State-of-the-art

Ge.M.IC’s project work will start from theoretical and fieldwork research already conducted in the areas of migration, gender and intercultural interaction as well as policy making on gender and migration. The Ge.M.IC baseline will consist of three pillars:

a. state-of-the-art research on international migration, which is critical of the ethnocentric bias of contemporary migration policies and practices

b. state-of-the-art research on gender and intersectionality, which emphasizes the intersections between gender, ethnicity, race and class

c. state-of-the-art research on intercultural interactions, which is proposed as an alternative to both ethnocentrism and multiculturalism

Through these pillars Ge.M.IC will address questions of relevance to state-of-the-art European policy making including migration policies, policies of gender equality, multiculturalism, integration, interethnic conflict, xenophobia and racism.

During the first phase of the project Ge.M.IC scholars will work together under WP 2 in order to enhance this baseline with a detailed context analysis and methodology review which will enable them to devise strategies in order to move beyond the state-of-the art research and analysis. Also WP 3 will focus on a detailed analysis of state-of the art policy making, identifying contradictions and problem areas which will be explored during the next phase.

Beyond the state-of-the-art

1. Collapsing the distinction between host, sending and transit societies

Ge.M.IC will include a broad range of practices and policies within the same analytical framework in order to enrich the state-of-the-art with in depth analysis based on the idea that the distinction between emigration and immigration is misleading, since most societies are (or have been in the recent past) both migrant-sending and migrant receiving. Migration will be approached as an ongoing process that involves multiple strategies and tactics in societies of origin, transit and destination and will include both policies of sending, transit and receiving states. Ge.M.IC will move beyond the state-of-the-art by grounding the tripartite conceptual and methodological approach of migration, gender and intercultural interactions on work packages organized in thematic areas rather than on national case studies.

2. Enlarging the geographical scope of Southern Europe as a space of mobility and diversity

The state-of-the-art literature on migration in Southern Europe assumes a circumscribed geographical scope limiting research and analysis to the nowadays old member states, Italy, Spain and Greece. Europe, however, is a dynamic formation and European borders shift in accordance with the policies of enlargement and international cooperation. Ge.M.IC will move beyond the state-of-the- art by conceiving Southern Europe as a region that includes the new member states from the Mediterranean (Cyprus) and Southeast Europe (Bulgaria and Romania), as well as prospective EU members, such as (FYROM and Turkey). In addition, Ge.M.IC will generate new and important insights into cases of new and prospective member states in which the distinction between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving statuses is blurred. Furthermore, migrants themselves will be conceived as agents of intercultural interactions between societies of origin, transit and destination. Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean have emerged, both contemporaneously and historically, as particularly versatile and unsettled regions within Europe, where multiple migrations, relocations and population movements occur regularly, often with and under considerable conflict. Therefore, as far as enhancing social cohesion and peaceful integration goes, it presents a significant research and intervention area for present and future tendencies.

3. Integrating gender and migration into the research on migration and intercultural interactions

Ge.M.IC will contribute to the debate on gender and migration by focusing on a research area largely left unexplored: the relationship between gender, migration and intercultural interactions. In particular the project will move beyond the state-of-the art by addressing possible ways in which insights generated in current research on gender and migration as well as in the in the case studies researched can be integrated into the study of intercultural interactions. Ge.M.IC’s explicit commitment to a positive approach to migration will ensure that gender inequalities and asymmetries, as well as questions of «victimization» and emancipation of migrant women will be integrated into a beyond the state-of-the-art analysis. In parallel, Ge.M.IC will use gender as an analytic lens to understand processes of nation-building, migration and social change, as well as power relations between migrants and natives, or amongst groups of migrants.

4. Acknowledging the relative ‘autonomy’ of culture

Moving beyond the-state-of-the-art, Ge.M.IC. will address practices of cultural interaction not as mechanistic exchanges between different and distinct entities – natives and migrants – embedded in exclusive pockets of difference but will look instead at mutual, if asymmetrical (unequal), influences between them in a commonly claimed and negotiated socio-cultural space. This means that Ge.M.IC will be tracing the emergence of new hybrid European identities, with local and transnational dimensions, as they occur in specific – yet interrelated – contexts of practice (e.g. education, religion, family).

5. Addressing intersections between institutional frameworks and grassroots practices and the integration of different socio-cultural practices

Ge.M.IC. draws on an understanding of culture as a complex and interrelated set of discourses and practices that permeate and define, through their underlying ideological assumptions, a wide range of diverse fields of social activity and social relations. Rather than focusing independently on different social spaces/institutions (e.g. school, religious institutions, family etc.), Ge.M.IC. will move beyond the-state-of-the-art by exploring, highlighting and integrating the intersections between them. Different socio-cultural practices (education, religion, urban integration) that in common influence and shape people’s interactions, trajectories, belongings and identities will be interrogated as to their overlapping and/or contradictory premises as well as to the possibilities or limitations they engender. Thus intersectionality will be applied not only as an aspect of gender relations but in relation to the overall areas of study. A basic premise of Ge.M.IC. is that grassroots cultural practices constitute locations and processes where dominant institutional boundaries are negotiated, transformed and transgressed, by highlighting contradictions and impasses and producing new solutions to social and political problems of integration. Therefore moving beyond the-state-of-the-art Ge.M.IC. will address and juxtapose the relationships between policy frameworks and grassroots practices in order to point out necessary policy recommendations that will be relevant to emerging and changing needs of different social groups that are implicated in new European mobilities.

6. Using the concepts of intercultural interaction and gender to look critically at integration

Ge.M.IC. will move beyond-the-state-of-the-art by critically considering the ethnocentric politics of integration in relation to anti-racist and diversity principles and practices engendered in and through intercultural interaction and gender mainstreaming. The state-of-the-art literature has explored extensively the relationship between space and gender, and in particular the feminine qualities attached to static places and the masculine attributes attached to movement and mobility.By focusing on transnational patterns of mobility and interaction, that connect different local communities in different countries in a global network of exchange and communication, GE.M.IC. will highlight cultural flows that cross and transform national and gendered boundaries and identities.

7. Generating beyond the state-of-the-art policy analysis and recommendation,including examples of best practices of alternative and potential forms of intercultural dialogue and cooperation

GE.M.IC. will generate beyond the state-of-the art policy analysis, including an explicit normative element bringing to the forefront examples of best practices as well as highlighting possible, alternative and potential forms of intercultural dialogue and cooperation, with particular emphasis on grassroots initiatives and products. The current debate on intercultural dialogue and cooperation has focused primarily on art, religion, urban planning and education, areas that will be explored in detail in separate packages. Ge.M.IC will move beyond the state-of-the-art by including other major
policy areas previously left unexplored, such as those of the family and intercultural violence. Furthermore, Ge.M.IC policy analysis and recommendations will move beyond the state-of-the-art by challenging the state-centric bias of most policies of multiculturalism and integration and the ethnocentric cultural assumptions, through an explicit commitment to collapsing the distinction between host, sending and transit societies and emphasizing the significance of international and cross-national cooperation in policies of migration and intercultural interactions.