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Localities of Welcoming in Hostile Times

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The second meeting of our new network took place on 9th July, linking people from the UK to Serbia, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Greece, Croatia, and Malta.

London, UK. A Refugees Welcome demonstration organised by Solidarity with Refugees heads through Central London. All images courtesy of “The New Internationalists: Activist Volunteers in the European Refugee Crisis.” (Goldsmiths Press, 2020)

Localities of Welcoming in Hostile Times: Building a comparative European framework of city districts/neighbourhoods/quartiers of Welcome 

By Professor Anna-Louise Milne (ULIP) and Professor Sue Clayton (Goldsmiths)

Localities of Welcoming aims to function as an informal and non-hierarchical network of people living and working in European city quartiers where refugee arrivals are concentrated, to promote and exchange information, discuss long-term strategies for welcoming and working with refugee communities, and develop a critical framework of ideas in this field with a particular interest in intersections between refugee-oriented work and other strategies for critical opposition, including Black Lives Matter actions or the Gilets noirs in France.  

Across Europe, in large and medium-size cities, particular localities have become synonymous with citizen-led actions in the name of safe passage for refugees and the right to rebuild one’s life in peace of mind and body. What factors have contributed to this clustering of welcome? How do they compare in different national and institutional environments? What circulations link them?  

You can read more about these meeting and the work they intend to do on the Warden of Goldsmiths, Frances Corner’s blog here.

This page was last updated on 6 November 2023