AspirE Final Conference wrap-up: sharing three years of human-centred migration research

On 11 and 12 December 2025, the AspirE project brought together researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and project partners for its final conference, “Migration decision-making in Asia-Europe social spaces”, held at the ULB-VUB site Usquare in Brussels. This two-day event marked a major milestone in the project’s journey, presenting core research findings, reflecting on collaborative methodologies, and opening dialogue on future directions for migration research and policy.

Day 1 — Research findings and thematic panels

The first day of the conference featured a series of thematic panels where research teams from across Europe and Asia showcased AspirE’s multi-sited empirical findings. Over the course of three years, the consortium gathered rich qualitative data through video diaries, in-depth interviews, and collaborative fieldwork involving aspiring (re)migrants in eleven countries from Southeast and East Asia to EU member states.

Each team presented insights into how migration aspirations form, evolve, and interact with structural constraints, emphasising AspirE’s tandem research approach that bridges local contexts with cross-regional comparison. Presentations highlighted:

• Evolving aspirations: how individuals’ hopes, plans, and intentions shift over time in response to personal, economic, and policy pressures;

• Temporal dynamics: the ways in which lived experiences, uncertainties, and future imaginaries shape decisions to move, stay, or return;

• Transnational linkages: patterns of mobility that reflect not only destination opportunities but also connections to home communities, families, and networks.

By foregrounding migrants’ voices and experiences, the panels underscored how human-centred methodologies enrich our understanding of migration beyond conventional metrics, offering nuanced insights for policy and governance.

To situate AspirE’s findings within broader research initiatives, the conference concluded Day 1 with a roundtable discussion featuring representatives from AspirE and its sister projects. This exchange highlighted complementarities between AspirE and parallel projects like PACES and DYNAMIG (which focus on African-Europe migration dynamics). Panelists discussed comparative insights on drivers of migration decision-making, methodological challenges, and policy relevance, offering a cross-project view on how nuanced, context-sensitive research can inform more equitable and evidence-based migration governance.

Day 2 — Exhibition and creative outputs

The second day took a more artistic and immersive turn. The onsite exhibition showcased selected materials collected throughout the project (photos, narrative fragments and sketches), inviting participants to engage with the human stories behind the data.

Highlights included:

• Visual narratives and a comic book preview: translating lived experiences into accessible visual stories rooted in migrants’ voices;

• Documentary screenings: documentary films produced by local teams in Thailand and Portugal, including "Blood Berries | หมากไม้ "and "Songs of Leaving" that bring AspirE’s qualitative insights to life through cinema and reflection;

• Networking and dialogue: Moments for conversation and exchange between researchers, stakeholders, and community members.

A milestone for AspirE’s legacy

The final conference not only summarised AspirE’s empirical achievements but also reinforced its commitment to humanising migration research, illuminating the aspirations, emotions, and temporal rhythms that inform people’s mobility decisions. In bringing together diverse voices and perspectives, the event showcased how multi-country, tandem research can generate policy-relevant insights grounded in lived experience.