The Drivers of Migration Governance

The paper explores the causes and consequences of cognitive biases held by actors in migration governance systems in Europe. Based on extensive interview data, the paper will analyse understandings held by actors in migration governance systems, meaning those who seek to make or shape policy, about the causes and effects of international migration in its various forms. The paper will also use this interview material to interrogate understandings of risk and uncertainty and to learn more about how these shape institutional responses to international migration now and in the future. The paper will demonstrate an understanding amongst these actors that something fundamental has changed in the underlying drivers of migration. This has been characterised as a 'new normal'. This paper will relate these understandings to contemporary situation debate. By doing so it will attempt to address a gap in migration research. This gap is marked by a tendency to focus on the outcomes or outputs of governance systems rather than to assess the motives of motivations of actors within these systems.