INFOCON Newsletter # 7

Brussels, March 2009

Contents:

  1. Welcome to the about-once-a-month INFOCON newsletter
  2. Here and There (www.here-there.org)
  3. The first INFOCON conference

1. Welcome to the about-once-a-month INFOCON newsletter

Dear Colleague,

We are very glad to present the 7th edition of the INFOCON newsletter! This special issue is entirely dedicated to the Here and There internet platform and the 1st INFOCON conference. After almost one year passed since the kick-off of our research project and we are already in measure to present some results of the strong commitment provided by all members of our consortium. We invite you to follow us and so benefit from the outputs we present in the 2nd INFOCON newsletter of 2009.

Please join us and discover what the INFOCON team is creating!

2. Here and There (www.here-there.org)

Launched this week, Here and There is a service for Civil Society Organizations, research institutes and international players engaged in the exchange of knowledge on migrant communities and their contributions to essential issues in current times such as integration, inter-cultural dialogue, human rights, conflict resolution, development and more.

This online social network tool offers to its users the possibility of creating a web space where they can make their knowledge available and exchange it with different partners in a self-customized environment. More than a simple directory, Here and There is an interactive portal that allows real dialogue and knowledge building. By editing the content of their exclusive, private or public and protected web spaces, the communities’ representatives can provide free and immediate information on their subjects of interest. Here and There offers to its users the opportunity to be heard by a wide audience and therefore share intelligence amongst unique performers.

The INFOCON team invites you to visit the website, to create your web space and enjoy its many communication features: edit articles, events, media and documents. Make some contacts, have discussions with your colleagues. Disseminate your work widely!

Here and There was developed taking in consideration all confidentiality requirements any user could expect. You can create public, semi-public and totally private profiles. You can choose who you want to find, if you want to be found, which documents you wish to share and which you do not. Please register and join the effort to empower migrant organisations to contribute to the knowledge on topics related to challenges faced by their communities, be they integration or cultural dialogue; human rights issues, conflict resolution or development.

Our utmost aim is to help NGOs, researchers and government organisations to engage more directly with transnational community organisations and to listen to and benefit from each others’ expertise.

More at www.here-there.org

3. The 1st INFOCON conference

Transnational Communities and Conflict: a Civil Society approach
                Conflict resolution from below?
               6 & 7 May 2009 – Sciences Po Lille

Conflicts and migration are as old as human civilization. However, modern achievements on transports, economics, politics and culture have brought these concepts to a new dimension. Migratory flux and its relation to conflicts, its victims and perpetrators, represent an old challenge with a new guise: how those migrants assimilate their host country’s culture and social rules without losing their binds to their own background? How the melting-pot of cosmopolitan European capitals influences conflicts and populations from far away regions or countries? How these societies may benefit from indirect actions driven by European civil society? What is the role of academic research in this discussion? What is the place of new technologies in transnational issues?

Those and other questions will be at the center of the debate in this interdisciplinary conference, which will be held at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Lille, France, the 6th and 7th May 2009, and will bring together leading academics and civil society representatives, enriching the discussion of new paradigms on transnationalism and the multicultural aspects of this new highly mobile world, in which several cultures coexist in the same geographic space, reciprocally feeding each other, within and beyond geographic boundaries. The cross-border dimension of communities linked by similar backgrounds but confronted to modern multicultural societies modifies both the regions of origin and the cities of settlement of those communities. Our core motivation is finding how. And how could it serve to bring social peace, here and there.

The two-day conference will enlighten and explore different perspectives of transnationalism and conflict resolution. The invited specialists, from both academia and civil society, will interact with the audience in the quest to understand the transnational actors’ role in a new geo-social set-up.

The Internationalist Foundation wishes to thank to the city of Lille, the Institut d’Études Politiques de Lille, the Université Laval, the European Commission, the INFOCON members and all other colleagues for their support in the organisation of this special event.

More information at www.infocon-project.org

On behalf of the INFOCON management team,

—

Felippe Angeli