TRAFIG introduces a novel perspective on protracted displacement situations (PDS) that will improve the protection and resilience of refugees and enhance trust and cooperation between refugees and host communities. It considers the transnational and local connectivity of displaced people and host communities as well as their capability of mobility as socioeconomic and socio-psychological resources that displaced people use and upon which their resilience relies. The project will develop a rapid assessment tool to identify the most vulnerable groups in PDS and to analyse interactions between displaced and host communities. As an evidence-based tool for creating impact, it will support policymakers and practitioners to enhance the self-reliance of displaced people as well as host-refugees relations through tailored programming and policy development. We closely cooperate with key stakeholders throughout the entire life cycle of the project. Our research is based on a novel concept of transnational figurations of displacement that combines the figuration model – a meso-level approach emphasizing the networks of interdependent human beings – with the transnationalism approach and state-of-the-art knowledge on forced displacement. Through comparative empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative, in camps and urban settings at sites in Asia, Africa, and Europe, TRAFIG will answer the following questions: (1) How do displaced people gain access to and make use of humanitarian and migration policies and programmes? (2) Why and how do displaced people live in vulnerable situations and sustain their livelihoods? How can policy support their self-reliance? (3) How do transnational networks shape refugees’ experiences and trajectories? (4) Which processes structure relations between displaced people and host communities? (5) What are the medium and long-term economic impacts of PDS?

This proposal aims at ‘rethinking’ ways forward in creating inclusive space (see OECD 2016) in such a way that it will contributed to the revitalisation of these places and the successful integration of migrants in demographically and economically shrinking areas. WELCOMING SPACES aims to search for new ways to merge two policy challenges: how to contribute to the revitalisation of shrinking areas while also offering space for the successful integration of NON-EU migrants in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (‘leaving no one behind’). new types of government-citizen-migrant relations. Our point of departure are existing examples of places of ‘welcoming spaces’ which do exist in some places, but often remain invisible and dispersed. Examples of small towns and villages offsetting declining population by attracting non-EUinternational migrants are found in various European counties in Italy, Spain, but also Germany, the Netherlands and even Poland. Such initiatives to create ‘welcoming spaces’ and initiating new types of government-citizen-migrant engagement are often citizen-based, but can equally be the outcome of initiatives by governments, NGOs or business, or they can be migrant-based. Going against the current of ‘anti-migration’, most initiatives are highly contested. Their success seems to depend on a combination of collective action, multi-stakeholder collaboration and institutional innovations. Given the local or regional scale of most of these initiatives, the dispersion in space and political sensitivity, much of what is happening around these ‘welcoming spaces’ remains under the radar. The possibilities for upscaling such initiatives are hence underexplored. The programme aims to answer the following question: How to achieve inclusive and sustainable development in shrinking regions, contributing to revitalisation while providing opportunities for the successful integration of non-EU migrants?

Euro-Mediterranean policies, as well as research on them, have been characterized by a Euro-centric approach based on a narrow geopolitical construction of the Mediterranean. Moreover, stakeholders, policy instruments, and policy issues have been defined from a European standpoint, marginalizing the perspectives and needs of local states and people, and ignoring the role played by new and powerful regional and global actors. In an increasingly multipolar world, overcoming this Euro-centric approach is key for Europe to play a more meaningful role in the region. Thus, MEDRESET aims to reset our understanding of the Mediterranean and develop alternative visions for a new partnership and corresponding EU policies, reinventing a future role for the EU as an inclusive, flexible, and responsive ‘actor’ in the region. This will be achieved through an integrated research design which is in three phases: it 1) de-constructs the EU construction of the Mediterranean, 2) counters it by mapping the region on the geopolitical level and in four key policy areas (political ideas, agriculture and water, industry and energy, migration and mobility) alongside a three-dimensional framework (stakeholders, policy instruments, policy issues), which directly feeds into 3) a reconstruction of a new role for the EU, enhancing its ability to exert reflexive leadership and thus its relevance in the region. Embedded in an interdisciplinary research team, as well as in a civil society and media network, MEDRESET evaluates the effectiveness and potential of EU policies by investigating whether current policies still match the changing geopolitical configuration of the Mediterranean area. The perceptions of EU policies and the reasons for their successes or failures are assessed by surveying top-down and bottom-up stakeholders on both shores of the Mediterranean. Country-tailored policy recommendations for the EU will be given for four key countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Since 2015, migration towards and within Europe has created a ‘stress’ in the EU asylum and migration systems, challenging the adequacy of the legal design of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). This impacted the implementation of both the CEAS and national asylum systems in practice and called its further harmonisation into question. The notion of harmonisation is not a fixed term, but rather incorporates varied meanings and practices. While in legal terms, harmonisation has been explained as an approximation process towards minimum standards, harmonisation in political terms rather focuses on policy convergence, of which the harmonisation of legal regimes is only one among many mechanisms of convergence. Taking these varied meanings into account, CEASEVAL will carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the CEAS in terms of its framework and practice. It will make an analysis of harmonisation which goes beyond the formal institutional setting and takes into account the complex relations among the actors engaged from the local and the national levels, to the European level, in order to explain the success and the failure of coordinated action between these varied actors. CEASEVAL will innovatively 1) combine multiple disciplines in order to explore different perspectives of the CEAS, 2) develop a new theoretical framework of multilevel governance of the CEAS, which will be empirically tested across several EU Member States and third countries, 3) provide a critical evaluation of the CEAS by identifying and analysing discrepancies in the transposition and incorporation of European standards in the area of asylum in domestic legislation, as well as differences in their implementation, and 4) elaborate new policies by constructing different alternatives of implementing a common European asylum system. On this basis, CEASEVAL will determine which kind of harmonisation (legislative, implementation, etc.) and solidarity is possible and necessary.

BRIDGES aims to understand the causes and consequences of migration narratives in a context of increasing politicisation and polarisation. By focusing on six current/former EU countries (FR, GE, HU, IT, SP, and UK), it has a three-fold objective. First, at the academic level, it aims to understand the processes of narrative production and impact and their mutual interaction. This entails analysing: a) why some narratives have become dominant over others in public and political debates from a historical perspective; b) how narratives shape individual attitudes in Europe and potential migrants’ decisions in countries of origin and transit; c) how narratives impact policy decisions and outputs both at the national and EU levels; and d) how individuals and policymakers become in turn narrative producers (‘shaped shapers’) and influence each other. Second, at the policy level, it aims to foster evidence-based policies. By developing a typology of government strategies for responding to populist narratives, we will provide policymakers with recommendations on how to redress a tendency towards increasingly symbolic policies in the field of migration and integration. Third, at the societal level, our objective is to create spaces for dialogue between actors involved in narrative production as well as to exchange innovative good practices among artistic communities, civil society organisations and migrant communities focused on how to build more inclusive accounts. The project objectives can only be achieved if we bridge – hence the name BRIDGES – several critical gaps between disciplines and between research and practice. A key added value of the project is its interdisciplinarity and co-production approaches, including three interactive workshops with policy, media and civil society actors, an itinerant photojournalism exhibition and two hip hop contests to reflect on the challenges of multicultural and increasingly diverse societies.