International and intergovernmental organisations in travel & migration

According to UN assessments, there are 214 million international migrants worldwide and another 740 million internal migrants . The OECD highlights that there seems little likelihood of substantial reductions in numbers of international migrants in the current decade . Rises in global population, new demographic trends including ageing population, environmental deterioration and an increased globalisation of the economy are some of the factors which will encourage emigration flows in coming years. International migration, firmly at the top of the EU’s political agenda, must be analysed from the integration perspective as the key factor for the future cohesion of European societies. The INTEGRIM programme is developed by a sound and well established network of 8 full partner academic institutions and 6 non-academic associated partners from the private and public sector, civil society and international organisations with outstanding research and training credentials on migration and integration issues. The aim of this programme is to structure the existing high-quality research capacity on migration and integration policies and processes in Europe through 480 person-months of Early-Stage Researchers. INTEGRIM will consider processes and policies concerning integration of foreign nationals within EU countries, including third-country nationals and European nationals migrating to other European states when they face substantial integration difficulties. The existing fruitful collaboration among the Network’s partners through existing research networks such as the EC acknowledged network of excellence IMISCOE has evidenced the capacity and added value to pool the talent to the benefit of a common critical mass and enhancement of the academic knowledge. INTEGRIM aims to enhance academic research capacity, encourage policy-relevant research on integration and diversity management and facilitate the use of that research by governments and non-governmental organisations.

According to UN assessments, there are 214 million international migrants worldwide and another 740 million internal migrants . The OECD highlights that there seems little likelihood of substantial reductions in numbers of international migrants in the current decade . Rises in global population, new demographic trends including ageing population, environmental deterioration and an increased globalisation of the economy are some of the factors which will encourage emigration flows in coming years. International migration, firmly at the top of the EU’s political agenda, must be analysed from the integration perspective as the key factor for the future cohesion of European societies. The INTEGRIM programme is developed by a sound and well established network of 8 full partner academic institutions and 6 non-academic associated partners from the private and public sector, civil society and international organisations with outstanding research and training credentials on migration and integration issues. The aim of this programme is to structure the existing high-quality research capacity on migration and integration policies and processes in Europe through 480 person-months of Early-Stage Researchers. INTEGRIM will consider processes and policies concerning integration of foreign nationals within EU countries, including third-country nationals and European nationals migrating to other European states when they face substantial integration difficulties. The existing fruitful collaboration among the Network’s partners through existing research networks such as the EC acknowledged network of excellence IMISCOE has evidenced the capacity and added value to pool the talent to the benefit of a common critical mass and enhancement of the academic knowledge. INTEGRIM aims to enhance academic research capacity, encourage policy-relevant research on integration and diversity management and facilitate the use of that research by governments and non-governmental organisations.

The overall objective of EUROMED Migration IV (2016-2019), a programme financed by the European Union and implemented by ICMPD, is to support EU Member States and ENI Southern Partner Countries in establishing a comprehensive, constructive and operational dialogue and co-operation framework, with a particular focus on reinforcing instruments and capacities to develop and implement evidence-based and coherent migration and international protection policies and activities. In order to achieve this objective, EMM4 builds upon the results of the first three phases of the programme (2004-2015) and tailors its activities around two pillars: the first pillar facilitates an effective North-South and South-South regional co-operation dialogue in the area of migration and international protection-related issues (legal migration, irregular migration, migration and development and international protection). The second pillar focuses on capacity-building, applying a new outcome-oriented approach which includes sub-regional activities, tailor-made national training programmes and a targeted technical assistance package for small-scale concrete actions. Both pillars are supported by a horizontal and cross-cutting component, with a particular focus on communication through the dissemination of reliable information in order to contribute to a more balanced narrative on migration. The EMM4 is inclusive in its approach and actively engages with a broad variety of stakeholders including government authorities, international organisations and civil society representatives, academia, and the media in the implementation of its activities.

Providing international protection to people fleeing persecution, torture and other inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment is recognised both in the US and EU as an important international obligation. Both the US and the EU have ratified international instruments which require states to provide international protection for an ever wider group of persons. At the same time, non-governmental organisations, academics and even international organisations have decried the reluctance of both the US and EU Member States to afford protection to specific individuals. This policy paper will provide some proposals how to bridge the divide between the US and EU commitments to provide protection and an apparent reluctance actually to accord that protection to individuals.

The MIGGOV seeks to break new ground in the analysis of international organizations (IOs) as key objects of study in the broader research field of international migration governance and of international governance more generally. The key questions are: to what extent, how and why do IOs impact upon and shape international migration governance in the absence of a global migration regime. In order to address these questions the project shifts the focus from international governance as a (changing) structure to international governors as sources of agency and to the outcomes that flow from interactions between various agents. As most international migration governance takes place under conditions of uncertainty about future migration scenarios, this project will specifically explore the issues of the production and the use of expert knowledge by IOs striving to impact upon international migration governance. The project will study the involvement of eight IOs in migration governance in Central Asia, which has been selected for analysis because it has so far escaped the attention of scholars despite evidence of multi-layered migration governance in the region. The project will specifically look at four Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan that share many similar features, but also exhibit some distinct political and socio-economic differences that make them highly relevant objects of study. The focus on Central Asia is also justified by the strategic importance that many international actors, including the EU, ascribe to the region. In addition to the Central Asian regional case study and intra-regional comparisons, the MIGGOV will produce overarching comparisons with the EU’s ‘Eastern Neighbourhood’. The project addresses topics on which the EU has called for further research in its 2013 Work Programme, namely those within activities 8.3 ‘Major trends in society and their implications’ and 8.4 ‘Europe in the World’.

The core intellectual aim of BIOSEC is to explore whether concerns about biodiversity protection and global security are becoming integrated, and if so, in what ways. It will do so via building new theoretical approaches for political ecology. Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of UNEP recently stated ‘the scale and role of wildlife and forest crime in threat finance calls for much wider policy attention’. The argument that wildlife trafficking constitutes a significant source of ‘threat finance’ takes two forms: first as a lucrative business for organised crime networks in Europe and Asia, and second as a source of finance for militias and terrorist networks, most notably Al Shabaab, Lord’s Resistance Army and Janjaweed. BIOSEC is a four year project designed to lead debates on these emerging challenges. It will build pioneering theoretical approaches and generate new empirical data. BIOSEC takes a fully integrated approach: it will produce a better conceptual understanding of the role of illegal wildlife trade in generating threat finance; it will examine the links between source and end user countries for wildlife products; and it will investigate and analyse the emerging responses of NGOs, government agencies and international organisations to these challenges. BIOSEC goes beyond the ‘state-of-the art’ because biodiversity protection and global security currently inhabit distinctive intellectual ‘silos’; however, they need to be analysed via an interdisciplinary research agenda that cuts across human geography, politics and international relations, criminology and conservation biology. This research is timely because in the last two years, the idea that the illegal wildlife trade constitutes a major security threat has become more prevalent in academic and policy circles, yet it is an area that is under researched and poorly understood. These recent shifts demand urgent conceptual and empirical interrogation.

La mobilité globale fait aujourd’hui partie de la texture sociale de la mondialisation et des relations internationales. Elle est à la fois une cause et une conséquence de la mondialisation et les réponses des institutions politiques nationales et internationales sont un enjeu clef de l’analyse de la gouvernance et des transformations sociales à l’échelle globale. Elle est un des points de tension de la modernité politique à l’échelle nationale et internationale. En s’intéressant tout à la fois aux organisations internationales, aux politiques migratoires nationales et régionales des Etats, aux modes d’organisation des espaces de vie des migrants et des réfugiés et aux dynamiques sociales transnationales de structuration de la mobilité, on observe le phénomène migratoire sous plusieurs angles et à différentes échelles. Les chercheurs impliqués dans ce projet ont choisi de privilégier une démarche empirique associée à un effort de systématisation qui emprunte à la science politique, à la sociologie, à l’anthropologie et à l’économie politique. Ils ont aussi choisi de lier leurs objets de recherche fondamentale à des enjeux politiques et sociaux immédiatement contemporains et à s’ancrer dans une réflexion scientifique sur l’action publique nationale et internationale, ses normes et ses principes vis-à-vis de la mobilité. Ce projet a pour vocation de donner une description précise de la mobilité et de ses dynamiques politiques et sociales, notamment en s’intéressant à l’observation empirique des pratiques des acteurs de la gouvernance de la mobilité (Etats, organisations internationales, migrants, réfugiés, réseaux). Il a pour objet d’élucider les représentations à l’œuvre dans ces pratiques, les dispositifs normatifs, idéologiques et identitaires qui les structurent. Le premier axe de ce travail concerne les pratiques et les représentations de la gestion de la mobilité en politique internationale. Il a pour enjeu la mise en questionnement de la notion de gouvernance globale de la mobilité, incluant migrations économiques et flux de refugiés. Les organisations internationales, leur interaction avec les acteurs non gouvernementaux de la politique des migrations internationales et des flux de réfugiés sont au cœur d’un dispositif politique qui est à la fois fait de discours et de pratiques. Le deuxième axe de ce projet observe les enjeux politiques de la gouvernance régionale des migrations dans deux espaces différenciés mais fortement marqué par leur contexte régional, l’Europe et le Moyen Orient. Il s’agit de déterminer la place de l’Etat dans la gouvernance de la mobilité à l’échelle régionale notamment dans le cas européen entre la fin du vingtième et le début du vingt-et-unième siècle. La « gouvernance » oscille entre intégration et « retour de l’Etat » dans la gestion des migrations internationales notamment avec la crise économique et financière, et on étudie les manifestations de cette « réaction souverainiste » sur la mobilité des personnes. Le troisième axe de ce projet s’attache à l’étude ethnographique des lieux de vie des réfugiés, les camps en ‘intéressant aux transformations sociales à l’œuvre dans ce espaces sociaux transnationaux institutionnalisés. Il s’intéresse notamment aux modes de gouvernance mise en œuvre par les acteurs humanitaires dans des contextes de conflits ou de crise et à l’autonomie (agency) des populations concernées et analyse celle-ci à travers la structuration et la matérialité des espaces de relégation et/ou confinement des réfugiés à l’échelle globale. Le quatrième axe de ce projet présente un dispositif prospectif qui vise à décrire les dispositifs contemporains les plus visibles de limitation de la mobilité –les murs et explorer des scenarii politiques d’ouverture des frontières et de libéralisation de la mobilité. Il constitue un complément et un prolongement théorique de l’ensemble des connaissances et analyses déployées dans le cadre de ce projet.

'The SOCIALCATH research project deals with the intercultural connection between Socialism and Catholicism in two cases in which this meeting was very evident: the French 'Parti Socialiste Unifié' (PSU) and the Italian 'Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria' (PSIUP). PSU and PSIUP put together Socialists and Catholics who did not accept the main strategy of their respective political families. PSU and PSIUP wanted represent a radically democratic form of modernity, giving great attention to social ferments and to defend all discriminated or under-represented categories: workers, women and young people. PSU and PSIUP were libertarian and they refused the hierarchical structures of a mass party, adopting a fluid organisation totally open to different cultural models. The political relationship between PSU and PSIUP, their ideological exchanges and the contacts between their members have never been explored within a scientific context. The SOCIALCATH project aims to fill this scientific gap, bringing to light many unedited documents. The interdisciplinary approach, the multi-methodological analysis and the comparative nature of the SOCIALCATH project are all new instruments to be used in these arguments. The SOCIALCATH project aims to reach three main objectives: 1. to describe the meeting between opposite cultural areas such as Socialism and Catholicism, in order to support the policies for intercultural dialogue promoted by the EU and other international organisations such as UNESCO. 2. to highlight alternative aspects of Socialist and Catholic cultures, in order to discover the anti-dogmatic spirit of the 60s and its today's inheritance in the collective European conscience. 3. to explore the relationship between the PSU and PSIUP's political class and the new social issues of the 60s (feminism, 'the young' issue, etc.), in order to compare those events with the present attitude of the European leading class towards society and collective issues.'

(En) Understanding the legal framework in force in the SEM countries is of paramount importance in order to grasp the functioning of the labour market and the influence that it can have on migration. The analysis presented here focuses on 11 countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey) and deals with those aspects of the legal regulation in force which can be considered responsible for shaping the employment relationship in term of rigidity or flexibility. The Report is divided in a series of country-studies where the various legal components of the labour market are presented and critically analysed following the same structure for each one in order to enhance comparability: rules concerning hiring, flexible contracts, working time, dismissals, and work inspections. The results, which draw mainly upon international organisations’ sources and upon the analysis of legal texts and laws in these countries, are preliminary. In the concluding remarks, it is explained that if the most valuable research output of this report is to provide cross-comparative analysis to a vast legal material critically organised, the main limitation resides in the fact that it is mainly cantered on the black-letters of the rules and therefore further research must be done on the multifaceted aspects that contribute to shaping a labour market, namely the social dialogue, the case-law and the actual functioning of labour market institutions such as labour inspections, employment agencies, social security, in order to mange to paint the full picture of the SEM countries’ labour market. A preliminary critical assessment of the labour markets is however provided, combining the data on the legal framework in force with the analysis of the independent international reports prepared by various international institutions and NGOs on labour rights’ violations. (Fr)Il est de toute première importance de bien comprendre le cadre légal en vigueur dans les pays du Sud et de l’Est de la Méditerranée (SEM) afin d’y saisir le fonctionnement du marché du travail et son influence potentielle sur les flux migratoires. L’étude porte sur 11 de ces pays soit l’Algérie, l’Egypte, Israël, la Jordanie, le Liban, la Libye, la Mauritanie, le Maroc, la Syrie, la Tunisie et enfin la Turquie. C’est principalement, les éléments juridiques qui affectent les relations de travail en termes de rigidité et de flexibilité qui sont analysés. Ce rapport s’appuie sur une série de cas d’étude nationaux. Les aspects juridiques du marché du travail y sont décrits et analysés dans une perspective critique. Chacun des systèmes légaux nationaux a été soumis à la même grille d’analyse afin d’assurer la comparabilité des données. Sont donc envisagées de manière systématiques: les dispositions relatives à l’engagement, à la flexibilité des contrats, au temps de travail, aux préavis et aux inspections du travail. Les conclusions formulées, sont à ce stade tout à fait préliminaires. L’un des intérêts manifestes de cette recherche est de rendre accessible en Anglais, de manière systématique et critique, un large éventail de dispositions juridiques. La principale limite de cette étude est certainement son aspect formel puisque les modalités de mise en œuvre de ces dispositions et la pratique des relations de travail échappent, en grande partie à la perception son auteur. De plus amples recherches devraient être menées sur les divers facteurs qui contribuent à déterminer les dynamiques du marché du travail dans les SEM, soit le dialogue social, la jurisprudence et le fonctionnement réel des institutions de régulation du marché du travail telles que l’Inspection du Travail, les Agences pour l’Emploi et la Sécurité Sociale. Ce rapport suggère néanmoins une première évaluation critique résultant de la combinaison des données juridiques recueillies et de l’analyse des rapports internationaux élaborés par diverses institutions internationales et des ONG actives dans le domaine de la violation des droits du travail.

Investigative report on the relationship between border practices, spatial changes in migrant trajectories, and the increased danger of crossing Niger's Sahara desert following the implementation of Law 2015-36. Given the methodological challenges posed by the existing literature on desert deaths and disappearances, the report developed innovative geospatial analysis and remote sensing methods.

The HEUNI report "Unseen Victims" presents the manifestations and consequences of gender-based violence and the challenges in assisting victims of violence in the migration context. With this report the authors aimed to increase the understanding of policymakers on the structural challenges asylum-seeking and refugee women who have experienced gender-based violence face.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) have been part of the “Balkan route” for smuggling people, arms and drugs for decades, but also a migrant route for people who have been trying to reach Western Europe and the countries of the EU in order to save their lives and secure a future for themselves. While in 2015, when millions of people arrived in Europe over a short period of time, BiH was bypassed by mass movements, the situation started changing after the closure of the EU borders in 2016, and later on, in 2017, with the increase of violence and push backs in Croatia, and other countries at the EU borders. This report offers insight into the situation on the field: is there a system responsible for protection, security, and upholding fundamental human rights? What has the state response been like? What is the role of the international community?

The purpose of this handbook is to describe a counselling method for assisting refugee women who have been victims of gender-based violence (GBV). The handbook was developed during 2017-2019 in a project titled “Co-creating a counselling method for refugee women GBV victims (CCM-GBV)” funded by the European Commission through the Rights, Equality and Citizenship (REC) Programme.

The research's overarching objective was to explore the level of mental health issues and the situation surrounding the provision of mental health care utilization as a result of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. This includes both Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Ukraine and people who were not affected by war (the general population) in government controlled areas. A mixed methodology was used, consisting of national surveys with IDPs (n=1000) and the general population the (n=1000) with a representative sample reflecting age, gender, and a territory. Also, interviews with professionals in mental health support and representatives of charities and international organisations were conducted (n=21).

Over the past 150 years, non-territorial autonomy has been one of three models for dealing with linguistic or ethnic minorities within several European states. Compared with the other two, i.e. the recognition of minority rights as individual rights and territorial self-rule, non-territorial autonomy has received little attention. This project proposes to write the first history of non-territorial autonomy as an applied policy tool in minority protection and as an intellectual concept with a chequered history across Europe. Intellectuals, politicians, and legal scholars across the political spectrum from the far left to the far right supported this idea, although they were aware of the risks of strengthening national differences by promoting such a collective approach to minority protection. The project explores how this idea of granting cultural rights to a national group as a corporate body within a state, as a means of integrating diverse nationalities, travelled and transformed throughout the Habsburg Empire from 1850 to the present. We propose to 1) trace the development/circulation of theoretical conceptions and political applications of non-territorial autonomy within the Habsburg Empire, by mapping the networks of scholars as well as politicians who advocated for it; 2) explain the continuities in the development of the idea, and its manifestations in policies adopted by interwar Central and Eastern European nation states, where communists, socialists, liberals and fascists alike were able to translate elements of non-territorial autonomy into their ideologies and programs; 3) analyse the treatment of non-territorial autonomy, which was advocated by minority lobby groups, in international minority protection in the 20th century despite strong opposition to practices based on it by international organisations. We rely on a mixture of historiographical methods developed in nationalism studies to analyse the idea’s translation in entangled transnational spaces.

"(1) Aspirations: In the absence of reliable, internationally available migration flow data necessary for statistical forecasting, policymakers increasingly turn to survey data on emigration intentions to evaluate future migration trends. The important assumption – i.e. that there is a measurable and systematic relationship between the intention to migrate and actual migration – has not been firmly established at the international level. In a first step, we examine the association between estimated population averages of emigration intentions and official migration flow data based on data for more than 160 countries. First results show a strong association between emigration intentions and recorded bilateral flows to industrialized countries, as well as between intentions and aggregated out-migration. The results provide policymakers with a reliability assessment of survey data on emigration intentions and encourage future attempts to incorporate survey data in formal statistical migration forecasting models. (2) Policies: Furthermore, we want to explore to what extent migrants consciously decide to migrate to countries that allow them to improve their economic situation taking into account the difficulties to migrate to this country. In particular, we would like to know how the difficulty to immigrate into a country prevents potential migrants from moving to this country. Might it be that migrants decide to move to more liberal countries to increase the chances to be accepted? We already know that migration flows increase when the destination country is economically more attractive (Borjas 1989; Hatton and Williamson 2003) and decrease when immigration policies are more restrictive (Helbling and Leblang 2018). These effects are to some extent due to rejections during the migration processes when for example visa applications are declined or people are not allowed to enter a country when they arrive at the border. (3) Corruption: Eventually, besides immigration policies in potential destination countries, the formation and subsequent materialization of migration aspirations is determined by various factors in the country of residence. However, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence on factors outside the pure economic sphere. For instance, the link between corruption and emigration has received growing attention. Until now, the evidence claiming a strong relationship relies on individual case studies and correlational analysis which severely limits generalizability. In our study, we apply quasi-experimental methods including instrumental variables and propensity score matching to global survey data on 130 countries over 6 years, covering almost 600’000 individual respondents. We find support for the notion that corruption – systematically and strongly - induces emigration plans across countries, across various model specifications and estimation methods. Strengthening causal claims about the link between corruption and emigration is important for further research in this field. Results are also relevant for policy-makers exploring options to address irregular migration in the context of development and trade agreements. "

"The ExiTT project (in its preparatory phase from January 2018 to December 2019) prepares a large-scale research project that processually traces, documents and analyses processes of migration from origin countries, from the starting point, over the route, until integration in the destination countries and their societies from social, economic, political and cultural aspects. At the same time, it will analyse the political, economic, societal, discursive and legal transformation of the sending, transit and receiving/destination countries as well as political, economic, societal, discursive and legal repercussions by, for example, transnational relationships, re-migration, circular migration or post-migration mobility. To grasp such complex processes, it employs a research approach that is interdisciplinary, multi-local and multi-method. The multidisciplinary research approach is intended to apply research perspectives from sociology, political sciences, psychology, geography, history, cultural sciences and economics in order to design questionnaires, to conceive the regional case studies and to carry out the data analyses. The main task of the project will be the collection and analysis of new data in multiple locations such as origin, transit, and receiving countries that will provide a unique basis to deliver evidence for the above sketched topics. The basic idea and method will follow a combination of the ethnosurvey model (Massey & Zenteno 2000) and regional case studies. On the basis of multiple methodological approaches such as surveys, fieldwork, discourse, media and policy analyses in origin, transit and immigration countries, the ExiTT project is intended to answer questions about the causes and motives of migration decisions, about the negotiations and conditions for successful integration and participation in transit and immigration countries, and about various aspects of social, political, economic and cultural transformations in all countries involved. The results of the data generated though this mixed methods approach is intended to be collated into one comprehensive data set that – based on the model of the Mexican Migration Project – will continue to grow cumulatively over time. In addition to surveys and (qualitative) interviews with individuals (migrants as well as non-migrants) expert interviews with representatives from state and private organisations as well as observations in the field will be conducted and innovative methods like experiments will be deployed. From the data set, there will derive a potential for research into the causes, conditions and negotiations of migration and migration routes as well as the changes in the so-called transit or host/receiving countries and their societies. At the same time, an interdependent approach will be chosen that includes in the analysis the effects of migration in the exit or origin countries. Insights into migration and integration processes from various actors and in multiple sub-systems can be expected on the basis of this data set. Labour market-specific and education-related aspects, cultural and social practices of integration, and obstacles and negative effects of disintegration could be evaluated according to target groups and, e.g., analysed in families and house-holds from the gender perspective or with regard to youths. In parallel, transformations in political structures, cultures or societies can be documented and the analysis of changes empirically grounded. The ExiTT project is a cooperation project of the DeZIM research community."