Europe in a changing world - ReROOT

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Introduction

ReROOT: Arrival Infrastructures as Sites of Integration for Recent Newcomers is a 52-months Horizon 2020 project seeking to analyse, diagnose and learn lessons from past and recent transformations of arrival and integration processes in Europe, with the explicit goal of fostering sustainable, evidence-based integration practices, policies and public imaginaries. ReROOT is coordinated by KU Leuven and gathers twelve partners from nine countries.

Project description

Europe has been built and continues to be rebuilt at the convergence of innumerable migration trajectories. In the long run, the traces of migration processes are often effaced and sedimented into ‘native’ society. But many communities, civil society actors, public authorities, small businesses, religious institutions, leisure organisations, etc. have records and living memories of these migration processes, or indeed, are actively engaged in forging the integration of relatively newly arrived migrants. These actors, we submit, produce and co-constitute living ‘arrival infrastructures’ throughout urban, suburban and rural communities in nine different pilot sites in Turkey, Greece, Hungary, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK.

Beyond the assumption that scaffolding and channeling of arrival and settlement processes comes through formal channels, agencies and programmes, ReROOT brings into view a wider constellation of actors, most notably previous generations of migrants who, together with ‘natives’ are co-creators of shops as information hubs, religious sites (churches or mosques), local labour offices, language classes, hairdressers, leisure clubs etc. ReROOT investigates the interactions, the transfers of knowledge and resources between first-comers and late-comers, the sedimented practices, organisations and provisions (whether private or public), as well as the transformations of all these through the recent, post-2015 arrival processes.

ReROOT is dedicated to unpack – with the help of migrants and a wide range of stakeholders – the nexus of migratory mobility and societal transformation in order to further inclusive and redistributive integration processes. Most importantly, ReROOT situates its impact in the transfer of knowledge, methods and analytical tools and reflexive methods to civil society and public service stakeholders. To that end, ReROOT develops and tests mapping toolkits and platform prototypes for policy makers and civil society – for them to continue the work ReROOT can only begin to do.

Objectives

These are the objectives of ReROOT

  • Objective 1: Describing and analysing site-specific, past-sensitive, post-2014 arrival settings and integration processes
  • Objective 2: Developing and identifying methodological insights for describing and mapping arrival processes
  • Objective 3: Implementing and disseminating tools of analysis and diagnosis through testing and training
  • Objective 4: Disseminating insights and propositions to policy makers at different levels
  • Objective 5: Inform and interact with targeted audiences to raise awareness and empower European residents to take integration into their own hands

Role of Ghent University

Prof. Dr. Luce Beeckmans is the Work Package leader of WP5: Designing tools for analysing and diagnosing integration processes, and is the supervisor of Dounia Salamé, the PhD researcher working on the project. A postdoc will be recruited in a later phase of the project.

The objectives of WP5 are two-fold:
(a) Designing mapping toolkits &
(b) Designing platform prototypes

WP5 transfers the methodological insights from the site-specific context for use in pilots and prototypes. The methodological reflection and comparative analysis of site research undertaken in WP5 will result in a 'mapping toolkit' for identifying, describing, and analysing local arrival infrastructures. This 'mapping toolkit' is a set of tools, techniques and instructive practices to be used by those (civil society actors, local authorities, migrant networks or federations) who envisage to better understand, re-engineer, or even develop relevant arrival infrastructures in different places any time in the future. Moreover, WP5 will design prototypes for interactive platforms, sensitive to local specificities and the involvement of particular stakeholders, but open enough to be implemented in other places in different circumstances.

Website

under construction.

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101004704

Contact

Prof. Luce Beeckmans
Department Architecture and Urban Planning
Phone number: +32 9 264 39 04
E-mail