Dr. James Dennison

Why do some people choose to migrate and some people not? Why are some willing to do so via irregular channels and some unwilling?  Answering these questions allows us to design better interventions to achieve migration policy objectives such as “safe, regular, and orderly migration”. It also helps us answer profound scientific questions using the timeless yet increasingly important case of migration. Given the salience, uncertainty, complexity, risk and novelty of migration—as well as its emotive and valuedriven nature—we can expect narratives to play a powerful and rich role in emigration decisions. This report builds on recent findings and cutting-edge data to investigate the role of narratives in affecting variation in various forms of migration behaviour.

This report overviews and discusses the key findings from the original research of the EUROMED Migration V programme on migration narratives in the Euro-Mediterranean region. Each report was dedicated to a different facet of migration narratives and each offering an original contribution that can help communicators offer a more balanced set of migration narratives.

Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) programmes have emerged as a migration governance tool used by many national governments and supranational organisations in the 21st century. They fund—typically irregular or stranded—migrants to return to their origin countries whereafter they provide support aimed at “sustainable reintegration”. AVRR reintegration support is classified by the International Organization for Migration, which administers around 95% of AVRR programmes globally, as “economic”, “social”, and “psycho-social”. However, AVRR programmes have received several criticisms from academics and activists. The academic literature on measuring reintegration, identifying the causes of reintegration success, and identifying the causes of AVRR participation are nascent but provide a basis by which policymakers can understand how to improve AVRR outcomes. Therefore, this study identifies how communication can contribute to AVRR objectives.

Public communication has the potential to do enormous good for humanity. Regarding migration, public communication can be used to meet widely agreed-upon policy objectives such as safe, orderly, and regular migration. Moreover, it can help governments uphold democratic legal- and rights-based policy frameworks against nefarious forces and contribute to maximising the potential benefits and minimising the potential costs of migration to origin, transit, and host country populations, as well as to migrants themselves. In line with ongoing research from the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) and the EUROMED Migration programme on how to use public communication to re-balance migration narratives and protect the rights, safety, and opportunities of migrants, this report asks how we can use persuasive communication to achieve policy goals regarding irregular migration. It gathers lessons learned and provides practical recommendations, with a particular focus on the Euro-Mediterranean region and the activities of the European Union.