We are COMPAS

For the last 20 years, COMPAS has been a vibrant community – expert and engaged, grounded and inspired. We believe that innovation flourishs in an environment that allows ideas and new thinking to be explored, debated and critiqued together. The multi-disciplinary ethos of the centre allows for a broad understanding of migration research, constantly expanding geographical and other lenses through which we frame the challenge and the response.

Our new film outlines the successes we’ve had since our inception, but more urgently highlights the challenges we wish to address in coming years:

• How can future demand for migration be reconciled with public concerns in destination countries, and future migrants protected from the discrimination and rights abuses that can ensue?

• How do international flows of people help and hinder the challenges of global inequalities, and other challenges such as conflict, climate change and an ageing population?

• How can the world promote sustainable growth when governance systems promote free movement of capital but not of migrant labour?

• How can future thinking for cities, states and markets combine an understanding of the demand for migrant labour with the consequences of technological changes, such as Artificial Intelligence and big data?

• How and to what effect does the movement of people reconfigure space, creating global cities, on the one hand, and abandoned spaces, on the other?

• How can we build communities at the local level who live well together?