Migration governance and infrastructure

The project breaks new ground in the study of migration governance by looking at the so-called immigration countries from the perspective of emigration governance. The main underlying theme of this research is that emigration and immigration are two sides of the same coin and thus European migration governance should be approached from two angles to understand its full dimension. European Union is in fact still a region of emigration, with majority of flows staying within its boundaries, but important numbers leaving EU every year. Following the current global trends emigrants should be perceived as a potential asset. ÉMIGRÉ analyses emigration and diaspora policies of four EU Member States (UK, France, Spain and Poland) as well as EU-level responses to emigration to understand what are the drivers of the emigration governance in Europe and how the policies actually work. Key objectives are: 1) To close the knowledge gap on migration from the EU. 2) To enrich international migration governance studies by providing comparative analysis of actions of EU States in regards to emigration management, over time. 3) To ask what is the relation between State identity formation/shifts and success of policy learning/policy transfer processes between levels of governance. 4) To contribute to evidence-based policy making at the EU level. The project focuses especially on EU emigration to other OECD countries and in particular Canada. It employs a wide range of interdisciplinary methods to collect and analyse data. It also offers an intensive training programme.

Risk and uncertainty are inherent in any decision-making procedure, but while a substantial body of work on the governance of international migration focuses on challenges posed to governance systems, we know remarkably little about the impact of risk and uncertainty on: (i) the cognitive biases of actors within migration governance systems; (ii) the susceptibility of these biases to change; (iii) the relationship between cognitive bias and broader questions of systemic resilience, vulnerability and adaptation and (iv) the similarities and differences in migration governance between major world regions. Each of these is a significant gap in our knowledge of international migration governance. To address this gap this project will focus on the context of decision to ask: what are the causes and consequences of the cognitive biases concerning risk and uncertainty held by actors in migration governance systems? The project will: (i) test the causes and consequences of the ‘frames’ held by actors in migration governance systems, specify the scope for these frames to change and to analyse the likely systemic effects of change on migration governance systems in four major world regions. (ii) develop a comparative regional analysis of the micro-political foundations of migration governance and their implications for system adaptation and change. (iii) significantly advance conceptual and methodological understanding of international migration governance through the use of concepts of systemic adaptation, vulnerability and resilience that bridge behavioural theories of choice with theories of institutional and organisational change. (iv) disseminate the results effectively through a range of appropriate outlets and through engagement with a range of users of the results of this work in academia, policy-making communities, NGOs and the wider public.

Risk and uncertainty are inherent in any decision-making procedure, but while a substantial body of work on the governance of international migration focuses on challenges posed to governance systems, we know remarkably little about the impact of risk and uncertainty on: (i) the cognitive biases of actors within migration governance systems; (ii) the susceptibility of these biases to change; (iii) the relationship between cognitive bias and broader questions of systemic resilience, vulnerability and adaptation and (iv) the similarities and differences in migration governance between major world regions. Each of these is a significant gap in our knowledge of international migration governance. To address this gap this project will focus on the context of decision to ask: what are the causes and consequences of the cognitive biases concerning risk and uncertainty held by actors in migration governance systems? The project will: (i) test the causes and consequences of the ‘frames’ held by actors in migration governance systems, specify the scope for these frames to change and to analyse the likely systemic effects of change on migration governance systems in four major world regions. (ii) develop a comparative regional analysis of the micro-political foundations of migration governance and their implications for system adaptation and change. (iii) significantly advance conceptual and methodological understanding of international migration governance through the use of concepts of systemic adaptation, vulnerability and resilience that bridge behavioural theories of choice with theories of institutional and organisational change. (iv) disseminate the results effectively through a range of appropriate outlets and through engagement with a range of users of the results of this work in academia, policy-making communities, NGOs and the wider public.

GLOBE will approach the issues identified in the call focusing on global problems, which has been defined as strategic priorities in the 2016 EU Global Strategy: trade and development, security and the politics of climate change. We will include also the challenges of migration and global finance as additional areas, which go even beyond the call. The strength of our consortium lies in first-class academic expertise, as composed by top-level European and international scholars, which guarantees not only high-level analysis of the past and present problems of global governance but also contributes to determining solid forward-looking trends and scenarios. We will include participants from all over the EU as well as Argentina, Indonesia, and China. Regarding each of the global problems selected, we will identify the major roadblocks for effective and coherent global governance, by multiple stakeholders, and in a multi-polar world. GLOBE will be based on 11 workpackages, which will be divided into two clusters. While the first cluster will focus on these problems one by one, the second cluster will move to a more general and prospective level and will elaborate more on risks and drivers for the transformation of current global regimes in the domains examined. While the first cluster will provide policy-makers, academics and the general public with an analytical grip on the state of play in global governance, supported by new theoretical and methodological approaches, the second cluster will equip national and European policy-makers with tools to identify constraints and possibilities in several global governance scenarios in the years 2030 and 2050. Taking into account these alternative scenarios, we will recommend strategies on how the EU might promote enhanced global governance and deal with their future challenges and gridlocks.

A typical Data Centre is comprised of multiple hardware and software components from different manufacturers, each with their own management tools, silo dashboard and limited sharing capabilities of business operations control data. This problem seems to get worse as IT-based companies are moving towards dynamic and complex virtualized and cloud environments. Moreover, when working on system´s safety, disrupting even one element of this fragile infrastructure runs the risk of affecting other systems, causing serious damage to the business. The average reported incident length is of 86 minutes, resulting in an average cost per incident of about $690,200. CorreAssess™ is an innovative game-changing Data Center Optimization Management system for business IT leaders that empowers companies with a complete visibility and control on all their IT infrastructure, through accurate detailed analytics insights delivered on a daily basis. It helps to generate valuable information for wise usage of IT infrastructure investments, resource allocation efficiency, IT alignment to defined SLAs, compliance, service availability, data recovery risks and easier cloud migration, alerting in advance before threats impact the company business. With CorreAssess™ companies will be able to reduce up to 25% the infrastructure investment costs and prevent risks of business failure by improving business continuity up to 80%. So far, €2M million have been raised and invested into the development and testing of the system to ensure its robustness and efficiency and move into the next stages of commercialisation. Within the overall project, we intend to finalise systems engineering and conduct a wide pilot trial within Europe. Current IP portfolio will be expanded to EU. The proposed work in Phase 1 of the SME instrument fits into our overall plan to reach the market by contributing the financial resources needed to plan a fast sound wider deployment of CorreAssess™ and its market uptake.

Data include statistics on trafficking (only trafficking for labour purposes, not including trafficking for the removal of organs, forced marriage, forced adoption…). ILO mainly focuses on the root causes of trafficking, especially weak labour market governance, ineffective labour migration and recruitment systems using media reports, reports from NGOs, GOs, IOs, academia, trade unions.

Europe’s response to the so-called ‘migration crisis’ has been driven almost exclusively by a border control agenda. This has significantly reduced the number of refugees and migrants arriving in Greece, for the time being at least, but has done nothing to address the drivers or causes of migration to Europe, including the movement of people from Libya which continues unabated, or the protection and integration needs of those who are already here. Several years into the ‘crisis’, there is still no sign of a coherent long-term response. Both the reception infrastructure and the asylum system in Greece have failed to adapt to the needs of the refugees and migrants. This is partly a Greek failure but it is also a failure of the EU. Meanwhile escalating conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq continue to displace hundreds of thousands of people from their homes every day. The assault on Mosul (Iraq) which began in mid-October 2016 is expected to displace 1.5 million people, many of whom are likely to cross the border into Eastern Turkey just a few hours away. Understanding the dynamics of migration to Europe and why some of these people might decide to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean remains a pressing concern.

Movement is the primary response of animals to spatiotemporal heterogeneity in ecological conditions. The consequences of movement for individual fitness, populations and ecological communities give this behavior a central place in ecological theory. Human activities alter both spatiotemporal variations in ecological conditions triggering movements (e.g. resource distribution) and availability of movement corridors (e.g. destruction of migration routes). An understanding of factors driving animal movements, affecting their mechanics, and characterizing the preferred travel routes is essential for ecological theory and to evaluate the impact of human activities on population dynamics and on the potential for human-wildlife conflicts. Due to recovering ungulate populations and increased road and rail traffic, ungulate-vehicle collisions represent an important source of conflict. These collisions lead to casualties, injuries and substantial economical losses. Due to poor knowledge of movement drivers and mechanics, mitigating measures currently taken to minimize the probability of collisions are often inadequate and inefficient. Despite the 10-year old call for a “behavioral ecology of ecological landscapes” (Lima & Zollner 1996), only limited information about cognitive mechanisms underlying movement is included in fundamental and applied ecology. During the past decades behavioral scientists have made important progresses in the understanding of animal spatial cognition and goal-oriented movements in laboratory settings. This project proposes a novel interdisciplinary approach to develop a mechanistic movement model integrating theory on space use from ecology in natural settings with theories from behavioral and cognitive sciences in the laboratory. Such model will have a broad range of applications in theoretical and applied animal movement ecology. We will use this model to identify risk areas for moose-vehicle collisions in Norway and guide mitigating actions.

IN2RAIL is to set the foundations for a resilient, consistent, cost-efficient, high capacity European network by delivering important building blocks that unlock the innovation potential that exists in SHIFT2RAIL: innovative technologies will be explored and resulting concepts embedded in a systems framework where infrastructure, information management, maintenance techniques, energy, and engineering are integrated, optimised, shared and exploited. IN2RAIL will make advances towards SHIFT2RAIL objectives: enhancing the existing capacity fulfilling user demand; increasing the reliability delivering better and consistent quality of service; reducing the LCC increasing competitiveness of the EU rail system. To achieve the above, a holistic approach covering Smart Infrastructures, Intelligent Mobility Management (I2M)and Rail Power Supply and Energy Management will be applied. Smart Infrastructure addresses the fundamental design of critical assets - switches and crossings and tracks. It will research components capable of meeting future railway demands and will utilise modern technologies in the process. Risk and condition-based LEAN approaches to optimise RAMS and LCC in asset maintenance activities will be created to tackle the root causes of degradation. I2M researches automated, interoperable and inter-connected advanced traffic management systems; scalable and upgradable systems, utilising standardised products and interfaces, enabling easy migration from legacy systems; the wealth of data and information on assets and traffic status; information management systems adding the capability of nowcasting and forecasting of critical asset statuses. Rail Power Supply and Energy Management create solutions to improve the energy performance of the railway system. Research on new power systems characterised by reduced losses and capable of balancing energy demands, along with innovative energy management systems enabling accurate and precise estimates of energy flows.

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the most recent policy trends observed at international, European, national and sub-state governance level in relation to the arrival and presence in Europe of migrants with irregular immigration status. This paper aims to explain recent legal and policy developments on this issue, identify their main drivers and the direction of travel of current policy scenarios. There are several dimensions of policies governing irregular immigration. On one side, policies on irregular immigration aim to prevent and reduce the unauthorised arrival of unwanted immigrants. On the other side, policies on irregular migrants address the treatment of irregular migrants once they have entered (or overstayed their stay permits) in breach of immigration rules. With regard to this second dimension, policy makers can develop different approaches depending on whether they decide to grant some form of accommodation to their irregular population and facilitate regularisations, or instead, focus on enforcing immigration rules, denying accommodating measures to encourage voluntary returns, and ultimately enforcing removals. These two policy approaches necessarily overlap, as strict enforcement cannot overlook European states’ obligations vis-à-vis irregular migrants’ fundamental (including social) rights, but at the same time tougher policies on the treatment of irregular migrants are often implemented to deter new irregular arrivals. In this paper, both policies focusing on immigration law enforcement and deterrence, as well as policies aimed at regulating the treatment of irregular migrants vis-à-vis their social needs will be analysed.

Europe’s response to the so-called ‘migration crisis’ has been driven almost exclusively by a border control agenda. This has significantly reduced the number of refugees and migrants arriving in Greece, for the time being at least, but has done nothing to address the drivers or causes of migration to Europe, including the movement of people from Libya which continues unabated, or the protection and integration needs of those who are already here. The research aims to: • Shed light on the dynamics (determinants, drivers and infrastructures) underpinning the recent unprecedented levels of migration across, and loss of life in, the Mediterranean; • Provide insights into the interaction of refugees and migrants with a multitude of non-State actors (for example smugglers, facilitators, and Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and State actors (for example, the navy / coastguard) in order to better understand their decision making processes; and • Explore how the decisions made by refugees and migrants on their journeys interact with dramatically changing global economic, security and political contexts.

Linked to terrorism, moral breakdown, and societal decay, Transnational Organised Crime (TOC) has come to embody current global anxieties as a figure of fear and cause of disquiet. Yet despite its central position on the social and political radar, our knowledge of it remains limited and fragmentary. Quantitative analyses may have identified the scale of the problem, but its underlying socio-cultural logic and practices remain under-researched and largely obscure. TOC is on the rise, and we need better insights into how it develops and expands, who engages in it and why, and how it is linked to and embedded in social networks that straddle countries and contexts. CRIMTANG proposes a unique approach to the study of the social infrastructure of contemporary TOC. It develops a research strategy that is ethnographic and transnational in design and so attuned to the human flows and formations of TOC. The project comprises a trans-disciplinary research team of anthropologists, criminologists and political scientists, and builds on their prior experience of the people, regions and languages under study. It explores the illegal and overlapping flows of migrants and drugs from North-West Africa into Europe, following a key trafficking trajectory stretching from Tangiers to Barcelona, Paris and beyond. In so doing, CRIMTANG sheds new light on the actual empirical processes in operation at different points along this trafficking route, whilst simultaneously developing new theoretical and methodological apparatuses for apprehending TOC that can be exported and applied in other regions and contexts. It reimagines the idea of social entanglement and proposes new transnational and collective fieldwork strategies. Finally, it will advance and consolidate the European research environment on TOC by creating a research hub for transnational ethnographic criminology at the University of Copenhagen.

More than 51 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced today as refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced persons. According to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to be recognized legally as a refugee, an individual must be fleeing persecution on the basis of religion, race, political opinion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group, and must be outside the country of nationality. However, the contemporary drivers of displacement are complex and multilayered, making protection based on a strict definition of persecution increasingly problematic and challenging to implement. Many forced migrants now fall outside the recognized refugee and asylum apparatus. Much displacement today is driven by a combination of intrastate conflict, poor governance and political instability, environmental change, and resource scarcity. These conditions, while falling outside traditionally defined persecution, leave individuals highly vulnerable to danger and uncertain of the future, compelling them to leave their homes in search of greater security. In addition, the blurring of lines between voluntary and forced migration, as seen in mixed migration flows, together with the expansion of irregular migration, further complicates today's global displacement picture. This report details the increasing mismatch between the legal and normative frameworks that define the existing protection regime and the contemporary patterns of forced displacement. It analyzes contemporary drivers and emerging trends of population displacement, noting that the majority of forcibly displaced people – some 33.3 million – remain within their own countries, and that more than 50 percent of the displaced live in urban areas. The author then outlines and assesses key areas where the international protection system is under the most pressure, and finally examines the key implications of these trends for policymakers and the international community, outlining some possible policy directions for reform.

The migration of the global population to urban areas has strained the resources of cities worldwide. To address these challenges governments are turning to Smart Cities to provide sustainable infrastructure that meets the needs of citizens. The smart city industry is projected to reach 1.56 $ trillion by 2020. Smart city initiatives are focussing on smart parking systems to enhance regulated parking spots with occupancy sensors that provide additional features & services to parking management companies as well as drivers by reducing time spent looking for parking, traffic and CO2 emissions. Monitored parking spaces will be a global emerging market by 2020 when 1% of on-street parking spaces will be controlled. The European Parking Association estimates that there are 12M parking spaces available for smart parking (in European cities with more than 20K habitants). As a result, they estimate that there are an additional 190M spaces likely to become regulated in the near future, equalling a huge potential market for Fastprk-2 in Europe alone. Considering the competitors & the time-to-market we aim to manage 60M parking spaces for 2019. FastPrk-2 is an innovative full featured smart on-street parking solution, featuring enhanced services resulting from almost 100% accurate occupancy sensors & a system architecture that provides cutting edge HW-based sensor technology & SW-based tools that optimize transport management through innovative applications that analyse diverse parking related data, minimizing maintenance costs and operational processes. Worldsensing is a cutting edge tech company, a market leader in innovative wireless solutions, & a pioneer in IoT technologies, with a strong executive & advisory team, as well as the strategic investors Cisco, Mitsui and FJME. Worldsensing has 2 main product portfolios: Smart Traffic solutions for Smart Cities and Industry Monitoring solutions. It has >30 employees & an increasing turnover of 2.7M€.

'This research project aims at contributing to the debate over religion and politics in the EU by considering the role played by Catholicism in shaping civil society mobilizations in Southern European regions. The underlying theoretical issues of this project do refer to the classical debates about a) the weberian perspective on the elective affinities between religious ethics, economic and politics; b) the role of culture and social capital in the regional economic development; c) the neo-institutionalist debates about the interaction between the EU, state, substate public authorities and civil society actors. The project will focus on the Catholic third sector. Empirical support will be taken from fieldwork research carried out in three Southern European regions: the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain), Aquitaine (France) and Emilia-Romagna (Italy). Overall hypothesis: despite the institutional and societal decline of Catholicism, religious actors do have not renounced to interfere in public debates. Rather, they have renewed their repertoire of action when becoming civil society actors among others in a pluralistic environment. Far from being confined to the private sphere, religion still plays a significant role in the European public sphere, either as an identity resource, an ethical reference or a ritual provider. As an ethical reference, Catholicism may bias civil society mobilisations towards more caring and community-oriented dynamics and outcomes. As an organization, the Catholic Church defends both general causes and its own interests, and is involved in territorial governance networks associating civil society actors, private bodies and public authorities. This hypothesis will be tested through three case-studies: a) Historical legacy: Catholicism and the emergence of territorial social economies; b) The Catholic third sector and the issue of immigration; c) The Catholic third sector’s mediation in ethnonational conflicts.'

"Theoretical background and objectives This project aims to shed new light on the causes and consequences of ethnic residential segregation, i.e. ""the degree to which two or more [ethnic] groups live separately from one another in different parts of the urban environment"" (Massey and Denton 1988: 283). While the number of papers dealing with this classic research question is large, the debate whether, to what extent and for whom ethnic residential segregation matters is far from resolved. This project addresses two issues in particular, namely interaction effects between individual and context characteristics, and the question to what extent segregation results from immigrants' deliberate choices to live among co-ethnics, or from such homphily preferences on the side of members of the majority population. Surprisingly, empirical studies investigating the prevalence and causes of immigrants' residential preferences remain scant. Guided by the preference model of residential choices (Charles 2003), we examine under which conditions and how the residential preferences of ethnic minority and majority members reflect a desire for self-segregation and avoidance of other ethnic groups or not. This study is likely to yield critical findings for both theory and applied initiatives, given that investigating the prevalence and the sources of segregation preferences is of key importance for understanding macro-level patterns of ethnic residential segregation. Research design, data and methodology In a first study, we applied multilevel generalised linear regression techniques to individual level survey data from a large metropolitan area (Duisburg) in Germany, supplemented with contextual measures of ethnic residential segregation on the neighbourhood level. We examined whether patterns of segregation were related to rates of interethnic contact, and whether this relationship differed for respondents of different socio-economic status. In a second study, we used factorial survey methodology to address majority members' preferences. One key advantage of this design is that it avoids the notorious problem of collinear contextual variables when investigating neighbourhood settings. In two within-subjects experiments conducted over the internet (total N = 1032), participants evaluated schools or residential areas with different levels of ethnic diversity (i.e. proportions of immigrants). In the vignettes describing schools and areas, we additionally varied factors that are ecologically related to diversity (i.e., neighbourhood socio-economic status and crime in residential areas, and quality of education at schools). At the person level, we measured intergroup contact and prejudice and used these variables to predict the level 1 effect of diversity on preferences for residential or school choice. We estimated a two-level random coefficients model with latent variables to explain preferences. In a third study, we will employ also an experimental factorial survey design, but this time to investigate immigrants' residential preferences. We will use quota samples of different ethnic minority groups living in Germany (e.g. Turks). Respondents will evaluate vignettes describing different residential areas which, in addition to the size of the ethnic in-group, vary systematically along additional dimensions known to affect residential choices such as neighbourhood SES, ethnic infrastructure or crime risk. Findings The first study has been completed, the second is ongoing and the third will be started in early 2011. Controlling for individual characteristics, results from the first study bring new evidence that friendships of immigrants with host society members are less prevalent in residential areas with greater degrees of ethnic segregation. The strength of this negative association, however, proves to be contingent on immigrants' educational attainment: The lower one's educational attainment, the stronger the negative association between ethnic residential segregation and immigrants' interethnic friendships. In other words, residential segregation is in particular detrimental for those sections of immigrant population for whom interethnic contacts are likely to be most important as a source of social capital, namely those of low socio-economic status. Preliminary results of the second study show that diversity had negative effects on evaluations of schools and residential areas, over and above the effects of infrastructure, crime, or quality of education. Furthermore, results indicate that intergroup contact reduced bias against diverse schools or residential areas, mediated by prejudice, but it did not produce a preference for diversity, except for people with prejudice scores as low as the sample minimum."

This groundbreaking multi-methods political science study investigates the transnational mobilization of conflict-generated diasporas in Europe and its impact on polities experiencing contested sovereignty in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. Four researchers study how diasporas mobilize when a specific aspect of sovereignty is contested in the original homeland: The PI focuses on the emergence of new states (Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, Palestine). The Post-doc focuses on a secessionist movement (Kurdish separatism in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan). The two Ph.D. students focus on challenges to sovereignty stemming from international military intervention (Iraq) and long-term international governance of a weak state (Bosnia-Herzegovina). Since the scholarly field of diasporas and conflicts still lacks theoretical rigor, this study brings a much needed systematization and innovates in several ways. First, it uses a sequential qualitative and quantitative analysis and multi-sited research techniques that have not been utilized so far. Second, the team seeks to develop a typological theory to incorporate in a single framework: 1) diasporic identities, 2) conditions providing political opportunity structures for transnational mobilization, 3) causal mechanisms concatenating in mobilization processes, and 4) transnational diaspora networks, penetrating various local and global institutions. The study further focuses on five levels of analysis: 1) the attitudes of individuals, 2) characteristics of specific groups, 3) five nation-states with different migrant incorporation regimes (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK), 4) supranational EU and global institutions penetrated by diaspora networks, 5) and patterns of mobilization specific to a certain region. The project also conducts a cross-country representative survey across 25 country-groups, creating a much needed quantitative dataset, sensitive both to transnationalism and specific context.