Migration communication campaigns are becoming increasingly common across Europe. James Dennison, Lorenzo Piccoli and Mariana C. Duarte present a framework for understanding the impact these campaigns are having on public attitudes and behaviour.
Each year, European institutions, governments and NGOs produce ever more public communication campaigns designed to affect people’s migratory attitudes and behaviours.
In a new study, we propose a unified research agenda to study these campaigns. We then put this research agenda into practice by presenting a novel, open source database of 301 migration campaigns, which can be downloaded and analysed online, and to which we invite submissions as we seek to grow the database to include campaigns on both emigration and immigration beyond Europe.
Migration communication campaigns
In recent years, migration communication campaigns have been repeatedly characterised by policymakers and civil society organisations as critical tools for achieving migration policy objectives of the utmost importance.
These include upholding human rights and democratic legal orders, improving quality of life via integration, reducing xenophobia and discrimination, correcting misperceptions, tackling misinformation and conspiracy theories, and reducing smuggling, human trafficking and fatalities during migration.
Figure 1: “Gemeinsam menschlich” campaign
Note: Example of a poster from the “Gemeinsam menschlich” (Together human) campaign. Translation: “Together, carrying responsibility”.
Moreover, the increased political salience of large-scale migration in the twenty-first century has resulted in larger budgets and more ambitious policy objectives regarding the attitudes and behaviours of host populations and actual and would-be migrants in origin, transit and destination countries.
In Europe, specifically, recent events have prompted institutional actors to increasingly turn to communication to manage and achieve objectives across all facets of migration. These campaigns are coordinated communication efforts to inform, persuade, or motivate behavioural changes regarding migration in specific target audiences.
A unified research agenda
Migration communication campaigns have attracted studies from across the social sciences using varied approaches. These include experimental studies of campaigns, typically in origin countries; survey experiments on the effects of campaigns on attitudes to immigration in destination countries; critical and media studies of campaigns; and ethnographies and social network analyses of campaigns in origin countries. Studies within each of these categories tend to have common strengths and weaknesses regarding robustness, validity and generalisability, as well as consideration of the contents of the campaigns themselves.
Considering each of these disciplinary strands, their strengths and weaknesses and the increased importance of migration communication campaigns, we diagnose the need for a unified, interdisciplinary research agenda for these campaigns. We identify six particularly pressing aims.
First, there is a need to define and conceptualise migration communication campaigns in the abstract, including by developing an effective typology of how they vary. Second, it is necessary to describe variation in campaigns empirically according to the above typology and metrics of their determinants and effects. Third, research must explain variation in the use, contents and type of campaigns across space and time.
Fourth, it is necessary to determine the effects of migration communication campaigns on their stated migration objectives and otherwise. Fifth, there is a need to identify complementarity between the disparate academic works for which campaigns are relevant, not only in terms of inter-disciplinarity but also in terms of methodological and epistemological approaches. Finally, we should aim to identify cooperation and interaction between academia and the design, implementation and assessment of these campaigns by those who produce them.
We contribute to this proposed research agenda in two ways. First, we offer a typology of migration communication campaigns, as shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Migration communication campaign typology
Note: For more information, see the authors’ accompanying paper in the Journal of European Public Policy.
Second, we do so by presenting our open-access, collaborative database to kick-start more systematic research in this field, including theoretical justifications for each variable therein. The database currently includes 301 migration communication campaigns conducted in Europe between 2012 and 2022. We invite ongoing submissions of all types of migration communication campaigns globally to create a bridge between communities of academics, policymakers and communicators.
The database includes 19 key variables that seek to describe the demographics, objectives, content and – more subjectively – the strategic approach of each campaign. Our database is by no means exhaustive and we invite submissions to it, which we will be glad to codify and add, expanding the database beyond Europe and including more campaigns aimed at affecting migration behaviour.
Yet various hypotheses and research questions can already be tested regarding such campaigns, partly using our database. To what extent are campaigns with differing objectives and audiences created by the same or different organisations? More broadly, how can we describe and explain variation in migration communication campaigns across different actors, spaces and times?
We hope that answers to these questions will provide insights not only into migration communication campaigns but also into more general theories of migration and communication, as well as the scattered and nascent literature on the topic.
For more information, see the authors’ accompanying paper in the Journal of European Public Policy (available open access).
Note: This work was supported by the EUROMED Migration V Programme, funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) funding from the Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute; and Leverhulme Trust: [grant no ECF-2021-342]. The article gives the views of the authors, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Nordic Studio / Shutterstock.com
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