Novelty

The novelty of MARS, and its innovation potential, is rooted in its approach comprising: 

1) A solid international consortium, with participants based in 18 countries, involving leading specialists studying migratory processes in non-Western migration hubs, such as the Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, North Africa, the Gulf States, West and Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and East Asia; 

2) A highly multidisciplinary research environment involving partners from various disciplines in each Research Stream (RS): migration studies, political science and international relations, development studies, sociology of law, law, sociology, social anthropology, geography, and interdisciplinary area studies. 

3) A multisectoral engagement with partners from academia, diaspora organisation, government external migration agency, a law enforcement body, civil society and business actor providing consultancy services in the field of migration. Due to the highly multisectoral composition of the Consortium, MARS fellows will obtain not only theoretical understanding but will also have opportunities to study the perspective of a variety of actors interested in migration; 

4) Innovative migration research: MARS fellows will go beyond traditional migration research by decentring the Western-centric approaches and frameworks. Instead of the standard application of Western-centric theories and frameworks, MARS fellows’ projects consider context-specific features in non-Western migration locales that can be of global relevance and applicability. Hence, this approach entails bringing forward alternative “epistemic approaches, philosophies and methodologies” in the study of non-Western migration locales through the involvement of leading specialists on non-Western migration regimes and non-academic partners and associated academic partners in our Consortium. This will enable fellows to access key field sites which are usually out of the reach of other researchers. 

5) A gender-conscious approach will ensure that our research on migration involves an intrinsic gender dimension. Not only will gender be mainstreamed in the training programme, but MARS fellows will also investigate the nexus between migration and gender in different non-Western migration locales. All fellows will receive training in how to conduct gender-sensitive research so that gender considerations will inform their research design and data collection.