Based on the authors’ work in Latin America and Africa, this article describes and applies the concept ‘structural vulnerability’ to the challenges of clinical care and healthcare advocacy for migrants. This concept helps consider how specific social, economic and political hierarchies and policies produce and pattern poor health in two case studies: one at the USA–Mexico border and another in Djibouti. Migrants’ and providers’ various entanglements within inequitable and sometimes violent global migration systems can produce shared structural vulnerabilities that then differentially affect health and other outcomes. In response, we argue providers require specialised training and support; professional associations, healthcare institutions, universities and humanitarian organisations should work to end the criminalisation of medical and humanitarian assistance to migrants; migrants should help lead efforts to reform medical and humanitarian interventions; and alternative care models in Global South to address the structural vulnerabilities inherent to migration and asylum should be supported.

Language is political in Ethiopia because it has both structured and symbolized the nation-building project, and because, in the context of limited resources, any language policy change would require a significant realignment of resources. In modern Ethiopia, the historical distribution of the political goods of communication, recognition and autonomy has been highly skewed, benefiting native Amharic-speakers disproportionately. Since the early 1990s, the decentralization of language choice under the federal constitution has led to the use of other languages by members of select ethno-linguistic communities. This study considers the politics of language choice, drawing from the rich literature in political theory which addresses the role of language in the identity politics of multiethnic and multilingual societies. The historical trajectory of language politics in Ethiopia is presented, but the focus is on evidence gathered in parts of Ethiopia in 2001 and 2003. These findings indicate the relationship between language identities, citizenship formation and identification in the country. They are based on structured interviews and participant observation in select regions of the country.

In light of global reforms to speed up local integration in protracted refugee settings, refugees and host communities need more capacity-building support around natural-resource management and resource-sharing. This article presents the findings of research conducted in Ethiopia and Djibouti focused on refugees and environmental resource management. Using remote sensing and land cover change analyses, as well as qualitative interviewing of refugees and local host community members in two protracted refugee camps, a multidisciplinary research team assessed the environmental impact of the camps as well as the perceptions of the two groups of these impacts. The open-ended interviews also proved useful in exploring concerns about the integration of refugees more generally. The findings suggest a set of understandings among both communities about the need for more information exchange, greater education and human-capacity-building and livelihoods development. These are all objectives shared by national governments of the region and the international community as laid out in recent global policy documents and require more coordination and new funding priorities.