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Homeward: exploring co-creation practices towards integration

Application summary

Homeward is a project that reframes how integration is understood and practiced through the use of co-creative practices. Despite the multiplication of highly innovative and inclusive local or national initiatives, the way integration policy are conceived remains fundamentally embedded into top-down practices. They consider integration as a state, the end result of a succession of linguistic, cultural and professional trainings. By contrast, Homeward posits that integration to a new society is more than a succession of formal steps. It is building a new home not only linguistically and culturally but also existentially. That is, building a place where people can inscribe their ongoing life and therefore secure a sense of belonging. To encourage this existential dimension of integration Homeward proposes to develop a double reflection. On the one hand, ensuring that integration is discussed by immigrants from their own experiences and perspectives. On the other hand, better understanding why previous initiatives aiming to include immigrants' voices fail to translate into institutional and societal thinking of integration. To accomplish this double ambition, the project relies on co-creation, a growingly popular concept of policymaking that disrupts hierarchies between governmental, economic, academic and individual knowledge. Through co-creative workshops combining immigrant voices, academic research, and societal activism, Homeward reflects upon how integration is lived and critically engage with what is at stake in the process of co-creation itself. From this collaborative effort, the project acknowledges the diversity of immigrant experiences to bridge various subjective perspectives on integration and better understand the potential and limitations of the use of co-creation in integration policy. In doing so, Homeward actively engages with contemporary concerns for social inclusion and sustainability in growingly diverse societies.

Homeward critically examined how integration is understood and practiced through the use of co-creative practices. Starting from the premise that, despite the multiplication of highly innovative and inclusive local or national initiatives, the way integration policy are conceived has remained fundamentally embedded into top-down practices that consider integration as a state, the end result of a succession of linguistic, cultural and professional trainings, Homeward has relied on a total of 13 co-creative workshops to demonstrate that insertion to a new society is more than a succession of formal steps. It is better understood as a process of homemaking, that is, a phenomenon rooted into people’s struggle to establish a new home not only linguistically and culturally but also existentially: a place where people can inscribe their ongoing life and therefore secure a sense of belonging. To explore this existential dimension of homemaking and better understand its absence in integration policies, Homeward has developed a double reflection. On the one hand, moving away from the concept of integration that perpetuates an artificial divide between “locals” and “migrants”, while all should be recognized as full members of the society. On the other hand, better understanding why previous initiatives aiming to include immigrants' voices fail to translate into institutional and societal thinking of integration. To accomplish this double ambition, the project relied on co-creative workshops combining migrant experiences, academic research, societal activism, art, and policy making. From this collaborative effort, the project has concluded on the urgency to recentre our understanding of migration on the everyday struggles experienced by those who are confronted with systemic discrimination and inequal access to fundamental rights, in particular their right to be recognized as full members of the society and their right to a viable and fulfilling future.

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