Reading Europe’s Mind on Migration

Migration is the most-polled and least-understood issue in European politics. Surveys capture positions; they miss the stories underneath — what people tell each other when no pollster is listening. For nearly a decade, Bakamo has been reading those conversations at scale, for foundations and institutions that need to understand the debate before they try to shape it.

Our Approach

Narrative, not opinion.

Polling tells you how many agree. We tell you why — and what story moves people from one position to another. Our migration work maps the unprompted conversation across public social media in the languages people actually speak, then translates it into narratives decision-makers can act on.

The studies below span pan-European narrative mapping, country-level crisis monitoring, and confidential work for governments and advocacy institutions.

The Studies

Selected migration research.

Public ReportOpen Society Foundation · Hungary · 2015

Refugees in Hungarian Social Media

At the height of the 2015 refugee crisis, the Open Society Foundation commissioned Bakamo to analyze how the situation was being discussed by Hungarians on social media — and, critically, how government communication was reshaping that conversation in real time.

The study mapped the main topics and triggers of the Hungarian online debate, tracked the penetration of official campaign messages through buzzword analysis, and identified the associations citizens were actually forming around the government’s framing.

Presented at ESOMAR Congress 2016 · New Orleans

“Kicking Refugees Was Just the Beginning”

The findings were presented to the global research community at the ESOMAR Congress 2016 in New Orleans in a joint session by Daniel Fazekas (Bakamo) and Balazs Denes (Open Society Foundation).

Download Full Report (PDF)

Public ReportFriedrich‑Ebert‑Stiftung · 28 EU Member States · 2019

Migration Narratives in Europe

Commissioned by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s “Flight, Migration, Integration in Europe” programme, this is the largest pan-European listening study of migration discourse ever produced. Bakamo Public analyzed the unprompted conversation across 28 EU member states and identified the narrative frames that cross every border — security, identity, economy and demographics, humanitarianism, and the political-establishment frame — then mapped how their relative weight shifts country by country.

Delivered as 28 national reports and a European synthesis.

Download Full Report (PDF)

ConfidentialInternational Centre for Policy Advocacy · Germany · 2020–2021

Islam & Migration Integration in Germany

A two-wave commissioned study for the International Centre for Policy Advocacy examining how the public debate around Islam, migration, and integration was unfolding in Germany — mapping the stakeholders, the main and sub-narratives, and the values driving each camp’s framing.

Findings delivered directly to the client under confidentiality.

Commissioning Partner

Methodology

How the research is built

Every Bakamo migration study combines three layers: large-scale ingestion of public social conversation in-language, anthropological coding that separates genuine narrative from bots and campaign artifacts, and statistical calibration that keeps the output representative of the population, not the platform.

It’s what we call Fixed Quant — reality in, defensible data out.

Working on a migration brief?

Let’s talk about what the conversation is really saying.

Bakamo has built dedicated methodologies for migration, integration, and refugee discourse across Europe. Whether you’re producing policy, shaping communication, or funding research, we can help you understand the debate before you try to shape it.

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