Vanja Ashkapova

Name and Surname
Vanja Ashkapova

Affiliation
Independent Researcher

Short Biography

Vanja Ashkapova is a researcher specializing in governance, anticipatory policymaking, and migration, with a focus on the Western Balkans and North Macedonia. She is currently a PhD candidate in Political Sciences at the South East European University in North Macedonia, where her doctoral research examines anticipatory governance approaches to migration policy. She holds a master’s degree in communication from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.
With more than a decade of experience in European projects, civil society, international organizations, and the UN in North Macedonia, she has worked on initiatives related to human mobility, human rights, and refugee protection. Her work is strongly oriented toward engaging diverse stakeholders, building coalitions and alliances across institutions and communities, and fostering inclusive dialogue with state actors, civil society, academia, and affected populations.
Her professional experience includes several years within the United Nations system and other international organizations, where she supported programmes focused on asylum and refugee rights, community-based protection, and strengthening national institutional capacities. Through this work, she has developed in-depth knowledge of the interplay between international norms, national policymaking, and local implementation practices, particularly in complex and politically sensitive environments.
She brings a practice-informed and context-sensitive perspective to research and public policymaking, grounded in long-term engagement with diverse actors, institutions, and policy processes.

Research abstract

How do young people in North Macedonia imagine their migration futures? And how can their voices reshape migration governance in the Western Balkans? This research builds on the ongoing North Macedonia anticipatory governance pilot, the project focuses on one of the region’s highest youth emigration contexts to examine how individual mobility scenarios intersect with demographic challenges and new political imaginaries. Through in‑depth interviews and participatory scenario workshops with 20–25 young people in Skopje, the study documents youth migration scenarios, elicits their own policy recommendations, and tests small‑scale foresight methods that connect youth futures thinking to formal policy processes. The project treats youth as policy experts and political agents rather than passive targets of intervention, asking what governance approaches, structural changes, and participatory mechanisms they see as necessary to remain in or return to North Macedonia. Expected outputs include a policy brief for national and international stakeholders (e.g. the Migration Policy 2026–2030), and a framework for embedding youth voices in migration foresight contributing to more inclusive, future‑oriented and regionally relevant migration policies.