REGIN Updates – May & June 2021

In the last few months, the REGIN Project partners have continued to work remotely and met virtually moving forward on a wide variety of activities. For instance, regional integration actions are being launched by our regional partners:

• Azores Region is developing a welcome guide for migrants, as a website and printed guide. The aim is to enhance collaboration between the different relevant regional departments (social affairs, health, housing…) through a rearrangement of procedures to ensure a harmonised approach and smooth communication so the information provided to migrants is coherent.
• Campania Region’s idea for a pilot activity is to look at migration, rural development and the prevention of depopulation.
• Catalonia Region’s integration action consists in enhancing education prospects of children with a migrant background providing extracurricular activity on IT programming/robotics. The long-term objective is to improve the migrant youth’s labour market inclusion, that was identified as one of the MIPEX-R indicators that had a lower score in the region.
• Murcia Region is working to design a participatory methodology that will reinforce a stable partnership for the promotion of integration policies in the region, through mainstreaming and networking.
• Puglia Region focuses on alphabetisation and communication in the schooling microsystem, that is to say on how students from foreign families are coping with the burden of being an “intermediary” between school and family. The region would like to look at ways to reduce the communication gaps between schools and families, as well as to overcome the digital divide which has come to the fore with the COVID-19 situation where foreign families are less favoured in terms of access to digital tools.
• Skåne Region has further developed and enhanced the parenting perspective through its activities developed and tested during REGIN test-bed; in addition, its method has also been further adjusted so that it can be used in different kinds of local settings. Pilots around parenting have been set in motion in some new municipalities and are being evaluated by universities.

Furthermore, in the framework of the new partnership on integration between the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) and DG HOME of the European Commission, the REGIN Project collaborated in the organisation of the Online Workshop for Local and Regional Authorities: Setting Up a Local Integration Strategy, focusing on stakeholder Involvement and ownership.

This partnership – foreseen in the European Commission’s new Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion 2021-2027 – builds on the existing Cities and Regions for Integration initiative, launched in 2019, of which the CPMR is an associated partner. It is a clear sign that the EU institutions recognise the important role of regional and local authorities in integration and inclusion and wish to give them a greater voice at the European level.

During the workshop that was held on 18^th June 2021, our project partner Instrategies presented the REGIN regional toolkit – Stakeholders’ Capacity Building Guidelines, Training Modules & Evaluation Framework – that can be used and adapted by both regional and local authorities. REGIN regional partners, such as Catalonia and Murcia, participated in different break-out sessions – one of them being moderated by CPMR – and exchanged their experiences with other local and regional representatives.

Thanks to this occasion, the REGIN Project expanded its outreach to a wider network to exchange experiences and discuss potential synergies beyond the project consortium. Moreover, as part of the expansion MIPEX-R (Migrant Integration Policy Index-Regions) to other regions, CIDOB and MPG have been in touch with additional regional experts to cover 18 new European regions in 7 EU Member States, that are:

• Austria: Vienna, Voralberg, Styria
• Belgium: Flanders, Wallonia
• Germany: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Bavaria, Berlin
• Italy: Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Trentino & South Tyrol
• Portugal: Lisbon
• Spain: Navarra, Basque Country, Valencia, Melilla
• Sweden: Västra Götaland