Awareness raising and information campaigns on the risks of irregular migration in Pakistan II

ended

Building on the AMIF funded project “Awareness raising and information campaigns on the risks of irregular migration in Pakistan”, this project will focus on information dissemination and awareness raising among potential Afghan and Pakistani migrants in Pakistan. The campaign will apply three intervention levels - mass media, community outreach and personal counselling - to communicate balanced information irregular migration, options for legal pathways, skills development in Pakistan as well as legal, social and economic realities of life of irregular migrants in Europe. With this approach, the project will both raise awareness at community level, and embed a personal behavioural approach through community outreach and personal consultation sessions. Building capacities of local government, civil society and the private sector – including media – is crucial to build sustainable structures for awareness raising and provision of migration information within societies. The project will hence build sustainable networks and platforms among different groups of stakeholders and build their capacities, in particular within the Government of Pakistan, local government entities, at community level, Civil Society Organizations, youth volunteers as well as local media. Understanding that effective information and awareness campaigns are built on strong background research, the preparatory research will focus on the one hand on the migration context of Afghans in KP, identify the target audiences and participants, characteristics, information needs, etc. that affect or influence their decision making processes. Secondly, building on the PARIM I findings, the research will develop a more in depth understanding on Pakistani returnees as strong influencers on migration trajectories in their communities, specifically in Punjab, through qualitative research. A robust evaluation of the campaign activities will allow to adapt within the action duration and identify lessons learned for future campaigns.