The first phase of the THEMIS ran from the start of the project in January 2010 until September 2010. Our teams in the UK, Norway, the Netherlands and Portugal (the project’s four destination countries) each carried out scoping studies focusing on a shortlist of six origin countries: Ukraine, Bangladesh, India, Morocco, Egypt and Brazil.
The studies, including detailed reviews of literature, national and local migration statistics and interviews with key migrant organizations for the six sending countries, were used to categorize the ways in which migration systems to the destination countries have developed.
The findings helped the overall project team to choose Brazil, Morocco and Ukraine as the three origin countries to be the focus of our subsequent research.
Internal briefing papers have also been produced based on selected aspects of this Phase 1 research. Phase 2 involves semi-structured interviews with migrant groups originating from these three countries in two locations in each of the destination countries.