Project description
How to reopen a fair dialogue on migration
Based on the principle of multi-perspectivity, an ethics of listening and a politics of recognition, the migration debate in Europe can move away from its current impasse. It is important to set a course for a forward-looking and productive debate grounded on fair dialogue on immigration and successful integration. The EU-funded OPPORTUNITIES project will show the way. Specifically, it will bring together European countries on the receiving end with African countries of origin and transit for ‘cross-talk’ experiments. By initiating encounters and conversations amongst migrants, citizens and stakeholders, the aim is to establish level telling fields or 'fair storytelling' on local levels. This will be supported by qualitative and quantitative research and discourses in the media.
Objective
The humanitarian tragedy of 2015-16 fuelled anti-European sentiment, allowing populists to successfully reframe the refugee crisis as a crisis of Europe itself. OPPORTUNITIES shows how we can move beyond this current impasse by creating a forward-looking and productive debate grounded in new principles for a fair dialogue on immigration and successful integration. These new principles form what we call a level telling field: Adopting the economic metaphor of the “level playing field” (i.e. “fair play” in the single market), we propose, apply, evaluate, and advocate “fair storytelling” in the migration debate. Based on the principle of multi-perspectivity, an ethics of listening, and a politics of recognition, this new debate strategically unites African countries of origin and transit with European countries of arrival and destination. Our collaboration establishes level telling fields on local levels, initiating encounters and conversations among migrants, citizens, and stakeholders. These “cross-talk” experiments, creating and re-enacting experiential narratives of migration and integration in local communities, build on, and are supported by, novel theoretical concepts as well as qualitative and quantitative research on national and transnational migration discourses in media. We seek in this way to demonstrate, in both theory and practice, how a reactive mode of crisis management can be transformed into a shared new narrative of integration, using the potential of stories to foster cross-cultural understanding. OPPORTUNITIES uses an innovative dissemination strategy which includes policy recommendations promoting level telling field rules and a touring stage production by a leading European theatre company to re-open a fair dialogue on migration. In the short term, this will allow for a new consensus to emerge in local conversations; in the long run, it will have a significant and lasting impact on how we envision opinion-making in the European public sphere.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- H2020-EU.3.6. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies Main Programme
- H2020-EU.3.6.1.1. - The mechanisms to promote smart, sustainable and inclusive growth
- H2020-EU.3.6.1.2. - Trusted organisations, practices, services and policies that are necessary to build resilient, inclusive, participatory, open and creative societies in Europe, in particular taking into account migration, integration and demographic change
- H2020-EU.3.6.1.4. - The promotion of sustainable and inclusive environments through innovative spatial and urban planning and design
Call for proposal
H2020-SC6-MIGRATION-2018-2019-2020
See other projects for this callSub call
H2020-SC6-MIGRATION-2020
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
1030 Bruxelles / Brussel
Belgium