Agreed upon principles
- Participants enter this cooperation based on their previous experience in international comparative research projects and networks. Their proven performance in joint projects in past and present constitutes a solid and realistic basis for the ambition to become the leading European consortium in the domain of migration and integration.
- The participating institutes contribute to the consortium their specialised expertise in the subjects and disciplines that form the building blocks for their common programme. The academic range of the participants extends to all relevant disciplines in the social sciences (political and communication sciences, economics, anthropology, sociology, geography, demography and education), the humanities (history, linguistics and philosophy) and law.
- A common programme and common facilities shall be built up gradually, starting from the existing, still fragmented, forms of cooperation and expanding these in line with the special expertise present within the consortium. Starting from a predefined basic input of researchers and PhD candidates from the participant institutions, the consortium will use the resources requested from the 6FP primarily to build the necessary infrastructure for the consortium and to undertake concrete integrative activities.
- The development of new lines of research will expedite the coherence and commonality of the research programme. The new research lines will be strategic in two senses: they will pertain to issues crucial for European-level policy-making; and they will offer a theory-based design in which both the present members of IMISCOE and future new members, particularly from the Central and Eastern parts of Europe, will implement new research within a shared framework. These new lines of research will be developed in feasibility studies as part of the integrative first phase of the consortium.
- EU policies and their development are to be major sources of inspiration in setting the priorities of a common research programme. This includes the outline of future policy development in the management of migration and integration as set out in the Amsterdam Treaty and later EU documents, as well as the concrete statements and topics specified in paragraph 1.1.7. of the Priority Thematic Areas (social cohesion; globalisation and convergence; the consequences of EU enlargement; new forms of citizenship, including the rights of non-citizens; tolerance; human rights; and racism, xenophobia and other forms of social exclusion).
- The future development of the consortium will be characterised by an open procedure. The consortium will develop a policy to strengthen institutes and expertise in Southern regions (including both sides of the Mediterranean) as well as in Central and Eastern Europe. A promising way to do this is by eliciting the participation of members from these areas in new projects through twinning. Present IMISCOE members will invite starting institutes with which they have good contacts in those regions to do joint research in one of the new strategic research lines. They will aid these institutes in building the necessary infrastructure and expertise, so that they can eventually become independent members in the consortium. A second form of ‘openness’ pertains to individual scholars of high international standing who do not yet work in established programmes or institutes in this field. They should be enabled to put their expertise to use within the consortium programme. A third form will be collaboration with existing specialised networks of experts, as in the field of migration law (the Academic Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe, funded by the Odysseus Programme) and in economics, linguistics and Islamic studies.
- The IMISCOE Network of Excellence will develop an infrastructure to make the results of its research available to the public at large as well as to politicians, policymakers and other stakeholders. Its ambition is to make a difference in public perception and policy-making by contributing sound, knowledge-based information.
As a primarily European Network of Excellence, the consortium will expand the present cooperation between its members and leading experts worldwide: several members already have ongoing cooperative arrangements, particularly in the USA, Canada and Australia—countries with long experience in migration studies and policy
