Migration
Other migration related projects
Tolerance, Pluralism and Social Cohesion: Responding to the Challenges of the 21st Century in Europe - ACCEPT PLURALISM is a project funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme.
The project aims to investigate whether European societies have become more or less tolerant during the past 20 years. Bringing together empirical and theoretical findings, ACCEPT PLURALISM generates a State of the Art Report on Tolerance and Cultural Diversity in Europe targeting policy makers, NGOs and practitioners, a Handbook on Ideas of Tolerance and Cultural Diversity in Europe aimed to be used at upper high school level and with local/national policy makers, a Tolerance Indicators’ Toolkit where qualitative and quantitative indicators may be used to score each country’s performance on tolerating cultural diversity, and a book on Tolerance, Pluralism and Cultural Diversity in Europe, mainly aimed to an academic readership.
The project includes direct communication with and input from policy makers, civil society, political and media actors for the dissemination and exploitation of its findings. The consortium is formed by 17 partner institutions and is coordinated at the RSCAS.
This project financed by the European Commission DG-ECFIN and completed in fall 2009 pursued the following goals:
The analysis of the key labour market determinants of migration flows from selected Arab Mediterranean Countries (AMCs – Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and the Occupied Palestinian Territories), with a particular emphasis on demographic pressures, wage differentials and relative income disparities with the EU, employment policies, labour market flexibility and unemployment rates; this analysis includes the impact of migration on AMC labour markets; A series of specific recommendations to improve the design of the EU’s migration policies towards AMCs and policy options available to them for the management of mismatches between labour supply and demand.
The project has delivered a regional report and 10 background papers that were presented in an international conference hosted by Cairo University.
CARIM South was created at the European University Institute in 2004 and is co- financed by the European Union. Since 2009, the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation (ITC-ILO) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) are partners, and the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo is also an associate.
CARIM South aims to observe, analyse, and forecast migration in 17 countries of the Southern & Eastern Mediterranean (SEM) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Palestine, Senegal, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. All are studied as origin, transit and destination countries.
Network of experts
The CARIM South team is composed of a coordinating unit established at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy), and a network of more than 90 scientific correspondents based in the countries under observation, as well as external experts from the European Union and the rest of the world.
Database
The database covers three major dimensions of migration: demographic and economic; legal; and socio-political.
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The demographic and economic module contains a wide range of statistics on migration (a list of 75 tables for each country) that are provided by national institutions. With a view to facilitating international comparison and aggregation, the names and formats of tables and variables have been standardised as far as possible, while, at the same time, the specificity of each national set of data is respected.
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The legal module contains the legal provisions directly or indirectly linked to international migration, its causes and consequences as well as notes and papers from our national experts.
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The socio-political module contains documents from governmental and non-governmental institutions which play a role in defining migration-related policies.
Publications
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Mediterranean Report on Migration: a comprehensive overview of the major developments concerning migration into, through, and from each of the SEM countries.
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Research Reports and Analytical and Synthetic Notes: papers based on original research related to the CARIM Research Programmes.
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Migration Profiles: an overview of demographic, economic, legal and socio-political aspects shaping migration in the country.
Research programmes
CARIM South conducts comparative and multidisciplinary research on issues that are crucial for countries and peoples in the regions under study. Research is applied and policy-oriented, with a view to identifying and analysing emerging questions, and providing support for the definition of public policies and subsequent monitoring. The following research programmes have been completed:
Border Management
Circular Migration
Irregular Migration
Transit Migration
Highly-skilled migration
Gender and migration
Events
Each research programme comprises one expert meeting and one or two policy-makers meetings; an annual summer school is also organised in the framework of CARIM South.
The project, co-financed by the European Union is carried out by the EUI in partnership with the University of Warsaw (CMR), jointly with a network of correspondents based in the target countries. It covers the following countries: Belarus, R. of Moldova, Ukraine; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russian Federation.
The following priorities are addressed:
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strengthening regional and national capacities to deal with migration by assembling high-level experts from all the target countries and across all major disciplines that deal with migration;
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connecting experts with policymakers and other stakeholders in the migration domain and developing an instrument that allows governments, stakeholders and the academic community to monitor migration facts and assess policies i.e. a unique database combining updated and harmonised statistics, legislation and data on policies;
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conducting research on emerging issues with a view to documenting migration-related challenges in real time and helping policymakers and stakeholders to adjust their response.
Network of experts:
The core of the correspondent network is comprised of individual researchers and academics based in the following institutions:
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Department of Population within the Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov State University in Moscow;
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National Academy of Science, Sociological Association of Ukraine;
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Expert-Group of Moldova;
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National Bureau of Statistics in the Republic of Moldova;
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National Academy of Science of Belarus;
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State Migration Service, Ministry of Territorial Administration of Republic of Armenia;
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Caucasus Research Resource Center in Azerbaijan;
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Eurasia Partnership Foundation in Georgia.
Database
The database consists in national, regional or local aggregate data, containing no individual information on migrant persons. Data is structured into three modules:
2.1 Demographic and economic module
This module contains statistics on migration flows and stocks, on refugee movements and asylum seekers as well as on economic processes directly related to the international mobility of persons taken mostly at the national, but also at the sub-national or local levels.
2.2 Legal module
The legal module contains both a database of legal materials and notes from national legal experts of the project. Legislation and regulation collected is organised around key elements of the migratory process: admission, stay, settlement, rights and migrants duties, exit of the territory as well as, inter alia, relationship with the national community abroad and the country of origin.
2.3 Socio-political module
The socio-political module gathers documents and a variety of first-hand texts that reflect the context of migration processes; it gathers knowledge on potential push and pull factors for migration related to political and social reality of the country of origin and/or transit country. It includes documents on institutional frameworks and discourses, official as well as unofficial (academia, media, civil society), on migration and asylum.
Research programmes
Research activities are conducted on two levels: national and regional. They focus on specific thematic priorities.
1. A comprehensive assessment of regional migration developments to provide a to-date overview of the migration situation in each country, and to provide an in-depth cross-comparative study of a particular issue considered a priority for the countries.
2. Country-specific case studies are part of transversal core research programmes applied to every country covered by the project on the following themes
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Border management.
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Irregular migration from, through and into Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Russian Federation?
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Asylum seekers, refugees and mixed flows.
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Circular migration in post-Soviet space.
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The international labour market and its implications for source and destinations areas.
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Development, remittances and highly skilled mobility.
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Impact of climate and environmental change on population movements.
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Mobility in the context of political and economic transition.
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Demographic challenges and international migration.
Conferences
Each research programme comprises expert meetings and policy-makers meetings. Regional training sessions as well as an annual summer school for policy makers are also organised in the framework of the project.
This project co-financed by the European Union is carried out by the EUI in partnership with the Indian Council of Overseas Employment, (ICOE), the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore Association, (IIMB), the Maastricht University (Faculty of Law).
The proposed action is aimed at consolidating a constructive dialogue between the EU and India on migration covering all migration-related aspects. The objectives of the proposed action are aimed at:
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Assembling high-level Indian-EU expertise in major disciplines that deal with migration (demography, economics, law, sociology and politics) with a view to building up migration studies in India.
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Providing the Government of India as well as the European Union, its Member States, the academia and civil society, with:
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Making research serve action by connecting experts with both policy-makers and the wider public through respectively policy-oriented research, training courses, and outreach programmes. The link between experts and policy makers will work in both directions so that the experts, on the one hand, produce results that respond to the needs of policymakers and the governments, on the other hand, use the research results in their policy-making process.
These three objectives are pursued with a view to developing a knowledge base addressed to policy-makers and migration stakeholders in both the EU and India.
More specifically, the proposed action aims at preparing the ground for reinforced India-EU cooperation on migration-related issues. This is effectively done through:
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The construction of standardised and consultable information on the demographic, economic, legal and political dimensions of migration from India to the EU;
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The development of research on migration-related topics prioritized by the Indian Government, the EU and its Member States;
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Informal and informed discussions among migration experts, state officials and migration stakeholders in the framework of regular training sessions and outreach programmes.
The Cross-Regional Information System on the Reintegration of Migrants in their Countries of Origin (CRIS) is aimed at addressing the social economic legal and institutional factors and conditions shaping returnees’ patterns of reintegration in their countries of origin. In other words, it sets out to explain why some return migrants contribute to development back home, whereas others do not.
Based on a network of partner institutions located in countries of return, field surveys are being prepared to collect a substantial number of interviews with return migrants. The core rationale for CRIS is its cross-regional comparative scope as well as the identification of reintegration indicators, beyond the specificities of each regional context.
To date, field surveys are being planned in 2012 in Armenia, Mali and Tunisia. Additional fieldwork will be carried out in other regions. Analytical tools will be provided with a view to informing and gaining further knowledge about categories of returnees, their socio-demographic characteristics and their manifold patterns of reintegration.
Finally, through a specific implementation method and the organisation of training courses and scientific events addressed to the academia and the world of practice, CRIS sets out to contribute to evidence-based policy-making in the field of return migration, reintegration and development. Against this backdrop, ad hoc recommendations and possible measures will be proposed with a view to fostering returnees’ reintegration processes and their contribution to the development of their countries of origin.
KNOW RESET
Building Knowledge for a Concerted and Sustainable Approach of Refugee Resettlement in the EU and its Member states
The Project is co-funded by the European Union DG Home Affairs in the framework of the Refugee Fund Community Actions 2010. It is carried out by the EUI in partnership with ECRE (European Council on Refugees and Exiles, Brussels).
The general objective of the project is to construct the knowledge-base necessary for good policy-making in the domain of refugee resettlement in the EU and its 27 member states. Its rationale is to identify the ways in which refugee resettlement in the EU can be quantitatively extended and qualitatively improved.
Know Reset aims to map and analyse the current policy framework and practices in the area of refugee resettlement in the 27 EU member states and to explore the potential to develop the resettlement capacity, extend good practices and enhance cooperation in the EU.
The team involved in the project, gathering members of EUI’s and ECRE’s large networks, has proceeded to a systematic and comparative inventory of legal frameworks and actual practices related to resettlement in the EU and its 27 member states providing the most updated set of information. Experts in three countries of first asylum for refugees, namely Kenya, Tunisia and Pakistan, will contribute to the knowledge and the assessment of resettlement practices of refugees from countries of first asylum to the EU. The project will assess resettlement in the EU and address recommendations aiming at a concerted and sustainable involvement in resettlement and refugee protection.
Media For Diversity And Migrant Integration
Consolidating Knowledge & Assessing Media Practices across the EU
The MEDIVA project seeks to strengthen the capacity of the media to reflect the increasing diversity of European societies and thus foster a better understanding of immigrant integration processes at a time when social cohesion and integration policies are put to the test by an acute economic crisis.
To achieve this aim, the project will:
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survey existing studies/projects assessing the media capacity to reflect diversity and promote migrant integration (looking at 5 aspects: content of news, news making and programme production, recruitment,employment, training) across Europe;
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create a searchable database of these studies;
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create a set of Indicators assessing the capacity of the media to reflect diversity and promote integration;
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assess 30 selected media outlets (TV channels, newspapers, news web sites) across Europe on the basis of these indicators;
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organize 5 Internat.Workshops to present the database, the indicators and discuss how they can be used;
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create and use a targeted e-mail list of relevant stakeholders to disseminate the project results (database, indicators, their use for policy assessment/policy design and journalist training).
METOIKOS, a project co-funded by the European Commission DG-JLS, studies the links between circular migration and the integration (in the country of destination) and the reintegration (in the source country) of circular migrants and their families in three European regions (south-eastern Europe/Balkans; south-western Europe/Maghreb; central-eastern Europe).
The project will identify the main challenges and opportunities involved in circular migration for source countries, destination countries and migrants (and their families) as regards social, economic and political integration in the destination country. It will also look at problems and opportunities for the reintegration of circular migrants in their countries of origin.
The project will develop a Guide for local, regional and national policy makers to help in framing circular migration with appropriate (re-)integration policies. Three Regional Workshops (on Spain, Italy and Morocco; on Greece, Italy and Albania; and on Poland, Hungary and Ukraine) will be organized. The project will foster online discussion on circular migration with a view to raising awareness about the challenges and advantages of circular mobility in the wider EU Neighbourhood and the Euro-Mediterranean region more generally.
MIGMEDCIS
The overall objective of the project is to bring together international and interdisciplinary research teams for the purpose of forming a network for research and transfer of knowledge in the area of international migration.
Migration phenomena are similar across the world and there are many tools to investigate them that can be used successfully in various geographic areas. Promoting universal scientific approach, the project is going to trespass geographical and political fragmentation of this study area. Instead it will focus on commonalities across three migration systems:
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European Union – Mediterranean countries
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Russian Federation – Commonwealth of Independent States and Georgia
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European Union – Commonwealth of Independent States
o EU-Russian Federation
o EU- other CIS and Georgia
The exchange program will facilitate the following technical cooperation:
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Exchange of expertise as regards measurement of various types of money transfers and their impact;
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Exchange of expertise on researching criminal activities in labour market in various migration systems;
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Exchange of experience in analyzing of the factors determining the formation of the centres of labour gravity and sharing the methodology of estimating the dynamics of human capital flows.
The main objective of the MIREM project lies in taking into better consideration the challenges linked to return migration as well as its impact on development. A whole set of analytical tools have been produced to shed light on the sociodemographic characteristics, conditions and patterns of reintegration of return migrants to the Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia).
The main outcomes of the MIREM project include:
The MIREM field survey on returnees to the Maghreb countries
This survey includes a large number of comparable datasets allowing the many factors shaping returnees’ patterns of reintegration in their country of origin (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) to be better understood.
The Database on return migrants to the Maghreb (DReMM)
The DReMM constitutes a rich source of information for the reintegration of around one thousand return migrants and about post-return conditions in their countries of origin.
Statistics on return migration to the Maghreb
Include a series of statistical data sets and graphs allowing return flows and stocks in the Maghreb countries to be evaluated.
Three policy meetings aimed at securing the practical exploitation of the analytical data produced by the project team.
Like many other migration terms used by governmental and intergovernmental institutions, return has gradually acquired a different acceptation. Today, in most migration countries located in the North and the South, its understanding is all too often associated with the end of the migration cycle. It is even mixed with expulsion or removal. This understanding has become so hegemonic, if not predominant, that the reference to return would imply a form of pressure or coercion exerted by the state and its law-enforcement agencies.
Any scholar having worked on return migration would realise that such a terminological confusion was not part of the open and recurrent debates about return migration during the 1970s and 1980s. Return was not mixed with the expulsion of migrants, let alone with their removal, and migrants’ motivations to return, on a temporary or permanent basis, as well as their aspirations and patterns of reintegration, constituted at that time the main research interests of scholars across various disciplines.
This terminological shift coincides with the drive for securitised temporariness as applied to labour migration that has consolidated over the last two decades. It also reflects the existence of strong paradigms and priorities that have subtly deflected policy attention from the rights, choices and aspirations of return migrants.
Against this backdrop, the Return migration and Development Platform (RDP) is aimed at giving a voice to return migrants whether they go back to developed or developing countries of origin.
The rationale for the RDP lies in combining a top-down with a bottom-up approach to return migration and reintegration. It is a platform for exchanges and knowledge-sharing about return migrants’ realities, in their broadest sense. It promotes comparative research projects and field surveys based on interviews with return migrants. It seeks to disseminate data and studies with a view to opening constructive dialogues and debates, across various disciplines, and to critically addressing predominant schemes of understanding as applied to return migration, reintegration and returnees.
This project is co-funded by the European Union; the Migration Policy Institute (MPI-Washington) is partner.
The rationale for this project is to identify the ways in which EU and US immigration systems can be substantially improved in order to address the major challenges policymakers face on both sides of the Atlantic, both in the context of the current economic crisis, and in the longer term.
Ultimately, it is expected that the project will contribute to a more evidence-based and thoughtful approach to immigration policy on both sides of the Atlantic, and improve policymakers’ understanding of the opportunities for and benefits of more effective Transatlantic cooperation on migration issues.
The project is mainly a comparative project focusing on 8 different challenges that policymakers face on both sides of the Atlantic:
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Employment challenges
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Social cohesion challenges
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Development Challenges
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Challenges for economic growth and prosperity
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Demographic Challenges
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Human Rights
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Security challenges
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Cooperation Challenges
For each of these challenges two different researches are prepared: one dealing with the US, and the other concerning the EU. Besides these major challenges some specific case studies are also tackled (for example, the analysis of specific migratory corridor, the integration process faced by specific community in the EU and in the US, the issue of crime among migrants etc.).
Against this background, the project critically addresses policy responses to the economic crisis and to the longer-term challenges identified. Recommendations on what can and should be done to improve the policy response to short-, medium- and long term challenges follow from the research. This include an assessment of the impact of what has been done, and the likely impact of what can be done.
ACP Observatory on Migration
The Migration Policy Center is a member of the ACP Observatory on Migration, led by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and financed by the European Commission (EC). It coordinates two research studies to be conducted in 2011/2012 on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Haiti in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake, and on intra-regional labour migration within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). It provides added-value and sustainable research capacity-building through sharing and replicating its innovative methodologies in migration studies.
Since 2005, this yearly event has been organised with the University of Florence, Faculty of Political Sciences 'Cesare Alfieri' and co-financed by the European Union. From 2008 to 2010, the School has been organized as part of the CARIM South project . Starting from 2011, it is also part of the CARIM East project with the support of Erste Group Bank and Unicredit & Universities.
The School offers professionals, administrators and researchers working in the field advanced training in migration studies, focusing on the area formed by the area formed by the European Union and its neighbourhood. The School will analyse the interactions of the regions of origin and the regions of destination; migration policies and the regulation of migration; and processes of integration.
Teaching will be accompanied by research work and practical debate. Participants will be encouraged to translate perceived societal problems into social scientific research questions, and to contribute to the solution of these problems by combining insights from demographic, economic, legal and sociological approaches.
More specifically, the School will explore the critical elements of international migration, the incorporation of immigrants in the society of the destination country, and the problems generated in the country of origin.
The group provides an informal and congenial atmosphere for interdisciplinary debate, through the presentation of on-going research. This facilitates the cross-fertilisation of work in progress at the EUI, and strengthens the position of social science expertise on migration in current policy debates.