Immigration policy research boost

Asylum seekers at the Channel Tunnel

Immigration, migrant workers and asylum-seekers are to be studied in a research centre to be opened at the University of Oxford.

With much political pressure surrounding the subject in the United Kingdom and across Europe, the research centre will analyse the social and economic implications of migration.

The Centre for Migration, Policy and Society is to be funded with a £3.3m grant over five years from the economic and social research council.

And it aims to be the "national focal point" for providing a clearer research-based understanding of this politically-charged subject.

The centre is intended to provide advice for the government and other agencies involved in setting immigration policy.

Researchers will explore migration and population trends - and will examine the circumstances in which migrants leave their home countries.

Global mobility

"Migration, asylum and social integration are ever-rising subjects on the agendas of policy-makers around the world," says the centre's director, Steven Vertovec.

The centre is intended to advise policy makers of how immigration, the labour market, social attitudes and economic changes are all interwoven.

It will examine "key aspects of global mobility and migration".

These will include "means of migration, integration and social change", the relationship between immigration and asylum-seeking and "migration management".

The research centre will draw together the work of three Oxford institutions, the Transnational Communities Programme, Refugee Studies Centre and the Centre for Migration Policy Research.