Global Migration Futures Workshop

This first Global Migration Futures workshop was an opportunity for an open dialogue with 25 scholars and non-academic migration stakeholders from Europe, North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Oceania.

• Read a brief workshop summary

Stakeholders identified their existing assumptions about international migration, distinguished what they believed to be certain and uncertain about international migration, and developed a set of 16 basic scenarios on future international migration in North Africa, Europe and Asia.

Next steps:

1. Developed four scenarios from the stakeholders workshop (two for North Africa and two for Europe).
2. Identified the main story of each scenario.
3. Identified the main assumptions of each scenario.
4. Identified the main qualitative and quantitative variables for each story on the basis of those identified by the stakeholders.
5. Added flesh to the qualitative parameters of each scenario story.
6. Wrote the stories linking qualitative and quantitative parameters.

North Africa scenarios

Blooming Desert: where there would be no conflict and high economic growth

Go South Young Man: characterised by no economic growth and high levels of conflicts.

In selecting the variables to be explored further within the North African scenarios, we also considered factors taking place in neighbouring regions such as the Middle East. In so far as drivers of migration do not happen in a geographical vacuum, the variables had to consider dynamics taking place at regional and international levels.

Europe scenarios

Renaissance of European Nation States + the Scramble for Migrant Labour: where the strength of European nation states over many aspects of public and private life has increased

We Are All Stranded Here Together: where countries across Europe are confronted with economic stagnation and fertility rates below replacement levels.