The project started with a thorough analysis of the state of the art, with the aim to provide the conceptual and knowledge foundation for PERCEPTIONS to guide the empirical and development work in subsequent work packages. As such, the consortium collected and reviewed an extensive body of existing knowledge, studies, secondary data, measures, policies, legal frameworks, as well as social security, threats and risks. As such, the following results have been achieved:
- An extensive overview of the stakeholders within the countries under analysis, including (i) migrant groups, (ii) NGOs and other host society groups, (iii) policymakers, (iv) media, (v) LEAs and other first-line practitioners and (vi) academics.
- A systematic literature review of 221 documents, including journals, book chapters, conference papers, working papers and project reports. Findings illustrate several important issues in the current understanding of migration narratives, demonstrating the complexity of migration narrative.
- An analysis of policies and policy recommendations in the 12 countries under research (Algeria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Italy, Kosovo, Spain, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom).
- A matrix of threats and security issues (real or perceived) regarding current movements and processes of migration.
- A collection of good practices addressing or counteracting issues resulting from a mismatch of expectation and reality caused by migrants’ narratives and perceptions of Europe, the EU or European countries.
- A baseline report providing provides a concise overview of (i) which types of stakeholders are relevant to consider for the project; (ii) the existing academic literature on narratives, perceptions and discourses on Europe and how this impacts migration, (iii) policies on migration and security issues, (iv) threats perceived by security practitioners, policymakers and civil society organisations and (v) good practices.
- A multi-perspective study design that takes into account the different target groups included in the empirical research, specifies the various research sites, as well as the research questions for the different activities.
- An ethical framework that presents the results of a thorough review of ethical concerns relevant to the PERCEPTIONS project, and guides the empirical research.
- A detailed collection of the various media sources – both social and conventional media – as data sources that were used for the investigation of online narratives.
- A keyword-based taxonomy to set up a multilingual analytical system to analyse social media data, as well as traditional mass media
- The technical concept of the PERCEPTIONS web platform.
