ICT facilitating travel & migration

DOLFIN addresses the demand/response and energy stabilisation scenario of the Smart Grid by optimising the energy consumption of Data Centres (DC), accompanied, if necessary, with a respective negotiation and readjustment of the DC's Service Level Agreements (SLAs). To achieve this, DOLFIN adopts an innovative energy closed control loop that targets to deliver the following advancements:• Create an integrated poll of 4 parametric energy consumption optimisation mechanisms (eCOM).• Organise the orchestration of eCOMs at the DC level, through dynamically deployed energy optimisation policies.• Fine-tune the parametrical implementation of eCOM and contribute to their standardisation.• Create a platform for handling virtualised ICT resources in an energy aware manner, considering SLA restrictions.• Introduce the idea of synergetic DCs and implement a migration process for ICT-processing workload, complying with SLA restrictions.• Make the DOLFIN DC part of the Smart Grid energy stabilisation solution for the demand/response scenario.• Build a system that is able to take informed decisions, so as to adapt the DC's electricity consumption to the demands of the Smart Grid.• Combine traditional metrics for ICT SLA management with energy performance metrics for ICT.• Implement a DC SLA renegotiation process considering both ICT and energy metrics.• Constitute the ICT SLA metrics proportional to the energy SLA metrics in a DC.

Le projet « e-diasporas atlas » entend se démarquer de la formule classique d&rsquo,un atlas des migrations qui se focalise traditionnellement sur les flux, les trajectoires ou la dispersion des populations en mouvement sur les territoires physiques. Les évolutions récentes du phénomène migratoire montrent que les parcours des migrants d&rsquo,aujourd&rsquo,hui passent aussi &ndash, et parfois bien avant d&rsquo,investir le parcours physique &ndash, par les territoires numériques. L'un des changements majeurs intervenu depuis les années 80 dans le domaine des diasporas tient à la multiplication des communautés en dispersion dans l&rsquo,espace physique et à leurs nouvelles formes de regroupement, d&rsquo,action et d&rsquo,occupation dans les territoires numériques. Ce changement appelle à une autre approche épistémologique. Les sujets tout comme les outils conceptuels et méthodologiques classiques de la discipline doivent êtres reconsidérés et confrontés avec cette nouvelle donne migratoire. Le projet E-Diasporas Atlas a pour ambition 1. d'analyser une réalité sociologique en pleine mutation et porteuse de nouvelles questions sur les migrations. 2. d'expérimenter des outils de production, assemblage et mise à disposition de contenus. Ouvrir un nouveau terrain de recherche, articuler deux courants d&rsquo,études jusqu&rsquo,ici relativement dissociés (les théories des diasporas et l&rsquo,étude de l&rsquo,exploration du web) et développer des outils génériques à redéployer dans d&rsquo,autres disciplines SHS sont les objectifs majeurs de ce projet. Il s&rsquo,articule autour de trois composantes : - Exploration et constitution de corpus : Les chercheurs-experts mobilisés dans le cadre de ce projet explorent le web pour constituer leur corpus. Ils disposent d'outils spécifiques pour les aider dans cette tâche (leur permettant de capitaliser la navigation, enrichir et organiser les données, etc.). Les chercheurs pilotent toutes les phases de ces explorations ainsi que leur enchaînement. - Archivage : Après avoir réaliser des crawls de validation de ces corpus, les corpus collectés sont archivés dans leur épaisseur temporelle. - Analyse des corpus: Cette analyse intervient dès la phase d&rsquo,exploration. Elle nous permet d&rsquo,orienter méthodologiquement la prospection et d'évaluer le degré de 'diasporisation' des communautés des migrants en ligne. Elle comporte plusieurs niveaux : confrontation du terrain numérique et du terrain physique, analyse des réseaux, visualisation et cartographie des corpus, analyse sémantique des contenus, etc. Cette chaîne méthodologique représente une innovation dans les sciences humaines.

The research study "ICT to support the everyday life integration of immigrants or ethnic minority people (IEM)" (ConnectIEM) which was co-funded by JRC-IPTS and DG INFSO, European Commission. The following external research teams collaborated in the study: the Migration and Network Society Programme (MNS) hosted by the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), the Technological and Social Change Group (TASCHA) hosted by the University of Washington, and a network of local researchers based in the target countries. The study gathered through an on-line survey statistically representative and comparable cross-country data on the ICT skills, access and usage of “connected migrants” from the main migration groups living in 8 EU Member States. It then explored the relationship between internet usage and integration processes and developed evidence-based policy options.

'WARP-5 is driven by the internet explosion and the question for sustainable bandwidth delivery. It endeavours the advancement of optical metro-access networks through the new paradigm of coherent ultra-dense WDM systems. Under the umbrella of Fibre-to-the-Home as ICT field with high market potential, efforts towards capacity and reach extension pose severe system complexity and require a disruptive yet straightforward solution. WARP-5 aims to provide the required potential for a next-generation photonic Tb/s-capacity ICT infrastructure and the required credentials for low cost and power consumption. It does so by tackling two important pillars of ICT networks: their capacity and scalability. WARP-5 will unlock the potential of advanced modulation formats in cost-sensitive ICT segments such as optical access. A novel modulation scheme for off-the-shelf devices radically improves simple intensity modulation towards 16-level QAM. The applied technique lifts the guaranteed per-user data rate to 10 Gb/s, without raising cost and energy consumption. The 30-fold increase in the granted bandwidth with respect to the commercially available standards such as XG-PON comes with a high spectral occupancy and 5 GHz channel spacing. Scalability of common ICT infrastructure will be guaranteed not only by the envisaged transition from the electrical TDM domain to the pure optical and highly granular WDM domain; WARP-5 adopts a disruptive amplification scheme that transforms background noise into supportive gain without electrically powered field equipment, providing a 'green' and effective solution to smoothly grow and migrate the network through reach/split extension. WARP-5 will demonstrate a next-generation ICT infrastructure with a long reach of 100 km and beyond, an aggregated capacity of up to 5 Tb/s and a high density of 1000 users. WARP-5 will strengthen the European leadership in coherent access networks by raising the research independence and performance of Dr. Schrenk.'

Many immigrants enter Europe both legally and illegally every year. This creates multiple challenges for the Union, including the gender and ethnic segregation of migrant groups, especially women. While it strives for an inclusive and integrated society as envisioned by the EU motto ‘Unity in Diversity’, it is still often perceived more as ‘Fortress Europe.’ This project focuses on the ‘connected migrant’, studying how virtual communities of migrants, or digital diasporas, convey issues of technology, migration, globalisation, alienation and belonging capturing the lives of migrants in their interaction with multiple worlds and media. More specifically, it will investigate whether digital technologies enhance European integration or foster gender and ethnic segregation, and, if so, how. Using a multi-layered and cutting-edge approach that draws from the humanities, social science and new media studies (i.e. internet studies and mobile media), this research considers: 1. How migration and digital technologies enable digital diasporas (Somali, Turkish, Romanian) and the impact these have on identity, gender and belonging in European urban centres; 2. How these entanglements are connected to and perceived from outside Europe by focusing on transnational ties; and 3. How digital connections create new possibilities for cosmopolitan outlooks, rearticulating Europe’s motto of ‘Unity in Diversity.’ The outcomes of this work will be innovative at three levels. a) Empirically, the project gathers, maps and critically grounds online behaviour by migrant women from a European comparative perspective. b) Methodologically, it breaks new ground by developing new methods of analysis for digital diasporas contributing to the development of ‘postcolonial’ digital humanities. c) Conceptually, it integrates colonial and migrant relations into the idea of Europe, elaborating on the notion of cosmopolitan belonging through virtual connectivity.

This project aims at exploring possibilities at-using social media data and big data in general for estimating (labour) mobility and migration in the EU. The report is published online. As results were promising, a pilot project will be launched on its basis sometime in 2017. **Feasibility Study:** http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pubId=7910&type=2&furtherPubs=yes This report addresses the question of whether it is technically, financially and legally feasible to estimate geographic mobility and migration flows in the European Union. The study reviews state-of-the-art methods to measure stocks and flows of migrants using traditional data sources but also new and innovative data sources such as mobile phone data and social media data. It finds that it is indeed feasible to estimate geographic mobility and migration flows in the European Union but that that it depends on several important factors such as access to data, legal obstacles and desired outcomes that are outlined in the paper.

Im Zentrum des MOBILISE Projekts steht die folgende Forschungsfrage: Warum reagieren einige Menschen auf gesellschaftlichen Unmut mit Protesten, während andere in die Emigration gehen? Wir verknüpfen die konzeptuellen Erwartungen aus der Migrationsforschung und der Forschung zu sozialen Protesten miteinander und untersuchen: a) ob es ähnliche Faktoren sind, die die Entscheidung für Migration und/oder Protest auf der Ebene des Individuums bestimmen; b) wie der jeweilige politische, soziale und wirtschaftliche Kontext diese Arten von Mobilisierung beeinflusst; c) ob die Optionen Migration und Protest unabhängig voneinander sind, oder ob sie sich gegenseitig verstärken, oder ob eine Option die andere unterdrückt. MOBILISE verbindet verschiedene methodologische Ansätze (nationale repräsentative face-to-face Panel-Umfragen, Online-Umfragen unter Migrant*Innen; Direktumfragen unter Protestteilnehmenden, Fokusgruppen, narrative Interviews, Soziale Medien-Analyse) und ein Forschungsdesign, das zeitgleich an verschiedenen Standorten umgesetzt wird. Das Projekt konzentriert sich auf die Ukraine, Polen, Marokko und Brasilien - vier Länder, die in den letzten Jahren sowohl von signifikanter Emigration als auch von Protesten geprägt waren. Wir folgen den Migrant*innen aus diesen Ländern nach Deutschland, Großbritannien und Spanien. MOBILISE verbindet in seiner Konzeption und empirischen Reichweite vier innovative Elemente: 1) Es verbindet die Phänomene Migration und Protest in einer Studie; 2) es erfasst alle für eine vergleichende Studie relevanten Gruppen (Protestierende, Migrant*innen, Migrant*innen, die protestieren, und Individuen, die sich weder für Migration noch für Protest entschieden haben); 3) es erfasst Individuen durch die Panel-Struktur der Umfragen über einen längeren Zeitraum hinweg; 4) es nutzt Soziale Medien als Zugang zu Echtzeit-Informationen über die Rolle von Netzwerken und politischen Transfers (political remittances). Durch diese vier Dimensionen verspricht das Projekt, erstmals in diesem Umfang empirische Daten zu erheben, einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Theoriebildung in der Migrations- und Protestforschung zu leisten sowie einen Transfer von empirischen Erkenntnisse an Policy-Makers zu ermöglichen, die von zentraler Bedeutung für politische und wirtschaftliche Stabilität sind.

Objectives: (1) To explore the role of place of living (locality) in school-to-work transitions to the domestic and foreign labour market by both young females and males; (2) To investigate the roles of parents and relatives in school-to-work transitions to both domestic and foreign labour market of young females and males; (3) To study the role of a peer group in school-to-work transitions to the domestic and the foreign labour market of young females and males; (4) To explore the role of new media and acquaintances connected to them in school-to-work transitions to both domestic and foreign labour market of young females and males; (5) To study how much youngsters use knowledge and skills obtained during education in the labour market and how they use experience acquired abroad after return to Poland. What we already know: The school-to-work (also abroad) transition is not a single event. It is a life phase which can last few years and can consist of various, also temporary jobs with. differentiated content. This is the time in the biographies of youngsters to make up their minds and make decisions for the future occupational paths. After EU enlargement in May 2004, one in three Polish youngsters from small towns and villages had their first jobs abroad. As main reasons they usually indicated financial motivations but in-depth studies uncovered that transiting from Polish education to the foreign labour market means also: firm leaving parental home, self-responsibility, ‘taking life in own hands’, ‘building up self-esteem’. Travels abroad are also for a life style connected to the way of living in multicultural metropolises. This is also a kind of an escape from the local constraining nexus: educationjob-marriage-kid-mortgage. Methodology: The core of the project is a peer group mapped and selected in localities in Poland with different social and economic backgrounds, such as: migration history, postcommunism transition, local labour market etc. Members of selected peer-groups will be monitored throughout the course of three years, in the interludes of 12 months (panel study). We will select 10 peer groups in three selected localities which at the end will give roughly of 320 in-depth interviews in total. The project will also take a social photography of places of living (localities) of youngsters. This social photography will be textured with observations of places where youngsters spend free time, talks with parents, local informants such as school teachers, people from local labour offices, people running clubs and other institutions where youngsters go and content analysis of new media such as: Facebook, blogs, professional portals etc. What the project can offer: Between the waves of talks with youngsters from the selected peer groups, the project will offer free of charge, voluntary coaching and job counselling in the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (University SWPS). The project will give also future opportunities to the youngsters to get involved in the Youth in Centre just established at University SWPS, for instance through participating in Youth Advisory Boards which will be set up to advice youth studies undertaken by the Centre. Originality: Researching the school-to- domestic and- foreign labour market transitions of youngsters through the eyes of members of peer groups who are both movers and stayers.

Male juvenile delinquency as represented by self-styled tcharmils has been the focus of a moral panic in Morocco over the last years. The tcharmil subculture has gained visibility through a social-media propagated aesthetic that turns the stigma of social disqualification into a source of pride by extolling assertive masculinity, violence, and the transgression of social and religious norms. By adopting consumerist values that overlap with those of more privileged classes, and by frequenting the latter’s urban spaces of leisure, the tcharmil blur social boundaries. The resulting anxieties among the privileged has resulted in public campaigns and police crackdown. MoroccoMasculinities examines the construction of the masculinities of disadvantaged young men in order to understand how gender, class, space and ethnicity intersect in juvenile moral and cultural formations in today’s Morocco. On the one hand, studying the tcharmil subculture reveals how juvenile subjectivities are reshaped by the combined effect of urbanisation, the new media, and state policies interlinked with global systems of regulation such as neo-liberal reforms, restrictions on migratory movements, and the intensification of the struggle against the hashish economy. On the other hand, the study of state reactions to the same subculture allows to highlight changing patterns of criminalisation: the unprecedented emphasis on male delinquency possibly reflects a strategy of discursive de-politicisation of the threats to an established order faced with the challenges of the Arab Spring and its aftermaths.

MIICT, is conceived with the goal of designing, developing and deploying tools that address the challenge of migrant integration through the co-creation of improved ICT-enabled services with migrants, public sector services and NGOs (Non-Governmental-Organisations). Previous research has established that issues of integration, dissemination, employment (and unemployment), incapacity support and education rank highly among migrants of varying demographics; including different age groups, genders, education levels and immigration status [1]. Factors such as autonomy, perception, culture and history, as well as institutional constraints shape the dynamics and experiences of migrants [2], and highlight the complexity of the migration process. This complexity is also said to indicate diversity in migration and integration process as a result of the almost infinite combinations of factors that may impact upon migrants' experiences; influenced by the relationships between the economic, social, political and cultural factors that exist across a given juncture [3].

'The REBUILD proposal address immigrant integration through the provision of a toolbox of ICT-based solutions that will improve both the management procedures of the local authorities and the life quality of the migrants. The design approach is user-centered and participated: both target groups (immigrants/refugees and local public services providers) will be part of the user requirement analysis and participants in three 2-days Co-Creation workshops organized in the 3 main piloting countries: Italy, Spain and Greece, chosen also for their being the 'access gates' to Europe for main immigration routes. Users and stakeholders engagement is a key success factor addressed both in the Consortium composition and in its capacity to engage relevant stakeholders external to the project. The key technology solutions proposed are: GDPR-compliant migrants’ integration related background information gathering with user consent and anonymization of personal information; AI-based profile analysis to enable both personalized support and policy making on migration-related issues; AI-based needs matching tool, to match migrant needs and skills with services provided by local authorities in EU countries and labor market needs at local and regional level; a digital companion for migrants enabling personalized two-way communication using chatbots to provide them smart support for easy access to local services (training, health, employment, welfare, etc.) and assessment of the level of integration and understanding of the new society, while providing to local authorities data-driven, easy to use decision supporting tools for enhancing capacities and effectiveness in service provision. Cross-culturality, ethical, accessibility dimensions will be addressed since the very beginning of the project, and validated and assessed in terms of consistency and impact during the project lifespan.'

The last few years have witnessed an explosive increase in the use of social networking sites. Today there are over 500 million on Facebook, and 100 million on QQ - the Chinese equivalent, as well as Orkut and Twitter. The primary purpose of this research project is to determine the nature of these sites and assess the challenge they represent to assumptions at the core of social science with regard to the decline in social relations, including the degree to which these sites have been appropriated to alleviate the negative impact of this decline. It will also focus on trends including the shift to older and less affluent users, and key consequences such as the impact on migrants and on separated families which rely on such communications. It will assess recent academic debates regarding the consequence of social networks for political action and activism, the nature of privacy and the public domain. But the research method is holistic and the seven proposed books will include a general re-thinking of core social science theory in the light of this phenomenon as well as monographs on more specific trends in usage and an overall assessment of social and welfare implications. Research has mainly been on the earlier users, mainly college students and focused on the US. But recent trends suggest future growth in older populations and in middle income regions such as Brazil and Turkey. The research consists of 15 months intensive ethnographic participation and observation, appropriate given the intimate nature of these communications. There will be seven ethnographies all based in small town sites. Some aimed at demographic breadth in China, India, Brazil and Turkey others at depth in Romania, Trinidad and the UK. The study will also include long term online participation in the social networking sites themselves with 150 informants from each country. The intensity of ethnographic depth will be matched by a commitment to comparative analysis and generalisation.