Academic Research
On this page, you will find information about my academic research activities. To learn more about my areas of specialization and commitment, please visit the 'About Me' page.
Current Research
Beyond borders: A diplomatic approach to research on global migration challenges
2023-2025
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Funded by: Visiting Researchers Program, University of Ottawa
This project, conducted in collaboration with Professor Thibaut Fleury Graff (Université Paris-Panthéon Assas, Law, France), seeks to improve political and diplomatic decision-making on legal migration pathways for refugees (including, but not limited to, refugee resettlement). This is therefore a comparative study between France and Canada, two countries which endorsed recent UN-led compacts on migration and refugees (2018) and which, despite positive examples of international leadership on both sides, still have much work to do.
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This research project is funded by the University of Ottawa’s Visiting Researchers Program in the context of its thematic appeal for projects that support scientific diplomacy. Specifically, the program leverages a partnership between the University of Ottawa and the Embassy of France in Canada to foster collaborations between researchers from Canada and France to advance projects dependent on diplomacy between the two nations.
​My role: Co- investigator (Canada) with Thibaut Fleury Graff (France)
Migrant Vulnerability in the Canadian Context
(VULNER, Canadian Team)
2020-2024
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Funded by: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and Quebec’s Fonds de recherche/Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC)
​My role: Principal Investigator
Co-investigators and collaborators:
Dagmar Soennecken (York University), François Crépeau (McGill University), Anna Purkey (Waterloo University), James Milner (Carleton University), Nathan Benson (Refugee Hub, University of Ottawa)
​(NEW) Open-access book chapters​​​
Purkey, Nakache, Yousuf and Sagay, 2025; Paasche, Soennecken and Tanotra, 2025;
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Research reports
Kaga and al, 2021; Nakache and al., 2022​;
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Policy briefs and policy handbook chapter
Nakache and al., 2021; Nakache and al., 2023; Nakache and Purkey, 2023​;
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Special issue
Vulnerability and the Legal Protection of Migrants: A Critical Look at the Canadian Context, 2022-23.
Since 2020, I have led the Canadian team of the VULNER project, an EU-funded international research consortium involving similar teams in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Norway, Lebanon, Uganda, and South Africa. The specific objective of the Canadian research team is to investigate how the vulnerabilities of temporary migrants and refugees are assessed and addressed in Canadian law and policy, while the goal of the international research consortium is to produce comparative and policy-relevant research on the issue of vulnerability, with policy recommendations aimed at protecting migrants and refugees’ rights.
More precisely, three research questions form the basis of the Canadian research:
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How are the ‘vulnerabilities’ of migrants defined in the relevant legislation, case law, policy documents and administrative guidelines?
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How do decision-makers understand the ‘vulnerabilities’ of migrants? How do they address them?
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How do the legal frameworks and the implementation practices concretely affect vulnerabilities as experienced by migrants.
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Question 1 was addressed during the first phase of the project (April-December 2020), where we focused our research activities on compiling and analyzing 1200 Canadian government documents, including court cases, legislation and regulations, guidelines, manuals, and ministerial instructions pertaining to the vulnerability of migrants. Questions 2 and 3 were addressed during the second phase of the project (January 2021-July 2022), where we conducted 104 interviews with migrants and other key informants (i.e., civil servants from the federal government and ‘on the ground’ practitioners, including lawyers and NGO representatives) in several Canadian provinces.​
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​The Canadian research resulted in several co-authored publications (see the Publications section for more information). To see the publications from the international consortium, you can also consult the international VULNER project website here.
Pathways into and out of precarity for temporary migrants in Canada (PRECAR)
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2018-2024
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Funded by: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Insight Grant
PRECAR is a project that studies the multitude of legal statuses held by temporary migrants and explores why and how migrants move in and out of authorized legal status.​
The project involves field research conducted between October 2019 and June 2022 in four provinces: Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Québec. It focused on cities (Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver) but also included smaller communities in all four provinces (Brooks, Nanaimo, Windsor and Québec City, respectively).
The research team conducted interviews with 148 migrants with lived experiences of having temporary work authorization, losing status and attempting to gain or regain secure immigration status.Migrant participants came from 35 countries and had diverse experiences. For example, some had entered Canada as temporary migrant workers while others had arrived as refugee claimants, visitors or international students. Additionally, 63 interviews were conducted with key stakeholders (for example, municipal civil servants, researchers, migrant representatives and “on-the-ground” practitioners such as legal and other service providers).
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​My role: Principle Investigator
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Co-investigators:
Idil Atak (Ryerson University), Luin Goldring (York University), Jason Foster (Athabasca University)
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The project findings will undergo peer-review and, if accepted, will be published in 2026 in an open-access book published by UBC Press and co-edited by the Principal Investigator (myself) and all co-investigators (I. Atak, J. Foster, L. Goldring). Several chapters will be co-authored with the students hired as Research Assistants on this project. ​
Other articles are currently in progress.
In July 2024, our research team wrote a short article for The Conversation Canada summarizing some of our key findings and highlighting why Canada should act urgently to give undocumented migrants legal status.
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Coming soon
Stay tuned!
Civil Society and the Global Refugee Regime (LERRN)
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2018-2025
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Funded by: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Partnership Grant
LERRN aims to better understand and enhance the role of civil society in responding to the needs of refugees in the Global South. Civil society plays a large role in developing innovative responses to refugee situations and has the power to be a driver of change within political communities.
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The Partnership’s goal (led by James Milner from Carleton University) is to enhance the understandings of the global refugee regime and empower society to directly contribute to the improved function of the regime, thereby ensuring more predictable protection and solutions for refugees and enhancing their lived experience. The project officially launched in October 2018 and will run until December 2025.
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LERRN’s Vision: All refugees have timely and reliable access to protection and rights-based solutions.
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LERRN’s Goal: Refugee research, policy and practice are influenced by the collective action of an informed, inclusive, equitable and sustained network of civil society actors.
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LERNN’s Strategic Objectives:
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Realize new knowledge and critical understandings on the conditions affecting refugees
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Support civil society actors to affect change for refugees in local, national and global context
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Influence research, policy, and practice to advance the well-being of refugees
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Sustain and expand scholarly dialogue and effective civil society networks within and between affected countries.
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One of the core objectives of LERRN’s Protection Working Group, which I’m co-leading (together with N. Benson, Refugee Hub), is to ensure protection for refugees. As detailed in international refugee law and policy, protection may be understood in terms of positive rights, such as the right to work and freedom of movement, and negative rights, such as the prohibition on being forcibly returned to a country where a refugee fears persecution. However, the concept of protection is both contested and increasingly used to cover a wide range of contexts and needs that go beyond what was originally envisioned by the refugee regime.
​My role: Co-Investigator, Co-lead of the Protection Working Group
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Principal investigator: James Milner (Carleton University)
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Protection and the Humanitarian-Development Nexus: A Literature Review (Kaga, Nakache 2019)
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Realizing protection and solutions within North America - 70 Years Protecting People Forced to Flee (2021)
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Past Research
Migrant Vulnerabilities in the Global Protection Regime
(VULNER, International)
2020-2023
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Funded by: European Union, Horizon 2020
The VULNER project focussed on migrants seeking protection in Europe (Belgium, Germany, Italy, Norway), North America (Canada), the Middle East (Lebanon), and Africa (Uganda and South Africa). For the analysis, two different yet complementary perspectives were adopted. First, the investigation considered the ways that the “vulnerabilities” of the migrants seeking protection were assessed and addressed by the norms and practices of decision-makers. Second, empirical fieldwork data shedded light on the various forms and nature of the concrete experiences of “vulnerability” as they were lived by the migrants seeking protection, including resilience strategies and how they were being continuously shaped through interaction with the legal frameworks.
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Ultimately, through this systematic documentation and analysis of legal and empirical data, the very notion of “vulnerability” was questioned and assessed from a critical perspective.
​My role: Co-Investigator, Leader of the Canadian Team
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Principal Investigators:
Luc Leboeuf/Marie-Claire Foblets (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
VULNER project: Understanding Migrants’ Vulnerabilities.
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As a leader of the Canadian team, I participated in several webinars, like the one below on COVID-19 and Border Closures: How are Vulnerable Migrants Affected?
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I also co-authored several publications with other team leaders:
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- A Common Policy Brief (Leboeuf and al, 2022);
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- A co-edited book (open-access) published by Springer (Leboeuf and al, 2024).​​
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Canada's Role in the Global Refugee Regime
2021-2022
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Funded by: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Connection Grant
​My role: Principal Investigator
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Co-investigators:
Nathan Benson (University of Ottawa) and James Milner (Carleton University)
Coming soon
Stay tuned!
Canada’s Role in the Global Refugee Regime: Change, continuity and prospects (2025), McGill-Queens University Press.​​​​
My work on this project emerged from my involvement as a co-researcher and Protection Working Group team leader in LERRN, a seven-year partnership research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). While the majority of LERRN’s research focuses on dynamics in East Africa and the Middle East, along with the politics of refugee participation in the governance of the refugee regime itself, it became apparent to us (i.e., researchers involved in LERRN and based in Canada) that it was equally important to consider Canada’s role in the refugee regime as part of an effort to understand preconditions for the regime to deliver on its commitments to protection and solutions.
The outcome is an open-access peer-reviewed book titled "Canada’s Role in the Global Refugee Regime: Change, continuity and prospects", which will be published by McGill-Queen's University press in early 2026. This book contains 10 chapters (excluding introduction and conclusion), with the contribution of leading experts from across Canada and around the globe writing about distinct facets of Canada’s global engagement - such as resettlement and diplomacy- or examining Canada’s responses to forced displacement in specific regions, including Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, as well as the history of Canada’s engagement in the global refugee regime.
​Contributors to this book were engaged in a dialogue and exchange process lasting over two years, from September 2020 to January 2023. This process began with a series of virtual meetings with all contributors to discuss the central themes and questions that animate the whole collection, thus ensuring that the chapters are in conversation with each other. This was followed by a series of virtual workshops to present and critically discuss early drafts of chapters between September 2021 and April 2022. With the benefit of these workshops and written feedback from the editors, chapters were revised for inclusion in a peer-edited volume. Finally, a capstone symposium and policy roundtable were held in November 2022 at the University of Ottawa to bring most of the contributors together to further highlight cross-cutting themes and insights arising from the contributions. Authors were invited to revisit their chapters one final time to reflect these interconnections in their own chapters.
Être ou ne pas être (un bon) citoyen
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2017 - 2019
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Funded by: France-Canada Research Fund
​My role: Co-Investigator
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Principal Investigators:
Elke Winter (University of Ottawa) and Myriam HACHIMI Alaoui (Le Havre University, France)
Special Journal Issue (​Hachimi-Alaoui and al., 2020)
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Éditorial : Les politiques françaises et canadiennes d’intégration à la lumière du « tournant civique » (Pélabay and al., 2020)
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Aiming at Civic Integration? How Canada’s Naturalization Rules are Sidelining Refugees and Family-Class Immigrants (Nakache et al., 2020)​
During the 2000s, immigration and citizenship policies in Europe and North America gave rise to the development of a new policy paradigm, termed “civic integration” . In the literature, these policies are presented as marking a “civic turn”, reflected in the introduction of a series of measures and laws aimed at imposing greater constraints on migrants seeking to settle in one of the countries concerned and at promoting a “thick” conception of citizenship , emphasizing the identity dimension of membership of belonging to the national community.
At a time when integration of migrants is at the heart of public debate, this research - co-led by Elke Winter (University of Ottawa) and Myriam Hachimi Alaoui (Université du Havre) - analyzed the laws and policies of “civic integration” by focusing on two case studies: France and Canada. Using analyses that combine empirical research and theoretical approaches, and drawing on a large body of data, the aim was to understand whether the reconfigurations attributed to a “civic turn” are underway in both countries, and their possible implications for migrants, in terms of inclusion/exclusion, and for the society of settlement, in terms of reaffirming national identity.
And more...
If you would like to know more about my other academic projects and/or require any additional information, please have a look at my CV and/or contact me.