Convened by: The Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity

Convened by The Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity and SE Regional Strategic Migration Partnership, this event brought together local authority officers and NGOs working at local level to explore challenges and practical solutions to migrant integration in the South East of England.

Front line workers have faced and continue to face, huge challenges in dealing with immigration and public responses to it. This event provided a space for participants to share experiences, reflections and ideas. The focus was on interactively sharing practitioner learning and good practice on strategies for cohesion and integration at local level. Experiences of how migrants were perceived, supported and failed were shared.

The programme covered:

• Share experiences and learn from others
• Cross pollination of ideas and how to harness them
• Integration and education ideas, refs made to women, and Roma communities and asylum seeking young people, ESOL classes – supporting learners
• Understanding the dynamics of integration and migration
• Networking and meeting people
• Hear about opinions on migration
• Want to learn about and how to apply learning in terms of policy
• Ways of appeasing local opinion
• Ideas for working across organisations and local authorities