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.

Link4Skills is a global research and innovation project on skill shortages. The acronym reflects the objectives of the call by linking for/4 fair skill matching. It embeds 4 processes of responding to skill shortages: re/up skilling of established populations (incl. migrants and inactive women), raising wages, automation and migration. It considers 4 continents: Europe, Africa, Asia and America, where skill shortages and skill flows will be analysed. It develops the AI-Assisted Skill Navigator for stakeholders from employment, vocational training organisations in origins and destinations. Link4Skills will scrutinize: (a) how to identify the existing and emerging required skills in changing labour markets?; (b) how the EU should respond to skill shortages?; (c) how to recruit the required skills from various pools either from the existing workforce (including established migrant populations and inactive women) also supported by automation, and from the workforce from non-EU countries? The project combines data on skill gaps and matching in the EU with analyses about human capital in origins; investigates emerging and established migration skill corridors between EU and India, Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria, Philippines, Indonesia, and Ukraine, in order to make enriched inventories of skill partnerships. The project achieves its aims via econometric microsimulations based on EU databases, combining skill supply and demand, and by data collections and stakeholders’ expertise oversees. The knowledge will be nested in the AI-Assisted Skill Navigator (TRL5) which is a Knowledge-Based Expert System, that goes beyond existing policy dashboards. It is an open access system available to public. It is co-created by labour market stakeholders in every partner country. Partners will take care about stakeholders’ involvements in the project, by enhancing tailor-made communication and dissemination. The project will also produce Link4Skill Podcast Series and academic outlets.

The Youth for Space Challenge - ODYSSEUS II project aims to inspire young people from all over Europe and to engage them in space exploration, through a series of educational activities, which will combine scientific learning with hands-on experiences. Through the organization of a fun oriented educational contest, which will be organized in multi rounds and which will target all pupils and students in Europe, wherever they are living and irrespective of their cultural background and the language they speak, the project will foster the development of qualified scientists, engineers and technicians in areas relevant to the priorities of the EU space policy. Besides the objective of providing the Space challenge to young people, the Odysseus II project will also strive to foster international collaboration and to attract attention to the field of science education related to space exploration. In this respect, the objective of the project is to involve national educational authorities and to engage with space industries and many science centres and space agencies across Europe on the exchange of experiences and knowledge on learning programmes about space exploration. Participation in the Odysseus II contest will be used as a good benchmark and indicator of how well space science and technology is accepted and integrated into the curriculum of different educational systems across the EU. Since educational competitions in general enjoy broader acceptance, the Odysseus II contest will also provide the opportunity to space industry and national educational authorities to show their support to educational activities related to space.

As Europe is growing unchurched, trends of religious radicalisation seem to increase both within the continent and across the world. Claims are made that migrant integration has overall failed because marginalised and radicalised second generation youth turns to jihadist terrorism networks. This research project takes stock of these contradictory trends of increasing secularism and intensifying radicalisation while turning to countries and regions outside Europe to study the challenges of religious diversity and radicalisation that they face and investigate how they deal with them. The project develops its empirical and analytical research along two lines: It looks at regimes for governing religious diversity in Europe (covering western, southern and southeastern Europe), North Africa, the Middle East, south Asia and Oceania. It compares the norms, laws and practices and seeks to assess their relative success in integrating migrants as well as in countering radicalisation trends. By studying countries outside Europe we seek also to analyse the mutual influences and transfers of norms and practices for governing religious diversity between Europe and other continents as well as the legacy of colonialism in this domain. The second line of work concentrates on religious radicalisation focussing on radicalised movements in different countries and their trajectories. Both lines of work relate our discussion of secularisation and radicalisation to wider societal transformation processes of the 21st century (including increased connectivity and inter-dependence, faster transport and communication, widening inequalities, and the concomitant re-emergence of nationalism). The project will deliver innovative academic thinking on secularisation and radicalisation trends today as well as key messages to policy makers with regard to the governance of religious diversity and the struggle against violent radicalisation movements.