ReSOMA
What: ReSOMA aims at creating a platform for regular collaboration and exchange between Europe’s well-developed networks of migration researchers, stakeholders, and practitioners to foster evidence-based policy-making. Being a Coordination and Support Action (CSA), ReSOMA is meant to communicate directly with policymakers by providing ready-to-use evidence on policy, policy perceptions and policy options on migration, asylum and integration gathered among researchers, stakeholders, and practitioners
Why: Migration management has shown that EU policy-making on asylum and migration has understandably not been able to keep up with the rapidly changing migration dynamics and political dynamics in the MS. Policies towards immigrants are generally slow to change and path-dependent, except when a number of factors accelerate the pace of changes in policy and public opinion. In addition, coordination on asylum and migration policy at the EU level involves an increasing number of relatively new actors who still fail to interact through a fully synergic partnership.
Impact: it will foster sustainable and mutually beneficial relationships between researchers and stakeholders in order for them to consult and work more regularly with each other to inform EU public debates. This will ultimately enable policy-makers to access quick ready-to-use policy evidence on current policy issues while putting new priorities on the EU policy agenda on asylum, migration, and integration based on the collective evidence of researchers and stakeholders in the MS.
Objective 1: Sustainable and mutually beneficial collaboration between EU research and stakeholder networks. This need for collaboration has not been addressed systematically, despite the ongoing interest in this from researchers, stakeholders, and the European Commission. Researchers and stakeholders need to provide the best evidence and arguments to inform evidence-based policymaking. Stakeholders and policymakers need researchers to provide them with missing perspectives, knowledge, evidence, methods, and robust recommendations. Researchers and stakeholders are very well-integrated within their own communities at the EU and national level but are not well-networked with one another to collaborate systematically on evidence-based policymaking. Even researchers and stakeholders working on the same topic often do not know each other across the EU and, despite a clear willingness to cooperate, collaborations will not occur without a greater awareness and an explicit request.
Objective 2: Make the EU’s platforms for policy dialogue and consultation more evidence-based. In recent years the EC has offered several actors to provide their policy input such as public consultations, symposiums, and other thematic events. However, researchers and stakeholders are not sufficiently coordinated to provide their evidence through these tools and platforms. Public consultations and impact assessments have often been replaced with rapid and informal consultations of EU stakeholder networks and a similar trend has been observed at the national level with ad hoc consultations being increasingly preferred over permanent dialogue.
Objective 3: Raise new evidence-based top priorities for the EU’s policy agenda. Major unmet policy needs on the ground do not always make their way up onto the EU agenda. Researchers and stakeholders need to find the right arguments and allies helping them to find consensus. The EU can be relatively quick to respond to bottom-up demands, but in many other areas of EU migration policy bottom-up agenda-setting has become increasingly difficult as the crisis-management context has changed the scope for public consultation, the profile of decision-makers and the number of actors involved.
How: It is implemented through:
1) Setting the policy agenda by identifying the most pressing needs relating to migration, asylum, and integration
2) Outlining the most effective policy responses by pooling together stakeholders’ experience and scholarly evidence on experts with a view designing evidence-based policy options
3) Challenging perceived policy dilemmas & offering alternatives by questioning existing policy patterns in order to turn policy options into viable alternatives for policy-makers
4) Informing the political and public debate by communicating on the activities carried out and disseminating ReSOMA’s results to wider audiences
The creation of the Platform is the cornerstone of the project as it allows stakeholders and researchers to be consulted about these things through their membership to the Expert Database.
