Migration is a complex process, involving the movement of large numbers of people between different jurisdictions for very different reasons that are liable to change in response to circumstances and in response to the policy regime that confronts them.  Migration to Ireland is made up of diverse groups which are in themselves internally diverse and whose attitudes reflect a variety of moral, cultural and religious principles. In this project, we will develop a model to evaluate policy outcomes for work-based visa applications in Ireland. In any such large scale system, individual behaviour and circumstance will vary widely. Thinking through all the possible combinations of  conditions and behaviours that may lead to a cumulatively deleterious impact on communities is impossible. Some policies that are well-intentioned when conceived may turn out to have ethically indefensible effects. Despite this, the need to make policy does not go away and, at times, must be done in a quick and responsive manner, such as the economic and social response to the pandemic. 

The main aim of this project is to create a policy simulation model for migrants, that allows its users to ‘experiment’ with alternative policy options and assumptions, by changing parameters or rules, and observing the outcomes. Specifically, the project aims to create a framework for:

1. Identifying individual and community-level variables that act as ​indicator ​variables for social impact in the area of migration, particularly on migrants

2. Creating a human-understandable simulation for understanding policy impact 

3. Allowing multiple policy choices to be simulated and tested for ethical appropriateness and human rights compliance 

Methodology

The project is pursuing two independent means of discovering issues: agent-based modelling and personal interviews. The agent-based modelling approach seeks to use Sen and Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach to inform our notion of what a migrant should be able to do. According to the capabilities approach, a human being may be seen not just as being but also as a set of “doings ” and “functionings ”. That is, the quality of life being led by a human being, can be seen as evaluating the functionings, and the capability to function. Hence, a migrant's life in the new host country could be viewed as a function of the number of capabilities they are able to acquire. Our assumption is that the quicker a migrant is able to acquire a verisimilitude of capabilities as that of a citizen, the more satisfied they are, at having migrated. We are acutely aware that these do not form the entirety of the lived experience of a migrant. However, the project takes pains ensure that our simulation’s input data has internal validity in the form of macro-economic data, that is source-able from reputable, third-party sources. 

A different, yet important, form of validation for our model’s results are its consonance with trends from personal interviews also being conducted by other members of the project.