MACIMIDE, Maastricht University to take part in the largest-ever European-funded research project on migration

The European Commission has awarded funding for what is probably the largest-ever European-funded research project on migration, set to start work in September 2018.

MIGNEX(Aligning Migration Management and the Migration–Development Nexus) will be carried out over the course of five years. The project aims to forge new connections between two policy fields: how migration is regulated, and how migration and development affect each other. Such connections are essential for developing a more effective, coherent and sustainable approach to the challenges and opportunities that migration brings.

The research will be led by Jørgen Carling at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and carried out by an international team of nine institutions. The funding was awarded following a highly competitive process within Horizon 2020, the European Union’s primary Research and Innovation programme.

One innovative aspect of the project is the approach to ‘development’. Instead of seeing it as a generic process towards higher standards of living, the team will examine the specific ways in which development unfolds in particular settings. Such a perspective creates new opportunities for understanding the causes and consequences of migration. This research will be carried out in 25 communities across ten countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The team will also examine the role of national and European policies.

The responsibilities of Maastricht University include developing new methods for measuring the development impacts of migration, assessing coherence between the legal framework and policy instruments, and evaluation of the overall European approach to third-country cooperation on migration. UM’s participation in MIGNEX is led by Professor Melissa Siegel, Co-Director of MACIMIDE, at the Graduate School of Governance and Professor Hildegard Schneider at the Law Faculty.

For regular information about MIGNEX, please visit mignex.org and sign up for our new quarterly newsletter. You can also follow #MIGNEX on Twitter.