"...only by looking at the full picture can you understand the beauty and balance of the image." The Different Approach of Leoluca Orlando, Mayor of Palermo

“How many migrants do you have in Palermo?” This is one of the most common questions I get asked when talking with foreigners or journalists about the migration policy of our administration.
The answer is simple and yet complex at the same time: no one single migrant lives in Palermo, because all people living or arriving in Palermo are considered to be Palermo’s citizens – or Palermitani. Of course, this answer does not consider the legal aspect of citizenship. The mayor or municipality do not, according to Italian legislation, have the power to award Italian citizenship by themselves. What we do have, however, is the possibility to promote and build a welcoming environment, reflected and supported by a welcoming policy and a welcoming set of services. This is Palermo today. Migration flows, meanwhile, have fallen drastically since 2014–16, when more than 35,000 migrants arrived, escaping from violence, poverty, disasters and war.
Five years ago, the Mayor proposed, and the City Council created, a so-called ‘council of cultures’. This is an official body comprising 21 citizens elected by and representing all those living in Palermo that hold a passport other than an Italian one. Each geographical area of the world is represented, in proportion to the presence of those communities now in Palermo.
The current president is from Côte d’Ivoire, supported by a vice-president from Sri Lanka. Past presidents have been from Palestine and Cape Verde. More than half of the members are women, many of whom are active in local civil-society organisations. The council is not only a place where the interests of different communities are represented, but is also where many intercultural initiatives are organised and proposed to the city. It’s the place where the slogan ‘all different, all equal’ becomes a daily truth.
The council of cultures represents the tip of a vibrant and diverse iceberg. In Palermo every culture and religion is considered as part of what I call ‘Palermo’s mosaic’. Each small piece of the mosaic has its own role. Everyone’s role is relevant, but only by looking at the full picture can you understand the beauty and balance of the image.
Is this just a ‘humanitarian’ approach to migration? No, it is not. We choose to refuse both humanitarian and security approaches to the migration issue.
If you use a security approach, there will always be someone who has a more secure answer to the problem. If you say: “We should not give freedom of movement in Europe to migrants”, there will be someone who will say, “We should not allow them to enter Europe at all”. And if you say: “We should not allow them in Europe”, there will be someone else who will say, “We should shoot their boats in the Mediterranean”.
If you choose a purely humanitarian approach, there will always be someone or some state that is poorer or more fragile than another, and which you feel you must prioritise, that in the end you will not recognise migrants’ rights.
We have chosen a different approach. This is summarised in the Charter of Palermo, a document approved in March 2015 by lawyers, representatives from NGOs and public officers. The simple idea behind the charter is that every single migrant is a person and, as such, owner of all human rights. This may sound obvious. But in today’s political scenario it is frankly revolutionary to say that mobility is a human right – in other words, a fundamental and basic human right for all.
In the hyper-connected world in which we live, almost everything has freedom of movement but people. You can move goods, money or data fairly easily. But you cannot freely move if you are a person from the ‘wrong’ country.
If, however, you look at migration as a natural human phenomenon, as the consequence of a desire for a better life, of a yearning to escape poverty, disasters, wars and violence of different kinds, then you can only assume that any limitations to movement are a new form of slavery. In many cases – the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Mexican–US border, as well as others – limitations to movement can be viewed as a new form of mass death penalty.
But back to Palermo. Even if we promoted the abolition of the so-called ‘permit to stay’, we (as a municipality) have no power to change our national laws on migration or citizenship. So what practically can we do? The answer is that we can – and do – take concrete and symbolic actions every day.
The Mayor of Palermo – a Catholic – officially participates in all religious celebrations of the city’s communities: Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian Orthodox. He participates not in a private capacity, but instead wears the tricolour band that is the official symbol of his public authority and representation of the state. This makes it possible for each Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist believer to feel and be perceived as a citizen of Palermo.
Unlike in other Italian or European cities, if a Muslim who is perceived as dangerous arrives in Palermo, the first one to alert authorities is the Imam. Why? Because the Imam feels he is part of the community and because he cares for the community.
Only in Palermo can Catholic authorities donate to the Jewish community to transform a former church building into a synagogue. Only in Palermo do Hindu and Muslim believers volunteer to be part of the team that moves the heavy chariot for the ‘Festino’, the most important Catholic festival in honour of the patron saint of the city. This same open and inclusive approach is applied in every aspect of our municipal life. (...)
In Italy and Europe, people willing to welcome refugees and migrants into their home do so without a legal framework to refer to. In Palermo, we established and promote an official list of voluntary tutors for young unaccompanied migrants. We give those tutors training, legal counselling and official status when dealing with the authorities. I could go on, but hopefully it is clear why we talk of Palermo as a model, particularly when compared with the realities migrants face elsewhere in Europe and beyond. (...)
Let me also say that welcoming migrants benefits our city as a whole. Just as some years ago when convincing people to fight against the Mafia I had to explain why legality is economically beneficial, now I assure people that opening our city is beneficial too. Thanks to our recognised policy of welcoming migrants, Palermo has become one of the most important tourist destinations in Italy over the last few years. While the entire tourist market in Italy grows between three and four per cent per year, every year Palermo welcomes some 15 to 18 per cent more tourists than the previous year. While the economic crisis continues to strangle small and medium-sized businesses throughout Italy, in Palermo our economy is showing signs of recovery, driven by the tourist boom and the city’s new cultural vitality.
(...) It is our culture of welcoming, of multiculturalism and our approach to migration that has turned Palermo into a place opportunity – for all communities.
Leoluca Orlando

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photograph via Live Sicilia

Milan is a Solidarity City

"Milan is a community of peace and tolerance, seeking to become a capital of freedeom where the responsibility to welcome and include migrants is a top priority. In May 2017, 100.000 people marched for "Together without borders" animated by the hope of those who believe in the respect of ethnic and cultural diversity. Milan supports the Solidarity Cities Initiative and is convinced that a plural society is a growth opportunity for everyone."
Giuseppe Sala, mayor of Milan

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image via Google

IKEA recreates 25 square metres of Syria

IKEA, the Norwegian Red Cross and advertising agency POL teamed up to create the awareness campaign "25m2 Syria". Inside an IKEA store in Slependen, Norway, a full-size Syrian home was recreated. The 25m2 home is a replica of Dana's home, a woman who lives there with her family of nine. What looks like the usual IKEA posters of product descriptions are posters with stories of Syrians, the "price tags" call visitors to act (Diversity is beautiful).

Berlin's Museums: A Means of Integration for Refugees

"Museums in Berlin are helping to welcome refugees to the city and its culture with the programme Multaka—from the Arabic word for forum or meeting place—in which trained refugees from Syria and Iraq give free guided museum tours in Arabic to other displaced groups. The programme, started by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin State Museums), offers visits twice a week in four museums: the Museum of Islamic Art and the Museum of the Ancient Near East, two separate museums housed together in the Pergamon Museum; the Byzantine Art Museum in the Bode Museum; and the German Historical Museum (which is not part of the State Museums). (...)
At the launch of the programme, 19 guides from Iraq and Syria were recruited by word of mouth among the migrant community in Berlin, and were given a four-day training session. There are now a total of 25 guides, who come from a variety of professional backgrounds, some related to the arts and heritage, others to disciplines like law and economics."
(The Art Newspaper)

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Photograph via Zwischen den Welten

Arrival Cities

"(...) Arrival City argues that the ad hoc, self-determined neighborhoods that emerge out of mass migrations, termed “arrival cities,” are integral to integrating newcomers in their destination country. Saunders contributes an essay to Making Heimat. In it, he cautions that arrival cities are “where the new creative and commercial class will be born, or where the next wave of tension and violence will erupt.” The difference, he adds “depends on how we approach these districts both organizationally and politically, and, crucially, in terms of physical structures and built form.”
The cities of Hamburg and Berlin have come up with two different approaches to designing arrival cities. (...)

Berlin’s Kreuzberg district was first established as an arrival city in the 1970s by Turkish men who had traveled to West Germany as part of its gastarbeiter (guest worker) program. Initially, these men lived in dormitories, until their employers realized that workers were more productive when they were happy. Guest workers’ families then joined them, and the men moved out of the dorms and into Kreuzberg. Along the Berlin Wall in Kreuzberg, the rents were cheap. More importantly, landlords were willing rent to Turks.
Today, Kreuzberg is a mix of first- and second-generation holdovers from the 1970s migration, arty Berliners, hipster tourists, and English-speaking expats from the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere. Shabby-chic bars and white cube art galleries push up against kebab houses and hookah lounges. Saunders describes it as having “gone from disreputable to fashionable in a generation.”
But for all the cocktails and kebabs, Kreuzberg still plays host to new arrivals in Germany. It’s become a ground zero for Berlin’s refugee advocacy movement since asylum seekers occupied a disused school building in 2013. This past weekend, the refugee rights group Women in Exile held a rally there, seeking, among other things, more viable housing solutions for refugees and asylum seekers."

Via/More CityLab

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Photograph via Fashion Underground

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

""The New Colossus" is a sonnet that American poet Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) wrote in 1883 to raise money for the construction of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. In 1903, the poem was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal's lower level." (Wikipedia) Lazarus herself was a descendant of Sephardic Jews who had immigrated to the U.S. from Portugal (Poets).

""The New Colossus" was the first entry read at the exhibit's opening, but was forgotten and played no role at the opening of the statue in 1886. In 1901, Lazarus's friend Georgina Schuyler began an effort to memorialize Lazarus and her poem, which succeeded in 1903 when a plaque bearing the text of the poem was put on the inner wall of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty." (Wikipedia)

"The title of the poem and the first two lines refer to the Colossus of Rhodes, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The poem talks about the millions of immigrants who came to the United States (many of them through Ellis Island at the port of New York).
The "air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame" refers to New York City and Brooklyn, which were consolidated into one unit in 1898, 15 years after the poem was written." (Wikipedia)

"The "huddled masses" image is unforgettably visual and narrative. It reminds us the refugees lived in slums or ghettos, in overcrowded conditions that would have been repeated at sea for the majority who travelled steerage. Their "yearning to breathe free" was not, therefore, only metaphorical. In the next line, "refuse" is a shocking and unexpected noun. English equates refuse with rubbish. We're forced to see the exiles as they were seen by the regimes that despised and dehumanised them. For contemporary readers, additional images of homelessness and genocide will inhabit these lines." (The Guardian)

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Photograph via Business Insider

Refugee Republic: Cities of Tomorrow

"We have to get away from the concept that, because you have that status – migrant, refugee, martian, alien, whatever – you're not allowed to be like everybody else." Kilian Kleinschmidt

According to Kilian Kleinschmidt, a leading authority on humanitarian aid who has worked for the United Nations and the UN High Commission for Refugees for 25 years, governments should stop thinking about refugee camps as temporary places. A lack of willingness to recognise that camps have become a "permanent fixture around the world" and a failure to provide the infrastructure needed would lead to poor conditions that could otherwise be prevented leaving residents vulnerable to "crooks" (Dezeen).

"These are the cities of tomorrow. The average stay today in a camp is 17 years. That's a generation. In the Middle East, we were building camps: storage facilities for people. But the refugees were building a city." Kilian Kleinschmidt

Refugee Republic is a brilliant(!) interactive online documentary created by the agency Submarine Channel. It was awarded twice at the Dutch Design Awards last year. The online documentary uses photography, moving image, illustration, sound and text to give an insight into the daily lives of refugees in the Domiz Syrian refugee camp in northern Iraq, 60 kilometres from the Syrian border (Dezeen).

::: Start the journey here: Refugee Republic

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Image via Submarine Channel