Projects which bring locals and migrants together greatly benefit social cohesion, but organisations which run them are often bogged down providing basic services which should be the government’s responsibility, a new report has found.
Spanning two years and eight partner countries including Malta, JRS Europe’s I Get You project looked at various community building initiatives and their effects on participants. Local researchers assessed 20 such initiatives, from intercultural evenings to drop-in centres, language lessons and prayer groups.
They found overwhelming evidence that the projects left both local volunteers and migrant participants better off.
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“Most of the volunteers we met described their experience as humbling and spoke of how they felt they had received more than they had given,” report writers noted, adding that migrants interviewed all said that the initiatives had “made them feel welcome and respected... without the fear of being judged on the basis of their appearance.”
Despite the benefits, the study found that many such local initiatives found it hard to offer truly intercultural progammes which forced migrants and locals to mingle. Instead, many organisations were forced to dedicate their scarce resources to offering migrants basic services, such as language and employment training.
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“Only when the government takes up these responsibilities will CBIs be able to shift their focus to other activities, including a greater emphasis on proper community-building, encounter and inter-culturalism,” the report noted.
It highlighted a number of ways in which the government could help give organisations offering community-building initiatives a boost:
- Provide them with physical spaces where they could meet
- Involve them in policy-making, to ensure community concerns are catered for
- Include human rights education and cultural diversity in the national curriculum for schools
- Help local councils organise events which bring residents from different cultures together
- Introduce a national integration strategy
- Establish a human rights and equality commission that allows migrants to seek redress when their rights are denied to them
The report also highlights five local initiatives which should be adopted by others as models of good practice: Integra Foundation’s drop-in centre Dinja Waħda; the Third Country National Support Network; Communities of Hospitality; Spark 15; and the Centre for Missionary Animation’s school awareness-raising programme.
Why does Malta need more community-building initiatives?
Studies consistently show that despite its small size, Maltese and migrants remain worlds apart. A UNHCR survey found, among other things, that 57% of locals think migrants’ cultures do not enrich their lives. 43% of respondents admitted that they had never had any form of interaction with a migrant or refugee. Of those that did, most said interactions took place at work, in the street or in shops – indicating that true intercultural friendship bonds remain few and far between.