Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PACES (Making migration and migration policy decisions amidst societal transformations)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-03-01 do 2024-02-29
In the last few decades migration has been framed as a challenge for the EU and its Member States. While there have been moments of concentrated arrivals of migrants and asylum seekers to the EU, migration has played a disproportionate role in public and political debates. EU and national migration policymakers have become preoccupied with predicting and controlling migration to the continent, leading to the proliferation of financial instruments, strategies and initiatives. This reactive approach fails to consider a set of emerging social changes, such as population aging and economic transformations that are likely to shape future migration drivers, and the need for migration policies to be forward-looking rather than reactive. Moreover, these policy interventions are often not based on research evidence on how people make migration decisions. Instead, narratives and policies follow general assumptions that migration is essentially driven by poverty and inequality and that migrants, particularly from African countries, want to migrate and settle in the EU en masse. Such simplifications reduce the complexity of migration decision-making and reinforce the belief that only control and surveillance measures can effectively control migration. In reality, migration is largely independent of control techniques as decisions to migrate are driven by factors such as labour demand, origin country development and network dynamics. Research from across the social sciences has greatly advanced insights in the nature, causes and impacts of migration processes over the last decades. However, much of this knowledge remains fragmented, with some areas still not well understood, and it is unclear how migration policymaking understands and makes use of this knowledge.
The PACES project has set four main objectives:
● Identify the assumptions that guide migration policies: The first objective is to examine the strength and limitations of current migration policies and governance by analysing the knowledge that underpins European migration policies since the turn of the 21st century.
● Examine the variables and interactions that influence decisions to migrate or not: Secondly, the research will examine the interaction between political contexts, regulatory constraints, societal changes, and individual life course factors in shaping decisions to stay and to migrate as well as the changing decision processes along the migration trajectory. It uses innovative models to understand the combinations of factors and mechanisms that shape decisions to stay and migrate over time and space.
● Assess the impact of policies as facilitators, enablers or disablers of mobility dynamics: The third objective of the research is to identify how migration, and non-migration policies more broadly, can either facilitate migration or enable sustainable and desirable ‘staying’.
● Identify alternative and innovative approaches to promote the agency and protection of migrants: Develop ideas for possible alternative migration initiatives that account for complex processes of migration decision-making, while taking into account constraints in migration policymaking. Co-participatory approaches will enable the incorporation of the diverse needs of migrants and involve the perspectives of stakeholders, including employer organisations, unions and populations at origin and destination.
The PACES project has set four main objectives:
● Identify the assumptions that guide migration policies: The first objective is to examine the strength and limitations of current migration policies and governance by analysing the knowledge that underpins European migration policies since the turn of the 21st century.
● Examine the variables and interactions that influence decisions to migrate or not: Secondly, the research will examine the interaction between political contexts, regulatory constraints, societal changes, and individual life course factors in shaping decisions to stay and to migrate as well as the changing decision processes along the migration trajectory. It uses innovative models to understand the combinations of factors and mechanisms that shape decisions to stay and migrate over time and space.
● Assess the impact of policies as facilitators, enablers or disablers of mobility dynamics: The third objective of the research is to identify how migration, and non-migration policies more broadly, can either facilitate migration or enable sustainable and desirable ‘staying’.
● Identify alternative and innovative approaches to promote the agency and protection of migrants: Develop ideas for possible alternative migration initiatives that account for complex processes of migration decision-making, while taking into account constraints in migration policymaking. Co-participatory approaches will enable the incorporation of the diverse needs of migrants and involve the perspectives of stakeholders, including employer organisations, unions and populations at origin and destination.
PACES is an innovative, inter-disciplinary and multi-level research project that asks how do changes in society, individual life experiences and migration policy shape decisions to stay or to migrate over time and across countries? And how can this knowledge inform future migration policies and governance?
PACES offers a ground-breaking approach to studying migration and migration policies through:
● Developing a comprehensive yet lean framework to study complex, multi-level changes affecting decisions to migrate as well as to stay;
● Elaborating a novel approach to analyse migration policies that explores how knowledge is produced and used in migration policymaking;
● Generating new insights with regards to public knowledge and public opinion on migration policies;
● Elaborating forward-looking perspectives on the future of EU migration policy and global migration governance that accounts for the uncertainties of future social and economic transformations;
● Establishing an interdisciplinary consortium to synthetise migration decision-making and migration policy research and to engage in co-participatory research with policymakers, stakeholders, including citizens and migrants, to amplify scientific, political and social impact.
PACES offers a ground-breaking approach to studying migration and migration policies through:
● Developing a comprehensive yet lean framework to study complex, multi-level changes affecting decisions to migrate as well as to stay;
● Elaborating a novel approach to analyse migration policies that explores how knowledge is produced and used in migration policymaking;
● Generating new insights with regards to public knowledge and public opinion on migration policies;
● Elaborating forward-looking perspectives on the future of EU migration policy and global migration governance that accounts for the uncertainties of future social and economic transformations;
● Establishing an interdisciplinary consortium to synthetise migration decision-making and migration policy research and to engage in co-participatory research with policymakers, stakeholders, including citizens and migrants, to amplify scientific, political and social impact.
In its first year, PACES has had two main scientific results: two conceptual frameworks to guide the research on the decision-making process of migrants and in migration policy-making. To support the research of the complex, multi-level and multi-dimensional decision-making process of (potential) migrants, PACES researchers developed a Temporal Multilevel Analysis (TMA) framework, which is now publicly available as a paper entitled ‘Researching decisions to stay and migrate: A Temporal Multilevel Analysis framework.’ In parallel, PACES has produced an approach for the research on how knowledge is produced and used in migration policymaking, which is also publicly available as a paper titled, ‘Researching the politics of knowledge in migration policy.’ Moreover, a report titled ‘Assumptions in Migration Policy: State-of-the-art of Research on Migrant Behaviour and Policy Effects’, which explores how migration policymakers account for migrant decision-making in their policy choices, was released on the PACES webpages.