Histories and Futures: Two Decades of COMPAS Migration Research

'P' is for Policy: Migration Policy and the Academy

Professor Martin Ruhs, Deputy Director of the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) at the European University Institute (EUI)

Dr Sarah Spencer CBE, Senior Fellow at COMPAS, University of Oxford

Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory, COMPAS

Migration research inevitably intersects with politics, and from the outset, COMPAS has been proactive in its engagement with policymakers, media and civil society actors working on migration issues. This discussion will consider what the role of the academy should be in the politics of migration: Does migration studies run the risk of providing a veneer of academic authority and credibility to activism? Are we speaking truth to power or just giving new tools and ideas for power to exploit or ignore? Will the migration researchers working 20 years from now be more or less engaged with politics? 

'S' is for Society: Exchange, Impact and Empowerment

Professor Bridget Anderson, University of Bristol

Professor Michael Keith, COMPAS, Director of PEAK Urban, Co-ordinator of Urban Transformations and co-director of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities

Professor Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham and Chair of International Migration and Forced Displacement and Director of IRiS

The essence of COMPAS’s work for two decades has been undertaking research designed to have a societal impact. But what sort of real effects does migration research have on communities? Does migration researchers' work inevitably create a better society – or can we also make things worse? What are the boundaries of “migration studies” in a globalised society where almost no aspect is unaffected by migration and where understanding immobilities is as critical as understanding mobility? 

The Future of Migration Research: Where Next?

Professor Carlos Vargas-Silva, Professor of Migration Studies and former Director of COMPAS

Jacqueline Broadhead, Director of the Global Exchange on Migration & Diversity, COMPAS

Over the last 40 years – particularly in the 20 years since COMPAS was founded - there has been an explosion in the study of migration. Innumerable projects, articles, books and reports have emerged from academics, research centres, and institutions representing many disciplines. So, has migration studies “grown up”? Have we reached a point where Migration Studies should now be considered a discipline in its own right? Or is it still a more diverse, undefinable or even disruptive subject that cannot or should not be hemmed in by the walls of a disciplinary silo? 

Genesis (and Revelations?)

Professor Steven Vertovec, Founding Director of the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, University of Göttingen

Nicholas Van Hear, Emeritus Fellow at COMPAS and the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (SAME), University of Oxford

Emma Newcombe, Migration Mobilities Bristol

Please note that this seminar occurred at Lecture Theatre, HB Allen Centre, Keble College.

The development and future trajectory of migration studies will be defined, at least partly, by the foundations on which it has been built. In this discussion, we will look at how migration studies have developed over the last 20 years through the prism of migration research at Oxford. We will discuss how changing global realities have shaped – and will continue to shape – how we understand migration, its drivers and its effects. COMPAS was forged in the academic and policy context of the first years of the millennium: The Blair government, the expansion of the EU, 9/11 and the wars that followed; the rise of the BRICs and the shifting and complex geopolitics of the post-Soviet era. The rise of migration studies as a powerful, exciting and vital component of the academy for the 21st century also called for something different – a work highly focused on policy impact and communications. But after 20 years, what – if anything – has the COMPAS approach achieved? How has the world, migration, and migration research changed? And what should migration research – and a migration research institute - looking to the next 20 years be doing?