Intercultural Cities and Refugees
Cities play a crucial role in welcoming refugees, providing both facilities to meet their immediate needs, and opportunities for their long-term social and economic integration.
Cities are at the frontline of refugee integration response as refugees move mostly to urban centres in the hope of finding a sense of community, safety and economic independence. Cities often have to react in a matter of days and find pragmatic solutions that alleviate the plight of distressed people without fuelling resentment within the local population. But they also need to invest in refugees’ long-term inclusion by dealing with public opinion, managing potential conflicts, combatting discrimination and ensuring that refugees have the possibility to realise their aspirations and make a meaningful contribution to the local community.
The refugee inclusion approach advocated by Intercultural cities is based on the “diversity advantage” concept - that any person, wherever he/she comes from and whatever background he/she has, has something to offer to the society he/she chooses to live in. Intercultural cities is offering innovative policy practice, guidelines and tools for supporting cities in designing responses for an inclusive, sustainable approach to refugee arrival.
Focus
- Arrival of Refugees in Your City - To-Do List
- Refugee policies for the intercultural city – Policy Brief (2017)
Refugee integration policies
A team of former FC Barcelona Players to hold a solidarity journey with refugees in Greece
Reggio Emilia - Intercultural approach to dealing with welcoming newcomers
Good practice
School promotion programme with the Roma community in Barcelona
The City of Cartagena (Spain) launches the Refugee Welcome and Integration Network
video
"Intercultural Cities are searching for solutions". Listen to Claudia Luciani, Director of Democratic Governance in the Council of Europe, talking on refugee inclusion.
Press
- Refugees and migrants can help build inclusive European societies - by Snežana Samardžić-Marković, Director General for Democracy, Council of Europe - New Europe [31/01/2016]
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