Shorts

Funded by the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, over the next three years until March 2027, a major new project called ‘Innovating to Enhance Dialogues Between Migration Policies and Practices’ (INNOVATE) will work to build bridges between migration research, policies and practices. The project team is comprised of 12 partner institutions and is coordinated by Andrew Geddes.

There are major challenges for work of this kind.

• Migration issues are highly debated, and scientific expertise is often questioned.
• Populist rhetoric further complicates matters, and research can be drowned out by other voices.
• In some policy areas, such as asylum and border security, evidence-based approaches are not always considered. This can lead to policies that ignore available evidence and persist with ineffective strategies.

The problem is not a lack of scientific evidence or information.

The EU and other organizations have invested heavily in enhancing the evidence base, but there are several gaps between research and policy-making. Bridging them is crucial to ensure research insights are integrated into policy formulation and implementation.

The INNOVATE project will address gaps between:

1. Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners: The INNOVATE project will bridge this gap by embedding its research in the needs and interests of these groups. The project will use dialogue-based and participatory methods to distill information and evidence in usable and accessible ways. Innovate will also seek pathways to empowerment that involve migrants as actors and agents of change.

2. Research evidence and practice: Sometimes, there is a lack of awareness of relevant evidence or the evidence is too complex. At times, evidence can be ambiguous or even contradictory. INNOVATE will develop methods and approaches that focus on the depth, scope, and effects of interaction and engagement between relevant stakeholders.

3. Policymakers and the general public and the possibility of politicisation and polarization: The INNOVATE project will provide insight into the communication of research evidence in an issue area that fits with what Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz’s describe as ‘post-normal’ science when there is uncertainty about facts, disputes about values, the stakes are high and the need for decisions is urgent.

4. Levels of decision-making: INNOVATE will bridge this gap by providing insights from research on all levels of governance and transmitting it between the local, national, and international levels while recalibrating to fit the competences and approach of that governance level.

5. Apparent areas of policy consensus and the situation on-the-ground: science can be just ‘one voice in a noisy room’ while the evidence base itself can be contested or ignored. The use of information, facts, and evidence are all shaped by frames, narratives, perceptions, values, beliefs, biases, and cognition. The project recognizes that some migration issues can be more shielded from wider public debate, while others are highly salient and contested political concerns at one or more levels of decision-making, which may affect receptiveness to research.

To bridge these gaps, we’ll launch the Migration Research to Policy Co-Lab, which will consist of a Knowledge Exchange, Engagement Hub, and a Training Facility.

This hub will be based on a strategic approach to engagement with the following elements:

• Engagement with a wide range of Strategic Stakeholders who bring a diversity of perspectives to ensure connection with relevant policy communities and debates and to multiply the project’s impact across relevant stakeholder communities.

• Engagement with research teams and stakeholders that have been involved in or are currently involved in funded projects, particularly but not only those funded by the EU.

• Engagement with behavioural sciences approaches to understand decision-making and the use of information and evidence of cognition, values, human rights and biases.

• Engagement with a range of key migration issues occurring across different ‘governance’ levels to develop, apply and test a toolkit of process innovations that are a key project outcome and will be embedded in accessible and usable outputs.

• Engagement through creative communication, including videos, fact sheets and podcasts, and always speaking in plain language.

While research is just one of many factors influencing policies and practices, the INNOVATE project is committed to bridging the gap between research and policy. By focusing on building capacity, increasing demand for evidence, incentivising engagement with the evidence base, and promoting the uptake of evidence, INNOVATE aims to make meaningful strides in addressing migration challenges and shaping effective policies and practices.

If you want to find out more or become involved in the INNOVATE project, sign up for our mailing list or email us at mr2p@eui.eu.