From 1 to 4 October, Reggio Calabria will host Mob in Med!, an awareness-raising campaign on obstacles to youth mobility organised by the Réseau Euromed France (REF) and Jeunesses Med in collaboration with Mana Chuma Teatro in the framework of an Erasmus+ project.
Twenty-two young activists aged between 18 and 35 from Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Tunisia, Italy, France and Spain will meet to further develop the work carried out online in previous months. They will discuss the obstacles and positive aspects faced by the younger generations in moving across the Mediterranean and draw up recommendations on the subject. Armed conflicts, bureaucratic hurdles, increasingly restrictive migration policies, economic and climate crises risk isolating young people in the region, strongly affecting their personal and professional futures. The growing militarisation and the externalisation of borders are gradually transforming their right to move around into a privilege reserved for a few or a crime to be punished by any means. In this increasingly complex and polarised scenario, defending the free movement of people, requires raising public awareness and strengthening dialogue with institutions.
Workshops and Meetings
After defining the editorial and advocacy line of the project, the group will draft a set of recommendations to be addressed to a wide range of policy makers. In addition, four videos shot by participants in the Parisian suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, Calabria, Lebanon and Palestine will be completed with the mentoring of director Felice d’Agostino, and a booklet illustrated by French-Egyptian artist Tiana Kader will be produced based on the travel stories of 10 participants of the Med Youth Meeting 2024, organised in Reggio Calabria by the same associations. The publication will be available in French and English and aims to spark reflection on the difficulties and challenges they encountered in reaching southern Italy, a symbolic as well as geographical location where chronic infrastructure shortages and scarce job opportunities still drive thousands of young people to emigrate, as in every other “South” of the world.
In Reggio Calabria, the young participants will also have the opportunity to meet some local figures who are active in these fields in order to achieve a better comprehension of local issues and grass-roots initiatives. The first meeting will be with Domenico Marino, a representative of the “No Ponte” movement, professor of economic policy at the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, and member of the Board of the Fondazione di Comunità di Messina and the Rete Comunità di Patrimonio Territorio Stretto Sostenibile (COPATSS). The second will be with the municipal councillor for Education, University and Equal Opportunities, Anna Briante, to whom the group will present the campaign as a first advocacy exercise. Finally, the third meeting will involve the representatives of the Cooperativa Sociale EUROCOOP, which has been coordinating the “Jungi Mundu” operational centre since 2011 – “Unite the world” in the local dialect – in the small village of Camini. This village on the Ionian coast of Calabria was at risk of depopulation, but thanks to their virtuous model of welcoming migrants from third countries, it is experiencing a real revival that involves the entire community.
The meetings will be held at Spazio Open and at Palazzo Corrado Alvaro, the historic seat of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria.
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