University of the Free State, Department of Sociology - Speaker Series

Wednesday 25 Aug 2021, 12:00 → 14:00 Africa/Johannesburg

Nontombi Velelo (Humanities)

Migration Impact Assessment in European Rural and Mountainous Regions: Enhancing Local Development of the “places that don’t matter” - Prof. Dr. Andrea Membretti

Against the background of global trends such as urbanization and agglomeration, economic and forced migration flows are also moving outside European urban areas. So far, this has largely been perceived as yet another burden for already marginalized territories.

The specific needs of rural and mountain regions of Europe have been scarcely considered at the time of formulating the governance of migration by EU and national institutions. If unaddressed, the sentiments of people in ‘places that don’t matter’ risk fueling an authoritarian dynamic, rejecting diversity altogether.

Notwithstanding the prominence of urbanization as a global trend, migrations to rural and mountain areas can play an important role for European rural regions, among the other things, by contributing to revitalize social and economic local milieu, reducing territorial inequalities and reconfiguring urban-rural interconnections. Migration has a potential to trigger development in the medium and long run especially in remote areas, where it can operate as a counter-process to depopulation, ageing and economic decline. Migration can be a crucial element to attain balanced territorial development, as defined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. To avoid the existing risk that migration flows exert a negative impact on socio-economically and geographically fragile areas, place-based policies and adequate governance measure are needed.

MATILDE Horizon 2020 project (www.matilde-migration.eu) brings together 25 partners, from Scandinavia to Turkey, with the aim of examining how migration impacts local development and territorial cohesion in European rural and mountain regions, as well as to improve integration and local development.

MATILDE uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and adopts an action-research approach, which that emphasizes the agency of migrants and the site-specific features of the regions involved. MATILDE will provide policy makers and local stakeholders with analytical tools and place-based policy recommendations to counteract misperceptions and untap the migration potential in rural and mountain regions.