EUMCHA Documentary
The EUMCHA project involves the production of a short documentary focused on "immigration, schooling, and integration", developed through interviews with first or second-generation immigrants.
Integration Tales: Immigrant Students’ Storytelling
The EUMCHA project involved the production of a short documentary focused on immigration, education, and integration. To create this video, we conducted short interviews with young first- and second-generation immigrants who have followed different educational paths in Italy. Our questions focused on their personal stories, their experiences at school, and their views on integration. As we riviewed and edited the interviews, we gradually realised that these stories were often speaking about us too, as the host community. And perhaps they suggest that integration is a process that begins long before we notice it, and that it can only work through the efforts of everyone involved.
As part of the EUMCHA audio/video project, a short documentary will be produced focusing on the themes of immigration, schooling, and integration. The documentary will feature interviews with students or former students who are immigrants or the children of immigrants (the so-called “second generation”). These individuals will have pursued their education in Italy and are now firmly rooted in the local community. Their testimonies will be interwoven with contributions from teachers, social workers, and professionals in the field of education, offering a multi-faceted perspective.
Objectives
- To foster knowledge and a deeper understanding of EU themes and policies related to immigration.
- To promote and broaden discussion and reflection on these policies within schools, academia, and the wider public.
- To enhance awareness of the EU system and improve comprehension of its processes.
Expected Outcomes
- A greater understanding of immigrants and of our relationship with them.
- A reduction in the distance between citizens and immigrants through listening to and engaging with individual life stories.
- An opportunity to debate the challenges of integration and education.
Methodology
- Interviews with immigrant students and children of immigrants who have completed a defined educational path in Italy—beginning, for instance, with compulsory schooling—and who have subsequently entered the workforce or continued into higher education, research, or related fields.
- Interviews with compulsory school and university teachers, researchers, migration experts, and local cultural mediators or social workers, in order to provide a concrete and realistic picture of the dynamics and challenges linked to educational integration, current issues, and possible future improvements.
- Dissemination of the documentary through the Forlì Campus WebTV, YouTube, CeSIPE, and other platforms.
Thematic Focus
The arrival of the interviewee or their family in Italy: memories and family stories (reasons for migration, migration chains, family reunifications); schooling, studying, language, integration, and identity; relationships with the country and culture of origin versus adaptation to the new reality; the tension between the “domestic world” and the “outside world”; media representations of immigrants and migration; racism; incentives and barriers to socio-cultural exchange; citizenship, legislation, and bureaucracy; Italian and European regulatory frameworks; remittances; perspectives on Italy and on Europe.