Reflections after a workshop on the Future of EU Migration, in Brussels

On Tuesday, February 11th Grazia Concilio attended the DGResearch and DG HOME workshop “Shaping the Future of EU Migration Research & Innvation” in Brussels.

Below, she shares some of her reflections on the debated topics with us:

“When dealing with migration and migrants integration, the interplay between science and policy is neither an easy conceptual space to navigate, nor a trivial functional relation to guarantee; science and policy should be reciprocating for science to provide evidences for sound policies and for policies to provide the forward looking research questions to science.”

“Uncertainties, large uncertainties in migration dynamics as consequent to climate or economic crises, wars, persecutions, are pivotal of important questions for science and challenging scenarios for policies.”

“Unfortunately, integration did not gain the expected stage in the debate. Migration is a long process that starts outside Europe but then takes (too) long for migrants to gain a decent level of inclusion, to become citizens of/in Europe.”

Grazia reports having left Brussels with a critical question burning my mind: Are we working to be a better, inclusive, tolerant, innovative Europe or rather are we working for a defensive, protected, well prepared conservative future considering humans as threats rather than ressources?

One thing is for sure, coordinating the easyRights EU project at CALL has made it clear for us; migration policies are locked into our capacities to work with migrants, to talk with migrants, to learn from migrants, to create with them a stronger European citizenship!