Carlos Vargas-Silva

Carlos Vargas-Silva is Director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society and Professor of Migration Studies at the University of Oxford. He is also the Director of the Doctoral Programme in Migration Studies at Oxford and a member of Kellogg College. Carlos is co-founder and current Editor-in-Chief of the journal Migration Studies and is an external Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO).

The overarching theme of his research is the interaction of migration with labour markets, public services, and health outcomes, with a key focus on the role of policy in affecting those interactions. An important contribution of his work has been the application of concepts from economics to conceptualise migration decisions and the impacts of migration on host communities in the forced migration context. Bringing additional insights from other social sciences, he has developed conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches to investigate the evidence in this context.

Carlos teaches in the MSc in Migration Studies at Oxford. He also supervises doctoral students interested in migration (in intersection with labour markets, development, and/or public policy) and welcomes new potential DPhil students interested in these areas. He also works with a vibrant group of post-doctoral fellows and is available for collaboration with early career researchers who want to consolidate their research in these topics.

See his Google Scholar page for details about his academic publications. See below for a selection of blogs and popular writting.

Blogs and popular writting

Comuna 13: Displacement, conflict and hip-hop - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 11/01/2022

Explaining UK migration policy and data as a foreigner - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 13/12/2021

Has the pandemic shifted public opinion towards migrant workers in essential, but low-skilled, jobs? - Marina Fernandez-Reino and Carlos Vargas-Silva - 15/11/2021

David Card, the academic who showed us how to estimate the impacts of immigration, wins Nobel Prize - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 11/10/2021

Olympic sports and identity: lessons from the boxing ring - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 23/06/2021

Without freedom of movement who will pick the fruit? - Roxana Barbulescu, Bethany Robertson, Carlos Vargas-Silva - 14/04/2021

Quantitative modelling of race, ethnicity and migration issues - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 19/03/2021

Migration policy research in the times of the pandemic - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 11/11/2020

COVID-19 and the post-Brexit immigration system - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 29/6/2020

Shifting Dependencies: Migrant essential workers in the health and social care sectors - Marina Fernandez-Reino and Carlos Vargas-Silva - 20/06/2020

Seasonal harvest workers during COVID-19 - Roxana Barbulescu and Carlos Vargas-Silva - 2/06/2020

Why Professor 'in Migration Studies'? - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 2/11/2020

Does the gap in migration research between high-income countries and the rest of the world matter? - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 8/10/2019

Tap LinkedIn for data gold dust - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 31/08/2015

Hard Evidence: how many foreign students stay in the UK? - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 11/08/2015

Remittance revolution unlocks funds - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 15/07/2015

The enduring damage of displacement - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 5/06/2015

The positive legacy of refugee camps - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 24/04/2015

It is important to move away from ambiguous concepts such as 'benefit tourism' and focus on actual numbers - Yvonni Markaki and Carlos Vargas-Silva - 17/11/2014

What do we know about EU migration to the UK? - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 27/10/2014

Hard Evidence: are migrants good for the economy? - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 19/08/2014

Colombia: A Wandering Country? - Isabel Ruiz and Carlos Vargas-Silva - 24/07/2014

Hard Evidence: does 'benefits tourism' exist? - Carlos Vargas-Silva and Robert McNeil - 22/01/2014

Challenging hysteria over Romanian and Bulgarian immigration statistics - Carlos Vargas-Silva - 16/08/2013


Current projects

Co-Investigator, Feeding the Nation: Seasonal Migrant Workers and Food Security During COVID-19 Pandemic
Grant ESRC, amount 307,880 pound, 2020-2022. (by R. Barbulescu at Leeds)

Senior Researcher, TRUST: Attitudinal Impacts of Refugees on Host Communities in the Global South
Grant Research Council of Norway, amount 12,000,000 NOK, 2020-2023. (by H. Buhaug at PRIO)

Principal Investigator, The Socio-Economic Impact of Refugees on Local Communities
Grant from The John Fell Fund, amount 27,000 pound, 2018-2021.

Oxford University Lead Investigator, Aligning Migration Management and the Migration-Development Nexus (MIGNEX)
Grant from Horizon 2020 European Commission, amount 4,999,572 euro, 2018-2023. (coordinated by J. Carling at PRIO)

Previous research projects

Principal Investigator, Role of European Mobility and its Impacts in Narratives, Debates and EU Reforms (REMINDER)
Grant from Horizon 2020 European Commission, amount 4,911,000 euro, 2017-2019.

Principal Investigator, The Economic Integration of Refugees in the UK (ECONREF)
Grant from The Nuffield Foundation, amount 127,000 pound, 2017-2019.

Principal Investigator (2013-2016), The Labour Market Impacts of Forced Migration (LAMFOR)
Grant from IZA-DFID, amount 317,000 euro, 2013-2016.