On the 11 December 2020, the Population Europe team organised a webinar to introduce the logic behind moving from a theoretical approach to empirical propositions that have a strong evidence base. It consisted of a presentation that first considered the very idea of migration theory, and then outlined ten propositions that can be empirically approached from different angles and turned into hypotheses. The webinar was based on QuantMig Deliverable 1.2.

In this meeting, top experts from the areas of policy, civil society, and academia discussed where most of the uncertainty in the future migration comes from, and what can be done to reduce or manage it.

We are delighted to announced that QuantMig team member, Professor Jackie Wahba, has received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Economic Policy in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2020.

On 29 September 2020, Jakub Bijak and Mathias Czaika took part as invited speakers in the 2020 National Conference of the European Migration Network, devoted to "Forecasting the Future of Global Migration". Jakub's talk was on "Forecasting International Migration: Dealing with Uncertainty Across a Range of Time Horizons", and Mathias discussed "Preparing for Uncertain Migration Futures".

We are delighted to announce that a QuantMig team member, Professor Marta Bivand Erdal, a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant by the European Research Council. Marta's project, entitled “Migration rhythms in trajectories of upward social mobility in Asia”, will focus on examining the roles of migration for social mobility – specifically for today’s middle class – in four different Asian cities: Karachi, Mumbai, Hanoi and Manila. The project will investigate how migration has affected upward social mobility over time and what narratives people construct around migration.

We are delighted to announce that a QuantMig team member, Professor Frans Willekens (NIDI), has been bestowed with the 2020 Mindel C. Sheps Award by the Population Association of America.

The initial meeting of the Horizon 2020 project QuantMig: Quantifying Migration Scenarios for Better Policy took place on 19-20 February 2020 in Brussels. QuantMig aims to develop innovative analytical tools for exploring quantitative scenarios of different futures of European migration based on strong theoretical fundamentals, and to disseminate the results in a close collaboration with project stakeholders.

A new Horizon 2020 project to shed light on the uncertainty and complexity of the future scenarios of European migration