POLICY BRIEF October 2023 Communicating on Migration: A case for communicating honestly ABSTRACT Migration is commonly framed in policy and media debates as a crisis(or crises) to be solved. In recent years public con­cerns shaped by this crisis framing have increasingly driven European voters toward populist political parties who offer ostensibly“simple” answers such as numerical limitations on migra­tion, migrant push-backs or mass deportations. These policies are harder to implement than to promise, and as a result will tend to disappoint voters. They are unlikely to end public concerns about migration, nor resolve the migration challenges facing the states who put them into effect. On the other side, advocates for more liberal policymaking commonly propose their own simplistic solutions such as the expansion of safe and legal routes to reduce dangerous or irregular migration flows, despite little evidence that these approaches would be effective. These approaches on both sides fuel polarisation, unders­tate the complexity of migration, overstate the likely efficacy of the policy tools available to manage migration and ignore potentially difficult consequences. This paper explores the implications of this for policy debates and considers how to reduce polarisation and work toward honest and realistic migration policymaking. AUTHOR Rob McNeil Researcher and consultant specialising in migration in the media and Deputy Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society(COMPAS)