Empowering migrant voices in integration policies

At the Peace Institute, as part of the "Empowering Migrant Voices in Integration Policies" project, research was conducted to create a national report on the possibilities for the political participation of migrants in Slovenia.

The report includes in its definition of migrants all people who have migrated from one country to another, including asylum seekers, refugees, people with subsidiary protection, and other third-country nationals. It is built on analysis of available official information and other sources, as well as on interviews and focus group discussions conducted with migrants and governmental and non-governmental experts in this field. The organisations involved included the Government Office for Care and Integration of Migrants, the Human Rights Ombudsman, the Cene Štupar Public Institute - Ljubljana Education Center, the Institute for Migration at ZRC SAZU, Cultural Center Danilo Kiš, Institute Global / Skuhna, Intercultural Dialogue, Infokolpa, Association Odnos, Slovenian Philanthropy, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Platform SLOGA, and UNHCR.

Key recommendations made in the report include the following:

• Education around the country's political system should be promoted, and possibilities for the political participation of migrants need to be improved for both migrants (in the context of integration programmes) and the rest of the (Slovene) population more broadly.
• The self-organisation of migrants, and their networks and associations, must be systematically and financially encouraged and supported. Granting basic rights is not effective if there is no real possibility of realising them.
• State and other institutions should employ and include more people with a migrant background in their operations, including cultural mediators.
• Migrants and migrant communities should be systematically involved in the formulation of migrant-related policies.
• Migrants and migrant communities should be included systematically in consultative bodies related to the field of migration, and consultative migrant bodies should be established where they do not exist but would be necessary.
• All people must be guaranteed full voting rights after legal residence in the country for one year.