What has PREMIUM been up to in 2023?

2023 December 18

Quite a lot…

Research is ongoing and already showing promising potential. There are seven work packages, working together and in parallel, to make sure we use mobility data, migrant stories and regional development effects to reveal policy pathways that better connect migration benefits to the needs of vulnerable regions.



 

Project meeting in Krakow

In October the historic city of Krakow hosted 20 consortium members and 12 special guests - local decision makers from the Sustainable Hub to Engage into Rural Policies with Actors (SHERPA) project. 

The project met to discuss progress and organizational bottlenecks, while our guests, each representing different rural regions in Europe, inspired us about how to take research results from the report to real-life action. Policy makers are intensely engaged with the development of their regions, but are not researchers. Interpreting big data and qualitative interviews is not on their agenda and therefore an interactive dialogue and collaboration is crucial to making sure the PREMIUM_EU project stays aligned to the core stakeholders our research is meant for. 

Each representative had their own best practices to share, opening up their regions like living labs, and taking an active part in finding lasting results to better engage their citizens in the development and policies of their home regions. 

Though SHERPA’s focus is on rural regions, migration is a key concern to sustaining their populations. Particularly as industries and sectors are in almost constant transition. Migration is not only an urban, EU or global issue, but the key to understanding some of the most remote areas, which is why we will be keeping the SHERPA representatives as close contacts throughout the project.  

EU Week of The Regions and Cities

Outreach and policy networking is a constant of this project, but certain events bring all the right people together at the same place. That place is EU Week of The Regions and Cities, and PREMIUM_EU attended this year for the first time. As we don’t have any final results yet, we were there in a learning and networking capacity. 

Peter Meister-Broekema, leader of the Regional Development Effects Module (work package 4) and Anne Katrine Ebbesen, head of communication and the Regional Policy Dashboard (work package 7) participated in about 15 seminars, workshops, events and sessions. We learned more about how to retain and attract talent in EU rural areas, the role of civil society in regional growth, and even met some of our SHERPA partner colleagues, who were panelists and workshop hosts in the sessions. 

There were plenty of lessons and contacts to take with us back to the project, to integrate into the research and network going forward. 



What’s to come in 2024?

Here’s a few glimpses… 

Results will start to reveal themselves and dissemination will follow closely behind. Along with attending several academic conferences, we will condense and communicate our findings here on our website, our social media and in our newsletter. Subscribing to said newsletter will pay off, as this is the first platform we will announce new events and news on. 

New partner project

In exciting news, we will formally announce our partnership with the MOBI-TWIN project in early January next year and what that means for PREMIUM_EU. The MOBI-TWIN project focuses on twin transitions' (the green and digital) effect on spatial mobility in Europe. Like us, they look at both the challenges and opportunities to spatial mobility and the interplay with regional attractiveness, though MOBI-TWIN branches out into a sustainable and digital perspective, where PREMIUM_EU  on the regional impact of mobility on the policy opportunities. 



Next project meeting

Copenhagen, more specifically Statistics Denmark, will host our next physical project meeting in the Spring of 2024. Coming together in these meetings is important to calibrate the methodologies and make sure that the ten consortium institutes and universities are on the same page, as each part of the project feeds into each other. 

Designing a prototype for the Regional Policy Dashboard will be the focus of the next project meeting, as well as the budding results of the social media survey data, datasets of migration flows, indicators of national mobility among other ongoing research. 

First annual event 

“Meet PREMIUM_EU” at our first annual event with the same title. We will open the project doors to present the methodologies and approaches that make us stand out as a mobility project that also looks at regional development, regression, depopulation, and what makes the difference when it comes to using policy to maximize the benefits of mobility. Our researchers will guide you through the project’s first steps, leading into a dialogue about new approaches to migration data. 

Details will be announced in the beginning of 2024, as the event will take place digitally, in April. 

Say updated on our 2024 progress here on our website or by subscribing to our newsletter.