What motivated the creation of this group?
Migraespai is a group formed from a European initiative for young people (ages 17 to 30) driven by the FaMiDo Association (Belgium) to build a network of thought among young people from different countries and local actions proposed and carried out by them on themes surrounding migration processes and their griefs to improve detected psychosocial difficulties.
Since May 2018, when the group was formed, working meetings have been held to reflect on concepts and difficulties identified in relation to migratory processes, their possible causes, and consequences. Based on this analysis, the young people have proposed a project to carry out with the objective of improving the identified difficulties.
What are the objectives? What actions do you take and how do you organize yourselves to achieve these objectives? Do you hold any kind of meetings periodically?
Currently, the focus of work for the periodic meetings (once a month) is directed towards the development of the different projects proposed by the young people of Migraespai:
- Workshop preparation for 3rd and 4th year ESO students and Bachelor's students in Barcelona high schools.
- Preparation of workshops for immigrant youth.
- Web Design Plan for Migraespai.
What profiles do the people in our group have? Do you think it could be enriching to expand the group with other profiles? Which ones?
The group members are young people between 16 and 30 years old from different cultures. Although any young person is welcome, it would be very enriching to expand the group with young people from different cultures.
Is participation open?
Participation is open, as any young person who wants to be part of the working group is welcome.
Why do you think this group is necessary?
The fact that the group deals with social issues and is made up of young people, who are the future, brings a particular and powerful perspective to these questions. We believe that for any institution and for society, the vision of young people is interesting for contrasting themes, opinions, and experiences.
Awareness is a social transformation action that yields its results in the medium to long term, but if you had to raise awareness among the population to promote social inclusion with a message for right here, right now, what would it be?
Beyond nationalities, we are human beings living on the same planet. If we stop to think about it, we are all children of immigrants; migratory movements have been present throughout humanity's history. Despite this, we encounter the paradox that there is often a lack of knowledge about this subject.
One of the group's objectives is to improve the difficulties detected in psychosocial terms? What difficulties have been detected so far?
We have identified different difficulties, which we have grouped into different categories:
Family reunification regulations:
- Parents have expectations that generally don't align with reality.
- The process takes a long time, years (in some countries with agreements with Spain, less). Parents (or a single mother) and children do not have a formed bond (they have formed a bond with other main caregivers, such as grandparents). Difficulty in the relationship between both.
School enrollment:
- Welcome classrooms segregate students.
- Although high schools provide information to parents, it doesn't reach them.
- Some professors show little sensitivity towards foreign students.
- Lack of parental knowledge about school operations.
- Language barrier on the part of the parents.
- Behavioral differences among different cultural communities. For instance, the Moroccan community is more willing to use and receive help from resources. In contrast, the Chinese community is more reserved and distrustful of local resources.
- Dual language (Catalan and Spanish).
Relatives of young people:
- Migratory journey conditions.
- Lack of contacts in the host country.
- False expectations about what life is like here.
- Not being able to talk about migration grief.
- The information is not being communicated effectively.
The ones regarding the difficulty of getting the “papers”:
- Foreigners' Office, police chief spoke English.
- Difficulty obtaining information.
- Difficulty getting an appointment.
- There is no physical point of information.
- Difficulty in talking about these matters.
- Difficulty in elaborating migratory grief.
How do you think it should be handled?
We believe it's important to create spaces for mutual support. Spaces to organize experiential workshops on migratory griefs that invite anyone who wants to join, in this case, any age is welcome.
We are also developing a website to create a virtual space for information, meeting, and exchange (experiences, advice, languages, etc.).
Awareness of the indigenous population through activities, workshops, and social media outreach.
In what ways do you think young people like yourselves can influence an improvement in migratory processes? What alliances do you have at the local, national, and international levels?
Young people are the future, and if we start by raising awareness among ourselves and other young people, and build a network, the next generation, meaning our children, will have greater sensitivity.
On the other hand, we find that adults, often burdened by their responsibilities, forget the social reality we live in, and we also consider opening up this dimension through our actions.
We have alliances at the European level, specifically in Brussels, London, Naples, and Dublin, but we would like this working group model to be replicable in more cities and countries, and to share and enrich ourselves through the exchange of experiences, types of workshops, mobile applications, among others.
What actions do you plan to take regarding migratory processes?
As we have previously discussed, we have already begun to conduct experiential workshops to address migratory grief, both aimed at the general population, with the goal of raising awareness, and at the immigrant population, to invite them to talk about migratory grief.
On the other hand, the website we are building will be a useful tool for immigrants, because we intend for it to be an approachable website where different types of immigrants can feel identified. Ultimately, we are working to create a network for exchange and thought.
If you are interested in participating in the group, contact us at info@