The new European Commission, which starts in November, has, for the first time, a specific portfolio on “migration”. During his hearing at the Parliament, Dimitris Avramopoulos, commissioner designate for migration and home affairs, made clear that the portfolio was crucial: there is, of course, the dangerous geopolitical situation at the EU’s external borders; terrorist threats; the economic crisis; and demographic ageing. The EU must respond, he insisted, through openness and security, not by building a fortress. The commissioner designate implicitly set out the research agenda: there is the need to implement the Common European Asylum System; there is the question of solidarity within, but also beyond Europe with countries that bear the burden of refugee crises; there is the need to respond to irregular migration through a framework for regular migration; it also makes sense to attract migrants to fill gaps in EU labour markets. The MPC hopes very much to participate in the policy reflection on migration and population movements in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. It is well placed to do so with its core programme on migration and population displacement generated by political change and conflicts in the Arab region, and the reactivation of its CARIM observatory for south Mediterranean migration. With its programme on innovation in a context of population and skills ageing, the MPC aims at understanding to what extent replacement, or complementary, migration can be part of an EU strategy to escape from economic crisis. Moreover, with ongoing projects tackling issues such as migrant integration in relation with the links kept by migrants with their origin countries, and member state practices for the detention of third-country nationals who are subject to return procedures, the MPC intends to study post-migration processes in the EU.

Professor Philippe Fargues, Director of the Migration Policy Centre

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The CONTENTION project held its Intermediate Meeting 3-4 October, at the European University Institute, Florence. The meeting assembled national experts, judges, members of the project’s Scientific Committee and the coordination team in order to discuss the preliminary results of the project and to plan for CONTENTION’s Final Conference. Over the two days, the CONTENTION research team presented the project’s database, which includes over 450 cases from the domestic Courts of the participating Member States. The database also includes an in-depth look at Article 15 of the Return Directive (2008/115) through consideration of applicable European and international jurisprudence. The CONTENTION team also presented a draft of its European Synthesis Report, which draws together the main findings of the project. For each of the particular findings of the draft report, the participants of the meeting discussed how CONTENTION could enhance the report and how that report might be advanced to a final draft stage.

A complete debrief from the Intermediate Meeting is available on the CONTENTION website.

The Final Steps

The CONTENTION team is currently inputting the feedback and ideas that were gathered during the Intermediate Meeting into the European Synthesis Report in preparation for the project’s Final Conference. The Final Conference will be held in Brussels, 11-12 December. The programme of the Conference will be available soon on the CONTENTION website.

Beyond CONTENTION

The Final Conference in December will not only mark the release of the CONTENTION project’s final results, it will also act as the launch of the REDIAL (REturn DIALogue) project. This new project will build on the work of CONTENTION and look beyond pre-removal detention, in order to consider broader issues of the return of third-country nationals from the EU.

Additional information about related events and the latest judicial decisions can be found here.
The CONTENTION project is co-funded by the European Union under the European Return Fund.
CONTENTION partners: the ODYSSEUS Network – ULB and the Centre for Judicial Cooperation.

The GLMM programme provides a daily news service, statistics, legal documents, analyses, and recommendations contributing to the improvement of understanding and management of Gulf labour markets and migration, engaging with and respecting the viewpoints of all stakeholders. By September, GLMM had collected, analysed and published more than 350 tables and more than 300 legal documents for Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In October 2014, the collection and analysis of statistics and legal documents for Oman started. So far, GLMM has published 13 papers, with more to come. The user-friendly GLMM website allows for the downloading, in pdf and Excel, of all information contained in the demographic-economic and in the legal databases, which can be retrieved through a variety of search options. The user statistics show that the website has a continuous and rapidly increasing number of visitors and downloads, especially from GCC countries and from a number of countries of origin, of those who migrated to the Gulf. 1 August 2014, GLMM received a new grant from the International Migration Initiative (IMI) of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), allowing the consolidation of its work. GLMM organized a workshop with 15 original research papers in the framework of the Gulf Research Meeting (Cambridge 25-28 August 2014) on “Determinants of Future Migration to the Gulf.” At present, GLMM is developing a number of regional comparative research projects, as well as training and data analysis activities. For full information about the project: http://gulfmigration.eu/.

Migration Seminar, Gulf Research Meeting 2014, Cambridge, 25-28 August 2014.

The GLMM programme is conducted together with the Gulf Research Centre (GRC) and financed by the Open Society Foundations (OSF).

Worldwide online survey on civil society organisations working with and for migrants

INTERACT survey on civil society organisations working with and for migrants was closed 31 September with over 900 completed questionnaires. Organisations operating in Belgium, France, Germany Italy and Spain contributed most responses to the survey. Associations assisting emigrants from Ecuador, Morocco, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine to the EU most often answered the questionnaire. INTERACT is looking at eight fields of integration, with most respondents dealing with issues related to labour market, education and language (the other dimensions are religion, social relations, political and civic participation, housing and access to nationality). Organisations that took part in the INTERACT survey assisted an extraordinary 1.1 million migrants – before they departed from their home countries and during their time of residence in the EU.

The final technical workshop of the MISMES project was held in Turin, at the premises of the European Training Foundation (ETF), 29-30 September. It brought together ETF’s migration specialists and country managers, the whole MISMES project team at the Migration Policy Centre and a panel of nine officers from the main labour migration institutions in the five countries for which country case studies have been developed (Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Morocco and Tunisia). For one and a half days, they discussed the main outputs of the joint ETF/MPC MISMES project: the country case studies, the Global MISMES inventory and a policy brief on MISMES in the framework of EU Mobility Partnerships with those countries. Once finalized, all these reports will be the object of a joint ETF/MPC publication.

Final Workshop of the MISMES Project, Turin, 29-30 September 2014.

Both in the Global Inventory and in the country case studies, the main categories of migrant support measures from an employment and skills perspective (MISMES) analyzed, from the point of view of efficiency and impact on labour market integration and skills utilization of migrant workers, were the following: international job matching and placement services; pre-departure information; orientation and training; professional skills development for migration; facilitating access to labour market information and protection in destination countries; temporary return of skilled migrants; promotion of the return of highly-skilled migrants; assessment, certification, validation and recognition of migrants’ skills and qualifications; return employment information platforms; targeted entrepreneurship and income generating schemes for returnees; assisted voluntary return and reintegration; Migration Resource Centers; pre-departure and pre-return information platforms and call centers; and Migrant Welfare Funds.

Two key recommendations from the project are: the need to systematically generate a standard template of information on budget implementation; and the need for beneficiaries of MISMES to make follow-up and impact assessments with a wide scope for optimizing the learning curve of MISMES across countries, and in particular across neighborhood countries, which have signed Mobility Partnerships with the EU.

The MISMES project is financed by the European Training Foundation (ETF).

The Migration Policy Centre has been selected, in the framework of a consortium led by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to provide External Thematic Expertise on Migration to the European Commission (DG DEVCO). During the next two years, the ETEM V Project will organize and facilitate five regional training sessions on migration and development for EU delegations throughout the world, three one-day trainings for European Commission staff in Brussels, two comprehensive trainings for EU delegations tailored to their needs and specific requests and four Thematic Expert Roundtables. It will also produce a series of pedagogical materials and internal European Commission Concept Notes and Orientation Notes on different migration and development topics.

4-5 September, 2014, the Demo India project “Developing Evidence-based Management and Operations in India-EU Migration and Partnership” held its first partners´ meeting. During these two days, the EUI discussed with its Delhi-based partner, the Indian Centre for Migration (ICM), the academic tasks and goals for the upcoming year. The ICM was represented by its Director Mr. Manoj Kumar and its project manager, Mr. Basant Potnuru. In addition to discussing the Demo India project, the ICM delegation was also able to meet the entire MPC team and learn about all our projects. As the ICM will be launching their very first migration database this year, they were keen to learn from the MPC’s experience.

First Partners’ meeting of the Demo-India project (from left to right: Kathryn Lum, Research Fellow at the MPC; Manoj Kumar, Director of the Indian Centre for Migration; Philippe Fargues, Director of MPC; Basant Potnuru, Head of Projects at the Indian Centre for Migration).

The Demo India project has developed synergies with the GLMM project. Fellows based at the GLMM will be involved in writing papers on the Indian presence in the Middle East. Drawing on the GLMM´s Gulf in the Media programme, the first paper in collaboration with GLMM will offer an analysis of all the India-related content of the Middle East media observatory.

The first meeting of the high level steering committee, which will discuss India-EU cooperation, is provisionally planned for this December in Delhi.

The CARIM-India project is co-financed by the European Union.

New look of the MPC website

The Migration Policy Centre’s website has adopted a new look: now more colourful and user-friendly, it aims at giving more visibility to MPC research and projects. It also includes a new search tool for publications to facilitate your search.

The MPC invites you to discover its new portal here.

2014 International Metropolis Conference, Milan, 3-7 November 2014

The Migration Policy Centre will present its work on the occasion of the 2014 International Metropolis conference, to be held in Milan, 3-7 November 2014. MPC will participate in Plenary Session 1 on “Forced migration, tension, and conflict in the Mediterranean” and organize two panels relevant to its research activities: “Invented European Neighbourhood(s)”, drawing on the work of CARIM Migration Observatories, and “Integration of Migrants as a Three-way Process”, presenting results of the INTERACT project.

The MPC is co-financed by the European Union.