Local welcoming and solidarity cities

in collaboration with the Asylum and Immigration Table, IASH and Mimetis

Session 1 – Starting from the Manifesto of Welcoming Cities 

For years, the topic of immigration has been used in an instrumental manner, mainly to gather consensus by pointing to foreigners and associations for the protection of rights, as the main scapegoat for our society’s difficulties. The legislative interventions and policies of the last 20 years at least, have made the distance between reality and the public representation of this complex phenomenon, a real chasm. Those who pay the consequences are primarily the people involved, the migrants, and the local communities the territories. For this reason, Tavolo Asilo e Immigrazione, the main coalition of organised civil society engaged in this field in our country, has promoted, together with the municipality of Rome, a meeting of local authorities and associations to present a Manifesto of Welcoming Cities, which could represent the basic document of a political and cultural campaign for reception, against all discrimination, which would see local authorities and associations as protagonists together.

Speakers

• Barbara Funari, Rome Municipality Councillor 
• Costanza Spera, Councillor of the Municipality of Perugia
• Maria Concetta Romano, councillor social policies III Municipality of Rome, ReCoSol
• For the associations of the Asylum and Immigration Table
• Rossana Aceti, europasilo 
• Francesca Debbas, Refugees welcome 
• Oliviero Forti, Caritas italiana

2nd session – Dialogue with IASH and From the Sea to the City 

Faced with the progressive implementation of the new European Pact on Migration, which is increasingly repressive and less oriented towards reception and integration, many European cities continue to develop welcoming local policies in the name of solidarity, respect for fundamental rights, and an alternative conception of migration policies and European society in general. These are cities that have mobilised individually, national networks (ANVITA in France) or transnational networks (as in the case of the International Alliance of Safe Harbours), bringing together metropolises and small towns, sharing good practices and seeking to form a common front capable of opposing the dominant ‘inhospitable’ logic. How has the mobilisation of welcoming cities evolved in recent years? What margins for action and political ‘invention’ are currently available to local authorities to develop reception policies? What are the strategies and who are the possible interlocutors?

Moderation: Laura Colini, Mimetis, Università Iuav di Venezia e Filippo Furri, Mimetis, Migreurop, Institut Convergences Migrations

Interventions:

• Leoluca Orlando, europarlamentare 
• Jan Braat, Senior Policy Advisor for Migration and Inclusion at the City of Utrecht
• Céline Barré, Co-directrice de l’ANVITA (Associazione nazionale di città e territori accoglienti -Francia)