This project has received funding via the EUI Widening Europe Programme call 2026. The EUI Widening Europe Programme initiative, backed by contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States, is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in Widening countries, and thus foster a more cohesive European Higher Education and Research area.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping the core domains of European societies from public administration and welfare provision to labour markets, migration governance and everyday socio-economic interactions. Yet the publics most affected by algorithmic decision-making, as workers, migrants, civil society groups, and residents of structurally disadvantaged regions, remain weakly positioned in institutional processes. Scholarship warns that current ‘stakeholder engagement’ often becomes participation-washing, where consultation obscures deep asymmetries of influence over AI design, deployment and oversight. Meanwhile, bottom-up norm-making by civil society, labour organisations and migrant associations is expanding but remains fragmented and under-resourced.
The AISOME research project addresses three research questions:
- How do AI systems reshape governance, labour markets and migration regimes in the EU, particularly in Widening countries, and which publics are most affected?
- What forms of participation exist for affected publics such as workers, migrants, civil society organisations, and to what extent do they generate meaningful agency rather than symbolic inclusion?
- What methodological and institutional foundations are needed for a long-term, multi-country research infrastructure capable of assessing AI’s societal impacts and informing democratic governance?
AI is increasingly embedded in welfare allocation, labour-market intermediation, border management and public service delivery. In the workplace, algorithmic management reshapes autonomy, supervision and bargaining power, while automation disproportionately affects migrants and mobile workers concentrated in routine or low-wage sectors. In migration governance, AI tools, from biometric triage to risk scoring, reshape protection, mobility, and vulnerability. Emerging evidence shows these developments can reinforce inequalities, increase opacity, and produce new forms of exclusion. The project maps these dynamics through participatory and comparative methods, with particular attention to Widening countries’ varied digital capacities, oversight mechanisms and trust environments.
Building on Arnstein’s ladder of participation and contemporary extensions in AI governance, the project examines both formal engagement mechanisms via consultations, redress channels, algorithmic audits, and grassroots practices such as tracing, community monitoring and counter-expertise. Evidence shows that affected publics frequently innovate oversight practices but face major barriers to institutional uptake.
Lastly, the project pilots small-scale components: AI-assisted survey tools, participatory mapping, cross-country institutional coding, and initial documentation of grassroots oversight ecosystems. These activities draw on methodological innovations such as matrix-sampled surveys, and cross-national item harmonisation. The focus is on finding synergies, feasibility, ethics, scalability and identification of research partners across Widening countries.
Within the project the following activities are planned:
1. An academic workshop at the European University Institute, Florence, June 2026;
2. A Civil Society and Practitioner academic workshop at Kozminksi University, Warsaw, September 2026.
For more information about the EUI Widening Europe Programme, please visit the official webpage.