E-MINDFUL: Enhancing European Migration Narrative to Develop Further Union’s Long-term actions

The political discourse about migration has changed significantly in the past few years. The European Agenda on Migration underlines how “Misguided and stereotyped narratives tend to […] overlook the inherent complexity of this phenomenon, which impacts society in many different ways.” Already before the so-called “migration crisis” in 2016, the representation of migration as a threat to security had increasingly dominated the public debate at global level. The consequences are particularly visible at the level of policymaking: the growing negative attitudes towards migrants has made migration management approaches, which could harness the positive contributions of migrants in both home and host countries, more difficult to implement. The socioeconomic inclusion of migrants is being challenged by increasingly hostile attitudes. Contextually, legal migration channels have progressively shrank. The recent lockdown measures due to COVID-19, have placed additional uncertainties on the role and perception of migrants in our societies. Aware of the divisive potential of an increasing polarized public discourse on migration, the E-MINDFUL project offers the opportunity to leverage the role and respective mandates of the OSCE, a regional security organization with a multi-dimensional mandate on migration, and the ILO, a specialized UN agency, custodian of the key international conventions on labour migration, in the framework of the EU Agenda on Migration. The aim is to provide the European Commission, the OSCE and the ILO constituents with an evidence-based and action-oriented guidance, including innovative instruments that can orient future communications’ efforts on migration and migrants. The overall objective is to promote a social and economic environment where everyone, migrants and nationals, can feel welcome and belonging so as to encourage effective migration policy-making, particularly in the field of economic migration. The project will set the basis for an inclusive, evidence-based methodology and co-creation processes able to expand the outreach of audiences and provide solid feedback on the effectiveness of the communication strategies. This overall process of stocktaking and prototyping will be capitalized in the possible piloting of web series and in a toolkit, comprising a publication and a set of distilled key findings and guidelines, which will provide a relevant compass and crucial instruments to steer and assess future communication strategies on migration and migrants.

Project symbol

RER/21/01/OSE

Admin unit

DWT/CO-Budapest

Start date

01/06/2021

End date

31/12/2023

Total allocation

870402

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

747096

Development Partners

Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Country/Countries

Central and Eastern Europe

Outcomes

Outcome 3: Full and productive employment for just transitions