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Imagining Europe from the Outside (EUMAGINE)

EUMAGINEProject description

EUMAGINE is a three-year collaborative European research project in which IMI is a partner. The central aim of the project is to investigate the impact of perceptions of human rights and democracy on migration aspirations and decisions. Visit the EUMAGINE website to find out more about the project, or download IMI's EUMAGINE project briefing (pdf).

Research questions

Why do people want to migrate? What influences their choice of migration destination? The EUMAGINE project will address these questions from an innovative angle. It will look not only at the role of factors such as socio-economic status and social networks, but also at the impact of perceptions of human rights and democracy.  ‘Human rights’ is understood to include both negative (e.g. democracy, individual liberties, freedom from discrimination) and positive (a right to e.g. social security, healthcare, education) rights. Special attention will be paid to the role of gender.

The core idea of the project is that macro- and meso-level discourses on human rights and democracy influence micro-level perceptions on these themes in countries of origin, which in turn influence migratory aspirations and decisions.

Methodology and approach

The study is based on a cross-national and cross-regional mixed-method design. With the help of local partners,  data will be collected from four major source and transit countries:

  • Morocco
  • Turkey
  • Senegal
  • Ukraine

In each of these four country surveys, ethnographic fieldwork and subsequent in-depth interviews will be conducted in four research areas with different characteristics:

  1. an area that is characterised by high emigration rates
  2. a comparable socio-economic area with low emigration
  3. a comparable area with a strong immigration history
  4. an area with a specific human rights situation.

The aim is to achieve a representative sample within each of the 16 research areas.  The cooperation with local partners will facilitate data collection and provide invaluable local expertise, and will also ensure a non-Eurocentric perspective which will improve the data quality.

By adopting a case-study approach that compares several emigration countries and various types of areas within these countries,  the project aspires to shed more light on how perceptions, aspirations and decisions are formed, and on how they relate to each other.

Research team

EUMAGINE is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme and undertaken by a consortium of the following institutions:

The IMI team consists of Hein de Haas, Evelyn Ersanilli and Dominque Jolivet.

The empirical research in EUMAGINE is undertaken by 'geographical duo teams' consisting of one European and one non-European partner. IMI will work with the team of Université Mohamed V Agdal led by Mohamed Berriane.  IMI is also responsible for coordinating the project-wide implementation of the survey and data analysis.