During the March mid-term meeting at the Paris School of Economics, members of the CrossMigration consortium reflected on the achievements of the project one year on, and set out the framework for continued collaboration towards the further development of the Migration Research Hub.
CrossMigration team members during discussions
CrossMigration has identified the need for a systematic way to gather, structure, and understand knowledge on migration, and aims to place this wealth of information under one roof for the benefit of researchers, policy makers and others interested in this growing field of study. As Luca Lixi, who represented the European Commission at the meeting said, this is an important effort toward organising the wealth of knowledge being produced on migration, “watch this space!”.
For Lixi and other members of the team, alignment goes beyond sharing a common research and application framework. For the project to succeed all moving parts need to work in sync, including the technical implementation of the online migration research repository. That is why IT partner Young Minds and the teams working on knowledge accumulation engaged in lively discussion about the technical features the Migration Research Hub needs to become the most useful tool for research synthesis. This encounter led to a better prioritization of the project’s tools and features.
Project manager Dr. Asya Pisarevskaya presenting the achievements from year 1
Another point of alignment addressed during the meeting dealt with research into migration drivers, infrastructure, flows and policies. There, researchers set goals, committed to a process and agreed on the form the output will take. In the coming months, two research angles will become priority for the CrossMigration teams. On the one hand, the teams will take stock of existing research while maintaining a global perspective on migration studies. One the other, teams will zoom into specific policy-relevant questions to satisfy the knowledge needs of the policy makers at the EU, national and local levels. The Migration Research Hub is a collective effort, and researchers are encouraged to contribute content and expertise, to further populate the growing database with literature, experts, projects and datasets on migration.
The working groups, which are spread throughout Europe from Portugal to Poland and from Norway to Italy, will have a new opportunity to meet during the 16th Annual IMISCOE Conference, between 26 and 28 June 2019 in Malmö, Sweden.