Subnational

The program management of municipal and regional migration challenges project in Niger, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and European Union (EU), supports selected regional and local level authorities to better understand social, economic political and administrative Impact of migration on the ground and supports the implementation of identified development measures. In Niger, 17 municipalities and 3 regions have set up local observatories.

Supporting refugee farming initiatives in rural and regional Australia: This initiative evolved spontaneously from research led by University of Wollongong and University of Melbourne academics in partnership with a community-based food cooperative Food Next Door. The researchers were able to connect Burundi refugees and former refugees, who are ‘landless farmers’, with donated farmland and with Food Next Door and the Sunraysia Burundian Garden to grow culturally important crops.

The Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot is a community-driven program designed to spread the benefits of economic immigration to smaller communities by creating a path to permanent residence for skilled foreign workers who want to work and live in rural communities where they can quickly become self-sufficient, and exercise their skills in agriculture and food production. This innovative, economic pilot will test a new community-driven approach to attracting and retaining newcomers to communities across Ontario, the Western provinces and the territories.

The City of Oujda integrated the topic of migration as a transversal theme when it elaborated its Plan d’Action Communal (PAC) for the period of 2017 – 2022. The inhabitants of Oujda, among them Moroccan returnees, migrants and refugees benefit from this project.

All residents whatever their nationalities are invited to register in the Padron, the administrative municipal census, to automatically gain the status of a “neighbour”. The Padron is managed by the local authority (Offices of Citizenship Attention). Access to many services in the city requires registration in the Padron (i.e. for social housing, public education, but also city public bikes).

Athens has a population of approx. 660,000 (2011), with more than 15,000 immigrants (March 2016), but also nearly 400,000 youth that have emigrated from the city due to the financial crisis. Being the major economic hub of Greece, displaced people come to Athens looking for friends and relatives, empty apartments and cheap housing, as well as higher chances of finding work than in the country’s rural areas. 

Many local authorities in the UK offer free English language classes to adult immigrants in their area. The London Borough of Islington, for example, offers English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses to unemployed or low-paid adults resident in Islington or with children in Islington schools. The course are for those for whom English is not their first language and who want to improve their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills, helping with their employability and citizenship.

Established by the council in February 2009, the JMAC brings together relevant role players to draft and oversee the City of Johannesburg’s strategy for the integration of migrants into all aspects of society in Joburg.

Inspired by the diversity agenda set by the city of London for the 2012 Olympic Games, as well as the seminal French Charte de la diversité, now replicated in Germany and Spain, the city of Copenhagen developed a Diversity Charter that seeks to actively engage the business community in the work of making Copenhagen “must inclusive city in Europe.”

The Diversity Charter and its Diversity Board are central to the Engage in Copenhagen campaign. Signatories ‘affirm’ the three guiding principles than inform the Copenhagen approach govern the campaign:

The Barcelona Anti-Rumour Strategy is a line of action of the Barcelona Interculturality Programme. They generate tools and discourses for dispelling these rumours and stereotypes, and thus to move ahead towards living together in a more intercultural and cohesive society.

The following actions are implemented: