ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The main question of this research project is: how do migration policies of receiving and sending states affect the size, direction and nature of international migration to wealthy countries? The effectiveness of migration policies has been widely contested in the face of their apparent failure to steer immigration and their many unintended, perverse effects. Due to fundamental conceptual and methodological flaws, most empirical evidence has remained largely descriptive and biased by omitting crucial sending country and policy variables. This project answers this question by embedding the systematic empirical analysis of policy effects into a comprehensive theoretical framework of the macro and meso-level forces driving international migration to and from wealthy countries. This is achieved by linking separately evolved migration theories focusing on either sending or receiving countries and integrating them with theories on the internal dynamics of migration processes. A systematic review and categorisation of receiving and sending country migration policies will provide an improved operationalisation of policy variables. Subsequently, this framework will be subjected to quantitative empirical tests drawing on gross and bilateral (country-to-country) migration flow data, with a particular focus on Europe. Methodologically, this project is groundbreaking by introducing a longitudinal, double comparative approach by studying migration flows of multiple origin groups to multiple destination countries. This design enables a unique, simultaneous analysis of origin and destination country, network and policy effects. Theoretically, this research project is innovative by going beyond simple push-pull and equilibrium models and linking sending and receiving side, and economic and non-economic migration theory. This project is policy-relevant by improving insight in the way policies shape migration processes in their interaction with other migration determinants

1 186 768 €

Start date: 2010-01-01, End date: 2014-12-31

We are witnessing unprecedented levels of mobility (within and beyond the European Union) and population change. In this context, how we develop the capacity to live with difference is the key question of the 21st century. It is this fundamental research question which this proposal addresses (an issue that is particularly pertinent given rising levels of insecurity generated by post 9/11 terrorism and the current global financial crisis). This will be achieved by the generation of a new body of information and understanding about the extent and nature of everyday encounters with difference through five inter-linked projects, each collecting original empirical data in the UK and Poland. My vision is to advance the theorization of meaningful contact by using this data about spatial practices of encounter and intersectionality to shed new light on mostly unevidenced interdisciplinary theories of cosmopolitanism; and to develop further an innovative social topographic approach for transcending conventional comparative research perspectives by producing a sophisticated model of the complex webs of connection across the research locations, integrating the findings from a post-colonial and post-communist state. I will develop new horizons in methodological practice through the development of biographical timelines, and audio diaries to capture qualitative longitudinal data; video-elicitation of encounters with difference; and radical spatial experiments to create meaningful contact. The findings will provide an integrated evidence base about everyday understandings of difference and spatial practices of encounter that will inform, and nuance, European policies and strategies for living with difference. This programme will be unique internationally and will open up new directions in the interdisciplinary study of cosmopolitanism.

2 181 400 €

Start date: 2010-06-01, End date: 2014-05-31

Despite half a century of sustained research into the structure of cities, we still cannot answer the most basic questions of how their morphology is affected by the energy and income of their populations. We do not know if cities will become more compact or more spread out as energy usage changes due to global warming and as we switch to renewable energy sources. What we need is much more robust theory with applicable computer models for forecasting such impacts. Many of the rudiments involving agglomeration economics, growth theory, trade, nonlinear dynamics, and fractal geometry have already been put in place with the complexity sciences providing a framework for this new social physics. But so far, energy has been strangely absent. Here we will embrace this role, thus generating theory and models able to address what cities will look like if current predictions of climate change are borne out. We will organise the project into six related themes. First, we will extend theories of urban morphology based on fractals, scaling and allometry to incorporate energetics in analogy to transport and network processes. Second we will link these to statistical thermodynamics in spatial interaction and location modelling where energy, entropy, and accessibility are central. Third we will aggregate our theories to enable comparative analyses of city shape, compactness, energy use, and density. Fourth, we will explore different dynamic regimes building on self-criticality and bifurcation. Fifth, we will make these ideas operational building on our London Tyndall Centre model, and on related work in Phoenix and Shanghai. Last, we will construct a web-based laboratory for posing what if questions about climate change and energy balance using our theoretical and empirical models.

2 336 806 €

Start date: 2010-07-01, End date: 2015-12-31