The EU currently faces complex challenges regarding its internal unity, normative coherence and justifiable and
universally acceptable refugee, migration, and integration policies. Convincing and successful responses require better
knowledge on politically and socially relevant values, their impact on and transformation in migration/integration
contexts and the role and possible evolution of European values. NOVAMIGRA – Norms and Values in the European
Migration and Refugee Crisis will enhance the European knowledge base on these issues with a unique combination
of social scientific and historical analysis, as well as legal and philosophical normative reconstruction and theory. It
will provide a precise and comprehensive understanding of core values/norms in Europe, explain, how they motivate
political, administrative and societal agents with regard to migration and the integration of migrants and refugees
into European societies, and consider, if and why this has changed with and since the refugee crisis 2015. This will
lead to better normative and efficiency assessments of migration/integration policies and measures, and to a clearer
grasp of reasons for their endorsement or resistance to them. On this background NOVAMIGRA will develop a new
idea[l] for Europe, a rights-based democratic perspective for the EU and its member states, which takes into account
differences in European values/norms and their possible evolution and also reflects Europe’s global responsibility.
This new idea(l) will allow design of a new political strategy for overcoming the deep divergences in Europe and
inform NOVAMIGRA’s concrete policy recommendations contributing to the further development of the European
Agenda on Migration, the Action Plan on the Integration of Third Country Nationals and similar European and
national initiatives.