YU

Forced displacement crises overcome societies and institutions all over the world. Pushed by the urgencies rather than events, solutions are frequently reactive, partial, and disregard some groups. The project ‘Reshaping Attention and Inclusion Strategies for Distinctively vulnerable people among the forcibly displaced’ (RAISD) aims at identifying highly Vulnerable Groups (VG) among these forcibly displaced people, analysing their specific needs, and finding suitable practices to address them. The concept of ‘vulnerability context’ considers the interplay between the features of these persons and their hosting communities, their interactions and experiences, and how different solutions for attention and inclusion affect them. As a result of this work, a methodology to carry out these studies will be developed. These goals are aligned with the call. They pursue characterizing these migrations and developing suitable aid strategies for them. The Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) frames the project. It proposes that all actors (including civil society) co-design actions, transversely integrates the gender perspective, and supports sustainability. Our research strategy will be based on methodological triangulation (i.e. the combined application of several methodologies). We will implement it through a specific participatory action research approach to fulfil the aim of undertaking advocacy-focused research, grounded in human rights and socio-ecological models. The team will work as a network of units in countries along migration routes. The units will promote the VG people’ involvement, so they can speak with their own voices, gather information, and test practices. Work will rely on a tight integration of Social and Computer Sciences research. Automated learning and data mining will help to provide evidence-based recommendations, reducing a priori biases. A software tool will support collaboration, continuing previous H2020-funded RRI work.

TRAFIG introduces a novel perspective on protracted displacement situations (PDS) that will improve the protection and resilience of refugees and enhance trust and cooperation between refugees and host communities. It considers the transnational and local connectivity of displaced people and host communities as well as their capability of mobility as socioeconomic and socio-psychological resources that displaced people use and upon which their resilience relies. The project will develop a rapid assessment tool to identify the most vulnerable groups in PDS and to analyse interactions between displaced and host communities. As an evidence-based tool for creating impact, it will support policymakers and practitioners to enhance the self-reliance of displaced people as well as host-refugees relations through tailored programming and policy development. We closely cooperate with key stakeholders throughout the entire life cycle of the project. Our research is based on a novel concept of transnational figurations of displacement that combines the figuration model – a meso-level approach emphasizing the networks of interdependent human beings – with the transnationalism approach and state-of-the-art knowledge on forced displacement. Through comparative empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative, in camps and urban settings at sites in Asia, Africa, and Europe, TRAFIG will answer the following questions: (1) How do displaced people gain access to and make use of humanitarian and migration policies and programmes? (2) Why and how do displaced people live in vulnerable situations and sustain their livelihoods? How can policy support their self-reliance? (3) How do transnational networks shape refugees’ experiences and trajectories? (4) Which processes structure relations between displaced people and host communities? (5) What are the medium and long-term economic impacts of PDS?

D.Rad grounds radicalisation in perceptions of injustice which lead to grievance, alienation and polarisation. Based on a rigorous, cross-national survey of the drivers (injustice, grievance, alienation, polarisation) that can generate violent extremism, it uses innovative machine learning, discourse analysis and social psychology approaches to test projects, tools and dissemination strategies, emphasising the experiences of young people and socially excluded communities, and offering policy and practical recommendations. It will meet challenges posed for radicalisation research by developing online and offline interventions to promote agency, resolution and resilience. D.Rad will benefit from an exceptional breadth of backgrounds. The project spans national contexts including the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Finland, Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Georgia, Austria, and several minority nationalisms. It bridges academic disciplines ranging from political science and cultural studies to social psychology and artificial intelligence. This will involve three core objectives, supplemented by secondary aims: 1. Detect Trends: D.Rad aims to identify the actors, networks, and wider social contexts driving radicalisation, especially in the emerging context of everyday polarisation over mundane issue in micro-spatial environments, in order to base interventions in evidence grounded in contemporary data and methodologies. 2. Resolve Drivers: D.Rad aims to understand the online and offline drivers that turn grievance, alienation and polarisation into radicalisation, so that policies can more effectively target underlying problems of social exclusion. 3. Re-integration and Inclusion: D.Rad aims to understand how individuals affected by grievance, alienation and polarisation can be re-integrated into the established polity or social groups, without compromising personal or collective liberties.