A Knowledge-base for the EU External Migration Policy
Since the early 2000s, the European Union (EU) has been gradually developing its external migration policy, the Global Approach to Migration. In support of the policy, the EU has been funding research that contributes to a knowledge-base on migration issues outside of its borders. This chapter discusses the experiences of the Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration (CARIM) Observatories at the European University Institute (EUI), one of the central knowledge-brokers funded by the European Commission between 2004 and 2013. The research produced by the Observatories was primarily to serve the European policy-makers but, in the spirit of the EU partnership, they were also intended to benefit the partner countries. The success of the Observatories was possible thanks to a complex net of arrangements and multilateral adjustments. The chapter explores the pathways to that success and provides the insights and lessons for consideration regarding the relationship between research and policy-making in an international context.