Dr. James Dennison

Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) programmes have emerged as a migration governance tool used by many national governments and supranational organisations in the 21st century. They fund—typically irregular or stranded—migrants to return to their origin countries whereafter they provide support aimed at “sustainable reintegration”. AVRR reintegration support is classified by the International Organization for Migration, which administers around 95% of AVRR programmes globally, as “economic”, “social”, and “psycho-social”. However, AVRR programmes have received several criticisms from academics and activists. The academic literature on measuring reintegration, identifying the causes of reintegration success, and identifying the causes of AVRR participation are nascent but provide a basis by which policymakers can understand how to improve AVRR outcomes. Therefore, this study identifies how communication can contribute to AVRR objectives.

Public communication has the potential to do enormous good for humanity. Regarding migration, public communication can be used to meet widely agreed-upon policy objectives such as safe, orderly, and regular migration. Moreover, it can help governments uphold democratic legal- and rights-based policy frameworks against nefarious forces and contribute to maximising the potential benefits and minimising the potential costs of migration to origin, transit, and host country populations, as well as to migrants themselves. In line with ongoing research from the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) and the EUROMED Migration programme on how to use public communication to re-balance migration narratives and protect the rights, safety, and opportunities of migrants, this report asks how we can use persuasive communication to achieve policy goals regarding irregular migration. It gathers lessons learned and provides practical recommendations, with a particular focus on the Euro-Mediterranean region and the activities of the European Union.

Emotions are regularly cited as vital components of effective strategic communication in the world of migration and beyond. However, until this report, there was relatively little guidance about how emotions should be used in migration policy communication. Emotions are vital to persuasion because attitudes have a cognitive (thinking) component and an emotional (feeling) component. Moreover, eliciting emotions causes involuntary but predictable physiological and behavioural reactions. Emotions can be used in communication to make one’s messages more resonant and impactful on both attitudes and behaviours, supporting policy objectives via persuasion.

Communicators should choose the desired emotional reaction according to the desired physiological and behavioural reaction using existing psychological schema, one of which this report analyses with 32 separate emotions and physiological reactions. Eliciting unsuitable emotions may have adverse reactions from audiences. Communicators can use this report’s recommendation and framework to ensure that the emotions, physiological and desired behaviours of their campaigns are aligned and thus effective. Narratives, personal-based messages, facial expressions, body language, and aesthetics can be used to create emotional resonance and reduce psychological distance. Frames, ordering (“emotional flow”), intensities, and certain combinations can also be used to elicit different emotions with predictable outcomes.

Emotions should be used to make one’s argument more resonant but the argument should not be simply based on the emotional reaction—the “appeal to emotion” logical fallacy. Indeed, for emotion-based communication to work, it should also use facts, values, identities, and efficacy. Emotion-based communication in the field of migration, although widely used, is largely untested—communicators should test different approaches but also can take lessons from other fields such as corporate, health, and climate change communications.

This report critically analyses 10 examples of good emotion-based migration communication, highlighting the different emotions and physiological reactions that they are likely to induce, and to what extent these are in line with the communication campaign’s stated objectives.