“Fundão, an embracing land”: Characterizing the migrant population in one of the European Capitals of Inclusion and Diversity

Fundão is one of the European Capitals of Inclusion and Diversity and a national reference regarding its migrant integration policies. For the development of the third Municipal Plan for Migrants Integration, the Municipality of Fundão established a partnership with André Saramago, PhD candidate at IGOT, member of the Re-Place research team and member of O Lugar Comum to characterize the migrant community: migrants’ priorities, vulnerabilities, expectations, and their lived migratory experience.

The research in place aims to inform the creation of more suitable responses in respect to the diversity of this population. Fundão is home to migrants from more than 70 nationalities with very different life situations i.e. from refugees to students, from cultural leaders to sporty families, from seasonal farmworkers to highly skilled engineers. All of them contribute to revitalize a territory that has been losing population for the last decades.

So far, the team held interviews with the Migrations Centre staff and its intercultural mediators, and with key partners from the education, employment, and health systems, from the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), from the industrial and agriculture sectors, from the migrant community and more. Two more visits are planned between June and July to conduct participative activities with the migrant and the Portuguese local communities, including eight focus groups and a world cafe. At the end of the process, it is expected to have a clear picture of the priorities and opportunities to be fostered for integration and social cohesion that will ultimately have a positive impact in Fundão, and its territory.

The research work conducted in Fundão will be of tremendous help to “benchmark” the potential of mobilities in non-metropolitan areas, and to assess the practices and policies of the two left-behind areas selected by the Re-Place team in Portugal”.

Fundão in the media: 

https://sicnoticias.pt/Fundão terra de acolhimento           

https://www.publico.pt/fundao-estendeu-mao-imigrantes

Fundão: an embracing land | The Global Compact on Refugees | UNHCR (globalcompactrefugees.org)