ENGAGEMENT HUB
You think ‘impact’ is a sell out? Here’s how to convert critique into audible justice claims
Author
About
Maybritt Jill Alpes
research to policy
Migration researchers should stop “doing” impact after the research is already completed. Instead, migration researchers should design transformative knowledge encounters to convert critique into actionable justice claims.
In this short, I offer an explanation of why critical migration research has had so little impact and what could be done instead. I delineate critical and actionable migration research and share three research design principles for transformative knowledge encounters.
Stop opting for either radical or ordinary critique
The limited impact of migration research stems from a persistent dichotomy: applied research is often not critical and critical research is often not actionable. Both approaches rest on critique: applied research on the ordinary, critical research on the radical. Radical critique challenges the legitimacy of entire systems, but is often ineffective in driving immediate shifts in law and policy. Ordinary critique operates within existing systems to seek incremental improvements without destabilizing structural systems.
To go beyond this dichotomy, I introduce critical and actionable migration research based on comprehensive critique. This type of critique takes the needs of state actors seriously, while simultaneously seeking to reframe problematic assumptions.
Critical and actionable migration research
Critical and actionable migration research resists migration laws, policies and narratives that violate human rights principles in the short and medium term. It operates within the realities of existing nation-states, yet aims to fundamentally change how states function.
Critical and actionable migration research is not applied research. Instead, it cyclically draws on insights from practice and contributes to deeper, foundational studies about how knowledge shapes legal and political systems. A critical and actionable research practice both reflects and intervenes in how knowledge and power intersect.
EXAMPLE: As human rights practitioners, we failed in 26 submissions before the European Court of Human Rights. This human rights interventions became my fieldwork data when I theorized the politics of legal facts and the conditions under which truth-claims are recognised in court. This fundamental research in turn offered a matrix for strategizing human rights interventions (see example “brokering truth claims” below).
Start designing transformative knowledge encounters:
There is politics to story-telling, but an archive of stories and documentation does not, without additional work, turn into audible justice claims within the corridors of policy makers, legislators, judges or other state officials. What new pathways for action emerge once academic research has reframed the problem and its underlying causes? This is typically where academics stop and civil society is not able to start.
In response, I outline three design principles for transformative knowledge encounters, illustrating each with an example from my work with laws and courts.
1. Build innovative knowledge alliances
Ask yourself who your most strategic allies are in order to identify pathways for action. Intermediaries have technical expertise on the timelines of legal, political and public processes. Knowledge brokers are trusted allies, experienced with brokering critique and knowledge to change laws, policies and practices. Academics have much to learn from such allies.
EXAMPLE: During my research on what happens after deportation and return, I developed ties with policy officers at human and refugee rights organizations. Conversations on how empirical data on post-deportation risks can be converted into legal and political arguments informed the design of a research project funded by a foundation. I published an actionable report on IOM emergency returns from Libya to Niger, Nigeria and Mali three years before a critical, but otherwise useless academic article on citizenship regimes in countries of origin.
2. Theorize knowledge needs
Ask yourself what knowledge is really needed to transform legal and political processes. Research findings can be interesting intellectually, but utterly irrelevant legally or politically speaking. Here, co-strategize with trusted knowledge brokers.
EXAMPLE: When I did research on post-deportation risks in Nigeria and Mali, PICUM asked me to add interview questions on the effects of detention in Europe after deportation. Communication specialists at PICUM decided on the format best suited to disseminate my research findings.
3. Broker the validity of truth claims
Ask yourself what counts as valid knowledge in legal and political processes. Academic validity is not the same as legal or political validity. Once you have understood the rules of the game, you can either play accordingly, or – if needed – strategize to change the rules.
EXAMPLE: Judges trust state evidence more than migrant voices. In order to broker the validity of truth claims by pushback survivors, I co-developed a legal argument to make pushback facts visible that accepts professional norms and institutional constraints of court actors. I also proposed actionable strategies for human right defenders that focus on mobilizing law to create evidence.
Learn more or connect to discuss:
– Alpes, M.J., (2025), “Smuggling critique into impact: Research design principles for critical and actionable migration research”, Migration Politics 4 (04).
Maybritt Jill Alpes is a legal anthropologist of migration who has worked at law faculties, as well as with and for human and refugee rights organisations. Affiliated with the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University and with CESSMA at the Paris Diderot University, Jill leads the REMOVED research project on “removal infrastructures for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Turkey” (Gerda Henkel, 2024 – 2026).
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