Current and future fundamental changes in global migration patterns raise new intellectual and practical challenges that will have profound consequences for receiving and sending countries.

However, policy makers and researchers are ill-prepared for future global migration trends primarily because of a limited insight into the factors driving migration processes and a lack of imagination about how future global transformation processes are likely to alter the global migration map. For this reason, IMI is involved in developing future migration scenarios.

Ongoing activities

Global Migration Futures (GMF) (2009)

This project aims to assess future global migration trends and their effects on European receiving countries and sending countries mainly located in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It will elaborate scenarios, taking account of likely future social, cultural, economic, political, demographic and environmental changes in sending, transit and receiving countries. Read more about the Global Migration Futures project...

Past events

• The Global Migration Futures team organized a panel for the Metropolis conference in the Azores entitled: 'Global Migration Futures: findings and strategic responses', 14 September 2011.
• The Global Migration Futures team organized a panel for the Metropolis conference in the Azores entitled: 'Technological Change and Global Migration Futures', 13 September 2011.
• Third Global Migration Futures Stakeholders Workshop, hosted by the Metropolis conference in the Azores as a 'pre-conference' day, 11 September 2011.
• Panel Event: Using Scenarios in Academic Research to Study the Future, Oxford Department of International Development, 26 May 2011
• Second Global Migration Futures Stakeholders Workshop, in Cairo, 13-14 May 2011, hosted by the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at The American University in Cairo
• First Global Migration Futures Stakeholders Workshop, in The Hague, 2010 (read a brief pdf summary)