Policies, projections and migration capital: Insights from the Ankara consortium meeting

2025 June 01

How do you turn around a region caught in a downward spiral of population decline? This question was high on the agenda as project partners from across Europe gathered for their fifth consortium meeting in this spring, hosted at the Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies in Ankara. Over two days of presentations, coding workshops, and dashboard design sessions, the PREMIUM_EU team dug deep into the data, compared early results, and took significant steps into the synthesis stage.

With policy tools under construction and regional narratives coming into focus, the Ankara meeting was all about connecting the dots between migration and development, stories and statistics, and between what’s happening on the ground and what’s showing up in policy.

Getting under the skin of population change

Population decline is often treated as primarily an economic issue, but the team in Ankara made it clear that it’s more than that. “We read a lot about population decline at a high abstract level,” said Claudius Ströhle from IIASA. “PREMIUM can contribute nuanced findings from the actors themselves.”

Much of the discussion focused on what actually drives people to move, stay, or move back. Through mobility models and projections, the project tracks both internal and international migration trends. At the same time, qualitative interviews from case studies in countries like Poland, Austria, and Turkey are helping to explain the “why” behind the numbers. From language barriers and housing challenges to career choices and family decisions, the factors shaping migration are rarely just economic.

The topic of return migration brought intresting discussion during the meeting days. In both Poland and Turkey, fieldwork shows that many migrants come back with valuable skills, experiences, and networks—but often find few ways to put them to use. “There’s a waste of migration capital,” noted Michał Wanke from Cracow University of Economics. “They learn a lot abroad, but neither they nor their regions know how to use that knowledge.”

This kind of untapped potential isn’t just a missed opportunity for individuals. It’s also a policy gap. From interviewing migrants and stakeholders in Austria, Claudius Ströhle reminded the group that remittances are only one part of the picture. “We focus so much on money sent home,” he said. “But returnees also bring back ideas, worldviews, and social connections.”

Case findings from Spain brought in the perspective of growing diversity of rural life and the importance of foreign mobility in the economy. “Rural diversity can be as diverse as urban ones, especially in the younger generations,” Osama Damoun from CED noted, pointing to the role of migrant communities in shaping vibrant local economies. The team emphasised that the development of rural areas is deeply linked to the arrival and settlement of migrants, who often become drivers of innovation and renewal.

Beyond isolated policies

Alongside stories from the field, the consortium also got a closer look at the ongoing work to map and categorise regional policies. Using web-scraping techniques, part of the team is gathering policy documents to understand how migration and regional development are actually addressed on paper. Still, as noted by Peter Meister-Broekema from HUAS, “all the policies together, intertwined, are what makes a region." Whether it's housing, education, or economic strategy, the way policies interact often matters more than any single programme.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to regional development. However, a catalogue of policies combined with development scores that account for social factors as much as economic indicators can offer a clearer picture of priority areas and potential solutions. Becky Arnold from NIDI highlighted that social and living environment indicators “really matter,” adding that “an inhomogeneous score across regions should interest policymakers.”

This complexity is shaping the PREMIUM_EU Regional Migration Policy Dashboard, which is now taking form. The dashboard won’t just show maps and numbers but includes typologies of regional development, quotes from case interviews and filtered data on migration flows. The team discussed how to make it intuitive and accessible without oversimplifying, and following the session in Ankara, the development team is now closer to a final structure. The tool will continue to evolve with feedback from the Resilient Regions Expert Group in the fall.

Looking ahead

The meeting wrapped up with planning for the final months of the project. In addition to the dashboard launch, a final event is in the works to spotlight key findings around regional revitalisation and the drivers and benefits of migration. The team also reflected on the legacy of the project and how to make sure the data and tools live on.

One of the strongest takeaways from Ankara? Migration and regional development aren’t separate stories. They’re deeply linked, and better policy starts with seeing those links more clearly.

Here, the significance of good data cannot be overstated. More data collection will be essential for future efforts to expand on the work of mapping and uncovering the many ways migrants and mobility shape daily life in regions and local communities. Policymakers have the power to make them livable and attractive for people, families, newcomers. As the project manager Leo van Wissen, NIDI, put it, “You can still have an attractive region even with population decline. It depends on how you frame the story and what you do with it.”

Now in its final year, the PREMIUM_EU team is focused on the final stretch: making research not just visible, but useful. Stay tuned for the policy dashboard delivery and upcoming final event in Brussels. In the meantime – are you interested in learning about return migration and getting real migrant stories from Turkey, Poland and Austria? Sign up to join our next webinar, 10 September: "Moving back or moving forward? Rethinking return migration"