Centre for Migration Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań invites you to this month’s webinar which will be given by Giovanni Calabrese and Sylwia Modzelewska titled “Green Light Welcome d' EUROPA. Our experiences of welcoming and integration”.

Date:
21st April 2022, 10:00 to 11:30 (CET), online (zoom)

Details about how to join the webinar will be sent automatically after registration.

Giovanni Calabrese is an international activist, artist and architect from Italy who explores the relationships between art, activism, politics, urban pedagogy and social design. He has often lived and worked in marginal and difficult areas of the world, such as South America and Central Africa in addition to rural areas in Italy, in initiating participatory processes and experimenting with new practices for social change. Calabrese today coordinates the European mission of the Sale della Terra Consortium in Poland and other European countries in support of refugees, trying to connect different realities to build new experience to learn from transcending each other’s affiliations, identities and ethnicities.
 
Sylwia Modzelewska graduated in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, then in Interculturality and Social Citizenship at Ca’Foscari University in Venice. She lives in Italy where she has carried out various jobs and voluntary work in the field of migration for various associations and humanitarian organisations. She has worked with migrant women, Roma children, asylum seekers and foreign communities. Since 2016 she has worked as a mediator in reception centres for the Consorzio Sale della Terra. In the past, she has published articles on the conditions of refugees and oppressed peoples for the Refugee.pl portal. Her thesis, written for the University of Ca’Foscari in 2007, dealt with Poland, its role as a barrier against migrants and refugees, since its entry into the European Union, a topic that after many years remains entirely relevant

Abstract
Our project or green light WELCOME movement, stems from the fact that Europe cannot continue to close itself off to reception, but must create openings through dialogue with politics, art, institutions and so on, to guarantee greater space for the participation of civil society in a new redefinition of borders. Kamil Syller's intuition, which I find absolutely inspiring, underlines how civil society can also autonomously change the narrative of a country and perhaps of a continent, highlighting how reception can be one of the greatest social investments that Europe could make at this historic moment. The small municipalities, the rural areas of Europe, play a fundamental role today, standing as candidates to become green lights of WELCOME and choose hospitality as a lever of local development and experimentation to trigger innovative processes and practices to inspire integration and reception policies.
The webinar will be the opportunities to introduce what we are doing in Europe through different actions and introducing you to the Italian reception system for asylum seekers, with a special focus on SAI projects (Sistema di Accoglienza e Integrazione) we have put in place.
 
We are going to explain in the second part The functioning, objectives, advantages and difficulties of these projects. In addition, a direct experience of the management of SAI reception centers for refugees in the Benevento area of southern Italy will be reported.
The webinar will be closed with a call to action to invite people to join us to our interdisciplinary and open workshop to be held in several small European municipalities, starting with Italian municipalities (Piccoli Comuni del Welcome), in which all professionals interested in the issue of reception, such as journalists, pedagogues, artists, anthropologists, students, etc. could participate to build a group of professionals learning together about how Europe can or could creatively address the issue of immigration.
How and what are we learning from each other about the migration cause around Europe? What’s the potential that has not being used?
These questions are meant to keep feeding the debate and build a more welcoming Europe together.