EC policy brief

GeneralAlthough the 2015 ‘summer of migration’ was widely framed as a ‘refugee crisis’, new and unseen in post-war European history, policy makers across Europe should not make the mistake thinking that all our experiences with and insights in previous processes of migration and integration are no longer relevant. Europe has been built and continues to be rebuilt at the convergence of innumerable migration trajectories. In the past, the traces of migration processes were 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 still actively engaged in forging the integration of relatively newly arrived and arriving migrants. While policy makers tend to focus on ‘big integration’ and follow these integration processes in the formal channels, agencies and programmes that channel migrants’ arrival and settlement processes, ReROOT brings into view a wider constellation of actors. A constellation of previous generations of migrants who, together with ‘natives’, produce and co-constitute living arrival infrastructures through which newcomers integrate ‘in practice’ into urban, suburban and rural communities in Europe. These living arrival infrastructures consist of shops as information hubs, religious sites (churches or mosques), local labour offices, language classes, hairdressers, leisure clubs etc. In order for such a perspective on integration to form a starting point for a new generation of integration and migration policies, policy makers need two things: 1) examples, concepts and methods to understand and gauge the local manifestations of arrival infrastructure and 2) examples of action schemes and strategies to intervene in this constellation of actors that build on their strengths.In a first part of the final policy brief, policy makers will be informed about examples of the arrival infrastructures we investigated in ReROOT. These examples will be based on the field work we develop in nine different pilot sites in Turkey, Greece, Hungary, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK. The reader will learn which practical methods can be used to find and get access to local arrival infrastructures, how to document the dominant integration routes provided in these local constellations but also to understand which integration trajectories (for example into jobs, into the tax system, into language acquisition, into the embracing of Western European values - e.g. man/woman equality; gay rights; separation between Church and State etc. -) are more difficult or blocked. These concrete methods, developed by ReROOT and tested in a variety of settings across Europe are the first main outcome of the project: they consist of the mapping toolkit, a set of tools, techniques and instructive practices that will enable civil society actors and policy makers to identify, describe and map out arrival infrastructure actors, processes and ensuing social innovations. In the second part of the final policy brief, policy makers will then be informed about successful strategies to intervene in such a variety of settings. The reader will receive an evaluation of how, in the nine pilot sites in Turkey, Greece, Hungary, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK, researchers have tested and experimented with a range of formats to negotiate between the important stakeholders that populate the local arrival infrastructure. More specifically, the reader will be introduced to the second main outcome of the project: the platform prototypes guidebook for organising, setting up and following-up negotiations between stakeholders which will allow civil society circles engaging with migration and integration to set up the appropriate type of platform to discuss and negotiate potential interventions in the a