Enhancing the knowledge base and facilitating the sharing of knowledge, good practices and methods.

Partnerships are central to much of the work undertaken by the Knowledge Centre for Migration and Demography (KCMD).

Partnerships enable the KCMD to access the latest knowledge on migration, share best practices and innovative approaches for data collection and analysis, and translate complex evidence into useful insights for policy.

KCMD partners range from international organisations (IOM, OECD, World Bank, UN DESA, ICMPD) to research centres and networks (IIASA, EUI Migration Policy Centre, Migration Policy Institute - Europe, IMISCOE) and individual experts, as the following examples show.

Envisaging demographic scenarios

Since June 2016, the JRC and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) have been partners in the Centre of Expertise on Population and Migration (CEPAM). This collaboration aims to assess the implications of different migration scenarios on future population change in Europe. 

CEPAM was launched in Brussels in June 2016 at a high-level event launching the KCMD with several Commissioners as well as policymakers, analysts and researchers from around Europe.

In April 2018, CEPAM published an extensive analysis of different scenarios of future population and human capital trends in 201 countries of the world, running to the end of this century. The report Demographic and human capital scenarios for the 21st century will inform the assessment of possible future migration patterns into the EU.

Pooling migration data

The KCMD's Dynamic Data Hub gives users direct access to datasets related to migration and demography. It currently provides data on arrivals, flows, stocks, socio-economics, demography, international displacement, children in migration and population projections.

It has been possible to pool together these datasets in the Dynamic Data Hub through collaboration with a range of international partners, specifically Eurostat, UN DESA, UNHCR, IDMC, World Bank and OECD.

The Dynamic Data Hub enables users to examine and visualise the data through an interactive, map-based interface. This makes trends and comparisons accessible to a broad public audience.

Harnessing Big Data

In collaboration with the International Organization for Migration’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), in 2018 the KCMD launched a Big Data for Migration Alliance (BD4M) to address the challenges of having and exploiting migration data and to increase investments into data innovation in the field of migration.

This built on an expert workshop co-organized by the KCMD and GMDAC at the Joint Research Centre on 30 November 2017.

As conveners of BD4M, the KCMD and IOM’s GMDAC welcome the participation of representatives from international organisations and non-governmental organisations, members of national statistical offices, private sector representatives, researchers and data scientists interested in contributing, in various capacities, to realising the potential of big data to complement traditional data sources on migration.

Europe and Africa

The fifth African Union - European Union (AU-EU) summit took place on 29-30 November 2017 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.

Ahead of the Summit, KCMD and the Migration Policy Centre (European University Institute, Florence) organised a High-Level Event on the dynamics of migration and mobility in Africa. 

The event gathered leading scholars from Africa and Europe, representatives of international organisations such as the African Union, IOM, World Bank, UN HABITAT and the EBRD as well as policy makers from different Commission services and the EEAS to discuss migration in Africa, its patterns, trends and potential for future development in the region.

Building on this, the project KCMD for Africa is currently building networks with researchers from Africa. This seeks to strengthen our knowledge exchange on migration, demography and development across the continent as well as learning more about how dialogue and support between researchers and policymakers on migration are shaped in different countries and regions.

Developing the evidence-base on migrant integration

The KCMD has actively engaged in developing the evidence-base on migrant integration through a range of collaborations with partner organisations.

Research from the KCMD on migrant integration in cities has recently been published with OECD, in their report Divided Cities. Overall, the report provides an assessment of spatial inequalities and segregation in cities and metropolitan areas from multiple perspectives. The contribution from the KCMD examined the spatial segregation of migrants in EU cities.

The KCMD has also run a Data Challenge on Integration of Migrants in Cities (D4I). By collating Census data from 2011 and making it available to research teams from around the world, D4I has sought to catalyse research and enrich the evidence base on the integration of migrants at local level from a range of perspectives.