WG 5 roundtable: Nothing about us without us: Roundtable workshop with migrants/refugees and vulnerable groups focusing on IDs: Identity documents and Identity dilemmas, Brussels, Belgium, June 25-26, 2024.
Dr Nadja Beglerovic
The HIDDEN roundtable began with a warm welcome from Dr. Jennifer Redmond, who introduced the day’s theme and objectives, setting the stage for an engaging and thought-provoking series of discussions. Icebreaker activities, led by Eszter Polonyi and Suheyla Demirkol Orak, allowed everyone to get to know each other in a relaxed atmosphere.
The sessions included presentations from organizations such as Apartide Network and Diverse Youth Northern Ireland. Israel Eguaogie, Aleksejs Ivashuk and Daniel Franco shared insights into their efforts to support migrant communities. The session sparked meaningful discussions about the challenges faced by migrant populations and how community-led initiatives are driving positive change.
The Roundtable also addressed “Facial Recognition & AI: Rights & Privacy,” featuring speakers Anita Lunić and Eszter Polonyi, who discussed the implications of AI on privacy, human rights, and EU regulations.
Day 1 concluded with a creative exploration of Representations of Experiences of ID, with a range of formats showcasing personal narratives. These sessions provided a compelling and diverse range of ways to engage with the issue of identity, sparking reflection and dialogue among participants.
Day 2 focused on collaborative report writing and brainstorming for a special issue, as well as future activities.
Participants broke into small groups to try to capture the conversations that had been happening over the last day-and-a-half that could have applicability to policy makers. As one of the key aims and strengths of this Action is to take research and experiential insights beyond academia and into the realm of public policy, this was an important step in crystalising our key take aways in light of EU and international policies on the pressing need for identity documents to access services and basic citizenship rights, the digitalisation of a range of identity documents and the consequent digital divide this causes and the movement of people internationally that has prompted the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum.
We discussed the issues we thought were the most compelling and one clear insight emerged: policy makers must LISTEN to those most affected by the policies they create and implement.
The HIDDEN Policy Viewpoint expresses some of these ideas in an easy to digest poster – please feel free to use and share with attribution to the HIDDEN COST Action CA21120.
The PDF is available at the following link:
Later on, participants visited the House of European History for a guided tour, where they explored the historical contexts that shape migration, identity, and contemporary European policies.
