European Migration Forum

The European Migration Forum is a platform for dialogue between civil society and European institutions on issues related to migration, asylum and migrant integration.
The 7th edition of the Forum, under the overarching theme ‘Youth inclusion: key to successful migrant integration’, will focus on the topic of youth inclusion and will in particular address:

• young migrants’ access to education and training
• specific challenges and measures regarding integration of young refugees
• legal migration: youth mobility, both in the context of education and labour mobility of young people
• advancing participation and engagement of young migrants

The Forum is an opportunity for civil society to express their views, exchange ideas and best practices, as well as discuss challenges and priorities with decision makers at the national and EU level.

Additional Information

Deadline: The call for interest is open until 23 August 2022 !Deadline extended until 1 September 2022!

When: 20-21 October 2022

How to participate? Fill in the application form

Check out the website for more info.

L'articolo Open Call for Interest | 7th European Migration Forum proviene da Youth Networks.

The Consortium

The organisation coordinating the DO-IT project is Ecepaa (European Center for Economic and Policy Analysis and Affairs). It is specialized in the development of European Union projects in the fields of social inclusion, education, youth and migrant. 

Associazione Joint is a youth association based in Italy, the work of which mainly focuses on providing learning opportunities to young people through international experiences, such as European Solidarity Corps, International volunteering, Work Camps, local and international Training Courses, Youth Exchanges and Capacity Building Projects.

AMECE (Association Maison d’Enfant pour la Culture et l’Education – Italy) is based in Turin. Its activities aim to understand and address the needs of children, teenagers and young adults with migrant backgrounds, most of them originally from north African countries. 

Fundacion Red Incola is a Foundation composed by nine religious entities. Its mission is to support the immigrant population in risky situations of exclusion, in the promotion and defense of their rights so that they can have a dignified life.  

The 2nd Vocation High School of Katerini is a school in Greece that serves around 600 students, aged 16 – 19, with 80 teachers and comprises four different sectors (Informatics, Healthcare & Welfare, Agriculture/Food Technology/Nutrition and Business/Economics). 

The Project

Complying with the general Erasmus Plus policy and the Call for Proposals in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the overall objective of the DO-IT project is to develop an innovative practice in the digital framework, while committing to a greater social inclusion of students with a migrant background by tackling the early-school-leaving phenomenon. On such a perspective, giving a transnational dimension to the project means to allow a deeper understanding and examination of the digital education sector, strong of a comparative analysis.

Moving forward, the specific objectives of the project are:

• Identify, develop and disseminate good practices and innovative digital tools to provide teachers and trainers with skills that make them able to address the needs of youth with a migrant background, arised as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic;
• Promote the recognition of digital competences and soft-skills acquired with youth with a migrant background while participating in informal activities;
• Increase the capacity of 50 teachers and trainers on digital competences by providing them with a training on the 5 competences framed in the “Digital Competence Framework 2.0”;
• Increase the capacity of 50 teachers and trainers to recognise the digital competences and soft-skills acquired by youth with a migrant background during informal experiences. 

The background

Given the above, the DO-IT project takes its origin from a general consideration over the consequences of Covid-19 towards the most disadvantaged young people (with a migrant background) in the education sector. 

In fact the lockdown restrictions over Europe, made compulsory by governments, have had different effects, depending on the family income. This establishes huge issues with respect to how to ensure access, equity and inclusion in the learning environment. 

From this perspective, and a consequence, while the indirect beneficiaries of the DO-IT project outputs are young people with a migrant background, the direct ones are the members of the organizations participating in the project itself, i.e. teachers, trainers, researchers, youth workers and associations of migrants and their children.

DO-IT implementation

The DO-IT project is expected to reach several results. The partners, bringing together their expertise in the field of reference, will be creating 5 questionnaires to deliver to 5 different categories of stakeholders:

• Youth workers;
• Trainers;
• Teachers;
• Researchers;
• Migrant associations members.

In addition to that, the consortium will be working on building 5 additional questionnaires for in-depth interviews. After collecting the data, the final result will be a digital publication over several topics, such as school dropout, lack of digital skills to cope with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the good and best practices to address in order to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic on the education and learning of young people with a migrant background. 

DO-IT therefore represents an innovative way to address the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on education, with a focus on the needs of youth with a migrant background and the wide range of professionals working with them.

Read also

Case Study: Youth Education in Post-COVID EU

Study on Youth Work in the EU

L'articolo How To Tackle Covid-19 Effects On Young Migrants’ Education proviene da Youth Networks.

For this reason, the European Union gives non-residents the possibility to get a EU Blue Card.

EU Blue Card To Work In Europe

High-qualified workers from non-EU countries can apply for a Blue Card that allows them to live and work in the European Union.

There are some requirements to meet in order to get a Blue Card. Applicants must:

• Own a valid work contract or binding offer of highly qualified employment for at least six months;
• Have an offer of a gross annual salary that meets the threshold of the member states;
• In case of regulated professions, it is necessary to fulfill the conditions to exercise the profession itself;
• For unregulated professions, it is necessary to have relevant higher professional qualifications;
• For IT workers, it is necessary to have higher professional skills.

EU Blue Card: How It Works

The applicants will receive a notification of the decision over their request within 90 days from application.

Concerning the validity of the permit, each member state decides on a standard validity period for EU Blue Cards, with a mandatory minimum of 24 months.

The Blue Card is issued for the duration of the contract plus 3 months.

What Rights You Earn with the EU Blue Card

The good news for anyone willing to work in Europe, is that with the Blue Card you will earn specific rights that align yourself to any other EU citizen.

The owner of a Blue Card indeed can:

• enter, re-enter and stay in the territory of the EU country issuing the card;
• access high qualified employment in the member state issuing the card;
• request family reunification with permits with the same duration as the Blue Card;
• align to EU citizens in terms of working conditions, education and training, social security and access to services;
• accumulate period of residence in different member states to be eligible for an EU long-term residence permit.

Mobility with the EU Blue Card

The Blue Card holders have the right to move, through:

• Short-term mobility: meaning that they can travel to another EU country for a business activity for a short period;
• Long-term mobility: meaning that, after 1 year in a EU country, they can enter a second member state and apply for a new card via a quick and simple procedure.

The regulation of the EU Blue Card goes under the Immigration Policy of the European Union.

Read also

EURES: New Incentives with the Targeted Mobility Scheme

How To Get The Vaccine In Italy as a Foreigner

L'articolo EU Blue Card To Work In Europe proviene da Youth Networks.

The goal

The main goals of RAYSE is to deepen the connection between second generation european citizens with non-EU background and european stakeholders, passing through the local level as well. Six young people from the six participating countries (Italy, Sweden, Spain, Bulgaria, Netherland and Greece) will meet and be instructed by policy makers in order to become Youth Ambassadors for active citizens of second generation.

The project

The RAYSE project will delevolp itself through the storytelling. Each participant will contribute to a blog, the contents of which are intended to give an insight of what the life of second generation EU citizens looks like: the stories, the obstacles and the challenges that they have to face. All of this will be shared among common people and the european media, with the purpose of tracing them back to the core of european values and investigate if and how these last are being achieved or if the way to lessen their distance with the european citizens is still long and winding.

The partners

The coordinating organisation of RAYSE is Association Tia, from Italy, and the project is being carried out together with Eu Diaspora Council from Sweden, ACD La Hoya from Spain, EUNI Partners from Bulgaria, International Labour Association (based both in Netherland and Turkey) and Institute of Entrepreneurship Development from Greece. They all have experience both in migration and active citizenship.

L'articolo RAYSE project: second generation EU citizens and social inclusion proviene da Youth Networks.