Policy Elites’ Understandings about the Determinants of Migration Decisions

The regulation of migration has become a highly salient and highly divisive policy issue in many high- and lower-income countries. But how much do policy elites and decision-makers actually know about the reasons why individuals decide to migrate? Do their understandings match migrants’ actual decision-making patterns and behavior? To address these questions, this paper investigates policy elites’ understandings of migration decisions. It adopts a multi-level, comparative perspective, focusing on European and African policy elites’ understandings of the factors driving migration between Africa and Europe. The analysis involves a multi-country conjoint experiment and standard survey fielded between February and May 2024 to policy actors involved in migration governance in Africa and Europe. The sample includes representatives from the European Union (EU Commission, Parliament, European External Action Service, European Asylum Agency, FRONTEX), the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the East African Community, and the Intergovernmental Authority for Development; as well as officials from the International Organization for Migration, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and from a select group of European and African countries’ ministries and institutions (e.g. Foreign Affairs, Interior, and Labour). The conjoint survey experiment with European and African policy elites is part of a paired experiment on elites and migrants, with the survey of migrants following later in 2024. These linked surveys will permit the first-ever direct comparison between the decision-making patterns of migrants in Africa, and the understandings that officials governing migration from the continent have about migrants’ behavior. The study is part of the EU Horizon 2022 project DYNAMIG, "How migration decisions are made: diverse aspirations, trajectories and policy effects."