HIDDEN visits the EU Commission, 6th September 2023, Brussels, Belgium.
In response to a call from COST for ideas for additional funding in 2023, the Core Group of the HIDDEN COST Action decided to curate a tailored visit to the EU Commission in Brussels and to meet with important stakeholders. The idea behind this was that it would give members, who are academics not policy makers, experience in the heart of EU where all decisions and policies are made, especially in the field we are researching, ID, citizenship and migration. We also wanted to further solidify the connections between Action members who have not had many chances to meet in person up to this point.
There were three parts to the one-day event we designed to connect with our MOU:
- Training in COST HQ with a journalist to further our aim of engaging with the media who are covering issues related to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.
Unfortunately, our chosen journalist was called away to cover an urgent news story, so we used the time slot to brainstorm ideas for what we would like to ask her. We developed a list of list of questions about how and what journalists cover when it comes to issues of asylum, migration, identity documentation and more. As an academic group, we are eager to explore additional ways to communicate our research with stakeholders, including journalists, as correct, impartial information on these issues is more important than ever. This will be an important feature of the work of HIDDEN going forward.
- Training with a representative from an NGO to further our aim of engaging stakeholders who work with migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.
This helped us fulfil some of the WG5 aims and objectives in particular and create contacts for the policy roundtable and the capstone arts-based event. European stakeholders such as NGOs and advocacy groups are important to connect with to strengthen the Action.
We invited Ridvan Yildiz of the European Migrant Platform (https://europeanmigrantplatform.eu/) to tell us about their work and to discuss the possibility of future collaborations. He gave us a presentation on the following collaborative projects the EMP have been involved in.
These include the following:
Culinary Ode to Diversity Erasmus plus Project which aims to promote migrant and refugees inclusion through the pairing of food and theatre awareness and the development of friendly educational materials for adult trainers and creating final performances involving trainers, migrants, refugees and audiences – more details available here: https://odeculinary.wixsite.com/culinaryodetodiversi
The Joint Stories: Journeys from Fear to Fair project which addresses the social responsibility of the higher education institutions to promote human rights and the awareness of the urgent European challenges of trafficking in humans, forced labour, undocumented migrants and the need for fair trade policies by giving space in their curricula to the voices of those individuals within the EU whose stories are often not included in the main social narrative and who often suffer silently.– more details available here: https://jointstories.eu/
The ILO-Intercultural Learning Online – project, funded by the European Union which will organize opportunities for highly educated immigrants to use their talents and capacity by lecturing in partner universities and by conducting shared workshops and short courses to improve their self-esteem.– more details available here: https://iloproject.eu/
CONSULTING EUTH, co-financed by EU COMMISSION AMIF programme for a project called “Enhancing the level of social inclusion of Youth migrants and refugees, co-designing policies through the setting up of consultative bodies at local and European level – Consulting Euth“. This project began on 1st January 2022 and concluded on 31 December 2023.– more details available here: https://consultingeuthproject.eu/
- A visit to the EU Commission about the EU Migration Strategy as well for the way of EU’s approach to UN SDG 16.9 and different ID forms that are covered in the Action.
Our visit was coordinated by Liesbeth de Buysser, who works in the European Commission DG COMM B4, Visitors’ Centre. We received three presentations and had time to ask questions after each one. These presentations were:
The European Commission: the political executive of the European Union
Mr Hugo KEIZER
Directorate-General for Translation
Identity and documentation in Europe – from beads and baubles to bits and bytes
Mr Mikko HAKKARAINEN
Policy Officer
HOME.B.1 – Schengen & External Borders
Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs
Documenting EU citizenship
Mr Jan ROHDE-STADLER
Team Leader
JUST.C.4 – Democracy, Union Citizenship and Free Movement
Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers
This dynamic training event was attended by the following Action members: Agha, Petr (CZ), Arielli, Nir (UK), AYDIN HALISOGLU, TUGBA (TR), Beglerović , Nađa (BA), Geary, Michael J. (NO), Hocaoğlu Bahadır, Neriman (TR), Jinga, Luciana (RO), Klimoska, Katerina (MK), Lendák-Kabók, Karolina (HU), Mango (Tase), Mirela (AL), Martinez Garcia, Ana Belen (ES), Mesaric Zabcic, Rebeka (HR), Redmond, Jennifer (IE), Sadegh, Ibtisam (MT), Scutaru, Beatrice Andreea (IE), Zammit, David Edward (MT) .
We look forward to future collaborations with these important stakeholders who will help us to complete our mission to connect researchers with policy makers inside and outside EU institutions as we examine the critical issues related to past, present and future access to identity documentation.
