Even before the 2015 refugee crisis Social and Solidarity Economy Organisations (SSEOs) and Social Enterprises (SEs) have played a pivotal role in dealing with the multifaceted challenge of migration. They operate on a broad range of migration issues at global, regional, national and local levels such as accommodation, social integration, labour integration, healthcare or education. Furthermore, many bottom-up initiatives by civil society organisations and European citizens have played a decisive and visible role in filling the protection and integration gaps left by EU and national policies, for example, by offering asylum seekers a place to stay, food, clothing, psychological support and human sustain.
The Key theme of this EMES Affinity Group (AG) would be the role and potential of SSEOs and SEs in tackling the migration and refugee challenge.
In particular, the “Migrations” AG will focus (but not exclusively) on the following sub-topics:
- experimenting with innovative integration pathways
- regenerating remote areas and communities
- assessing the socio-economic impact of migration
- designing new housing patterns
- exploring the interaction between SSEOs – SEs and public authorities
- labour integration, vocational training and recognition of skills and competencies
The “Migrations” AG will be the place of coordinating EMES academics dealing with the migration-related issues in order to make it easier to organise focused conference sessions, project proposals and other activities on a specific topic, but also meetings and PhD symposia within the EMES network.
With a view on reviving the ‘Migrations’ theme, the group will engage in the following initiatives:
- Organizing webinars and meetings among members.
- Proposing conference sessions.
- Drafting, together or among those interested, new project proposals to be submitted to funding schemes.
- Special issue to explore the above mention themes in academic journals.
Names and contact details of the “Migrations” AG directors:
- Giorgia Trasciani (LEST, Université Aix-Marseille) giorgia.trasciani@univ-amu.fr
- Giulia Galera (Euricse)
- Jenny Eschweiler (Roskilde University)