Strategic communication for migration policymakers: lessons from the State of the Science

Policymakers and social scientists alike increasingly recognise the need to understand what makes effective strategic communication on migration issues. For policymakers, such communication may have multiple goals, such as to inform, to publicise, to gather information, and so on. However, one major contemporary imperative for numerous international organisations, governments, NGOs, etc. is to use strategic communication to reduce the spread and belief in polarising, misinforming, and inflammatory narratives that have the potential to threaten legaland rights-based migratory governing orders and thus undermine the potential benefits and amplify the potential costs of migration, broadly defined. Strategic communication on migration to these ends is thus increasingly pursued by numerous organisations (OHCHR, 2020; UNHCR, 2020: 1; Dennison, 2020; Sharif, 2019; Bamberg, 2019; Ahad and Banulescu-Bogdan, 2018). As such, understanding what forms of strategic communication are effective is important for improving migration integration into host communities, reaping the potential economic benefits of migration, upholding the safety and rights of migrants as defined in domestic law and international treaties, reducing misleading misinformation, and contributing to the eponymous objectives of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). Understanding what communication works can also guide the design of future interventions, making it substantively important from a value-for-money perspective.