Author: Welcoming Spaces

The battles of Riace: A town torn between immigration and emigration

By Ester Driel (Utrecht University)

What can we learn from Riace, a ‘ghost town’ that revived socio-economically by hosting refugees, despite being located in a poor region mainly known for the ‘nDrangetha mafia? Is it possible to revitalize shrinking European areas while also offering a home to refugees? And also, what have been the consequences of the way in which the so-called ‘Riace model’ was dismantled and from the recent sentence against its pro-migration mayor Lucano, convicted to 13 years of prison? 

How it all started

In 1998, long before the so-called European ‘refugee crises’, 300 Kurdish refugees landed on Riace’s coast. In the absence of a formal national reception system for refugees that only got established years later, the Kurdish newcomers spontaneously received help from local volunteers. For weeks, youngsters were busy collecting mattresses and warm clothes to keep everyone warm,  while the older inhabitants cooked meals to ensure no one went to bed hungry. Temporarily, the refugees were hosted by locals or provided with shelter in the old local sanctuary of San Cosimo and Damiano.

One year after the arrival of this first boat, a group of young locals led by Domenico Lucano, who would later become Riace’s mayor, founded the NGO Città Futura Puglisi, named after a Sicilian priest who was murdered by the mafia. Together with the municipality, they developed an innovative settlement program for refugees, the so-called ‘Riace model’ that combined the reception of refugees with the revival of the local community. Various initiatives were started by local Italians and refugees together, such as the ‘laboratori’ (workshops) to revitalize local ancient crafts, the sustainable agricultural projects, and the restoration of the old town.

A local refugee of Riace working in the ceramics workshop, by now forcedly closed down. Photo by Ester Driel.

The main goal was to create a different socio-economic environment characterized by welcoming refugees and by actively combatting the exploitation and exclusion of migrants, which unfortunately were standard practices in the region. Riace’s refugees also perceived the town as a place where they were received with warmth and hospitality and had the opportunity to pursue a normal and dignified life. Also, their experiences in Riace stood in sharp contrast to the overcrowded asylum centers and to the exploitation and discrimination that they faced elsewhere in Europe:

“I got shot in Catanzaro – it was a hate crime, possibly fueled by the mafia. But after this incident “il sindaco” (the mayor), opened his heart to me, took me into his village and offered me this nice job. I never experienced racism here” (T., male, refugee, construction worker for Città Futura)

The story of Riace led to large international media attention, such as films, documentaries, and academic publications, and in 2016 mayor Lucano even got listed in Fortune magazine as one of the worlds’ 50 greatest leaders. Moreover, many other towns copied the Riace model, which also inspired the foundation of a national system that financially supported such initiatives. But, unfortunately, this success also incited intimidation and violence by people who tried to maintain the old power balance, often affiliated with the ‘Ndrangetha mafia. The last violent attack in Riace took place in 2009 when members of the ‘Ndrangetha attempted to shoot the mayor through the glass door of Riace’s solidarity restaurant, where he was having dinner. Despite such intimidations, the mayor continued running the associations and the program that further expanded until 2018.

From emigration to population growth

Like many other shrinking, rural European regions, Calabria suffered from waves of emigration[1]. Firstly, many people left for America between the Italian unification in 1861 and the Great Depression of the 1930s after World Wars I and II. The emigration peaked again in the 1960s and ‘70s when many moved to Northern Italy during the industrial boom. Due to poverty, a corrupted political system, and the traditional power of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia, Calabria remains an undeveloped area with high unemployment and an aging population, pushing the emigration crisis to continue nowadays. 

In this context, the Riace-model is exceptional, as it demonstrated that the reception of refugees could turn the tide for a dying town. In only a few years, the local school reopened. Businesses flourished again thanks to refugees who were both customers and employees. The population even grew again from about 1.600 in 2001 to over 2.300 in 2016. In this period, on average, about 400 to 500 refugees resided in Riace. The rest of the population growth was because the new young generation was able to stay in Riace to work in the refugee projects instead of feeling forced to emigrate. For example, a young inhabitant who lived in many countries for work but came back to Riace and worked in a refugee project explained:

“I travelled the world, and realized that Riace really is not a bad, or actually even a very good and special place – compared to other cities. A small town, that serves as an example of hospitality towards migrants, of different ways to create a social and fair economy” (V., male inhabitant, 28)

Interestingly, the changing social climate, the decreasing power of mafia related-forces, and the improved socio-economic conditions in town also inspired older emigrants to come back. One of them (a young social worker) vividly remembered the story of his father who was forced to leave Riace ‘back in the old days, but who by now had safely returned to his family in Riace:

“..back in the days, my father did a “job” for them [referring to the local mafia]. A ‘capo’ (local boss) approached him, because the word was on the street that my father, back then a healthy young man, could be of help with the escape of an important clan member. After this ‘success’, the mafia approached my father again, but he did not want get caught up in that world. Therefore, he joined friends in Northern Europe to find work there, where he stayed for years..”

Is there a future for the ‘Riace-model’?

Despite the success stories above, the tide seems to have turned for Riace. Nowadays, the fight against Riace’s approach seems to have shifted from violent ‘Ndrangheta in the early 2000s to the legal and bureaucratic arena. The appointment of the far-right minister of the interior, Salvini, resulted in Italy’s more restrictive migration and integration policies. The government abolished the scholarship that allowed refugees to work under Decree Law 113/2018 and replaced a national system that financially supported all asylum seekers with a system that merely offers financial support to recognized refugees. Additionally, a legal process – that is considered by many a political process –  was started against the pro-migration mayor Domenico Lucano.

On September 30, Riace’s former mayor and current NGO-leader Domenico Lucano was sentenced to over 13 years in prison for abetting illegal migration and for ‘irregularities’ in the management of asylum seekers. In addition, he has to pay a fine of 700.000 euro. An example of the ‘crimes’ of Lucano is that he aimed to help a Nigerian woman, who had been forced into sex work, to marry a local Italian man to prevent her from being exploited. He was sentenced with 25 other locals, such as social workers and project leaders who, in the midst of Europe’s refugee crises, gave all their time and energy to help the many refugees that were sent to Riace by the Prefect, often on a voluntary base due to the delay of public funding.

At the 60th anniversary of the famous ‘Peace Walk’ from Perugia to Assisi on October 10, 2021, many people took banners to express their solidarity with Domenico Lucano. Photos by Gianluca Palma.

This sentence was received with much upheaval and sparked protests in cities across Italy, as it was twice as long as requested by the prosecutors and because other criminals that include murderers received lower sentences, such as the man who beat the young Nigerian Emmanuel Chidi Namdi to death in 2018 and got only four years of house arrest. Moreover, the supreme court of cassation, the highest court of appeal in Italy, previously dismissed all the charges in a 2018 case against Lucano by the Guardia di Finanzia, and even referred to them as “crimes committed for morally appreciable purposes”.  

Though this previous decision by the highest court of appeal makes some Italian experts hopeful about the appeal of the current sentence, the damage to Riace’s reception program has already been done. The town is rapidly on its way to change from being a village of immigration and an example of hospitality to becoming a ghost town once again. The number of refugees has dropped significantly, and local Italians who worked in the refugee projects have lost their jobs and emigrated to search for work elsewhere. As a result, the total number of inhabitants in the municipality declined from 2,313 in 2017 to 1,869 in 2021.      

However, what gives hope is that the socio-economic revitalization of Riace and similar towns has inspired an increasing number of other shrinking European communities to initiate programs for refugees. The social composition of these shrinking communities is often quite similar to Riace, and they struggle with similar challenges. Therefore the lessons learned in the development of the Riace-model can give them crucial guidance. For now, let’s hope that we continue to remember and live the values which the people of Riace taught to the world. The Riace-model showed us that hospitality and solidarity towards those in need and sustainable local development can go hand in hand and that migration is not a threat to “fortress Europe”.

[1] Borzomati, P. (1982). L’Emigrazione calabrese dall’Unità ad oggi: atti del II Convegno di studio della Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Calabria, Polistena 6-7, Rogliano 8 dicembre 1980. Centro studi emigrazione.

Learning in and from a marginalized-but-welcoming Europe

By Alberto Alonso-Fradejas (Utrecht University)

How to contribute to just and sustainable futures in depopulating and socioeconomically marginalised European localities, while at the same time offering a ´welcoming space´ for non-EU migrants to pursue their life projects? It was with this question in the back of our minds and the thrill of meeting face to face that we travelled to Soria, Spain, during the last week of September 2021 for the on-site phase of the International PhD School on Migration and Socioecological Change.

We were a crew from thirteen different countries in Europe and beyond, including eighteen PhD researchers, nine instructors, three babies and the same number of lovingly baby-sitting fathers. The PhD School was sponsored by Utrecht University´s Focus Area on Migration & Societal Change and organized by the International Development Studies Group of the Human Geography and Spatial Planning Department at the Faculty of Geosciences, in collaboration with the partners of the Welcoming Spaces Consortium.

After two previous online sessions, the intensive week-long programme of the PhD school in Soria run on a learning by doing methodology that combined conceptual-methodological discussions with field visits. There were lectures, peer-review sessions, walk-shops, and a “methods fest” including workshops on aesthetic and visual methodologies, participatory action research, intercultural competences and diversity, and a framework for the analysis of multi-dynamic politics of migration and socioecological change. But special attention was devoted to the participants´ hands-on experience on the complexities behind the “emplacement”[1] of migrant newcomers and older residents in demographically shrinking and socioeconomically marginalized small and mid-sized towns in Europe. To this end, our colleagues from Cepaim Foundation and the University of Valladolid welcomed us in such a unique region for the PhD School purposes as Soria. With a distinct blend of Celtiberian, Roman and Arabic historical traits, Soria city and the towns and landscapes part of the province with the same name show a great deal of cultural and natural wealth. However, Soria was left behind the Spanish industrial bandwagon of the Twentieth Century to fall into a downward spiral of socioeconomic marginalization and depopulation. With less than two inhabitants per square kilometre Soria is known today as the ´Lapland of the South´, in direct reference to the sparsely populated Finnish territory in the Artic circle, and stands at the core of the so-called ´Emptied Spain´.

A walk through the challenging ´new trails´ of an ancient region

Residents, civil society organizations, and local and regional governments in Soria are joining forces to fight back shrinkage and marginalization through a diversity of (re)development efforts. These include  initiatives to attract and facilitate the settlement of new residents. A particularly interesting initiative on this regard is led by PhD School host and Welcoming Spaces consortium member Cepaim Foundation. Since 2006, Cepaim´s “Nuevos Senderos” (New Trails) project promotes the professional and social participation of migrant families in shrinking areas. As expected, this is easier said than done and these pathbreaking sociocultural ´new trails´ are anything but smooth. The PhD School participants had the opportunity to ´walk´ these new trails and discuss the challenges and opportunities for migrant settlement and area development with representatives from local governments, educational and environmental institutions, and civil society organizations in the Sorian towns of Yanguas and San Esteban de Gormaz.

With less than 100 residents and sitting at more than 1,100 metres above sea level, Yanguas is a well-preserved medieval town that was declared a National Historic-Artistic Site in 1993. It also features in the list of ´the most beautiful towns in Spain´. For more than a decade now, the Municipality of Yanguas has been running a decent housing & employment programme to attract new residents. As a result, a few migrants from other areas of Spain as well as from Argentina, Ecuador, Morocco and Romania have settled in Yanguas. This has helped to keep the village alive and to re-open the primary school. But as our informants explained to us, nine out of ten newcomers end up leaving shortly after arrival. They felt this was due to the lack of amenities and the difficult access to education, health and other social services in a town which is some 48 kilometres away from Soria city.

With Yanguas´ deputy mayor in front of Santa Maria´s church. Source: PhD School participants.

Meeting with residents and municipality representatives at Yanguas´ castle. Source: PhD School participants.

Despite being 20 kilometres further than Yanguas from Soria city, San Esteban de Gormaz is home to a bit more than 3,000 residents. The town combines its medieval architecture and unique Romanic churches with a wide range of social services. But it also enjoys a favourable geographical location at 850 metres above sea level and along the fertile banks of the Duero river. This allows for the production of high-quality Ribera del Duero wines. In fact, the PhD School participants who were up to it had the chance to taste San Esteban´s wine. This was thanks to the hospitality of the local government and of 78-year-old Don Pablo who kindly invited us to visit his traditional underground winery and taste the wine he makes there. In San Esteban, the municipality and civil society organizations behind the EU´s LEADER programme Local Action Group (LAG) have been implementing a participatory local development plan in recent years. As a result, San Esteban´s mayor argued that they now offer high school, vocational and adult education services, managed to build two public sports centers, and are home to a district-level healthcare facility and fifteen commercial wineries. This has also attracted new residents from other parts of Spain, Europe, Africa and Latin America, and helped others to remain in town.

However, our hosts also explained to us the complex challenges their local development plan faces. For instance, San Esteban is at pains to keep its wide range of social services running due to the lack of professionals willing to settle there. There is also a lack of housing for migrants interested to work in the wineries and other agricultural ventures. And San Esteban´s benefit package to investors, including cheap land and soil tax waivers, cannot compete with similar ones offered in more vibrant and relatively close areas like Madrid. Moreover, there is still a long way to go for migrant newcomers from other cultural and religious backgrounds to feel at home in San Esteban. During our visit to the adult education centre we had the chance to hold a conversation with two Moroccan and one Algerian women who enrolled in a Spanish language course. Whereas they made an overall positive assessment of their live in San Esteban, they still miss a madrasa for their children to learn Arabic.

With Don Pablo at his traditional underground winery in San Esteban. Source: PhD School participants.

A nurturing learning experience that deserves a follow-up

In Yanguas and San Esteban de Gormaz, two extremely different places with common histories and current challenges, the PhD School participants were confronted with some of the many and diverse ups and downs in the new trails towards the socially-just and environmentally-sound emplacement of migrant newcomers and older residents of the Emptied Spain. But we were also witnesses to the eagerness of all Sorian residents to address these wicked problems and to the high stake these issues have in the political agenda. The PhD School in Soria enjoyed the support and attention from multiple actors, including from the regional public news channel.  

It was precisely the warm welcoming the School received, together with the unmatched commitment, hard work and positive attitude of the PhD researchers, facilitators and hosts, that made of the PhD School a highly nurturing experience in scholarly, societal and personal terms. To be continued! 

[1] For Glick Schiller and Çağlar (2016, p. 21), “emplacement can usefully be definedas the social processes through which a dispossessed individual builds or rebuilds networks of connection within the constraints and opportunities of a specific city”.

The Riace model and the Domenico Lucano case. Is another world possible?

By Alice Lomonaco (Bologna University)

On 30 September 2021, the Court of Locri sentenced former Mayor of Riace Domenica Lucano to 13 years and two months in prison. The judges accused him of criminal association aimed at aiding and abetting irregular immigration, abuse of office, fraud, extortion, embezzlement, bid-rigging, and ideological falsification. In addition, he will have to return €500,000 of European funds.

The severity of this sentencehas been described as unexpected and unusual (A. Camilli, Internazionale, 8th October 2021). The Court of Locri doubled the penalty requested by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, accusing Lucano of being the head of a criminal association for the purpose of aggravated fraud and embezzlement – that is, using funds allocated for the reception of migrants for other purposes.

Domenico Lucano was Mayor of Riace (Reggio Calabria) from 2004 to 2018 (until he was suspended) and had become known internationally for his pro-migrant reception position. The Riace model was based on a vision of an alternative and welcoming society in which everyone, regardless of origin, language or culture, participates in the life of a community in order to find their place, as he recalls in his book Il fuorilegge (2020).

Riace, June 2021

Like many other municipalities in Calabria and southern Italy, Riace has been marked by a strong emigration of its inhabitants, who after World War II left one of the poorest areas in Europe in search of new life opportunities in northern Italy and abroad. In 1951 the population of Riace was 2,331, but depopulation continued inexorably until the 1980s, when 1,668 residents remained. To fight the depopulation of Riace and deal with global migration, Mayor Lucano opted for an integration of migrants into the life of the village, leading to a considerable increase in the population (from 1,610 in 2001 to 1,869 in 2021, with a peak of 2,345 residents in 2016). Through the recovery of uninhabited houses, renovation of infrastructure, and investment in local crafts, the local economy was rehabilitated. This also made it possible to support the education and training of migrants, demonstrating that “another world is possible”.

The Riace model had been recognised by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), attracting international interest and inspiring numerous reception projects in Italy and abroad. Lucano’s work paved an different path to the depopulation of villages, imagining an alternative for a region that is a “land of consumption” (il Manifesto, 3rd October 2021) and typically dependent on the economic growth of central and northern regions.

The Riace model was a symbol of redemption of the margins. First, territorial margins of a region like Calabria, which paid for its entry into modernity by providing cheap arms for industrial development in the North Italy and Europe. Second, human margins – as migrants are often considered –  creating alliances and development projects for a solidarity-centred, sustainable, and innovative renaissance.

Lucano’s legal troubles began in 2008, when he was placed under house arrest and suspended from his position as mayor. Two weeks later, the Court of Reexamination of Reggio Calabria banned him from staying in Riace, as an alternative to house arrest. The Riace reception project was closed a month after Lucano’s arrest, although the Council of State later ruled in favour of the appeal filed by the Mayor. The Council defined the closure of the reception center as illegitimate and the behaviour of the Ministry of the Interior as ‘hostile’ towards Lucano, having dismantled a project that he had supported and financed until a few months earlier.

In 2019, Lucano was indicted, as the Public Prosecutor’s Office accused him of arranging a marriage of convenience. At the basis of the accusation is a telephone conversation in which Lucano talks about the possibility of obtaining citizenship for a woman who had been denied asylum three times, by marrying a Riace inhabitant. The Public Prosecutor’s Office also accused him of illegally assigning waste collection services, between 2012 and 2016, to two cooperatives – which employed migrants – that were not registered in the regional register (as required by law), and without inviting tenders . The Court, in fact, had found no evidence of “fraudulent behaviour” by the former Mayor in awarding services to those cooperatives.

Lucano was then also accused of fraud because some migrants lived in apartments that weren’t certified as “habitable”. In 2019, he received a further notice of indictment for issuing identity documents to an Eritrean woman and her infant son who weren’t in possession of a residence permit. As Lucano told us during an interview in Riace in June 2021, it was part of his idea of integration, a political idea of reception. In his words: ‘But they were the ones who called me, they were the ones who asked me to take in so many people, humans, because they had nowhere to put them… and I took them in… I committed a crime of humanity’.

Lucano’s “outlawed” actions were consciously carried out in contravention of laws that he considered unjust and detrimental to the rights of immigrants and inhabitants of Riace. These actions did not give provide him with any personal or political benefit. Lucano’s legal sentence also seems to be a vicious attack on a project that has successfully shown the potential of regenerating shrinking areas by establishing welcoming spaces.

Digitalisation of services and measures for migrant integration: Are the inner areas losers or winners?

By Irene Ponzo (FIERI)

How can digitalisation help inner areas to improve integration services and initiatives? This was one of the key questions addressed during the three-day training (22-23 September 2021) co-organised in Turin (Italy) by Welcoming Spaces and the AMIF-funded national-based project “CapacityMetro Italia”. The aim was to identify common challenges and solutions and support inner areas in catching the opportunities offered by the Next Generation Fund to improve integration opportunities.

During the first day participants worked in sub-groups to identify common challenges, in the second day experts and inspiring local experiences provided food for thoughts, while the final day was aimed at exploring possible common solutions through the drafting of fictional projects. 

Potentials of digitalisation emerged as substantial for inner areas. Since services require a critical mass of potential beneficiaries to be economically and politically sustainable, in smaller municipalities they are either physically distant or provided on part-time basis (even only once a week) and accessing them may be problematic. These hurdles could be partially overcome with the development of online services. Yet, we can’t sell the fur before killing the bear.

Participants pointed out how so far in Italy digitalisation of services has been a process promoted by the central government and limited to nation-wide services while it is not even an issue of debate in the vast majority of inner areas. This brings about the risk of a top-down digitalisation of services with a little attention for the specific necessities of local communities and a consequent mismatch between actual needs and proposed solutions. Hence, a diversity-sensitive mapping of needs and demands should be the first step of service digitalisation. To underevaluate the implications of digitalisation for services’ internal organisation is another likely risk: if workload could decline on some tasks, it may increase on others so that a revision of tasks, competences and ways of working is necessary. An example brought during the training was that of the Italian App to track Covid-19 contagion, “Immuni”, which miserably failed since the it was developed without considering that the already overwhelmed local health services, not properly enhanced, would be unable to carry out the additional task of inserting the infected people’s data into the Immuni database. Furthermore, we have to consider that small organisations and services of inner areas may not have the human resources to plan and implement the necessary internal reorganisation.

Concerning the individual level, the lack of digital devices and skills appears as a problem shared by both service employees and service users, especially elderly people and migrants. Language is another hurdle: on one hand, people with a migrant background may have a poor knowledge of the Italian language which further hampers the understanding of online instructions; on the other hand, services tend to use a bureaucratic language unsuitable for online communication.

Another critical factor is the underdevelopment of support services. The possibility to have face-to-face support is particularly important for recently arrived and/or marginalised migrants to make up for the lower knowledge of the context and the possible misreading of situations due to cultural differences.

Solutions identified by the participants in our training event are diverse, among which: “digital mediators” that could bridge either digital gaps or cultural gaps; a mixed approach to digitalisation with info points scattered over the territory providing device-sharing options and support to access digital services; the systematic inclusion of digital components in adult education and vocational training.

Finally, the drafting of a fictional project for people with health problems, including asylum seekers, highlighted how online communities of users could complement the provision of digital services to connect medical staff and patients living in inner areas where health units are scarce. Rather than rating service quality, user communities may allow their members to increase awareness and acceptance of health problems (especially across different “health cultures”), share difficulties and offer mutual support in a community-welfare perspective.

To conclude, according to the stakeholders convened in Torino, depending on concrete measures adopted, digitalisation can either reduce or widen inequalities in service access between large cities and small municipalities. Risks of a negative outcome are high and cannot be neglected. Many Italian inner areas are not yet equipped to catch the train of the Next Generation EU Fund and risk to be on the losing side of top-down digitalisation processes. Hence, it would be crucial to conceive digitalisation as a social rather than a mere technical process and foster participatory planning where inhabitants of inner areas, including newcomers, may have a voice and develop tailored solutions where needed.

Welcoming spaces picked up by local news in Soria, Spain

From 27 September to 1 October, the International PhD School on Migration and Socio-ecological Change took place organised by Utrecht University´s Focus Area on Migration & Societal Change and the International Development Studies Group of the Human Geography and Spatial Planning department at the Faculty of Geosciences, in collaboration with Fundación Cepaim in Soria and the partners of the Welcoming Spaces Consortium.

How to contribute to fair and sustainable development of European localities other than large metropolis while at the same time offering a welcoming space for non-EU migrants to pursue their life projects?

It led to many inspiring discussions and reflections and field visits to Yanguas and San Esteban de Gormaz, where migrants became part of new future perspectives in an area marked by severe depopulation and social innovation.

At our last day the local news visited the closing symposium: ¿Puede la emigración paliar el problema de la despoblación?

Academic seminar on Migration and Socio-ecological Change, 1 October, Soria

How to contribute to the fair and sustainable development of European localities other than large metropolis while at the same time offering a welcoming space for non-EU migrants to pursue their life projects?

This is the question driving the International PhD School on Migration and Socio-ecological Change organised by Utrecht University´s Focus Area on Migration & Societal Change and the International Development Studies Group of the Human Geography and Spatial Planning Department at the Faculty of Geosciences, in collaboration with the partners of the Welcoming Spaces Consortium.

The PhD school takes place in Soria from 27 September to 1 October and will finish with a public seminar Migration and socio-ecological change on Friday October 1st. Please sign up by sending an email to carmenayllon@cepaim.org. More specifics about the programme:

DAMR PhD event – Exploring Migration in Rural Areas

A large part of research in migration studies focuses on urban centers. Context-specific social processes surrounding international migration to and diversity in rural regions, small villages and marginalized, or downscaled, areas have been widely omitted by scholarship and policy. However, the often specific social make-up, community structures and spatial developments in those areas, may bring about dynamics that are different from those in big cities.

In this workshop, the Dutch Association for Migration Research (DAMR) invites early career researchers, PhD candidates, post-Doc researchers and master students, who are keen to shift, decenter or broaden the focus on international migration into rural areas to come together.

The workshop consists of two parts: a first co-creation session in which we will explore topics/questions on conceptual and methodological issues of migration research in rural areas. The outcomes of this session will provide input for the second part, a panel discussion with notable rural scholars: Prof. Michael Woods, Prof. Birgit Glorius, Dr. Marlies Meijer, Prof. Sarah Neal and Dr. Rosario Sampredro. The panel will be followed by small-group workshops with the speakers, and provides the ability for the participants to further dive into a specific question or issue.

Practicalities:

The event will consist of two sessions, the first takes place on 2nd June 2021, 10-12.30h and the second meeting is on 16th June 10-12 and 14-16h.

Sign up:

To apply and prepare for the event we ask you to fill in the following form on or before Friday, May 28th.

More information:

For content questions contact Jana Finke: j.c.finke@uu.nl or Rianne Hadders: r.hadders@uu.nl. For practical questions, please email Jana-Sarah Hönnige: j.s.honnige@students.uu.nl.

Call for papers on Migrations/Mediations – Promoting transcultural dialogue through media, arts and culture

Comunicazioni Sociali. Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies has announced a call for papers for their special issue:

Migrations / Mediations. Promoting transcultural dialogue through media, arts and culture, eds. Pierluigi Musarò, Nikos Papastergiadis, Laura Peja (n. 1/2022, due in April 2022)

This special issue of Comunicazioni Sociali intends to invite international scholars, artists and practitioners to discuss through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives 1) the role of media, arts and culture in the management of policies and practices devoted to migration phenomena; 2) the ways and the degrees in which media, arts and culture have been considered as critical tools for transcultural dialogue; 3) the ways in which media, arts and culture have been used in processes of artistic creation within the framework of the “aesthetic cosmopolitanism”; 4) ways through which models of action in territories oriented toward bringing host populations into contact with migrants and refugees can be developed; 5) the specific set of tools and methodology that have been developed to assess social, cultural and economic impact of multi-, inter- and transcultural dialogue activities through arts, media and culture.

More information on the topics and submission details can be found here.

Call for papers on the legacies of forced migrations

Society Register would like to announce a call for papers on the legacies of forced migrations. The issue will focus on social, cultural, political and economic transformations brought about by forced migrations or displacements in different regions of the world. From the end of World War II to the present day, millions of people have been forced to flee because of armed conflicts, civil wars, border changes, violence, persecution, development projects, natural disasters, environmental degradation and trafficking of people. Forced migrations brought about multifaceted social change for people who left their homes, those who had lived with them before and for those who met them later.

We encourage you to send articles on the social, cultural and political legacies of forced displacements. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are welcome. The analytical focus may fall on recent displacement events and the long-term consequences of forced migrations in the past.

Submissions may pertain to the following topics:

  • The consequences of displacement on the displaced and host communities
  • Displacements and individual/social memory
  • Social representations of the ‘displaced’ and ‘refugee’
  • The protection of refugees
  • Displacement and transformations of place, power and social ties
  • Representations of displacement and forced migration in media and art
  • Security and forced migration

We would like to invite you to submit your articles. The procedure is following:

The date for submission of the completed article is June 30, 2021. In order to submit the full paper authors must register on the “Society Register” webpage.

All papers will be subject to the Society Register review regime. The volume will be published in 2021. Please comply with the editing requirements of the American Sociological Association (ASA). While preparing your article please remember also about the Authors Guidelines. Shall you have any questions, feel free to write to Guest Editors:

Michał Nowosielski, Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw michal.nowosielski@uw.edu.pl

Piotr Cichocki, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań piotr.cichocki@amu.edu.pl

Expected date of publication: December 2021

Welcoming Spaces European Meet-up

On the last Friday of March, the Welcoming Spaces team hosted initiatives, social organisations, businesses, policy makers, local authorities and researchers from all over Europe in a celebration of the first anniversary of the Horizon 2020 project Welcoming Spaces in Europe.

We celebrated our progress and cooperation over the last year and created a space for an exchange of practices, ideas and experiences between the different actors present – all from diverse international and professional backgrounds that provide them with different and important perspectives on the ways shrinking regions and migrants can become connected in mutually enriching ways.

The meet-up was opened with a few guiding words by the Director of Welcoming Spaces, Prof. Zoomers, before diving into the pitches by four organisations working on welcoming initiatives that shared their innovative strategies on how they connect people and places.

The first pitch was about the Spanish foundation Cepaim, presented by Carmen Ayllón, Welcoming Spaces project broker. She introduced the nuevos senderos projects (“new paths”) by which Cepaim is working on social and labour inclusion of migrants in rural localities. Their core focus is to engage both migrants and local communities to contribute to the revitalisation and development of the rural areas. To reach this goal, Cepaim guides the process of emplacements of migrants in rural areas from an early stage, working closely with not only the migrant but also the local residents, to involve the full community in the process.  She remarked on the importance of revitalisation of rural areas in the Spanish context by showing the example of Spanish Lapland. In the experience of Cepaim, successful relocation of migrations to rural areas depends highly on accurate and detailed information and decent housing and job offers.

The next pitch was presented by Claudia Schneider, project leader of the German NGO Ökoherz e.V. She described how the roots of the NGO lie in the region of Thuringia where they help farmers engage in social farming practices, facilitating for example the integration of intellectually disabled people. Later, she said, they asked themselves if they could also work with refugees and quickly realised that their context provided great conditions to do so: they noticed that for many refugees coming from rural backgrounds in their home countries the familiar activities and the home on a farm had a healing effect. They also found that the engagement in farming provided good informal language learning opportunities and further opportunities to train skills and competences. Lastly, they also saw that for many refugees the possibility of paid work was important, giving them the opportunity to send money to support family members. Claudia also added that this development benefitted both sides, as the additional manpower was desperately needed by farmers in these rural depopulating areas.

Next, the Italian initiative Miledù was introduced by co-founder and senior researcher at Euricse, Giulia Galera. Miledù focuses on the social and labour-market integration of newcomers, especially refugees and asylum-seeking people in the peripheries of lake Como, and on bringing the business perspective and the eco-perspective together in rural areas. Employing migrants, they are following a holistic empowerment model which is based on multiple dimensions: the social, work and cultural dimension. By pursuing strategic economic fields such as the management of common goods with activities that include the production of edible flowers, restoration of drystone walls and beekeeping they manage to combine the enhancement of social cohesion, economic stability and environmental protection. Giulia also mentioned that she sees a strength in their small size with opportunities to upscale through collaboration.

The last pitch was about the Dutch/Belgian/German project In de zorg, uit de zorgen (“Into care to be carefree”) presented by project coordinator Romy van den Akker. The initiative is a collaboration of eight refugee, care and labour market organisations that work together closely with the aim of supporting refugees in finding a job or internship in the care sector. The initiative facilitates a specific education path for refugees with the ambition to find employment in the care sector. Participants could join the programme without prior knowledge or education and find out during the course of the programme what healthcare position fit them best, from becoming a nurse to more social healthcare positions. Eventually, the completion of the programme provided them with the guarantee for a paid job in the healthcare profession, more specifically in elderly care. In this way the programme manages to benefit both parties involved, as many of the regions in the three countries involved are experiencing severe labour shortages in the healthcare profession and the initiative manages to address this need.

These newly gained insights were then processed and discussed in small mixed teams giving everyone the chance to reflect on how these good practices could be adapted to their local contexts. Some interesting insights and further discussion points came out of this, as was revealed in the subsequent plenary harvest. The many great ideas voiced here were certainly inspiring and provided great food for thought that will be further discussed in future meetings.

Community of practice

Carmen Ayllón then introduced and invited everyone to join the Community of practice. The name stands for a broad network of stakeholders we aim to create as part of the Welcoming Spaces programme. Here, the focus is on local actors in the field, including local policy makers, those involved in the welcoming initiatives, and both newcomers and long-term residents, and broader, more overarching projects related to welcoming initiatives for newcomers and processes of revitalisation in shrinking region. The community of practice builds on the idea that despite the diversity in context everyone has the same shared goals and that a space for supporting each other and sharing thoughts could help the creation of solutions and possibilities on the ground.