JEF international seminar in Tarxien, Malta | 17-23 October 2010

From Sunday 17th to Saturday 23rd of October 2010, 40 young people from all over Europe gathered on Malta, in the small village of Tarxien, to discuss and learn about the topic of migration. The seminar was organised by JEF Europe in cooperation with JEF Malta with the financial support of the European Youth Foundation (EYF) of the Council of Europe.

In the beginning of the international seminar, sessions were dedicated to define what migration actually means and what kind of different types exist. This exercise demonstrated the complexity of the topic and how important it is to be aware of these differentiations. Moreover, already on the first day, very controversial debates aroused. These debates made clear how diverse the opinions and possible approaches to solutions on the topic of migration are and how emotional this topic can be, especially when people come from so many different (national) backgrounds. In total, sixteen nationalities were represented; everybody with different interests, (fore)knowledge and views. But especially this diversity made the discussions in the seminar so valuable.

Most of the participants agreed that the field visit to an open center where illegal immigrants from Africa were given shelter was the most important experience of the whole seminar. It was described as “meeting the reality” as it was possible to get to know vividly the living conditions of the residents as well as to share their personal stories.

Moreover, there were different input speakers on almost every day of the seminar: They were explaining the situation on Malta as regards the influx of migrants, talking about the integration of young migrants and making the participants think about possible solutions, elaborating on the EU policy and the international law aspect of migration in addition to presenting the UN 1951 Convention on the status of refugees. At the end of the seminar a high-profile panel debate took place with a Latvian researcher on migration, a British local councilor and speakers from the UN representation on Malta and the Maltese Ministry of Justice.

But of course, the participants themselves also contributed a lot to the seminar, for example by exchanging information about the situation in their home countries and participating in a simulation game on refugees. At the end of the seminar, an output was produced by the participants reflecting their impressions and the elements that they perceived as most important: a declaration was written, an animated video created, various articles for the webzine “the new federalist” initiated and a campaign concerning local JEF activities developed. Especially the declaration contains measures that should be taken by the EU and actions that JEF Europe could perform on this topic.

Last but not least, the participants also had the possibility to enjoy some leisure activities in Malta experiencing the rich Mediterranean history and culture this region has to offer. Several Maltese cities were discovered such as Sliema, Mdina and the capital Valletta where the beautiful waterfront served as perfect venue for the Europe United Party at the last evening of the seminar.

If you would like to have more detailed information about the content of the seminar, you can find the comprehensive summaries of all sessions here.

Output of the seminar:

Click here for the declaration that the seminar participants wrote.

Here, you can have a look on the map on migration that was created by the participants.

Check out this document for the developed JEF campaign in schools about the topic of migration!

The project is financially supported by the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe. The European Youth Foundation (EYF) is a fund established in 1972 by the Council of Europe to provide financial support for European youth activities. Since 1972, more than 300,000 young people, aged between 15 and 30 and mostly from member states, have benefited directly from EYF-supported activities. In 2007 the EYF supported some 300 projects involving more than 15,000 young people.

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