Education seminar 25 March 2019

In this first education seminar the focus lay on opening up the discussion by providing an overview of current RU-wide course offerings and identifying collaboration potential. Towards this aim, prior to the meeting a document of all RU courses related to migrant inclusion has been worked out by the RUNOMI secretariat in cooperation with course coordinators and RUNOMI members. This document containing 26 courses has been circulated to all course coordinators and RUNOMI members prior to the meeting and a print version was handed out during the meeting.

An analysis of the course names and descriptions reveals that the migrant inclusion theme connects to broader discussions on well-being, inequality and diversity in society. There are clearly multi-disciplinary approaches to studying the theme of migrant inclusion including among others socio-cultural, historical, legal and economic dimensions. The health dimension is also clearly present in the course offerings, but it is currently missing from this analysis, as these courses still need to be added in the overview document. Many different dimensions of migrant inclusion are studied, such as European policy, gender issues, and broader theoretical discussions on globalization.

During the meeting participants were asked to state which thematic content they would like to add to their course, e.g. by means of guest lectures, and what expertise they would like to provide themselves to other courses. On the basis of this discussion, a supply-demand platform for guest lectures will be established by RUNOMI as a first step towards furthering RU-wide educational collaboration on migrant inclusion issues.

Several lecturers held pitches to introduce new interdisciplinary educational ideas related to migrant inclusion issues. The viability of these ideas will be further assessed and possibilities to provide support through RUNOMI will be explored, e.g. by organizing targeted RUNOMI Education Seminars.