The significance of migration as a social, political and broader public concern has intensified significantly. Migration is increasingly seen as a high-priority policy issue by many governments, politicians and throughout the world. As well as migration projections and scenarios that are essential for appropriate planning and effective policymaking, a deeper understanding of the root causes and drivers of migration and of their interrelation with people’s propensity to migrate is needed. Enhancing migration data is a crucial step to advance migration governance since better data is needed in order to accomplish sustainable social and economic development and national migrant data strategies are required to inform good policies. The project’s overall objective is to improve understandings of changing nature of migration flows and the drivers of migration, to analyse patterns, motivations and new geographies. Moreover, HumMingBird aims to calculate population estimates and determine emerging trends and future trends and accordingly to identify possible future implications of today’s policy decisions. Correspondingly, migration scenarios will be developed in a more forward looking manner that takes into account both quantitative and qualitative perspectives of different migration actors that might have an impact people’s decisions to migrate and consequent trends that will have an impact on our societies. Global scenarios will base on not only a realistic understanding of the drivers and dynamics of migration but also on the effects and effectiveness of past migration policies. Projects ambitions are to identify the uncertainties and reappraise, to explore the reasons why migration predictions may not hold and to demonstrate non-traditional data sources for migration research.

SPRING will develop a toolbox to improve the innovation, effectiveness and sustainability of the work done by Europe’s integration stakeholders at national, regional and local levels. The SPRING consortium brings together some of Europe’s most well-connected integration researchers, think-tanks and stakeholder networks. Mobilizing their significant research, networks and communications capacities, the SPRING partners will identify and engage with the main researchers and communities of practice on integration: national and local policymakers and public sector, NGOs, business and grassroots initiatives (i.e. local volunteers, migrant leaders, and religious groups). These communities will shape the project’s activities through piloted participatory techniques for needs assessments, co-designing activities and the identification of solutions and policy implications. SPRING will then gather, summarise and share the best available research and evidence on the effectiveness, innovation, transferability, sustainability and evaluation methods for integration policies and practice. This evidence will summarise the findings of EU projects funded under Horizon 2020, AMIF, European Social Fund and Erasmus+ as well as relevant public and private donors. Summarising this evidence, SPRING will collect, create and disseminate the most usable and practical materials, such as examples of good practice, handbooks, pieces of training, templates, databases and contact lists. The SPRING online portal and repository, combined with the consortium’s communications task force and social media strategies, will make this evidence more accessible by curating the content and form to match the specific profile and needs of these communities of practice.

The INNOVATE project aims to facilitate a step change in the types, scope, forms and impacts of Migration Research to Policy (MR2P) engagement. It will do so through a series of Actions that develop, test, apply and communicate Process Innovations that are grounded in the needs and interests of researchers, policy-makers and other key stakeholders, including migrants, that are engaged with migration issues across governance levels from the local to the international. It will then embed these within an MR2P Collaboratory with both a ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ presence comprising a Research Exchange, Engagement Hub and Training Facility. The project’s Objectives are to: 1. Establish as a key project outcome the MR2P Collaboratory as a go-to resource that promotes use of and valorises research evidence in both ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ formats to support policymaking 2. Develop its coordination and support actions based on principles of co-creation that are migrant-centred. 3. Create opportunities for mutual learning between researchers, policy-makers, citizens and people with lived migration experiences 4. Engage at all stages with Strategic Stakeholders to generate a multiplier effect of increased engagement during the life of the project. 5. Design Process Innovation Actions to promote use of and valorise knowledge and promote mutual learning by addressing key topics in MR2P relations 6. Have built-in margins of flexibility to respond to new and emerging issues 7. Expand the strategic scope of the work by complementing and enhancing the role of existing EU networks and evidence sources 8. Provide insights from behavioural science to bridge work on narratives, frames and perceptions 9. Create measurable indicators of the project’s success and impact along four dimensions: building capacity; incentivising engagement; in incentivising engagement; increasing demand; and increasing uptake 10. Establish activities with the potential to generate income beyond the duration of funding

<< Objectives >>Given the current inflow of Ukrainian refugees to the CEE, the project aims to support stakeholders working with migrants and to supply them with innovative tools (e.g. digital application) improving their communication with migrants and for migrants. Further the project aspires to educate about migration in the CEE region in an innovative way in terms of the topics: the inclusion of migrants' perspective and the use of digital teaching materials.<< Implementation >>Mapping communication towards migrants, assessing their digital competencies and making recommendationsComparing models of migrant integration management from a multi-level governance perspective, collecting and disseminating best practicesDeveloping and digitizing innovative international migration coursePublishing monograph on the role of local authorities in the integration process, for the course useBringing key stakeholders together thus enabling them to better work on local integration<< Results >>Migration and Integration stakeholders have better knowledge on how to communicate with migrants. This enables them to efficiently work together on local integration and ameliorates migrants’ access to information. Further, the project contributes to:*mainstreaming the CEE perspective on migration,*popularizing modern inclusive digital learning through innovative tools,*empowering public officials to implement local integration policies, *raising awareness about migrant integration in CEE.

The project ‘ALFIRK – Collaborative Networks for Migrant Parent Empowerment’ addresses the importance of including parents, and in particular migrant parents in school and educational processes of their children in order to tackle the high occurrence of early school leaving (ESL) and disparities in learning outcomes of migrant youth in European school systems. This project sought to address the many barriers to increased empowerment of migrant parents by developing practical tools for functioning migrant parent involvement and networking in six countries. ALFIRK was initiated by the SIRIUS Network – Policy Network on Migrant Education with the support of the European Commission through the Erasmus+ Program and builds up on the SIRIUS (2014) ‘Agenda on Migrant Education’.Migrant parents are often found to participate less in the school processes and the education of their children while at the same time many migrant students lag behind in educational achievements. Parental involvement in school and education matters of their children carries the potential to contribute to enhanced educational performance. Furthermore, parents with a migrant background are often not as well connected to local structures and information as parents without a migrant background. Strengthening parental networking and their inclusion in local structures carries the potential to further enhance their involvement in the education of their children.Before this background, ALFIRK addresses barriers in increased parental empowerment in education processes, particularly among migrant parents, by:•Analyzing patterns of migrant parental involvement, parental networking, and barriers in parental involvement and empowerment at case study schools in six EU countries;•Identifying practical tools and good practices for migrant parental involvement and empowerment in order to enable schools to improve their strategies for migrant parental involvement;•Developing online tools to enable migrant parents to easily access information about school and education systems in EU countries and to network and exchange information among each others.This is implemented through three outputs:1) A qualitative study on the experiences of Migrant Parents.2) A toolkit for good practices in migrant parental involvement in education3) A migrant parent empowerment collaborative platform.In the long term, ALFIRK aims to empower migrant parents at three levels: •The family level, which reflects parents’ ability to manage issues of the family within the social context, •The service system level, which reflects the degree to which parents are able to effectively work with the school system, •The community/political level, which reflects parents’ advocacy for improved services for migrant youth in general.The collaborative approach is reflected in the project name “ALFIRK,” which means “the flock.” The project ran from September 2015 to August 2018; it was coordinated by the european forum for migration studies – efms (Germany): The partners were Multi Kulti Collective (Bulgaria), Risbo (the Netherlands), Leeds Beckett University (United Kingdom), Economic and Social Research Institute (Ireland), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain), and Migration Policy Group (Belgium).