Dr de Haas will use the grant to study the determinants of international migration through a theoretical and empirical assessment of policy, origin and destination effects.
This project will seek to answer the question: how do migration policies of receiving and sending states affect the size, direction and nature of international migration to and from wealthy countries? The project is expected to generate groundbreaking insights in the way policies shape migration processes in their interaction with other migration determinants. It will also generate new data, improve insight in the drivers of migration processes and provide empirical tests of migration transition theory, which hypothesises that the links between human development and migration are positive and curvilinear rather than linear and inversely proportional.
ERC Starting Grants aim to support the creation of excellent new research teams to conduct pioneering frontier research in any field of science, engineering and scholarship. This five year grant will allow Dr de Haas to establish a research team within the International Migration Institute consisting of a research officer, a research assistant and two funded DPhil studentships.
The European Research Council (ERC) was launched in January 2007 with a mandate to award basic-research grants solely on the judgment of panels of scientific reviewers. The aim is to create the first large, pan-European competition for basic research.