EMN Georgia and EMN Latvia joint conference - “A Commonly Understood Language as a Tool in Migration Management: the EMN Asylum and Migration Glossary”

The need to exchange information on all aspects of migration had already been identified as a priority of EU asylum and migration policy. To improve the exchange of information between and within Member States across the wide range of asylum and migration policy developments, information must be comparable between the EMN Member (EU Member States except Denmark) and Observer Countries to the greatest possible extent, for which a consistent use of terms is required. In order to provide policymakers and the wider public with up-to-date, objective, reliable and comparable information, the EMN developed and has been maintaining a comprehensive Glossary that identifies and describes different concepts central to asylum and migration policy in the EU.

The EMN’s Asylum and Migration Glossary is one of the important outputs of the EMN network, being a multidisciplinary product aimed at introducing a common terminology in the field of asylum and migration by promoting comparability of the terms and concepts and encouraging their unified application. The Glossary is intended for decision-makers in the field of migration, academia and media as well as broad readership interested in the migration related topics.

Bearing the above-mentioned in mind, an international conference was held in Tbilisi on 7th June 2023 titled - “A Commonly Understood Language as a Tool in Migration Management: the EMN Asylum and Migration Glossary”. The event was organized under the EU funding by the EMN’s Georgian and Latvian National Contact Points.

The purpose of the hybrid conference was twofold: highlighting the essence of the EMN Glossary and its meaning for the EU and beyond (EMN Observer Countries, other users); and providing a wider discussion platform, where representatives of the EMN National Contact Points, academic circles and migration practitioners from different countries shared the knowledge and experience on their own approaches to the application of migration related terminology and the challenges arising when dealing with translation or adjustment of certain terms to national professional vocabularies.
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The European Migration Network (EMN) represents an EU-wide group of asylum and migration experts to analyze the various issues emerging in the relevant fields in the EU. Georgia joined the Network in 2021 and is actively involved in its analytical work. In the framework of bilateral cooperation, in the framework of the EU funded project, the Glossary terms were translated into Georgian and have been integrated into the online version of the EMN’s Glossary along with other EU languages.