ITHACA

Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency

ITHACA aims to analyse migrations from the Middle Ages to the present day, within a rigorous historical framework. The development of the ITHACA platform will allow researchers, practitioners, policy makers and migrants to work with a digital database of narratives, documents and archival sources.

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Partners

Risorsa 1

18

Involved Countries

Risorsa 2

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Stakeholders

1. Approach & Research

The superarchive will be a multilingual, collaborative, and user-friendly digital platform.

The key goal is to provide content and digital tools to researchers, archivists, politicians, practitioners, students, and the public through a clear and accessible architecture. With an intuitive interface and multilingual content presentation, it will be accessible to migrants, and it will, also, be organised on two levels (past – current), with the aspiration of getting policymakers to pay more attention to the historical and long-term dimensions of migration problems by combining past and present studies structurally.

EXPLORE THE SUPERARCHIVE

2. Migrant Agency

The project contends that historical research and analysis of current events can aid the development of more innovative and sustainable migration policies in the future.

Migrant narratives are seen as a form of critical reflection on contemporary transnational migrations, and a thorough examination of their transformative potential will help to facilitate the opening of public spaces. What is needed today, in the postcolonial, multicultural, and fastmoving world we live in, is the direct involvement of migrants themselves, of their voice and their capacities of agency, for a deeper understanding of both fractures and opportunities, and for the molding of policies of positive integration and inclusion.

RESEARCH

3. New narratives & new policies

ITHACA provides political and social recommendations to inform local, national and international policies on migration.

ITHACA organises Policy Council Events to discuss issues relevant to the European migration agenda, in parallel with ITHACA research activities and results. Migrant people, associations, policy makers, practitioners, journalists and media experts are protagonists at the local, national and international levels. The structure of the Policy Council Events starts from stakeholder meetings at the local level. On the basis of the local results, a round of national events enlarge their scope; once the national results are elaborated, they are discussed in an international event, dedicated to stimulate a more informed debate at the European level. Results are released as a Policy Brief.

POLICY