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Research and evidence-based policymaking on migration are currently held back by a severe lack of knowledge. Two years after a vast majority of states adopted the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), most of the data needed to monitor its implementation and impacts are missing. Moreover, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic which has affected all corners of the globe and radically changed migration patterns, raises new questions and challenges in the intersecting domains of migration and public health. Traditional demographic data collection tools (censuses, surveys, registers, administrative records) overlook significant dimensions of migration processes, and innovative approaches based on social media and other sources of big data are still in their infancy. The proposed World Migration Survey (WMS) will generate comparative information with the aim of informing a wide range of policy-relevant debates on the levels, characteristics and dynamics of migration, its causes and consequences, particularly across the global South. -- Introduction -- Recurrent demand for a World Migration Survey -- Rationale for a World Migration Survey -- Social demographic analysis of causes and consequences of migration -- Constructing evidence to address the causes and consequences of migration -- The challenge of concepts and common definitions -- Key methodological issues: questionnaire design -- Key methodological challenges: sample design -- Piloting a WMS: Operational and financial challenges -- Concluding remarks -- References

Migrants form 87 per cent of Qatar’s resident population and 95 per cent of its workforce, and 71 per cent of them are employed in low-income occupations. The country has a GDP per capita which is among the world’s highest. It also has a fairly good reputation regarding rule of law and justice, which has significantly improved in recent years, in particular since the embargo imposed on the country by other Arab countries. Yet, according to numerous reports by media, human rights activists, international organisations and academics, low-income migrant workers in Qatar can be subjected to poor conditions and their rights violated. In November 2017, the Government of Qatar and ILO signed a technical cooperation agreement to gradually ensure compliance with ratified labour conventions and achieve fundamental rights at work in a gradual manner during the period 2018-2020. Since this research was done in the period March-November 2018, it provides a neat ex ante picture of the situation in Qatar before the reform programme was implemented.

Migrants form 88 per cent of the UAE’s resident population (2010 estimates) and up to 95 per cent of its workforce (Dubai 2017). Sixty to 70 per cent of them are employed in low-income occupations. The country has a GDP per capita among the world’s highest and a fairly good reputation regarding the rule of law and justice. Yet, according to numerous reports by media, human rights activists’, international organisations and academics, low-income migrant workers in the UAE can be subjected to poor conditions and their rights violated.

‘Stopping migration’; ‘closing the borders’; ‘exiting the European Union’; ‘regaining the nation’s independence’; ‘protecting our identity’. From the UK Independence Party to France’s Front National, to the myriad nationalist, populist, and xenophobic movements flourishing across Europe, anti-immigration and anti-EU slogans go hand in hand. The ongoing relaying of facts about migration by the media indeed makes a great impression on European public opinion. Masses of forcibly displaced people cramming into the European neighbourhood; disorderly crowds moving across member states’ borders; would-be migrants stuck in some of the world’s most dangerous countries waiting for a passage to European shores; inoperative distinctions between economic migrants and refugees; the patent failure of international protection; the inability of the European Union to deal with migration-related tensions – the list goes on. In Europe, migration has become one of the most serious threats to the survival of the Union. But is it an external threat or an internal one, an attack from abroad by migrants, or one from within by politicians manipulating facts about migration?