Migration Policy Indexes: A Mapping Exercise

In the framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, high attention is put on migration and in particular on ‘planned and well-managed migration policies’. To compare policies across time and space, several migration policy indexes have been devised in the academic and policy literature to measure and aggregate policy trends. This report maps and analyses migration policy indexes, explaining their methodologies, and describing their main findings. A map of these initiatives will provide some clarity, allowing for a comparison and guidance for their use. The report focuses primarily on immigration (admission) policies, and marginally on immigrant (integration) policies. A further distinction is on sector-specific indexes - dealing exclusively with individual policy areas (e.g. asylum, or labour migration) -, and comprehensive indexes - aiming at a thorough description of the wide spectrum of asylum and migration policies that may be adopted by States. As practical applications, this report provides for comparisons between and guidance to the various indexes; detects gaps and best practices in the methodologies; is accompanied by a meta-database of policy indexes as a reference for quantitative analyses of policies; and discusses how these indexes can support policy-makers in policy monitoring. The report concludes by recapping what we have learnt about migration policy trends thanks to these indexes, in particular on the restrictive or liberal nature of the policies, the specific case of the EU, the typologies of policies being adopted, and more broadly on the governance of migration.