Between 2014-19 I was co-investigator in a five years project funded the European Research Council with 2.1 million Euros. The principal investigator for the project was Professor Andrew Geddes, Director of the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute in Florence. The MIGPROSP project began from a relatively simple idea: we know quite a lot about why people move and we also know quite a lot about the legal and policy responses in the places to which they move. We know less about how people within these governance systems (politicians, officials and a range of other actors) understand international migration and how these understandings shape the possibilities and limits of migration governance. The MIGPROSP project’s main aim was to know more about what could be called the ‘micro-political’ foundations that shape the context of choice for individuals within migration governance systems. The project aimed to learn how actors within these systems understand international migration? How susceptible are these understandings to change? And what do these understandings and possible change in them mean now and in the future for the governance of international migration at state, regional and international levels? The project focused on Europe, North America, South America and the Asia-Pacific region because of the significant variations in migration governance within these regions.
I was invited in 2016 to be a member of the commission of high-level academic experts drafting a new model treaty on international mobility. The goal of the model treaty is to both reassert and reaffirm the existing rights afforded to mobile people and corresponding rights and responsibilities of states as well as to expand those basic rights where warranted to address the growing gaps in protection and responsibility that are leaving people vulnerable. As part of my responsibilities in this project, I have participated in a series of workshops in New York, with support from the Open Society Foundations–International Migration Initiative. I have also acted a rapporteur for the chapter on family migration.