Visibility, measurement, and public perception in migration governance

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• MPC: Migration Policy Centre

The next Migration Working Group will bring Zoe Sigman and Rachel Kei Kawasaki to discuss two papers that interrogate how migration realities are measured, represented, and perceived—and how these processes shape governance and public attitudes.

The first paper by Zoe Sigman, research analyst and PhD candidate at the Hertie School in Berlin, presents one of the first applications of Multiple Systems Estimation (MSE) to migrant mortality along the U.S.–Mexico border, revealing that official statistics substantially undercount deaths and demonstrating how demographic estimation tools can uncover hidden dimensions of migration-related harm.

The second paper by Rachael Kei Kawasaki, Max Weber Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre, examines whether observable integration outcomes, such as immigrants’ economic success or social participation, affect public attitudes toward immigration in the United Kingdom. Together, the papers highlight the importance of visibility in shaping how migration is governed, quantified, and understood, revealing the complex relationship between empirical realities and their political or societal interpretation.

The Migration Working Group (MWG) is a researcher-led research group, whose aim is to foster exchange on the latest, cutting-edge migration research and give the opportunity to early career scholars and PhD researchers to present their research.