MIGRATION AND RESPONSIBILITIES DEATHS, LIVES, INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY
Most people globally (96.4%) live in the country where they were born.
Migrants in the world are about 281 million and correspond to one person for every
30 of the 7.9 billion inhabitants of the earth. In 2022, only 3.6% of the world’s
population, equal to just over 80 million people, left their place of origin in another
context. A large part of these movements is internal to the same countries of origin
and only a small part is represented by international migration. Many and complex
are the reasons that push people to leave their original place to another context:
the serious economic imbalances between global North and South, climate change,
food crises, conflicts between states and those internal to each country, the
presence of anti-democratic systems and the consequent persecution and violation
of human rights, and last but not least, the individual or family drive to seek a better
future for themselves and their loved ones.
European migration policy has for many years made it increasingly difficult and
drastically reduced the channels of regular entry into the EU, making the
Mediterranean a place of death: more than 2.4 million people have crossed the
Mediterranean since 2014, and more than 26,800 have lost their lives.
Italy is the first arrival country of refugees and migrants in Europe: in 2022 it
registered over 105,100 new arrivals and in the first 3 months of 2023, arrivals were
already at least 28,750 – including 5,000 minors – plus more than 173,600 Ukrainian
refugees, including more than 49,400 children under 18. Following the shipwreck of
26 February 2023, the national debate focused on the responsibility related to this
tragedy. No one in the public debate seems to have taken responsibility for what
happened and public attention has turned to the role of Europe, accused of not
being present enough.
Starting from these reflections, we want to create a space for public discussion
around these questions:
What is the responsibility of every one of these deaths?
What role do we play as Italian and European citizens?
WHAT IS AN OPEN FORUM?
An open forum is a public space in which a community can talk to each other, and
confront each other openly to learn more about the diversity of ideas and feelings
present within it. In this space, every point of view will be important and welcome, not
only that of experts on the subject. The experts are all the participants, whatever their
position. The forum will start with a small group of speakers that will open the meeting
with interventions of 10 min. each, representing the main positions around the topic to
be discussed. Following the discussion space will be open to free public interventions.
The facilitators will have the task of generating and accompanying this space so that all
the voices, both the best-known and the least popular, can be heard.
TILDE PROJECT https://tildeproject.org/
TILDE (Transformative and Inclusive Leadership through Deep Democracy), is an
Erasmus+ project in the Adult Education Sector. It is led by a strategic partnership of 6
European organizations (Altekio, Altekio Swiss, Impuls, Deep Democracy Denmark, Xena,
Comunitazione) in five different countries (Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, and
Italy), each with distinct competencies in facilitating groups and communities and sharing
the approach to facilitation, Process Work, and its underlying philosophy, called Deep
Democracy. The project, which is coming to an end, has provided for the implementation
in each of the partner countries of training on conflict facilitation for social and migrant
workers, and an open forum on a theme of relevance for the reference context. Training
in different countries addressed issues such as discrimination, segregation, and racism,
and facilitated participants to find creative and innovative solutions, as well as to discover
opportunities that can be found in situations of social polarization. The various
interventions also included artistic forms such as storytelling, theatre, plastic arts, music,
dance, and movement.
FACILITATORS Beatrice Leone, Sergi Barrientos, Anna Pujol
The forum will be in Italian with an English translation.