PASS · A Place for the Asylum Seekers. European migration policies and their socio-spatial impacts

A Place for the Asylum Seekers. European migration policies and their socio-spatial impacts

The Marie-Curie project A Place for Asylum Seekers. European migration policies and their socio-spatial impacts (PASS) analysed the socio-spatial impact of asylum legislation in the European Union since 2013 - when the latest Dublin III Regulation (No. 604/2013) and communitarian efforts to achieve an integrated system on migration had become an increasingly central issue in EU policies. In this context, “socio-spatial” impact referred to two primary and concomitant aspects. On the one hand, the controlled formal spaces and practices implemented in order to manage the phenomenon: checkpoints, sorting centres, reception procedures, and the EU Relocation Programme. On the other hand, it concerns the daily life of migrants who are divided into different categories defined by the legislation itself, such as legal/illegal, forced/economic, asylum seekers/refugees and so on. The project included a dual perspective: 1. A top-down perspective, involved in the analysis of the European, Italian and Dutch immigration policies; and 2. A bottom-up perspective, embedded in the migration experience and focused on the migrants' agency. The project wished to give visibility and resonance to the richness and complexity of migrants' life stories and desires, as well as a deeper understanding of the difficulties encountered during their journey and stay in Europe; not least as a result of a more stringent legislation. In the PASS project, the personal reasons and choices at the base of individual mobility are observed alongside broader social, political, and economic processes. The final goal of PASS was to elaborate empirical data in order to build more human rights-oriented policies, in line with the needs expressed by migrants and by the European Commission (Understanding and Tackling the Migration Challenge: The Role of Research, 4-5 February 2016), which requests the dissemination of results as a means to combat migrant misconceptions. This goal is intended to foster more inclusive societies that undoubtedly entail a more in-depth review of how migration management is imagined and executed. Migration issues are still one of the main points on the EU political agenda. Given the tensions arise between the EU Member States on the asylum system recently, the topic remains still crucial for the EU society, and the same goes to PASS research and its impact (see below, section n. 3).

Data: CORDIS, © European Union