Refugee Crisis: New Concepts, New Ideas and New Chances Erasmus Project

Project Title

Refugee Crisis: New Concepts, New Ideas and New Chances

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Integration of refugees; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

In 2015, the number of people seeking asylum in the EU reached its peak of 1.3 million and triggered the refugee crisis. Even six years later, the EU and its member states have not solved the refugee crisis yet, refugees are still drowning or living under inhumane conditions in refugee camps in the so-called “First States”. Integration remains one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century for politics and society.
Over the past 30 months, we have encountered projects, measures and ideas that demonstrate the creatively diverse approaches that can be used to respond to challenges of integration of refugees. In a consistent and multidimensional comparison of countries, we examined the strategies of flagship projects to successfully shape immigrant integration processes.
In addition to raise the awareness of the complexity of integration processes, the project focused on promoting students’ political, social, and civic competencies successively. Furthermore, they developed an in-depth and solution-oriented view of the interrelationships of integration, which served to strengthen them in a critical examination of political and social processes. At the same time, the exchange between the different partners should be encouraged so that they could benefit from each other’s ideas and strategies.
For this purpose, we concentrated on different main points in a modular structure:
C1 De jure: law and policy in international politics
C2 De facto: integration concepts of the regions & the education sector
C3 Private integration initiatives & NGOs
C4 Integration in the labor market
as well as the cumulation in C5: Presentation & Dissemination.
The results of the individual modules as well as our business game designed in C4 are freely accessible on our website http://erasmus-refugeesintegration.eu/ for further use, in the sense of a digital teaching material and exchange platform. This is in line with our philosophy that collaboration only proves mutually productive when one side learns from the other.
The modules aimed at a multidimensional view, focusing on the perspective of the migrants, the affected stakeholders as well as the given preconditions and restriction.
The first module examined the policy-making processes regarding the integration of refugees within the European legal framework. During the first mobility, students created different political roles of the European Parliament in international groups who conducted interviews on the causes, legal possibilities, humanitarian necessities and pragmatic approaches to the crisis in order to create an understanding of policy-making processes. This exposure helped students to improve their political, social, civic, and critical thinking skills, as well as understand the need for integration.
The second module compared exemplary approaches to integration by local authorities and the education sector. The selected projects focused on different aspects and problems of integration processes. Based on this, we visited regional integration projects. The joint dialogue with external partners focused on a transnational exchange on strategies and approaches and trained a critical and solution-oriented view on preconditions for integration processes.
In C3 private initiatives of NGOs in our regions were analyzed. The goal was to offer the students insights into social engagement, to understand the essential role of social responsibility and to encourage their willingness to become socially active themselves. For this purpose, we developed a motivational video for young people together. We also talked to local NGOs and discussed the opportunities and challenges of integration processes and social responsibility.
The students in C4 dealt with the question of how successful integration processes can be designed at the level of labor markets and vocational training and how companies respond to various challenges online. In addition, to various interviews, the students developed a mock debate in which representatives of the three countries developed a joint project to improve the integration of refugees in the labor markets. This included the findings of the previous modules. This approach promotes the multidimensional, action-oriented view of our students in a special way.
C5 served as an overview and summary of our project. During this online mobility, we critically examined the knowledge, facts and information we gained as well as our results.

Project Website

http://erasmus-refugeesintegration.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65636,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnasium Lehrte & Country: DE

Project Partners

• COLLEGE DES ECRIVAINS COMBATTANTS
• Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “Giovanni Verga”