ITHACA: Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency

The H2020 ITHACA project focuses on migration narratives in the past and present, analysing them in a rigorous historical framework, whilst adopting an interdisciplinary, comparative and transnational approach. To this end, it involves a consortium of 12 partners from countries of origin, transit and destination of migration in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia. The project deepens the various forms of narratives on and produced by migrants, considering them as agents of social change, historically retracing causes, transformations, and effects of migration narratives, and highlighting silenced voices.

 At the heart of the project is the creation of a digital platform collecting databases on past and present migration narratives, and offering media tools and applications to policymakers, practitioners, and migrants. ITHACA is also committed to organise participatory, artistic and training activities to foster the engagement of key stakeholders, including scholars, archivists, museum curators, practitioners, NGOs, returnees and potential migrants. These actions aim to raise awareness, inform the public debate, and disseminate thoughtful recommendations for present and future policies of relief, empowerment, inclusion, and participation.

Crises as OPPORTUNITIES: towards a Level Telling Field on Migration and a New Narrative of Successful Integration

The H2020 OPPORTUNITIES project seeks to overcome the toxic debate on migration in Europe, which undermines the process of European construction itself, by creating a forward-looking debate grounded on a fair dialogue on migration and successful integration. It brings migrants, citizens and stakeholders together to learn to listen to each other and to create a common story. An enriched art of storytelling is at the heart of the project. The result is a common story that opens a window of opportunities to start a fair dialogue on migration. The aim is to establish these cross-talks methods at the local and regional levels in several European and African countries, inviting policymakers and civil society actors to implement them. By doing so, the project seeks to demonstrate how a reactive mode of crisis management can be transformed into a shared new narrative of integration, using the potential of stories to foster cross-cultural understanding. Moreover, OPPORTUNITIES uses art-based methods and an international theatre production to promote this fair dialogue. This will be supported by qualitative and quantitative research of discourses on migration in the media.