NEWSLETTER 1 - Migrants’ decision
December, 2010; No 1
In November 2010 in Turkey, Kusadasi, Soke started the approved project “Training of adults - migrants in the context of encouraging social inclusion into the labour market and society - Migrants’ Decision” - 2010-1-BG1-GRU06- 03077 under the Life Long Learning Programme, Sub programme Grundtvig Learning Partnership.
The project partnership includes the following countries and institutions:
Turkey - Soke Halk Egitim ve Aksam Sanat Okulu – Project coordianator
Austria - Dkommer ınterkulturelle personalentwıcklung, Vienna
Germany - EURACONCEPT GmbH, Halle
Spain - Associació Catalana de Formació Polivalent Aplicada, Santa Coloma Gramenet
Background of the project:
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said there are more than 300 million migrants around the world today. Europe hosted the largest number of immigrants, with 70.6 million people in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available. The IOM has estimated the number of foreign migrants to be over 200 million worldwide today. Recent surveys by Gallup found roughly 700 million adults would like to migrate to another country permanently if they had the chance.
All these data show the importance of the questions connected with migrants non only on European but also worldwide. Do we know this phenomenon and the specific features connected with it? Whct is our understanding about migration?
One theory of immigration distinguishes between push factors and pull factors. Push factors refer primarily to the motive for emigration from the country of origin. In the case of economic migration (usually labour migration), differentials in wage rates are prominent. If the value of wages in the new country surpasses the value of wages in one’s native country, he or she may choose to migrate as long as the travel costs are not too high. Emigration and immigration are sometimes mandatory in a contract of employment. They are often referred to as 'expatriates', and their conditions of employment are typically equal to or better than those applying in the host country (for similar work). For some migrants, education is the primary pull factor (although most international students are not classified as immigrants). Retirement migration from rich countries to lower-cost countries with better climate, is a new type of international migration.
Thus the concept “migrant” is an ambiguous one and in many cases it is a heterogeneous one, which increases the difficulties to work with these groups as well as increasing the specific features connected with them. Barriers to immigration come not only in legal form; natural and social barriers to immigration can also be very powerful. Immigrants when leaving their country also leave everything familiar: their family, friends, support network, and culture. They also need to liquidate their assets often at a large loss, and incur the expense of moving. When they arrive in a new country this is often with many uncertainties including finding work, where to live, new laws, new cultural norms, language or accent issues, possible racism and other exclusionary behavior towards them and their family. These barriers act to limit international migration (scenarios where populations move en masse to other continents, creating huge population surges, and their associated strain on infrastructure and services, ignore these inherent limits on migration.)
As a principle, citizens of one member nation of the European Union are allowed to work in other member nations with little to no restriction on movement. This is aided by the EURES network which brings together the European Commission and the public employment services of the countries belonging to the European Economic Area and Switzerland. For non-EU-citizen permanent residents in the EU, movement between EU-member states is considerably more difficult. But the barriers in both cases remain and set up challenges for training of adults – migrants in the countries within the scope of LLL Programme.
The paramount objective of the EU policy for increasing of the economic growth, the competitiveness and the social cohesion (Lisbon Strategy) forms the framework of the Grundtvig Programme, which goal is to meet the double challenge facing the education, on one hand, of the great number of adults that drop out from school or in the case of many migrants that had no opportunity to acquire school education and on the hand, the ageing population. The objective is to support people from disadvantaged social groups in marginal social context too. The adult migrants belong to these groups and they need to have alternative access to education and training for adults. It is important to stress on the support to trainers and people working with migrants for the development of their communication skills; using of innovative approaches for learning (e.g. through experience and tools for training for people working with immigrants by means of innovative approaches for training using experience and provoking of knowledge, understanding, adjustment and expectations of the persons in the programmes for adaptation of immigrants), because the trainers should be prepared not only for the relevant lessons but to be aware of the wishes, cultural origin and needs of the trainees – immigrants.
By selecting the target group of specialist working with immigrants and not the immigrants themselves we aim the project to have wider impact in many European countries.
