Quo Vadis? Envisioning Human Mobility For 2050

One year into the coronavirus pandemic that brought the world to a halt, the Open Think Tank Network’s grassroots think tanks partnered with the Kenyan-based youth empowerment organization, The Youth Café, to reflect on the impact of current transformative events on the various forms of migration. Recognizing that the future is unpredictable and to unravel the range of possibilities it holds, a methodology to democratize strategic foresight was pioneered.

This report and an accompanying podcast series, are the results of the participatory strategic foresight process. Diverse perspectives on the future of migration and crowd-sourced migration policy actions were ideated throughout the project.

The project team regrouped the ideas into four key avenues for policymaking to set the political course for the participants’ visions of the future today, which are the following: Fair remuneration and inclusive working conditions for all occupations and contributions to society to end exploitative working conditions for migrants, increase employment prospects and access to education in host communities by expanding inclusive occupations and remuneration-schemes, increasingly subsidizing continuous vocational development and retraining, as well as financially acknowledging efforts such as language studies and care work as valuable contributions to society. 

Addressing the positive impact of migration on the social and economic challenges of an aging society by taking into account the different experiences and skills that migrants bring to the labor market, establishing a job opportunities database, and developing a meaningful and comparable skills assessment tool. 

Increase the decision-making power of cities and local level actors in migration management by recognizing the significant roles and responsibilities of cities in managing human mobility and giving them more competencies to create sustainable urban development, taking into account the views of all actors involved in human mobility and using them to build inclusive, bottom-up governance structures, and allocating resources to cities, and granting them more sovereignty over the establishment of local-level residency schemes, visa regimes, and resettlement decisions. 

Strengthening of urban-rural linkages in the context of climate change resilience and adaptation by abolishing the rural-urban dichotomy and introducing a regional turn in policy action aimed toward climate resilience, establishing a network of model regions, which act as innovation incubators and develop urban-rural resilience strategies and adapting these learnings into capacity-building guidelines for other regions to apply to their needs.  

Policy Kitchen is a policy crowdsourcing methodology developed by foraus – Forum Aussenpolitik/Swiss Forum on Foreign Policy. It enables a diverse network of thinkers from all around the world to find creative policy recipes to pressing foreign policy challenges. The methodology is built on three components: an online crowd innovation platform, interactive workshops, and a support process to create impact with the best-crowdsourced policy recipes. The platform is public and anyone, irrespective of background or location, can participate and contribute ideas. 

With human mobility being called into question across the world due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the way we move – or do not move – has changed rapidly. This unprecedented situation inspired the Open Think Tank Network (OpenTTN), consisting of grassroots think tanks Agora (UK), foraus (CH), Polis180 (DE), and Ponto (AT), to reflect on the impact of the current transformative events on different forms of migration – and to create a participatory process to look into the future. Looking into the future is nothing new. 

Humanity has always tried to anticipate changes, events, and other phenomena that could disrupt our normality and force us to adapt, be it in the form of prophecy, mysticism, art, philosophy, fiction, or with scientific approaches. Yet, we continue to fail to predict the future, because the future is unpredictable. The Covid-19 pandemic has vividly demonstrated this to many of us.

We believe that the future is a common good, therefore everyone should have the right to contribute to shaping our collective future. As grassroots organizations, we have long been seeking to democratize the development of international policy by using innovative crowdsourcing methods and participatory structures. By making strategic foresight participatory, we give citizens the possibility to collectively formulate preferred narratives of the future, opposing the widely perceived lack of agency over our future.

Quo Vadis? Where are you going? This question took on a whole new meaning in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. With the spread of the virus, the concept of human mobility changed dramatically. For the first time, people all around the globe were confronted with a multilateral border shut-down. Even those who took freedom of movement for granted were faced with limitations previously unheard of. 

This unprecedented situation inspired the members of the OpenTTN to partner with The Youth Café to question and reflect upon both the status quo and the many possible futures of human mobility. For that reason, a participatory process to imagine new, more equitable possibilities of human mobility for the future was created. In current migration regimes, passports and citizenship play an essential role in freedoms (of movement, employability, health care access, etc.), or lack thereof, which can be seen as restrictive and unequal for many individuals across the globe. 

Download the podcast series, narrating possible futures for 2050 for our five fictitious personas that guided our process.

The Youth Café works with young men and women around Africa as a trailblazer in advancing youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience and transformative change.

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