Stopping it at source: Migration decision- and policy-making in Afghanistan

该项目审查了欧盟阻止移民和将被拒绝的寻求庇护者送回阿富汗的战略的影响。它询问潜在移民及其政府如何收集、整理和评估来自不同来源的有关移民的信息。本研究报告的重点是一个有移徙历史和文化的国家，该国处于日益不安全、失业严重和不断增加、情况和政策迅速变化的时期，移徙被视为一种解决办法，也是一个问题。过去四十年来，阿富汗一直是全球被迫移徙人数最多的来源国。塔利班政府垮台后，从邻国大规模返回的人数大大减少，外流仍在继续。在过去两年中，由于国际部队撤离后塔利班和其他叛乱分子死灰复燃，经济因政治不确定性和日益不安全而急剧收缩，总统承认安全部队无法保护个人，以及2015年夏季欧洲向难民开放边界的看法，移民急剧增加。到2015年底，目的地国（和捐助国）政府通过宣传活动做出回应，寻求减少或转移前往他们方向的移民数量，并警告阿富汗政府，进一步的援助将取决于减少向外移民和接受强制遣返的合作（欧盟新的“多买多，少买少”战略）。这是一个挑战，因为在一种文化中，移徙传统上是一种生存战略，是对危机的“正常”反应，而且国外家庭成员的信息流动在很大程度上鼓励离境。本研究探讨了对阿富汗决策者和阿富汗公民的压力。这两个群体都试图在严格受限的情况下，根据相互竞争、相互冲突和不完善的信息做出决策。该项目有三个工作流程，与阿富汗利益相关者协商制定：我们寻求了解不同信息来源的方式和原因我们将研究阿富汗的移民政策制定，重点是对目的地国/捐助国阻止大规模移民的压力的反应;我们将探讨在阿富汗流行文化（生存策略，冒险，投资），形成上述过程的背景下被迫迁移的代表。作为一个有着长期被迫移民历史的国家，我们将考虑流行文化是否使移民“正常化”，以及与之相关的机遇和风险。我们将收集两种民族语言中涉及移民的流行诗歌，这项研究特别重要，因为它探讨了阿富汗对既定的（宣传运动）和欧盟决策者为减少来自发展中国家的移民而采取的新的（多付多，少付少）战略。与来自社会科学和艺术的阿富汗研究人员团队一起，我们将采用一系列方法（在12个月的时间内与潜在移民和阿富汗政策制定者进行重复访谈，对流行文化[歌曲和诗歌]进行文本分析，导致戏剧学生拍摄戏剧表演。这将是阿富汗学者首次以本国语言编写关于阿富汗移徙问题的国际优秀学术研究报告。

This project examines the impact of EU strategies to discourage migration and return rejected asylum seekers back to Afghanistan. It asks how information from different sources about migration is gathered, sorted and evaluated by potential migrants and by their government. The study focuses on a country with a history and culture of migration during a period of increasing insecurity, severe and growing unemployment, and rapidly changing circumstances and policies, where migration is seen as both a solution and a problem. Afghanistan has been a source country for the largest number of forced migrants globally for the past four decades. The large scale returns from neighboring countries that followed the fall of the Taliban government have slowed significantly and outflows have continued. Over the past two years, migration has sharply increased in response to the resurgence of the Taliban and other insurgents following the withdrawal of international forces, a sharp contraction in the economy due to political uncertainty and growing insecurity, the acknowledgement by the President that the security forces could not protect individuals and the perception in summer 2015 that Europe had opened its borders to refugees. By the end of 2015, the governments of destination (and donor) countries responded with information campaigns seeking to reduce and or deflect the number of migrants heading in their direction, and warned the Afghan government that further aid would be contingent on cooperation in reducing out-migration and accepting forced returns (the EU's new 'more for more, and less for less' strategy). This is a challenge given a culture in which migration has traditionally been a survival strategy, a 'normal' response to crises, and given the flow of information from family members abroad largely encouraging departure. This study explores the pressures on both the Afghan policymakers and Afghan citizens. Both groups seek to make decisions in severely constrained circumstances, on the basis of competing, conflicting and imperfect information. The project has 3 work streams, developed in consultation with Afghan stakeholders: We seek to understand how and why different information sources (families, friends, agents, the media, governments) are validated while others are discounted by potential migrants; We will study Afghan migration policy-making with a focus on responses to pressures by destination/donor states to stop large scale emigration; We will explore representations of forced migration in Afghan popular culture (survival strategy, adventure, investment), which forms the backdrop to the above processes. As a country with a long history of forced migration in particular, we will consider whether popular culture 'normalises' migration and the opportunities and risks associated with it. We will gather popular poetry and songs in the two national languages that refer to migration, migrants and those left behind.The study is particularly important because it explores the response in Afghanistan to established (information campaigns) and new (more for more, less for less) strategies adopted by EU policy-makers in their drive to reduce migration from developing countries. Together with a team of Afghan researchers from the Social Sciences and the Arts, we will employ a range of methods (repeat interviews with potential migrants and with Afghan policy-makers over a period of 12 months, a textual analysis of popular culture [songs and poetry] leading to a filmed theatrical performance by Theatre students. This will be the first time that Afghan scholars have produced internationally excellent academic research on migration in Afghanistan in the national languages.