Citizen Science in the EU strategy for the inclusion ofrefugees : Potential benefits and limitations

Sammanfattning: As long as the world continues to experience war, climate change, financial adversity,and persecution; the number of refugees will only continue to grow along with the needto develop more effective and innovative integration strategies. Currently, to address theongoing challenges that refugees face in Europe, the European Commission has publishedthe Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion 2021-2027, illustrating the criteria for theadequate inclusion of migrants and refugees in EU Member States. While focusing oneach of the key areas discussed in the Action Plan- education, employment, healthcare,and housing- the present study also turns its attention to the growing practice of CitizenScience (CS) as a potential means of contributing to the EU’s endeavours. As establishedin the literature covered in this paper, CS is understood as research practices relying onthe general public’s engagement in different research tasks that focus on matters ofcommon concern among researchers and different communities. Due to the potentialshown by this open, flexible, and participatory quality of these practices, this study hasproceeded to investigate which EU requirements for inclusion are met by CS initiativesbased on the correlations in CS principles and strategies with the EU Action Plan criteria.Following a qualitative research method based on comparative text analysis of EU andCS documents, as well as interviews with members of four CS case studies, this paperhas identified several principles and working areas that align with CS and Europeanintegration requirements for refugees. Nonetheless, the study results also show certainlimitations to the influence that CS projects can have for refugee’s integration which arebased on the short-term impacts of this practice and the lack of general acceptance anduse of CS research data among policy-makers in the EU and its Member States. Based onthese results, the usefulness and relevance of CS initiatives to integration efforts withinEurope can be said to exhibit certain potential although, limited and largely unexploredin policy-making and academia.