Action for Inclusion in Europe is a project led by the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity (GEM) at the University of Oxford in partnership with 16 European cities. The project aims to secure tangible reforms in European city practices that address the exclusion of marginal communities from services and civic life and facilitate a mutually positive sense of local belonging via action-oriented learning exchange. Three thematic areas were focused on during the project in three separate working groups: Cohesion and Belonging, Parental Engagement in Schools, and Homelessness and Destitution amongst Excluded Migrants. This report summarises the lessons learnt during the project in the Homelessness and Destitution amongst Excluded Migrants working group.
In each working group, senior city officials were brought together over ten months to develop high-level strategic thinking on social policies, learn from research evidence and the experiences of other cities, and deliver improvements in services. Three meetings of the Homelessness and Destitution amongst Excluded Migrants working group took place in Dublin, the London Borough of Islington and Vienna, where working group participants shared good practice on the thematic areas, identified problems that required solving and potential solutions to those problems, and discussed ways of overcoming challenges in the implementation of solutions.
Each city was required to develop an action plan for securing tangible reforms, and as part of this process, consider the research evidence and consult and engage civil society actors (including existing and new NGO partners), based on the principle that policies and practice are informed by the views of residents and civil society actors, and by research evidence around what is most effective. Each city identified the actions it wanted to take forward in light of the particular problems faced in its city within the overall theme of the working group. The result has been five projects addressing various issues in migrant homelessness and destitution, with many achievements and valuable lessons to share. Each action plan presented several ideas and solutions to the identified problems, and these were developed, tested, and amended where necessary. Each city has documented its progress and produced a report summarising its experiences, achievements, and challenges. It aims to provide several lessons that can facilitate change in other cities across Europe experiencing similar problems.
This paper has a similar aim and highlights the key themes and lessons learnt from across the cities in this working group. The paper focuses in particular on the considerations that cities should find helpful in seeking to reform city practices in the area of migrant homelessness, along with some of the common challenges to implementation that towns should be mindful of in the process of bringing about change.
