible situations and are often still struggling to get to a place of safety and security, to build better lives for themselves, and almost always for their families.”
Kerwin said he looks forward to spending the academic year at the Keough School, especially because of its rich and diverse faculty and student body.
“The Keough School brings together rigorous research, policy expertise, and a profound commitment to upholding the dignity of the human person,” Kerwin said. “It’s a privilege to be a part of this community.”