12/12/2015

The idea that immigrants themselves can represent an important development factor for their countries of origin has been gaining ground for years. With remittances and other aid to families left behind, they alleviate poverty; improve education and health; start businesses that grow local trade and employment; with the knowledge and skills acquired, they stimulate innovation and strengthen awareness of human and social rights; contribute to overcoming vulnerabilities and to greater resilience in the face of economic and environmental crises. In this sense, immigrants are real development actors. While there are interesting examples of the transnational dynamism of some immigrant communities,
LINK 2007, presenting the document “Transnationalism of immigrants TO PROMOTE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION BETWEEN TERRITORIES” at the Workshop promoted in Rome by the Interministerial Committee for Human Rights, on 11 December 2015, launches a proposal that enhances organized diasporas integrated into our realities territorial.
It is the transnationalism of immigrants that must be valued, argues LINK 2007, their ability to be, to live and to feel rooted here and there, conceiving globalization above all as multilocalism, with the enriching assumption of multiple identities. Starting from this transnational dimension and from the protagonism shown by some immigrant communities in starting transnational partnerships, co-development paths open to the entire territorial dimension can be identified in the two transnational realities, the Italian one and that of the region of origin, involving every potentially interested actor. If in a region there is a strong presence and roots, for example, of a Moroccan community (or Senegalese or Egyptian or Ecuadorian …) which over the years has maintained relations with the region of origin, extensive cooperation between the two regions, here and there, is not only possible but also a mutual opportunity, not to be underestimated. The transnationalism of immigrants can and must become an opportunity for a transnationalism of territories capable of building partnership relations in areas of mutual interest: social, cultural, economic, commercial, institutional.
Therefore, not only between resident immigrants and their communities of origin, but also between organizations of the two territories, between universities and universities, cooperatives and cooperatives, between business associations and between companies, between credit institutions, between social, trade union, cultural and professional realities and so on, for a true, lasting, mutually beneficial co-development, based on the principles and ethics of cooperation, partnership, human rights, justice, together with reciprocal legitimate interests and benefits, also guaranteeing the continuity of the partnership relationship.

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