Europäische Jugendbildungs- und Jugendbegegnungsstätte Weimar

Cultural Identity and Democracy Workshop for African Migrant Children

The workshop will be conducted for three days over a period of two weeks, with each session lasting five hours.
Target Group: This workshop will primarily target African migrant children aged 12–18.
Expected prior knowledge: Ideally, participants have knowledge of or experience with racism.

Background

According to 2020 data from the Federal Statistical Office, 11.2 million foreigners currently live in Germany nationwide, with at least 105,629 of them in Thuringia. Policy measures have been taken at the state and federal levels to ensure that migrants do not lag far behind in the development index on a variety of quality-of-life indicators, including school performance, health, employment, and democratic participation, as well as promote respect for racial and cultural diversity.
However, a 2018 joint report by the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), people with an immigrant background have twice as much difficulty accessing high-skilled jobs than their German peers and are mainly employed in the service sector of the labor market.
For migrant children, the situation is similar. According to a 2021 report by the independent pan-European media network group EURACTIV, many migrant children are falling behind in the education system. It points out that the current »tracking system« used to determine the transition from primary to secondary education in public schools often excludes migrant children from attending the Gymnasium, which is specifically designed to prepare students for university studies. In addition, migrant children also face prejudice because of their skin color and hair type to include the question of the origin of German children who have parents with an immigrant background (source: Deutsche Welle report, March 2019).
On the other hand, the integration and social inclusion of young migrants is a two-way process. This means that young migrants should be able to develop cultural competency skills that extend beyond language acquisition to developing the capacity to effectively participate in a culturally diverse democratic society and challenge prejudice, hate speech, and stereotypes through respectful Intercultural dialogues. Participatory engagement and inclusion of immigrant children will create its own self-reinforcing mechanism where they can exercise their fundamental human rights, participate, and contribute to development over many generations to come.
The United Nations cultural diversity framework, under Articles 5 and 27, promotes cultural identity, participation, education, and self-expression as key components of the rights and fundamental freedoms of every human being. The provisions reinforce the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as Articles 13 and 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. It is around these principles that this workshop is tailored and promotes a bottom-up approach to realizing integration policies with the inclusion of African migrant children.

Aims

The overall goal of this workshop is to contribute to the German government’s effort to build stronger relationship between German and non-German community members through intercultural awareness. Specifically, it aims to accomplish the following:
• To create a mutual space where African migrant children acquire skills, recognize, and deepen their understanding of their cultural rights to effectively engage in a culture of democracy and diversity.
• To build the cultural competencies to challenge prejudice in the school environment and community.
• To motivate and provide an avenue for African migrant children to share their perspective on democratic cultural values such as human dignity, cultural identity, and equal respect.

Procedure

The ideal approach for this workshop is a mix of case studies, teaching (classroom style), role-playing, and visualization activities (films/​videos) conducted in a physical space.

Notes

The workshop will be conducted in English with German translation.

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