A draft funding plan published on Monday (2 October) proposes to dedicate €111m between 2018 and 2020 for researchers who want to study the causes and effects of migration.

A further €139m is proposed to be dedicated to investing in research on issues of “governance”, as in the rise of extremism in the Middle East and the Balkans, the strength of democracy, and the future of post-war order of international organisations.

The plan’s authors say that the intent “is to address the concerns of the European citizens regarding migration, the fourth industrial revolution and the challenges of governance”.

To date, the European Commission has published five of 12 draft work programmes, detailing how it intends to spend around €30bn from 2018 to 2020 on research topics.

The research plan on social sciences focuses heavily on the pressures of migration. It calls for researchers to propose studies into the factors which encourage people to migrate, patterns of migration, and how global organisations manage migration.

Furthermore, the programme identifies that more research is needed into the causes of violent extremism, and how it can be contained.

It points to the Middle East and the Balkans as regions for specialist study, as well as the causes of extremist ideologies more generally.

Other topics under the proposed project include studying the illegal trafficking of cultural goods, the impact of technology on children, and innovative approaches to cultural tourism.