Themes

Our research is organised around four parallel programmes of work:

Axes of inequality including gender, childhood and income.

Migration processes and outcomes including decision-making, intermediaries and resource flows.

Development interventions to reduce migration-related inequalities through political mobilisation, access to justice and the use of digital technologies.

This programme delivers a series of development interventions in collaboration with local partners to test MIDEQ’s findings in the later years of the project.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) through comparative household surveys, a wide range of creative and visual methodologies, and the evaluation of MIDEQ’s interventions. Read more about our methodology.

Our structure maximises opportunities for comparative research within and between the corridors. It also provides opportunities for co-development and co-learning within MIDEQ.

Gender inequalities

The links between gender and migration are well-understood, with extensive research on the highly gendered nature of migration drivers, dynamics and impacts associated with processes of societal transformation.

Childhood inequalities

Children are affected by migration in different ways.

Poverty and income inequalities

Millions of workers and their families move between the countries of the Global South each year, seeking to reduce what they see as the gap between their own position and people in other, wealthier places.

Migrant perceptions, knowledge and decision-making

Assumptions about the factors influencing migrant decision-making often underpin policy responses to migration.

Migration intermediaries

Migration intermediaries can take many different forms: smugglers, brokers, gatos, employment agencies, coyotes, saloceiros, village heads, teachers, travel agencies and family members or wider social networks.

Resource flows

Resource flows between migrants, their families and wider communities include money (remittances, diaspora investment), trade (goods, services) and knowledge (technology, skills, business capabilities).

Political mobilisation and transnational solidarity

Migrants’ ability to move, work, and seek protection depends on their ability to access rights, resources and other opportunities for social and political integration.

Legal remedies and access to justice

Regardless of their nationality or reasons for moving, migrants enjoy the same fundamental human rights as all human beings under international human rights law.

Digital technologies and inequality

Access to and use of digital technologies has wide-ranging consequences for development.

Adaptive programming

We use theory-based evaluation to inform the development of interventions for political mobilisation and transnational solidarity; legal remedies and access to justice; and digital technologies and inequality.

Arts, creative resistance and well-being

Where development work engages the arts and culture, it typically does so to communicate findings, educate or mediatise.