The follow-up Committee to the Congress of Algiers
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the National Committees
The European Movement International

SOUTH-NORTH MEDITERRANEAN DIALOGUE
FOR A SHARED VISION OF THE FUTURE

CONGRESS OF ALICANTE

Alicante, 19- 20- 21 November 2009

Education and Migrations

DOCUMENTS

1. Synthesis of the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Alicante Congress
2. Alicante Declaration on Education, Iman El-Kaffass (English Version - 4 pages) *
3. Alicante Declaration on Migrations, Bichara Khader (French Version - 28 pages) *
4. Preparatory Note (45 pages) *
5. Programme of the Alicante Congress *
6. List of Participants *

* Documents available at the Secretariat of the European Movement International: secretariat@europeanmovement.eu

Synthesis of the Proposals resulting from the Reports and Workshops Debates of the Alicante Congress

The second Congress of the South North Mediterranean Dialogue : For a Shared vision of the Future was organized in Alicante, on November 19-20-21, 2009, on the initiative of the European Movement International, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and the National Committees of Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia.

This Congress brought together some 350 participants, representing 30 countries from the South and the North from the Mediterranean who shared their experiences and discussed the two themes at the core of the Mediterranean Dialogue: Education and Migration.

This synthesis results from the final documents of the rapporteurs, Iman El-Kaffass and Bichara Khader.

The conclusions and recommendations extracted from the workshops and presented hereafter take into account the preparatory meetings organized in several countries (Belgium, France, Croatia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia), as well as the recommendations and the action plan defined in the Declaration of Algiers.

The participants shed light on the centrality of the two themes of the Congress in a common vision of the future resulting from the South North Mediterranean Dialogue. They underlined the necessity for a change of paradigm in the analysis of Education and Migrations; the main concerns in those two areas must be: common and interdependent development, sharing of knowledge, mobility and gender equality.

Discussions clearly underlined that the South North Mediterranean Dialogue must not be undertaken on the basis of dominant realities and values. It has to be a dialogue of equals and a partnership beneficial for the two shores, a partnership based on mutual understanding that reflects the wise words of Albert Camus, the great French writer who said: “Do not walk behind me, I will maybe not guide you. Do not walk in front of me, I will maybe not follow you. Walk beside me and be my friend”.

SYNTHESIS OF THE PROPOSALS RESULTING FROM THE REPORTS AND THE WORKSHOPS DEBATES OF THE ALICANTE CONGRESS

The South-North Mediterranean Dialogue should support collaboration on the following issues

Education

Develop educational programs, projects and/or joint curricula:

1. Teach a culture of multiculturalism to young children on the two shores of the Mediterranean through nursery/pre-school education and the education of mothers.
2. Prepare young students in primary schools with language, research and discovery skills; teach them the attitude of tolerance, knowledge and acceptance of the other, in a way to create a citizen of the Mediterranean, while preserving their own identity.
3. Introduce the culture of neighbours and cross-cultural value systems to the different stages of school education in order to bridge the two shores of the Mediterranean and encourage a feeling of friendship and neighbourhood amongst youth.
4. Improve and modernize curricula and outcomes of technical, vocational and higher education in the South to give southern youth a qualification to confront labour market demands both in the South and in the North of the Mediterranean. Education for opportunity.
5. Support the establishment and the strengthening of education quality assurance entities/agencies in the South that apply international standards in assessing education.
6. Ensure gender equality in terms of access to education but also in retention in education at all levels.
7. Promote the concept of democratization of education.

Set policies and collaborate on improving student mobility in the Mediterranean region through the following:

1. Equate university curricula and allow for mutual recognition of academic courses and degrees to facilitate mobility and employability between the two shores.
2. Establish programs at high school and university levels which encourage youth exchange and their attending of cultural and educational programs in the host country.
3. Teachers and trainers of migrants in the North should receive training in culture, history etc. of the country of origin of their students. Collaboration can take place in this respect; trainers and educated intelligentsia from the south can participate in the preparation of the Northern teachers and trainers.
4. Establish an analysis of human skills in the South Mediterranean countries to know the competitive edge of southern youth, use it and build on it.

Collaborate on the following concrete projects:

1. Create academic programmes that require students to achieve one or two semesters of study in a university of the other shore before their graduation.
2. Develop joint curricula for Mediterranean studies, which would be taught in universities around the Mediterranean, and create graduate and/or post-graduate degrees in this regard. The students would need to become fluent in Arabic, English and one other Mediterranean language and they would be required to move at least once to a second university for a year and to do an internship in the North and in the South and receive a joint degree. They should ultimately be ready for jobs in politics, industry, etc. at either of the two sides.
3. Build a Euro-med University in the South, as in the North, focusing on scientific cooperation and studies that foster peace, intercultural business and sustainability in the Mediterranean region. Provide enough scholarships to enable underprivileged students from the South and from the North to achieve a degree/qualification.
4. Create a higher education degree specializing in vocational and professional education and development for Southern and Northern students on the model set by the College of Europe, whose aim is to bring together young students from different countries to live and study together and receive equal qualifications. The institute will have to be located in an area easily accessible from the North and the South and will admit students either after their high school or their university degree. It will offer up-to-date vocational education for two years ending with a degree. Thus, highly qualified graduates should be able to obtain vocational jobs on the two shores.

Collaborate on non-formal/life-long education:

1. For a common development, participants underlined the importance to link educational institutions in the South to distance learning institutes and universities in Europe, transmit knowledge and offer certification/degrees through ICT.
2. Link literacy programs to the labour market.

Migrations

The debates during the Workshops on Migrations led to the following global orientations:

Work together for a common development - migrations as a factor of development:

1. In order to improve joint development, information and communication networks such as the Euromed agency for employment have to be put in place, creating a synergy between demand and supply and providing the necessary conditions for a return to the country of origin to share the expertise acquired in the receiving country within the framework of North-South solidarity.
2. Local competences must be exploited within the context of regional migration (and development). The scourge of unemployment cannot be fought without the joint efforts and cooperation of North and South.
3. Encourage transfers while reducing their costs: it is not normal that the costs of these transfers exceed the critical threshold of 10%: this is excessive and discourages bank transfers in favor of informal transfers not necessarily cheaper.
4. These transfers constitute an important contribution to the country of origin. In some cases, the inflow of foreign currency can pay the debt service.
5. Participants expressed the wish of channeling remittances to micro-projects, to the creation of micro-enterprises and cooperatives, as a way of creating jobs and activity. It is unfortunate that most go towards pure consumption. We should firstly bind remittances and local development.

Promote freedom of movement in the Mediterranean:

1. Promote circular migration, stressing however the fact that it does not simply concern intellectual and economic elites, but that all migrants should be able develop interests on both sides of the Mediterranean.
2. Train domestically southern youth in order to improve their “qualified circulation”.
3. Improve the partnerships for mobility. Correspondingly, the Spanish-Moroccan, Italian-Tunisian and French-Tunisian working agreements are considered good practices which must be encouraged and applied elsewhere.
4. It is necessary to question the existence of a factor of appeal, or pull factor in Europe, combined with a push factor present along the Southern shore of the Mediterranean, which a cause of migration. Based on the inevitability of this constant, there is a need to organize a freedom of movement in the Mediterranean.

Improve the integration of immigrants

1. Participants stressed the need to inform potential migrants on the labor market in Europe, and train them accordingly before their departure. The Tunisian experience in this context is a valuable example.
2. Encourage governments of host countries, together with actors of civil society, academia and the educational field to provide the institutional, cultural and logistical tools to promote the integration of arriving immigrants.
3. The example of the integration model of the Community of Valencia provides training programs, volunteering, initiatives to combat xenophobia and racism, as well as approaches to familiarize immigrants with the host society.

Beyond a security approach to migration policies and the criminalization of immigrants:

1. A purely security approach aiming to close borders (electronic controls, maritime observation, walls, barriers, barbwire, etc.) is criticized for being inhuman and unrealistic as is the externalization of borders.
2. Some participants advocated the abolition of visas, simply by claiming that it is very restrictive and ultimately un-productive: the visa system has not dried up migratory flows; it has made them more difficult, more dangerous and costly. Most importantly, in the eyes of some, visas not only lead to illegal immigration, but also the installation.
3. We must change approaches to illegal migration. It is the product of these barriers to free movement in the region.
4. The habit of « criminalizing » immigration was unanimously condemned. Smugglers and mafia networks are the middlemen who take advantage of this situation and they must be punished.
5. Facilitate the establishment of readmission systems and reintegration of illegal immigrants in their country of origin. We must abandon the criminalization of illegal immigration.
6. The European Union and its members should apply a more generous visa system, to improve, for example, the mobility of researchers, professors, students ...

Brain drain – Brain gain: develop the circulation of knowledge

1. Beyond a European vision of “chosen” immigration. Some participants saw this as a "subtle way" of "plundering" highly qualified individuals for little cost. Others saw it a discrimination of immigrants without qualification. While, on the other hand, some claimed that it is better to witness "brain drain" than excessive numbers of "unemployed graduates" in their own countries. Everybody agree on the concept of interdependent development.
2. Promote the circulation of “brains” for a transfer of knowledge and skills: the concept of “brain drain” referring to those who migrate but who will develop a number of skills which can be transferred to their country of origin through the process of circular migration.
3. Assuming that migration is a difficult choice, often involving a family split, participants wished to emphasize the need to improve, before their departure, the skills of their youth to align them with the needs of the labor market of the destination country.
4. Migrations and mobility of young graduates, students and professors or workers have to be promoted.
5. By his installation in the host country, the immigrant must in one hand adapt to, but also integrate values in terms of rights and duties of the individual and the citizen, importance of the democratic life, the positive character of diversity. All this represents immaterial added value for the social and political culture of the sending country, in the framework of migrants’ return.
6. In the South: convince young people to return home, establish programs for the implementation of youth projects. We must develop a form of technical support to develop entrepreneurial initiatives in countries of origin for the return of settled communities in European countries.
7. In the North: invest more in the training of young to increase their employment opportunities in the North and in their countries of origin. However, participants have underlined that the current financing of qualification programs for youth and European financial support to business development leaves much to be desired.

Submitted to the Board of the EMI, December 12, 2009