Scientific recognition of the complex relationships between climate, migration and society has increased in recent years, but it often remains incomplete. Misleading claims about mass migration due to climate change persist both in the academic debate, as highlighted by Boas et al. (2019) and Zickgraf (2020), but especially in the media, the public, and politics. While international migration and climate policy makers increasingly portray climate change as a key driver of migration from the Global South to the Global North, this narrative often simplifies complex realities and often lacks empirical foundation (Black et al., 2011). The militarisation of 'climate migration' is reinforced by public funding programmes that prioritise security concerns over comprehensive understanding, such as funding calls under the Horizon 2020 programme (Piguet et al., 2018). These narratives influence border management measures and migration policies in destination countries and perpetuate the myth of "climate migration" or "climate flight" as a security risk (Trombetta, 2014). The planned project aims to 1) identify reasons for the discrepancy between public perception and research (the current state of knowledge would then have to be analysed in the case school and then the survey would have to deepen this). 2) Identify opportunities for better communication of scientific findings. 3) Anchoring the topic permanently in science. By promoting an objective discussion and sensitisation of young scientists, the public and politicians, awareness of the complex links between climate change and migration should be raised. This will ultimately lead to more informed political decisions and a better public debate on these important issues. This project includes a three-day Fall School for Master and PhD students at CIES-Iscte.

Inclusion+ aims at fostering inclusivity and diversity in Erasmus+ mobility at the higher education level by tackling the barriers faced by students with fewer opportunities, namely students with caring responsibilities and students with disabilities, to participate in international mobility. By establishing cooperation between HEIs and host cities Inclusion+ will enhance both host institutional and cities’ inclusivity. Inclusion+ activities are scoping review, dialogue forums, and online survey on inclusivity in student mobility to feed into a storytelling report and an online inventory of promising practices. Collaborative laboratories to co-create recommendations for inclusive mobility for HEIs and host cities and co-design a full-fledged prototype for a mobility app. Development of a roadmap and two factsheet checklists to guide HEIs and host cities on how to improve inclusivity toward Erasmus+ students. Our project aims at improving the partner HEIs’ ability to exchange students in an inclusive way, and foster host cities’ inclusiveness toward international students. Raise awareness at the HEIs and city level of the barriers faced by students with fewer opportunities to participate in Erasmus+ mobility. Support HEIs and host cities’ on how to better respond to the needs of these students.  Website: https://inclusion.iscte-iul.pt/

rregular migration represents a serious challenge worldwide. However, it is difficult to develop and monitor policies because relevant quantitative data are scarce and often outdated or contested. Many questions remain unanswered regarding the way that legal frameworks define migrant irregularity, the characteristics of irregular migrants concerning age, gender, nationality and other socioeconomic variables and the assessment of policies like regularisation. The EU-funded MIrreM project will assess the policies, data needs and estimates that define migrant irregularity in 11 EU Member States, the UK, Canada, US and five transit countries. The project will develop new and innovative methods for measuring irregular migration and 'regularisation scenarios' actively involving relevant stakeholders at every stage of this project.

Despite the Union’s effort to fight against online hate speech (OHS), several reports showed an increase in OHS during 2020-21. The current pandemic provided a context for increased scapegoating and stigmatization, and minority groups are disproportionally targets of hatred discourse. OHS is a persistent threat to the Union’s values and there is a need for more knowledge on its content, detection and countering, as highlighted in the current Call. Portugal, as other member states, has seen an escalation of hate speech against immigrants, racial/ethnic groups, and LGBTIQ communities. However, there is no systematized knowledge nor tools designed to detect, monitor and prevent OHS against these communities. Our project aims at addressing this need, offering a comprehensive, participatory and culturally sensitive approach to analyse, detect, and counter, direct and indirect OHS in Portuguese language. 

"Mapping Out: Portugal on the European anti-immigrant movements map” adds to the “Reaching Out to Close the Border: The Transnationalization of Anti-Immigration Movements in Europe (MAM)” project, led by Kristian Berg Harpviken (PRIO), by incorporating the Portuguese case to its analysis. MAM looks at contemporary European anti-immigration movement in Germany, Italy, Poland, Norway and the UK, analyzing their transnational dynamics and its impact on their national migration agendas. Hence, “Mapping Out” aims to be part of a wider transnational collaboration that focuses on a cutting-edge topic in the migration and social movement’s field. The well-constructed myth about Portugal as a non-racist society has deemed anti-immigrant movements as an absent issue in the country. In 2019, however, the election of a MP affiliated to the far right party raised public awareness to the problem as it attested to the growing support for racist and xenophobic ideas by the population. Against this backdrop, our initiative aims at expanding the knowledge on the Portuguese anti-immigrant movement, following MAM’s threefold analytical focus: 1) interaction (forms and consequences), 2) framing (political-ideological underpinnings) and 3) outcomes (on migration policies). https://mappingout.iscte-iul.pt/"  

The Covid19 outbreak has impacted negatively on the gendered and racial inequalities in science. The closures of schools and care homes imposed more care responsibilities on women, which might have translated in a reduction of their productivity vis-à-vis their male counterparts. Drawing from a multi-method approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods with data triangulation, SAGE19 aims at analysing the consequences of the pandemic on gender inequality in academia and its aftermath.

The outbreak of Covid-19 has had a profound impact on all the social, economic and political life of practically all societies. To help contain the virus and limit pressures on national health care systems, spatial mobility has also been severely affected. Motivated by the rapid spread of Covid-19, countries around the world closed their borders, airlines cancelled their flights and people have been told to stay at home by their governments, limiting human circulation in a manner unprecedented in the post-war period. As a border-crossing and now a border-closing related phenomenon, the global flow of international students has been severely disrupted by social isolation measures put in place without consideration of the consequences for mobility-dependent individuals, a predicament that invites research and analysis. Looking at the Portuguese case, this situation not only reflects the challenges raised by the pandemic in regard to how institutions dependent upon mobility function, but also existing inequalities between the Global North and the Global South, and the socio-economic differentials that have shaped individual experiences of the lockdown: what has become for a many forced displacement from sending countries or an involuntary return home. Some people are evidently better equipped or better situated to cope with the sudden immobility than others. Special attention in our work is given to the impact of lockdown on the quotidian routines of international students, taking into account the new, and existing, challenges they now face, as well as the effectiveness of the response made by host institutions. Empirical evidence is drawn from 30 interviews conducted with international students who were attending Portuguese universities during the lockdown, providing us with illustrations of their capacity to cope with what we have termed ‘pandemic immobility’.

Even if the world is living in the Age of Migration where fluid mobilities and diversity have become common, certain sudden migration flows disrupt societies of origin and destination, mainly when related to humanitarian crisis. Few decades ago, Venezuela was the jewel of Latin American, with high standards of living and economic prosperity, however in the last years, Venezuelans are experiencing an exodus, representing the largest and fastest migration and refugee flows in the world. Latin American countries are taking these migrants. While their governments are designing specific national and regional policies to deal with this unexpected situation, Latin American societies are displaying an array of attitudes, ranging from open arms to intolerance. Other regions where Venezuelans have settled before (United States and Portugal) have seen their numbers increase, and their responses are under consideration. Due to the novelty of the situation, no research has been carried out yet; what is known comes from relief organization reports and news, thus scientific research is needed to understand how Venezuelans are coping, how these fast processes are taking place and what are the policies in place. Using policy analysis, mass-media analysis and interviews, this project aims to study Venezuelan migration in the context of a humanitarian crisis in three countries that have witnessed increasing inflows, Argentina, Portugal and the United States, with different policy responses. Findings will offer insights for public policy to more adequately address the problems encountered by Venezuelans abroad.

This projects is co-funded by FAMI (Fund for the asilum, migration and integration) and addresses the general thematic "Female migrants and refugees", responding to the recent arrival of refugees to Portugal. By focusing on refugee women, the project aims at understanding the specificities of the experiences of refugee women in Portugal in relation to their trajectories, considering social class, sex, religion, nationality, access to education, health, and learning a new language, as well as their expectations, from a gender and intersectional perspective. We want to unveil what are the challenges and vulnerabilities experienced by them and what are the hosting and integration policies and practices offered by the Portuguese system. The methodology is qualitative, including in-depth interviews, action research and the national, regional and local policies and practices.  

Since the beginning of the 21st century, migration and settlement of new Chinese communities in Europe (business migrants, highly skilled migrants, international students and lifestyle migrants) have been growing. In Portugal, the rise of Chinese migrants has followed this trend, demanding a better knowledge on their characteristics as an ethnic group, their migratory pathways and their social and professional trajectories. Current research on this community is still scarce and mainly focused on labour migrants, not considering their heterogeneity as a social group or geographic diversity. This project aims to contribute to the analysis of new Chinese communities in Portugal, through several specific aims: (i) comparative analysis of migratory and transnational flows between Portugal, Europe and China; (ii) characterization of their social, educational and cultural profiles; (iii) identification of their economic and professional activities, having in mind their entrepreneurial strategies, and the opportunities and constrains that they might be subject to; and (iv) the analysis of the trajectories of social integration of first and second generation migrants. The methods to be used in this project will be both quantitative (statistical data) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews, biographic interviews). Team:  Sofia Gaspar (Coord.), Thaís França and Fernando Ampudia de Haro from CIES-IUL; Irene Rodrigues from Orient Institute, ISCSP-ULisboa.

The project is on the interface of migration studies, public policies and education. Specifically, it is dedicated to i) internationalization of higher education in Portugal and ii) international student mobility (MEI) for Portugal. Currently, both topics have considerable prominence in the national agenda given its importance to the economic and social growth of the country. The relevance of the study is justified by the increasing pressure from the European Union (EU) for improvements in the community levels of internationalization of higher education and student mobility. In Portugal, the phenomena present a unique configuration, as only in the last ten years these areas started to gain more structured investments. Moreover, the peculiarities of Portuguese society - the participation of (EU) and the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries, the late development of the higher education system, the recent colonial past, and the economic value of the Portuguese language – give new features to it. The project investigates different analytical contexts: historical, political and social; institutional and local strategies; national and regional interests. It uses qualitative and quantitative methodologies and gender analyses is transversal to it.

The overall aim of this proposal is to create a transnational interdisciplinary research and training network between European and Latin American Universities and Research centres in order to promote transfer of knowledge and to produce innovative research in the field of the multilevel governance of cultural diversity in a comparative perspective.

Scientific mobility is one of the highly-skilled migration forms that have been gaining importance in European efforts to create a common European area for research; initiatives such as ERA, Marie Curie Fellowship, European Network of Mobility Centers and EURAXESS attest to this importance. Thus, this project aims to investigate how Portugal faces this reality. It is known that some initiatives were taken, such as Law 23/2007, facilitating the entry of international students and scientists in the country, research grant programs – FCT, the Gulbenkian and Champalimaud Foundation, Camões Institute – and several bilateral agreements between national and foreign institutions. Therefore, this proposal sets out to examine the impact of these actions in promoting the internationalization of Portuguese academia and to analyze the mobility trajectory taken by national and foreign researchers. In order to accomplish this goal, qualitative and quantitative methodologies will be employed, seeking to encompass the various dimensions of this phenomenon.