Determinants of 'Mobilisation' at Home and Abroad: Analysing the Micro-Foundations of Out-Migration & Mass Protest

The MOBILISE project asks: When there is discontent, why do some people protest while others cross borders? Connecting theoretical expectations from the migration and protest literatures, we examine: a) whether similar factors drive the choice to migrate and/or protest at the individual level; b) how context affects this mobilisation; c) whether these choices are independent of each other or mutually reinforcing/ undermining. MOBILISE employs a multi-method (nationally representative face-to-face panel surveys, online migrant surveys, protest participant surveys, focus groups, life-history interviews, social media analysis) and a multi-sited research design. It covers Ukraine, Poland, Morocco and Brazil, which have recently witnessed large-scale emigration and protests. It follows migrants from these countries to Germany, the UK and Spain. The project offers four key innovations: 1)it combines protest and migration; 2)it captures all the relevant groups for a comparative study (protesters, migrants, migrant protesters and people who have not engaged in migration or protest); 3)it tracks individuals over time by employing a panel survey; 4)it includes the use of social media data providing real time information on the role of networks and political remittances. These features allow the project to make a major contribution to theory development in both migration and protest studies and offer key insights to policy makers on factors influencing political and economic stability.

Expected output / impact and dissemination (both academic and non-academic)

Outputs include: a co-authored monograph on the linkage between protest and migration, of interest to scholars and students from many disciplines (political science, sociology, political economy, development studies, anthropology); a minimum of five co-authored articles in high-impact journals and specialized journals in migration and area studies (building on at least five papers at conferences such as APSA, EPSA, ASN, ASA and workshop papers and invited lectures); three research-lead policy briefs for national and international policy-makers, connected to personal briefings for policy makers in London (Chatham House), Berlin (ZOiS), Washington (Carnegie, IOM), Brussels (EU institutions), and among local users and stakeholders in Kyiv, Rabat, Brasilia and Warsaw. We plan a new data set (to be archived for open access upon the completion of the project), three dissemination workshops for different academic and non- academic audiences at regular intervals throughout the project. These workshops allow us to build a stronger network between scholars and policy-makers and allow for a two-way exchange throughout the project. These workshops, and the active involvement of a number of graduate students and post-docs in the project, underline that the project takes training, career development and the next generation of academic expertise on the themes of protest and migration seriously.

The dissemination workshops will discuss the policy implications of our findings for political stability, democratization/regime change and development. We will employ interactive formats of knowledge exchange between academic and non-academic communities.

The academic impact of the publications will be in comparative politics, sociology, area studies and migration studies. The non-academic impact results from the engagement with different national policy communities in Germany, the UK, France, the Netherlands and the four fieldwork countries, as well as with international institutions: The German Foreign Office, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and their equivalents in the PIs' countries; the national Interior Ministries, DFID and equivalents across the PIs' countries; the European Commission, the IOM with its various country offices, the Population Division of the UN's Department of Social and Economic Affairs, and the Global Migration Group. This type of engagement requires the development of a strategy for building a network of interested individuals and institutions throughout the project. The PIs' extensive experience in working with the media, their regular contributions to widely read international academic, media and think tank blogs (e.g. the Washington Post's Monkey Cage, The Conversation, Carnegie Europe's Strategic Europe, ZOiS Spotlight) and their social media presence will ensure the communication of the main research findings through a wide range of different outlets targeting a wider interested public. A dedicated project website will create an information hub.

This project's collection of unique data, interdisciplinarity and potential for impact excellence. The drivers of protest and migration are of high significance in Europe and beyond. Our project knowledge exchange has the potential to raise awareness of a link between protest and migration, shape policy responses and engagement of governments and institutions and provide national and international policy-makers and institutions with an understanding of dynamics that could repeat themselves beyond our country cases.