The current situation of global emergency as a result of the health ad socioeconomical crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic, is making migrants and refugees live conditions even harder, not to speak about their future chances to fulfill their attempt to access the EU after the border lockdown and the hardening of migratory policies. Within this environment, MIGRIMAGE: Images of Migration on the Southern Border is based on the recommendations generated by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI General Policy Recommendation No. 15 on combating Hate Speech), where it is detected that the misconceptions and erroneous information that constitute the basis of the hate speech, and highlights the role of education in undermining these discourses, facilitating and exemplifying intercultural dialogue and combating misinformation, negative stereotypes and stigmatization. MIGRIMAGE proposes to develop a specific educational program for this purpose at the crossroads of Communication Studies in New Media (Digital Journalism included) and Communication for Social Transformation. It aims to strengthen the competence of educators to deliver them and at the same time support non- governmental organizations that work to combat hate speech. The project proposes the design, development, piloting and evaluation of an educational curriculum at the graduate level, around the Images of Migration in the Southern European Border, involving transversally the main disciplines within the network of applicant partners: the Universities of Granada (with headquarters in the cities of Granada, Ceuta and Melilla, Spain); University of Salento, based in Lecce (Italy), and the University of the Aegean Sea, based in Lesbos (Greece). The network gathers specialists in audiovisual communication; studies and new media, visual anthropology and human geography, political science and sociology, comparative literature and transmedial narratives, and migratory studies. The project links this training itinerary with the NGOs of the consortium, three organisations with a broad trajectory in the work with Young people, local or migrant, and with the use of communicative tools for social change. This curriculum will lay the foundations of a graduate, interuniversity and transnational study program intended to be referential in academic studies on frontier cultures and the use of communication, and in particular of new interactive digital media, for social transformation, through communicative tools used from an intercultural, open and integrating perspective. The articulation of the educational program with the possibilities of the new means of communication will occur through the use of both technologies and innovative formats such as the MOOC and the WEBDOC (interactive documentary). These formats will foster and support collaborative learning and creation methodologies as well as the narration of new positive stories about migratory experiences, through transmedial designs (stories distributed coordinately in different platforms or media with strong audience participation). At the heart of the project´s objectives is a call for the attention of the citizenship of three bordering European countries in the Mediterranean, especially to its young population, on the need for knowledge and responsible use of the information circulating about migrations at this historical juncture of historical crisis for Europe on the issue of immigration. The critical questioning of negative stereotypes and the stigmatization of migrants is also in the agenda of this project, which aims to offer a prototype training program for young people (Europeans and foreigners) to be the best interlocutors in the intercultural dialogue that Europe needs, making more and more expert use of communication tools with transforming potential. Europe must continue to be a guarantor of fundamental human rights and this project aims to contribute to overcoming the crisis that we have experienced in recent years. The transfer of knowledge generated in the project by universities and in collaboration with social entities that fight against discrimination of migrant groups and racism, will occur through the creation of educational content and resources, the intellectual products of this project, integrated in a communicative platform and through innovative technological supports that are based on a broad experience in this scientific and educational field. Last, but not least, it is reasonable to believe that the immediate consequences of the global pandemic will make more relevant the compliance of MIGRIMAGE goals.
Innovation: generate tools for the discursive analysis of the images created by the media, social media and cinema, which allow for a critical view of the discriminatory images of migration and the use of new audiovisual and journalistic communication formats, which, based on a responsible use of information, can provide counter-narratives to the discourses of hate and discrimination. -Knowledge transferability: between universities and NGOs that allows coordinating the effectiveness of knowledge on the analysis of migration images and the use of new communication formats (Universities), with the use of communication tools for social transformation (NGOs), thus linking future social trainers (university students) and, in turn, the young migrant or local population (NGO beneficiaries), promoting media literacy and intercultural dialogue. -Networking: offering a training program designed at a transnational level in the Southern European context that coordinates different social actors, understanding migration as an opportunity for the construction of an intercultural society based on communication.
MIGRIMAGE starts from the geography of the southern border of Europe as a space where it is necessary to train professionals capable of possessing communicative tools for the transformation of xenophobic discourses on migration, and for the promotion of intercultural citizenship. MIGRIMAGE emerges around four fundamental pillars: 1. The discursive analysis of images about migration, which are transmitted through classic or digital media, social networks, cinema and literature. 2. The creation of new narratives on migration, which go beyond the us/other separation, seeking to create continuities between different sectors of the population, in a relationship of interdependence; seeking to generate common spaces, encounters. 3. Intercultural dialogue, the belief that through these new discourses generated, these new narratives that seek a common one, spaces of joint representation are created that question xenophobic and discriminatory discourses and combat misinformation. 4. The creation of more inclusive higher education systems, under the commitment to transform social realities and in collaboration with other educational agents.