Migration is always on the agenda of FYEG’s daily life and that’s why we met in Budapest to talk about refugees and labour migration and – very importantly to build new networks
From 1st to 7th of December 2003 the Study Session on Migration in Europe took place in the Hungarian Youth Centre of the Council of Europe. It wasn’t easy for the 30 participants to reach their place of destination because an angry looking prep team was waiting for them and obliged them to pass a bunch of security checks and interviews – all in a language that hardly sounded familiar to most of them. This was to show the barriers that borders are for a lot of people that don’t have European or other privileged passports. But apart from that, the prep team tried to be friendly ☺
he programme of the following days included a lot of creative parts. We did a video exercise, some paintings and the best was a theatre workshop where we tried out the “Theatre of the Oppressed”, a kind of theatre to realize and solve conflicts. And we had a lot of fruitful discussions and workshops and an interesting lecture.
In the middle of the week we visited the Hungarian NGO NaNe which is working in the field of women rights and where we had a very interesting talk about trafficking women. Later this day during the free afternoon FYEG’s Communication Officer Natalie had to face an example of how traffickers approach their victims. Besides the work we had some very good evening activities: The Bad Time Story Night included thrilling, funny and exciting stories from allover Europe and also; in a massage workshop, we learned a very important skill for FYEG meetings☺!The Talent Show brought into light the talented people in FYEG – from juggling to singing and story telling; everything was present! Of course we didn’t miss the International Evening and a very moving Farewell Evening.
As a result of the week, 2 statements on refugees and labour migrants where issued (see www.destinationeurope.org). Other results were the first movie of an FYEG event and a lot of good new ideas for the migration campaign and future projects.