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This report set out to unpack dynamics and characteristics of diaspora engagement policies in the MENA region, drawing on an in-depth review of six countries’ frameworks and Gamlen’s typology of diaspora engagement policies. 

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.

A Baseline Study on Migration Data Management in Azerbaijan has been published by the EU-funded MOBILAZE 2 project. The study was conducted by ICMPD and EU member states’ experts. The main objective of this study is to provide comprehensive insight into the current state and practices of migration data management in the Republic of Azerbaijan, with a particular focus on the existing procedures and tools available for data collection, analysis, and application. The particular gaps and needs observed in this regard are then laid out and recommendations for improvement are given. The MOBILAZE 2 project team would like to thank all participating Azerbaijani state institutions who gave their valuable insight and recommendations for this study. 

The intensity and pace of climate change is a source of concern worldwide. Weather-related events are taking an increasingly heavy and obvious toll, pressing policy-makers to act decisively to safeguard natural resources and to protect populations from harm.

Against this backdrop, it has become routine for the public discourse to associate climate change and its impacts with migration and mobility. In Europe and the global north in general, climate change is often perceived as precipitating a new stage of large-scale mobility from developing countries. The occurrence of floods, droughts and other natural disasters and the resulting population displacement, contributes to cement the assumption that climate change and mobility are two sides of the same coin.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is facing severe climate risks. In fact, scientific projections indicate that the region is warming up faster than the global average, exposing local populations to a series of threats directly and indirectly associated with climate change. However, the migration and mobility implications of this phenomenon have been contentious. Indeed, measuring climate mobility is fraught with challenges, from assessing people’s propensity to migrate to identifying obstacles to movement.

This study aims to consider the various perceptions and narratives surrounding climate mobility in three different countries: Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. Based on key stakeholder interviews, this work aims to provide policy-makers with pointers to understand how the public discussion on the climate mobility nexus is progressing in these countries. The research focuses on exposing people’s perceptions of climate impacts and how these perceptions shape decision-making mechanisms related to mobility. In doing so it aims to uncover the complex and singular realities that current reporting on climate mobility tends to mask.

This report synthesises the overall findings of the ECONDIAS project and takes stock of the country-specific, and EU-level policy and institutional landscape on migration-development nexus, and identifies relevant stakeholders and practices to draw context-specific lessons on success and impeding factors for diaspora-led investment in countries of origin.

Bei der vorliegenden Studie handelt es sich um die erste umfassende qualitative Forschungsstudie über arbeitsmarktspezifische Integrationsmaßnahmen für asylberechtigte bzw. subsidiär schutzberechtigte Frauen in Österreich, Deutschland und Norwegen. Als arbeitsmarktspezifische Integrationsmaßnahmen werden Maßnahmen, Projekte und Programme verstanden, die einen Fokus auf die Förderung der ausbildungsadäquaten Arbeitsmarktintegration von geflüchteten Frauen legen und sich dabei mit den verschiedenen Phasen des Arbeitsmarktintegrationsprozesses auseinandersetzen, wie z.B. Vorbereitung, Berufsorientierung, Ausbildung, Arbeitssuche und - aufnahme.

Die Fragestellung der vorliegenden Studie – Erfahrungen mit der und Erfolgsbedingungen für die Arbeitsmarktintegration von Frauen mit Fluchterfahrung – ist anwendungsorientiert und verlangt eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Praxiserfahrung entsprechender Projekte und Maßnahmen und eine Analyse der Projektergebnisse. Anders als eine Evaluierung, bei der es um das Erreichen von Projektzielen und den Einsatz der vorgesehenen Mittel geht, um auf dieser Basis Empfehlungen für die Weiterentwicklung eines Projektes zu erarbeiten, lag die Aufgabenstellung dieser Studie darin, einen Überblick über die Wahrnehmung der wesentlichen Herausforderungen durch ProjektbetreiberInnen und Geflüchtete zu gewinnen und aus den Projekterfahrungen Empfehlungen für die Organisation und Gestaltung der Arbeitsmarktintegrationsmaßnahmen zu entwickeln und notwendige Veränderungen in den strukturellen Rahmenbedingungen zu diskutieren. Im Sinne des peer-learning wurde die Erhebung in Österreich mit Recherchen zu vergleichbaren Projeken im deutschen Bundesland Nordrhein-Westfalen und in Norwegen vergleichbare Projekte ergänzt.

Der vorliegende Bericht präsentiert Ergebnisse des Forschungsprojekts FIMAS+Frauen, „Prozesse der Arbeitsmarktintegration geflüchteter Frauen in Österreich“. Die Analyse der Arbeitsmarktintegration geflüchteter Frauen beruht auf den 2022 erhobenen Interview-Daten der fünften Befragungswelle der FIMAS-Längsschnitterhebung. Im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts wurden 2.716 Asylberechtigte und subsidiär Schutzberechtigte aus den Asyl-Hauptherkunftsländern Syrien, Afghanistan, Irak und Iran befragt, die in den Jahren 2011 bis 2021 nach Österreich geflüchtet waren und zum Zeitpunkt der Befragung 15 bis 64 Jahre alt waren.

This trend assessment is part of an ongoing series launched by ICMPD’s Policy, Research and Strategy Directorate. These assessments analyse emerging trends related to the field of migration based on expert opinions and ICMPD’s knowledge and insight on the subject in the context of changing geopolitical situations and external shocks that may influence existing trends of migration. In this vein, this study examines the relationship between food security in Tunisia, compounded by the recent war in Ukraine, and migration in the region.

Emotions are regularly cited as vital components of effective strategic communication in the world of migration and beyond. However, until this report, there was relatively little guidance about how emotions should be used in migration policy communication. Emotions are vital to persuasion because attitudes have a cognitive (thinking) component and an emotional (feeling) component. Moreover, eliciting emotions causes involuntary but predictable physiological and behavioural reactions. Emotions can be used in communication to make one’s messages more resonant and impactful on both attitudes and behaviours, supporting policy objectives via persuasion.

Communicators should choose the desired emotional reaction according to the desired physiological and behavioural reaction using existing psychological schema, one of which this report analyses with 32 separate emotions and physiological reactions. Eliciting unsuitable emotions may have adverse reactions from audiences. Communicators can use this report’s recommendation and framework to ensure that the emotions, physiological and desired behaviours of their campaigns are aligned and thus effective. Narratives, personal-based messages, facial expressions, body language, and aesthetics can be used to create emotional resonance and reduce psychological distance. Frames, ordering (“emotional flow”), intensities, and certain combinations can also be used to elicit different emotions with predictable outcomes.

Emotions should be used to make one’s argument more resonant but the argument should not be simply based on the emotional reaction—the “appeal to emotion” logical fallacy. Indeed, for emotion-based communication to work, it should also use facts, values, identities, and efficacy. Emotion-based communication in the field of migration, although widely used, is largely untested—communicators should test different approaches but also can take lessons from other fields such as corporate, health, and climate change communications.

This report critically analyses 10 examples of good emotion-based migration communication, highlighting the different emotions and physiological reactions that they are likely to induce, and to what extent these are in line with the communication campaign’s stated objectives.

Rural communities in North Africa and the Middle East are confronted with a myriad of context-specific challenges. While food security is rising on the global and regional agendas, countries are experiencing a demographic decline in rural areas, important shortcomings in rural development and environmental degradation resulting from resource overexploitation and climate change. For concerned communities, the conjunction and intensification of these trends raises serious questions as to their ability to cope now and in the near future. This study is devoted to the analysis of the migration phenomenon in the South Mediterranean’s rural areas. It focuses on identifying and explaining rural trends of migration, including incoming and returning flows. To do so it draws on a multi-disciplinary and synthetic examination of the situation in five countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. The results and recommendations arising from the study are meant to consolidate knowledge on migration in the Euro-Mediterranean region in line with the target 10.7 of the UN sustainable development goals to achieve safe, orderly and regular migration. 
 

This study is carried out within the scope of Enhancement of Entrepreneurship Capacities for Sustainable Socio-Economic Integration (ENHANCER) Project, which is funded by the European Union and implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD).

Migration sensitive Local Entrepreneurship Ecosystem (LEE) Analyses have been carried out in 11 provinces of Türkiye; Adana, Ankara, Bursa, Gaziantep, Hatay, İstanbul, İzmir, Kayseri, Konya, Mersin, and Şanlıurfa. The distinct feature of these analyses than the ones already conducted is the inclusive approach for Syrians under Temporary Protection (SuTP). Through ecosystem analyses, the challenges and opportunities for the SuTP entrepreneurs as well as of their relations with ecosystem actors have been identified and policy recommendations are presented for improvement of local entrepreneurship ecosystem focusing on SuTP entrepreneurs.

This study is to an extent a follow-up of a study EUROMED Migration IV programme carried out for the same subregions
in 2015-2016. It takes a different approach but with the same goal of developing a better understanding of
the reality and constraints of traditional and other media and how these elements affect their capacity to tell the
“migration story”.
More specifically, this study investigates how media coverage in some European countries of migration has changed
over the course of the 2019-2020 period, including the impact of social media on migration narratives, polarisation
and journalism, the influence of political dynamics on the media landscape and vice-versa, and the impact of
COVID-19 on migration narratives.

External author: Chris Elliott

Original title: "Analyse der Zusammenhänge zwischen Schutz, Entwicklungschancen und Entscheidungen über irreguläre Migration in einem Transitland"