Democratic citizenshipMigrants, Refugees, Asylum SeekersSocial Rights, Inclusion and Justice

Bringing together actors from Greece, Croatia, Serbia and Sweden, the FORA project organized a series of initiatives centered on the theme of community cohesion and the mutual integration of established local citizens’ and newly-arrived migrant communities. The project was implemented via the tools of facilitated joint reflection, citizenship-enabled intercultural dialogue, direct participation in policy-making, solidarity and societal engagement.

Temporary assemblies for co-creative democratic participation promulgated the bringing together of local and migrant communities. The assemblies, designed by the partner organizations, using cultural devices, including a cultural workshop, open debates and seminars, and were hosted as part of various integration efforts that have been observed in the field of education, health, civil society, communities and public services.

At each meeting, actors would collectively consider challenges to integration from both a local and European perspective, in order to propose concrete policy solutions to local integration issues. It is worth nothing the interrelativity of the local and European contexts: local resolutions were somewhat only achievable through cooperation and coordination at a European level, which, in turn, became policy suggestions for integration in DG HOME’s Strategic Plan 2016-2020.

The results were compiled and publicly presented in a transnational forum, which served as both a report on new citizenship and integration, and as a manual on policy suggestions on intercultural citizenship and participation, highlighting the mutual benefits of integration.

The Partnership