NORFACE – New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe – is a partnership between fourteen research councils to increase co-operati

on in research and research policy in Europe. Over the five project years, the partners will engage in a range of initiatives designed to deliver new levels of co-operative research policy and practice.

In 2008-2009 NORFACE introduced a transnational research programme with the theme Migration in Europe – Social, Economic, Cultural and Policy Dynamics. The programme had a total budget of almost 29 million € and granted funding to twelve transnational projects. The objectives of the programme were:

• To advance globally excellent theoretical and methodological disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and comparative research on migration which builds synergetically on a pan-European basis
• To take advantage of and develop the informal laboratory of experience, knowledge and data which migration in Europe currently presents
• To motivate and support excellence and capacity building for research on migration on a cross-national basis throughout the NORFACE countries
• To develop understanding and promote research-based knowledge and insight into migration for issues of societal, practical and policy relevance, with theoretical foundations but worked on jointly with relevant users and experts.