THE REALITY OF EUROPEAN MIGRATION: RE-ESTABLISHING A EUROPEAN IDENTITY THROUGH CULTURAL INTEGRATION AND AN ACTIVE LIFE Erasmus Project

Project Title

THE REALITY OF EUROPEAN MIGRATION: RE-ESTABLISHING A EUROPEAN IDENTITY THROUGH CULTURAL INTEGRATION AND AN ACTIVE LIFE

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Inclusion – equity; Migrants’ issues

Project Summary

Resting on the assumption that migration movements are a trending topic nowadays, we truly believe in their innovative character. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this is a much-debated theme still subject to conjecture, which we have to come to grips with in the current society, since it is part of our daily lives. As far as we are concerned, hinging on this issue from the academic perspective seems crucial on the grounds that re-educating new generations is of core importance to smooth over and polish wrong views. By and large, we are different but we are the same. We all live in the European Union, which implies an attempt to blur boundaries and create bonds. We are largely concerned about a contemporary topic as it is people’s migratory movements with the consequences that it implies.
We aim to focus on the reasons why people leave their country of origin, why they choose a specific country, what they do to integrate and adapt to an alien and distant place and how their life has changed and presumably improved since then. These are questions the research community has been investigating for a long time and that have recently gained even more visibility and impact.

We want to focus not only on the emotive side, revolving around their feelings and sensations, but also on the ‘action’ plan interwoven to fit in and feel part of the group. And there lies the importance of our project, laying emphasis on the mechanisms, protocols, tasks and acculturation process that we propose to make them feel at ease and to inform society of the actual situation of these new-comers. We will come up with this data thanks to our several interviews, our welcoming activities and everything we have designed specifically for them.

The total number of participants will be approximately 202, divided into 20 long-term students , 60 short-term students , 3 coordinating teachers, 3 partner teachers, 3 headmasters, 3 counsellors/psychologists or analogous figures, 80 families hosting all the long and short term students, 20 interviewed families and10 lecturers from local governments or private organizations.
We attempt to provide an account of emigrant families living in the different cities involved (Lugo, Spain; Perchtoldsfort, Austria, and Potenza, Italy) with a view to reporting on the process they underwent from the beginning until the arrival at the new country. We plan to help them adapt even more with the elaboration and implementation of the activities we propose. Let us focus on the most significant ones. Long-term students will design and carry out interviews to immigrant families living in Italy and Spain, to gain insights on the actual situation migrants undergo. This enables them to test and measure the migrants’ degree of integration and compare both countries scenario.

On the other hand, short-term students will produce a play with the results obtained by long-term students as well as watch movies dealing with migration such as ‘Samba’ or ‘Marea Humana’, to brainstorm over its content and bring about a debate. Short-term students will also produce a TV news programme at the ICT centre in Santiago de Compostela to make the audience informed of the latest news regarding the project topics. Likewise, we also suggest some cultural activities which foment social cohesion such as an ‘orienting’ race in a park with cultural questions of the countries at stake, or a ‘treasure hunting’ game with questions related to migration, to examine participants’ degree of learning and promote group work, key to cultural union. It will be short-term Italian and Spanish students’ task to interview some migrant families living in Austria during their stay there, to be able to gather information from that country.

On the basis of the activities, we can deduce the methodology, consisting of a four step planning -preliminary analysis, participants’ training, action plan (activities) and final remarks-

The blogs that participants will elaborate and upload to the e-twinning space will presumably be substantial indicators of the goals achieved gradually. Likewise, the interviews by long-term participants will prove to bring about interesting data about the connection of immigrants to the cultural reality of their destination country.

Regarding the longer term benefits, we intend to raise awareness in our students and the educational community towards migrants’ adaptation to education and society, providing other schools with the guidance and examples needed to set out the initiative in forthcoming projects at local or transnational level successfully. We will keep on working with the process to train students to facilitate migrant citizens’ adaptation to co-living with neighbours with different traditions. In the three schools involved, formation to develop students about migration movements and related problems will be offered after the completion of the project. A conflict prevention campaign will be developed on a yearly basis.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 95088 Eur

Project Coordinator

Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria Nosa Señora dos Ollos Grandes & Country: ES

Project Partners

• LICEO ROSA-GIANTURCO”
• Bundesgymnasium und Realgymnasium perchtoldsdorf