1. Key issues and central perspective
In the past century, millions of people have moved in and out of Europe. Over time their pathways through Europe have been forming a rich societal fabric. This fabric includes the ‘arrival infrastructure’ in which recent newcomers negotiate their arrival and give shape to their possible futures. Here, newcomers build their emerging lifeworlds both with the resources that they bring themselves and the ones surrounding them upon arrival. Although these world building processes may appear unplanned and unpredictable, broader regimes and discourses considerably impact the lives and world-building options and capacities of migrants and newcomers.
ReROOT attests to the numerous forms in which recent newcomers’ lives are being regimented, as much as to the efforts and energies that construct lively new worlds within the arrival infrastructure. In nine pilot research sites, ReROOT detects and amplifies some of the diverse voices in the arrival infrastructure to learn from their struggles and achievements. By bringing together expertise in many shapes and types, ReROOT aims to foster sustainable, evidence-based integration practices, policies and wider public imaginaries. To that end ReROOT partners co-create hands-on training materials for municipalities, civil society and social professionals in order to learn how to explore, analyse, reflect upon, and advocate for the local arrival infrastructure they care about, want to understand and help to optimize.
2. Why is ReROOT important for society?
Across Europe, migrant settlement has been framed with the notion of ‘integration’ both in academic and policy discourse. This notion is criticized for placing the responsibility of integration on migrants rather than the receiving society and for ignoring the role of socio-economic divisions, racism, and disadvantage. Scholars also question the idea of a ‘mainstream society’ into which migrants should integrate. ReROOT profoundly reorients the very concept of ‘integration’ and shifts the focus to the role of long-established residents, organisations and institutions in accommodating newcomers. It thus contributes to our understanding of processes of migrant incorporation as being shaped by both broader national and city-wide integration policies and socio-economic conditions, as well as populations, organisations and institutions on the ground. ReROOT focuses on processes of migrants’ settlement beginning to take place from their initial ‘intake’. These early stages are critical and formative moments of migrants’ pathways into employment, housing, education and training, public services, religious, cultural or leisure activities, neighbourhood organisations, etc. These processes can be identified as migrants’ ‘minor integrations’ – the everyday practices that interweave their lives with the arrival infrastructures of society. ReROOT’s exploration of ‘minor integrations’ enables it to move beyond an overall judgemental, unilateral or teleological view of ‘integration’. ReROOT situates its impact in the transfer of knowledge, methods and analytical tools and reflexive methods to civil society and public service stakeholders– for them to continue the work ReROOT can only begin to do.
3. Overall objectives
First, ReROOT documents the historical 'depth' of arrival infrastructures to tap into forms of expertise and know-how built-up through time as the result of previous and ongoing migration and integration processes most notably co-authored by previous arrivals of migrants.
Second, by learning lessons from their contemporary predicament under conditions of new arrivals, of emerging discourses and policies of welcoming or rejection, of valuing or devaluing migrants’ contribution to ongoing societal change, ReROOT aims to put itself in a position to identify where the ongoing minor integration processes are presently experiencing blockages or, reversely, spurring social mobility at the individual level and social innovation at the community level.
Thirdly, ReROOT aims to learn from history and untangles the intricacies and urgencies of contemporary migration and integration processes not as an end in themselves but as necessary steps towards devising future-proof solutions. The latter do not take the form of one-size-fits-all tips and tricks, let alone general rules and dynamics, but of handing over concepts, methods and tools to actors, organisations and institutions to find out for themselves.
