Reception of “new migrants” in EU cities
First workshop of the Designing Inclusion Project
Sheffield, UK, 14 December 2017 | Published in Social
The first workshop of the DESIGNING INCLUSION project, in which Housing Europe is a partner, took place in Sheffield from the 29th November to the 3rd December 2017. The participants involved in the workshop come from a range of different disciplines with different approaches to migration and inclusion. This is why we started day one with “definitions” to understand if we give words and concepts the same meaning.
It soon became clear we must start from defining inclusion, as a first step together in Sheffield. The discussion focused on the reception of “new migrants” in EU cities and the engaged teaching and learning experiences from the University of Sheffield, Milan, Leuven, and Housing Europe.
Housing Europe team, Abderrahim, and Alice were impressed by the inclusive features of the city of Sheffield and the multidimensional involvement of the local actors in the inclusion of new migrants. Among the Sheffield-based civil society organizations, we´ve met ASSIST Sheffield, the City of Sanctuary Sheffield and SymAAg and experts involved in the process. As for academia, we were pleased to discuss the ‘live projects’ (socially-engaged projects where students work with the local community during six weeks) with university students. All these activities implemented aim to provide the holistic approach, needed to deliver concrete actions, empathy, and sense of humanity. As Jane Jacobs says, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”
Among the six weeks live project we found very interesting 'The Sheffield Housing Conversations' with the Client South Yorkshire Housing Association.
