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Research carried out at the University of Oxford's Centre on Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS) and disseminated through an accessible multimedia website, `The Migration Observatory', has transformed public and policy debate on migration and changed the practices of government departments, media, and third-sector organizations regarding migration data. As a result of COMPAS's research on public attitudes to immigration, migrants' remittance payments, and employers' demand for migrant labour, these groups have been able to make stronger, evidence-based arguments and decisions.
The impact has occurred in two main ways: (1) direct impact on public debates; and (2) changes in the practices of those participating in, or reporting on, those debates. The direct impact has included evidence for arguments against new restrictions on student immigration, and related arguments in favour of changing the way student immigration statistics are tracked. It has also included shaping deliberations on the potential for developing new measures of remittances by the Office of National Statistics. Changes in practice have involved the dissemination of research and data through the vehicle of the Migration Observatory. The Observatory has enabled journalists, civil servants, parliamentarians, and NGOs to use a more accurate and impartial evidence base in debates on migration issues, and to inform the public about such issues.
The `Bangla Stories' website is one of several outcomes of an ambitious, collaborative, inter-disciplinary research project on the Bengal diaspora, led by Dr Joya Chatterji of the Faculty of History and funded by the AHRC.
`Bangla Stories' encourages young people, in particular school children at Key Stage 3, to think about the history of migration and the experience of migrants. It stimulates classroom discussion about how and why people moved to Britain, survived, adapted and integrated there while remaining embedded in networks of community which often span the globe.
The website is the product of an effective ongoing collaboration between academics, think-tanks, schools, community organisers and civil society groups.
This case study focuses on the impact of ethnographic research on migration to the UK from South Asia and Eastern and Central Europe by a team of researchers in sociology at Roehampton. This research has enhanced knowledge of demographic change in British society and has had a significant impact on policy makers and providers in local, national and European policy communities. The research has contributed to changing attitudes, raising awareness, and shifts in policy and practice by local government in London with regards to migration and social inclusion to the capital. It has also contributed to capacity building activities and new policy tools to support social inclusion and labour market integration by new migrant communities in the UK and across the European Union.
Events organised as part of the TNMUNDI research project in 2008 and 2009 set out to increase understanding of the processes and practices of migration among a range of audiences, including cultural practitioners, public policy representatives, school children and the general public. The research team focused on migrant musicians and their transnational networks through concerts and workshops held in Rabat and Southampton, demonstrating how transnational musicians create their professional networks and how, in turn, they use these to make positive contributions to the social and cultural well-being of nation-states inside and outside Europe. At both events, the researchers discussed the cultural and artistic impacts of transnational migration with representatives from educational and cultural institutions, NGOs, the media, the music industry and the artists themselves. As a result of the project, new professional and cultural networks have been formed and the researchers provided input to the development of European cultural policy.
Research at Oxford's International Migration Institute (IMI) on the driving forces of global migration processes, conducted in conversation with international stakeholder groups, has significantly affected the ways in which migration is conceptualised and viewed by experts, international organisations and governments involved in formulating migration and development policies. The new perspective arising from IMI's research fundamentally challenges the common assumption that migration is driven by poverty and distress, and holds that migration is in fact an integral part of the process of human and economic development. This view was adopted by the United Nations in the UNDP Human Development Report 2009 and has significantly influenced the UK government's Foresight report on Migration and Global Environmental Change.
This research by Professor Matras has had a substantial impact on European policies concerning Romani migration. It highlighted the unique vulnerability of Romani migrants and instigated special consideration of their issues by major European policy-making bodies. At a more local level in Greater Manchester Professor Matras' recommendations led to the employment of Romani outreach workers to act as mediators and interpreters for the community of Romanian Romani immigrants in east Manchester. In 2011 a training programme born out of his research led to ten young members of the Romani community taking up roles as interpreters, mediators and classroom assistants within Manchester's local services and schools.
Professor Sonia McKay researched the relationship between precarious work and migration for the (European) Directorate General for Employment, Social affairs and Equality, ACAS, the Health and Safety Executive and the European Union's Framework 6 programme. She found new forms of employment relationships are emerging from the convergence of precarious work, migration and the current economic crisis with increases in informal working and concentration of precarity among certain groups such as Roma. While migration policies based on closing borders in EU countries increases the numbers of undocumented migrants and intensifies exploitation McKay's work has led to some changes in policies and practices.
Research at UCL provided the primary analysis of the effects of immigration on wages and the fiscal costs and benefits of A8 migration to the UK. These provided important and ongoing contributions to policy and media debates in the UK, as demonstrated by citations in key debates and policy documents in both Houses of Parliament, in commissioned studies and in the financial press. As a result, research successfully put facts and figures on immigration into a highly emotional and partisan debate.
The impact has its origins in work carried out by social policy (Kofman) and legal (Wray, Howard) academics from the mid-2000s which challenged existing conceptualisations of family migration, the absence of gender considerations and the evidential basis for national and European policy in this field.
This research has culminated since 2011 in an influential intervention in debates on restrictions on spousal migration, especially relating to income requirements, in Parliament, amongst NGOs and the public, and on the form and outcome of legal proceedings which challenged the compatibility of immigration rules restricting spousal migration with human rights and non-discrimination norms. The impact therefore takes the form of significant contribution to legal challenges and policy debate that are creating impetus for reform.
Community cohesion emerged as a distinct policy agenda in the aftermath of the 2001 disturbances in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham and was subsequently shaped by events including the London bombings of 2005 and large-scale migration from the EU and beyond. Researchers in the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) have delivered a programme of research and evaluation exploring cohesion and the effectiveness of service responses. Beneficiaries have included government departments, devolved administrations and other local, regional and national public agencies. Awareness and understanding have been sensitised, lessons learnt have informed strategy, and guidance has directed improvements in practice.