
The project Quantifying Migration Scenarios for Better Policy (QuantMig) has been featured by the European Commission in its series of 'Success stories' of EU-funded research. PRIO was one of seven institutions that carried out the project.
'We built the project in a way that each research stream fed directly into another. This ensured that our estimates of past and current migration trends could directly shape our models for future scenarios,' project coordinator Jakub Bijak (University of Southampton) told the European Commission.
PRIO was responsible for some of the foundational pieces in the bigger project puzzle. They included the first systematic review of survey-based research on what makes people want to migrate, and a specific analyses of conflict-related and climate-related causes of migration.
This research not only fed into other parts of QuantMig, but also informed other projects at the PRIO Migration Centre.
QuantMig officially ended in 2023, with six reports delivered by PRIO researchers. Parts of the research have been developed further and turned into scientific articles and book chapters. The following have been published and several others are under way:
- Marta Bivand Erdal, Mathilde Bålsrud Mjelva & Andreas Forø Tollefsen (2025) Conceptualizing and Measuring Conflict-Related Determinants of Migration. Journal article in Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies.
- Marta Bivand Erdal; Maryam Aslany; Andreas Forø Tollefsen; Mathilde Bålsrud Mjelva; Jørgen Carling; Tone Sommerfelt; Halvard Buhaug; Jonas Vestby & Cathrine Talleraas (2024) Migration drivers across time and space: selected examples. Book chapter in From Uncertainty to Policy: A Guide to Migration Scenarios.
- Mathias Czaika, Marta Bivand Erdal & Cathrine Talleraas (2023) Exploring Europe’s external migration policy mix: on the interactions of visa, readmission, and resettlement policies. Journal article in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.
- Mathilde Bålsrud Mjelva & Jørgen Carling (2023) Surveys on migration aspirations, plans and intentions: a comprehensive overview. Journal article in Open Research Europe.
See PRIO's QuantMig page for publications by PRIO researchers and the QuantMig website for output from across the project. For new publications from the PRIO Migration Centre, subscribe to the PRIO Migration Update.