By Janine Wallrabe
In February 2024, we had the opportunity to present the work of Migration Matters at an online event organized by the German Center for integration and Migration Research (DeZIM). The event focused on the resilience of municipalities in the face of the challenges of flight, return and circular migration, and participants included integration officers from the municipalities themselves. Among other things, they discussed what the public discourse on migration looks like, how migration is best communicated and how local efforts can be made visible.
Sophia Burton, co-founder and managing director of Migration Matters, told the participants how Migration Matters was founded, what the organization’s goals are, and how the team is structured. She talked about the conviction that Integration and inclusion can only work if host societies are well informed, empathetic and better able to discuss migration and diversity.
Sophia also gave examples of work such as dialogue events, video series, and training sessions. And she emphasized that the aim of Migration Matters is not to convince people of anything, but simply to show that migration is a normal (and complex) part of society. The main target group is therefore not migrants and refugees themselves, but mainly the host societies. Some Migration Matters videos were also presented as examples.
As examples of projects in 2024, she mentioned the Research Meets School project, in which workshops on migration in the classroom are held, GAPs Return Migration, which deals with return migration, and the podcast “Voices on the Move” on the interface between migration and climate change, which will be released in fall 2024. It was very interesting to meet the integration officers in this context and to report on our work, and we hope to have many more opportunities to do so!