With the goal of enhancing the governance capacity and policy coherence of the EU, its member states and neighbors, RESPOND is a comprehensive study of migration governance in the wake of the 2015 Refugee Crisis. Bringing together 14 partners from 7 disciplines, the project probes policy-making processes and policy (in)coherence through comparative research in source, transit and destination countries. RESPOND analyzes migration governance across macro (transnational, national), meso (sub-national/local) and micro-levels (refugees/migrants) by applying an innovative research methodology utilizing legal and policy analysis, comparative historical analysis, political claims analysis, socio-economic and cultural analysis, longitudinal survey analysis, interview based analysis, and photovoice techniques. It focuses in-depth on: (1) Border management and security, (2) International refugee protection, (3) Reception policies, (4) Integration policies, and (5) Conflicting Europeanization and externalization. We use these themes to examine multi-level governance while tackling the troubling question of the role of forced migration in precipitating increasing disorder in Europe. In contrast to much research undertaken on governance processes at a single level of analysis, RESPOND’s multilevel, multi-method approach shows the co-constitutive relationship between policy and practice among actors at all three levels; it highlights the understudied role of meso-level officials; and it shines a light on the activities of non-governmental actors in the face of policy vacuums. Ultimately, RESPOND will show which migration governance policies really work and how migrants and officials are making-do in the too-frequent absence of coherent policies. Adhering to a refugee-centered approach throughout, RESPOND will bring insights to citizenship, gender and integration studies, ensure direct benefit to refugee communities and provide a basis for more effective policy development.

OppAttune tracks the evolution of oppositional extreme ideologies and protectionist decision-making, develops an innovative attunement model and tests a series of interventions at the national and transnational levels which limit the spread of extremism. OppAttune revitalises trust in key democratic institutions. Its actions involve an on-line I-Attune self-test interactive to build democratic capacity across diverse publics. OppAttune will create an OppAttune Summer Academy for students and researchers (2025) and an OppAttune Winter Academy for practitioners and policymakers (2026). OppAttune provides micro, meso and macro level evidence-based recommendations and strategies designed to counter the potential of extreme narratives to disrupt democratic growth. It delivers this via a multi-disciplinary consortium of 17 countries across the EU and its periphery. Democracies and the European project are under threat by extremism and lack of political and social dialogue. Existential insecurities arising out of economic and refugee-related crises have been exacerbated by Covid-19 to create re-bordering e.g., xenophobic-nationalism and re-shoring e.g., the localisation of production. Oppositional worldviews, narratives and dissensus within public debate are all vital to a functioning democracy. However destructive polarisation of oppositional us/them logic is at the core of the rise of extremist narratives. Disruptive actors polarise oppositional logic using disinformation, emotions, hot cognitions, conspiracy theories and mistrust to create new forms of direct action. This direct action is understood to many as direct democracy. This direct action cultivates unlikely coalitions creating attractive alternative on-line/off-line worlds which spread extreme narratives into the mainstream via deep rooted sociological and historical pathways. OppAttune will track, attune and limit extreme narratives to foreground EU transnational freedoms and multilateralism.

GAPs is a comprehensive study on the drivers of return policies and barriers/enablers in international cooperation on returns. The project examines the disconnects between expectations of return policies and their actual outcomes by de-centering the dominant, one-sided understanding of “return policymaking.” GAPs will: a) scrutinize the shortcomings of the EU’s governance of returns with both its internal and external dimensions; b) analyse enablers and barriers of international cooperation c) shed light on the perspectives of migrants themselves to understand their knowledge of return policies, aspirations and experiences. By taking a close look at governance, cooperation and actor’s agency, the project is able to suggest new avenues for international cooperation, develop recommendations for stakeholders and explore alternative pathways to returning migrants. The project combines its decentering approach with three innovative concepts: a focus on return migration infrastructures that enable GAPs to analyze governance fissures; an analysis of return migration diplomacy to understand how relations among EU MSs and with third countries hinder cooperation on returns; and a trajectory approach that uses a socio-spatial and temporal lens to understand migrant agency. The project achieves its aims via multi-disciplinary, qualitative and quantitative comparative research in 11 countries in Europe, Africa and the broader Middle East (including Afghanistan). The project involves wide-ranging and innovative impacts, including the creation of interactive data repository on returns, a return cooperation index, return governance indicators, policy briefs and workshops, the formation of stakeholder expert panels, a digital storytelling and video series, the launching of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) as well as open access policy and scholarly publications.

D.Rad grounds radicalisation in perceptions of injustice which lead to grievance, alienation and polarisation. Based on a rigorous, cross-national survey of the drivers (injustice, grievance, alienation, polarisation) that can generate violent extremism, it uses innovative machine learning, discourse analysis and social psychology approaches to test projects, tools and dissemination strategies, emphasising the experiences of young people and socially excluded communities, and offering policy and practical recommendations. It will meet challenges posed for radicalisation research by developing online and offline interventions to promote agency, resolution and resilience. D.Rad will benefit from an exceptional breadth of backgrounds. The project spans national contexts including the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Finland, Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Georgia, Austria, and several minority nationalisms. It bridges academic disciplines ranging from political science and cultural studies to social psychology and artificial intelligence. This will involve three core objectives, supplemented by secondary aims: 1. Detect Trends: D.Rad aims to identify the actors, networks, and wider social contexts driving radicalisation, especially in the emerging context of everyday polarisation over mundane issue in micro-spatial environments, in order to base interventions in evidence grounded in contemporary data and methodologies. 2. Resolve Drivers: D.Rad aims to understand the online and offline drivers that turn grievance, alienation and polarisation into radicalisation, so that policies can more effectively target underlying problems of social exclusion. 3. Re-integration and Inclusion: D.Rad aims to understand how individuals affected by grievance, alienation and polarisation can be re-integrated into the established polity or social groups, without compromising personal or collective liberties.