Speaking Truth to Power? Why Civil Society, Beyond Academia, Remains Marginal in EU Migration Policy

Abstract

The dynamics of the EU’s research-policy nexus may have made it more difficult for other stakeholders than academia and policymakers to influence EU policymaking in the field of migrant integration. The general absence of migrant voices and of civil society more generally from the research-policy nexus is the result of several factors that have positioned migrants as the object of study and recipients of policy measures rather than as active contributors. These factors include: the lack of transparency and accountability in EU migration policymaking; the focus of much migration research on policy concerns (currently integration and security); the use of research methodologies that investigate migration-related topics from theoretical and expert, academic positions; and the exclusion of migrant voices from media coverage. All of these are analysed in this chapter, which concludes that, in the end, the voices of migrants and of researchers alike, even of those who use the most innovative methodologies, are unlikely to have significant or measurable impact on the policy priorities of the member states and in the EU Council of Ministers.