‘From Europe to Local: Migrating Solidarity’

On Monday 10 October 2016 SOLIDAR and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies launched the latest common publication ‘From Europe to local. Migrating solidarity’. The debate took place in the new SOLIDAR premises and started with the opening remarks by SOLIDAR Secretary General Conny Reuter and FEPS Senior Political Advisor Hedwig Giusto.

Two of the book’s authors, Marketa Seidlova from Charles University in Prague and Enza Roberta Petrillo from the Sapienza University in Rome, presented then their contribution to the book. While the former focused on the discrepancies in the implementation of integration measures in two different French regions (a metropolitan area, Paris, and the a rural region, Basse-Normandie), the latter discussed the, at times dysfunctional, working relations between local institutions and civil society organisations working in the field of migrants’ integration in Rome. The debate was then joined by Elly Schlein and Julie Ward, both members of the European Parliament for the S&D Group, who both called for a strengthening of local integration initiatives and an end to the negative connotations surrounding migration. Brando Benifei, who contributed one of the articles in the book joined in through a video message. The floor was then opened for a debate in which Judit Tanczos, Migration Policy Group, Justus Schonlau, PES Group in the Committee of the Regions and Elmir Bojadžić, ASB South Eastern Europe, were among the first speakers.

The launch of the book “From Europe to Local: Migrating Solidarities” was the concluding step of a longer project that started in 2015.

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