BRIDGES: Assessing the production and impact of Migration narratives aims to understand the causes and consequences of migration narratives in a context of increasing politicisation and polarisation by focusing on six European countries: France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The conference will provide a space to discuss why some narratives become dominant over others in the media and social media, but also in political debates, and how these affect individual attitudes and behaviours towards migration, as well as policy decisions, at national and European level.
In view of the upcoming European Parliament elections, the BRIDGES final conference will include a session on migration as a key campaign issue in the European elections. Far-right parties are mobilising with anti-migration themes and a discourse dividing ‘them’ vs ‘us’. How should other parties and societal actors respond to these polarising campaigns? Is an alternative and more positive narrative on migration possible? These and other questions will be discussed by researchers from the BRIDGES project and two Members of the European Parliament, Tineke Strik and Juan Fernando López Aguilar.
The last session of the conference will focus on the creation of alternative, more inclusive narratives on migration, one of the objectives of the project. The co-creation of alternative migration narratives was one of the objectives of the project, and it has materialised in initiatives such as the BRIDGES Hip Hop Contest, organised by Fundación Contorno Urbano and the non-profit organisation Hip Hop Works Inc. with the aim of encouraging critical reflection, creativity and imagination about migration narratives from an artistic perspective, or the itinerant photo exhibition Out of Frame, curated by ZONA. After Rome and Madrid, the photo exhibition will open in Brussels on 1 February at 18:30h, after the BRIDGES final conference. The exhibition will be on display at Géopolis – Centre du photojournalisme.
During the three years of the project (2021-2024), BRIDGES has adopted a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach, involving researchers from different disciplines and institutions from academia, civil society and cultural associations, with special attention to the inclusion of migrant voices. The results of the project can be found through the project's social media channels - Instagram, X, and YouTube channel - and on its website, which includes 32 Working Papers with national and comparative results, 3 policy briefs, a document with guidelines on how to include a gender perspective in the analysis of migration narratives, 7 op-eds reflecting on the most pressing issues in current public and political debates, a toolkit for creating more inclusive narratives, and several multimedia outputs - 9 infographics, 11 videos and 3 podcasts.
