Imagining Migration in the Future
In June 2010 the International Migration Institute organised an unconventional and imaginative workshop in The Hague on the future of world migration. The workshop involved 20 people from the private sector, international organisations, civil society organisations, academia and governments.
The movement of people across the world is becoming ever more complex and presenting new challenges for humanity in the 21st century. Migration policies are often developed without taking a long-term perspective of the wider global context, and with only a limited understanding of the complex forces that drive international migration. Common assertions, for example that there is an unlimited global supply of low-skilled workers ready to migrate to wealthy countries, or that climate change will force millions of people to migrate, are based on speculation rather than on sound analysis. The future is full of uncertainties, demanding more imaginative approaches to migration research and policy.
IMI’s workshop stimulated innovative and creative thinking about possible future trends, and included fresh and varied perspectives. The interactive sessions adopted scenario methodologies normally used in business in order to imagine the different ways in which international migration could evolve in the coming decades up until 2050. The project team and the workshop participants are developing a selection of the expected and less-expected scenarios arising from the workshop by backing them up with quantitative and qualitative data. The scenarios will be used to investigate how future social, economic, cultural and environmental changes are likely to affect migration – information which will be invaluable in designing effective longterm policies. By means of this workshop, IMI has initiated a constructive dialogue which is encouraging migration experts to develop unconventional and imaginative thinking about world migration.
The workshop participants have become an expert focus group on future migration flows and policies – a group which will be sustained and expanded throughout the whole project and beyond, as the stakeholders go on to use what they have learned in their work.
The Global Migration Futures project is run in partnership with the James Martin 21st Century School and The Hague Process on Refugees and Migration. It is funded by Boeing’s Global Corporate Citizenship Program and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
