Informing Migrants to Manage Migration? An Analysis of IOM’s Information Campaigns

Abstract

This chapter investigates the role played by information in migration management. A cross-cutting argument in the global policy discourse on international migration is the lack of appropriate information regarding migration, both among potential migrants and the population of destination states. Information campaigns would be needed to address such disinformation, which generates irrational behaviours and thus jeopardizes some of the positive outcomes expected from ‘properly managed’ migration. Yet, the analysis of the information campaigns that are actually put in place reveals several gaps between this rhetoric and the practice. This illustrates some of the imbalances of migration management initiatives, and their proximity to objectives of migration control.