Given the recent surge in interest in refugee research, this editorial discus-ses whether the study of refugees’ migration and integration requires entirely newtheoretical and methodological approaches. We make the case that refugee migra-tion is a special type of migration and that refugee integration is subject to similarlaws and regularities as the integration of all kinds of immigrants. Therefore, itshould be studied using conventional theoretical and analytical approaches to empi-rical–analytical migration and integration research. Obviously, special conditions ofrefugee migration apply, such as specific patterns of refugees’ selectivity, health andresource endowment, settlement conditions, and reception or integration services.However, such peculiarities do not represent distinct mechanisms; they are simplybackground conditions for more general mechanisms. Contributions to this SpecialIssue, which all rely on new high-quality data from Germany, best highlight theuniversality of general mechanisms of immigrant integration, on the one hand, andthe relevance of refugee migrants’ specific characteristics and conditions, on theother hand.
