The EXTERN2 project will focus on the new and different forms of ‘contactless’ external migration control that have been employed by European States to eliminate any physical contact with migrants in transit, delegate to African countries the management of migration and refugee flows, and limit onwards movements to Europe.

The ISRF Grant will assist the work of a small interdisciplinary research group in finalizing, publishing and disseminating two research papers on the findings of a fieldwork that has been carried out in Ethiopia and Tunisia in 2020 thanks to the Global Challenge Research Fund (GCRF).

As refugees are left out any measures of progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), EXTERN2 will conduct substantive research on the impact of these containment policies on the rights of migrants and refugees in transit – an issue which has not been thoroughly addressed in the literature. It will adopt a multidisciplinary qualitative research methodology, within a socio-legal research perspective. Legal analysis will be coupled with qualitative research techniques coming from sociological and anthropological fields, such as ethnographic research, participant observation, semi-structured and in-depth interviews with relevant stakeholders and asylum seekers.

This new methodological approach will consist in the definition of a refugee-sensitive set of standards and indicators to evaluate refugees’ access to protection in the framework of so-called “well-managed migration policies”, in accordance with SDG 10 (“Reduce inequalities within and among countries”), Target 10.7 (“Facilitate orderly, safe, and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies”). In suggesting new solutions to real world social problems, this project purports to overcome the so-called “SDGs refugee gap”, and to provide evidence-based policy recommendations – both to SDG custodian agencies and other relevant stakeholders – to ensure greater protection against human rights violations, and safe access to Europe.