The IOM as a knowledge entrepreneur in EU asylum policymaking

International organisations are increasingly important to how the policy challenges of forced and irregular migration are governed. The International Organisation for Migration has emerged as a key international organisation in this policy domain. In particular, it has played an essential role in assisting national governments and regional bodies like the European Union to implement migration management programs on the ground in third countries. Increasingly though, international organisations, like the IOM, have played a crucial role in policy formulation through knowledge production. Scholarship has begun to demonstrate that through ‘technical work’ - impact assessments, cost-benefit analysis, policy modelling and scenario analysis – the IOM has played a key role in evidence-based policymaking in the EU. The aim of this paper is to conceptualise the role played by the IOM in EU policymaking. It seeks to refine our understanding of international organisations by constructing and testing a novel conceptualisation of international organisations as ‘knowledge entrepreneurs.’ In the wake of migration crises across different regions, policymakers’ interest in anticipating and preparing for future migration flows has increased. Here, the IOM has positioned itself as a key authority on migration data and mapping. Its data sources – for example the Migration Data Portal, the Global Migration Flows Interactive App and the Missing Migrants Project – along with its data science and analytics services (e.g. the newly established Global Migration Data Analysis Centre) have been widely relied on by policymakers at both national and regional levels, as well as by researchers and the media, cementing the IOM as a leading technical expert. To demonstrate the concept’s empirical relevance, the project examines the IOM’s knowledge entrepreneurship during the European Union’s latest reforms on asylum and irregular migration