BRIDGES: Assessing the production and impact of migration narratives

“BRIDGES: assessing the production and impact of migration narratives” is a Horizon 2020 project that analyses the causes and consequences of narratives in a context of increasing polarisation and politicisation around migration issues in Europe. The project pursues a three-fold objective:

• Analysing the processes of narratives’ production and impact, and why some narratives become dominant over others, from an academic perspective.
• Fostering evidence-based policies in the field of migration and integration by providing policy recommendations at the EU and national levels.
• Creating spaces for dialogue between the actors involved in narratives’ production in order to boost the exchange of good practices at the societal level.

Photo by Brett Jordan

To do so, BRIDGES adopts an interdisciplinary and co-productive approach and is implemented by a diverse consortium of 12 universities, research centres, think tanks, cultural associations, and civil society organisations from all over Europe, under the coordination of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). The project aims to build BRIDGES between different disciplines and methodologies, between the study of narratives’ production and impact, and between research and practice.

BRIDGES analyses how narratives are produced in the media arena and how they impact the attitudes and beliefs of individuals and policymakers, who become producers of narratives in turn. To this end, the project combines approaches from History, Sociology, Political Science, Media Studies, and Social Psychology. Under the guidance of the BRIDGES Gender Observatory, it also adopts a gender, intersectional perspective in all its activities, from data gathering and analysis to communication and dissemination campaigns.

BRIDGES focuses on Europe as a whole, and on six European countries in particular: France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. It also studies the impact of EU-funded information campaigns on potential migrants’ decisions in countries of origin and transit, such as Gambia and Sudan.

The project seeks to engage with the main actors involved in narratives’ production at the media, societal and policy levels through an integrated social media and communications strategy, as well as targeted activities, like workshops, an itinerant photo-journalism exhibition and a two-fold hip-hop contest involving a mural painter and a rap singer. BRIDGES will also release a toolkit on innovative practices to counter exclusionary narratives on migration that will be jointly produced with civil society organisations, as well as several videos and podcasts that will count with the participation of experts and key stakeholders.

Since its kick off in March 2021, BRIDGES has already released the Guidelines on how to include the gender perspective in the analysis of migration narratives, co-authored by Berta Güell, and Sònia Parella; as well as a video on the concept of narrative featuring several experts from the Consortium, including BRIDGES Scientific Coordinator Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas.

BRIDGES: Bridging the gaps in the study of migration narratives

All these outputs and activities can be checked out on the BRIDGES website and will be soon collected, together with more updates, in the first newsletter of the project, which also comes with its own Twitter account and Youtube channel.

By Cristina Sala i Soler, Communications Assistant at CIDOB

The views and opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the TRAFIG Consortium or the European Commission (EC). TRAFIG is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.