FOCUS Final video – Living Well Together

FOCUS, an international consortium funded by the European Commission (2019-2022), has conducted broad surveys and focus groups with over 5.000 participants which have explored, for the first time in a European context, both the socioeconomic and sociopsychological dimensions of integration.

FOCUS has shown that core socioeconomic and legal barriers to integration remain important: legal status and right to employment, recognition of qualifications, family reunion, housing quality and support beyond reception period.

But FOCUS also looked at sociopsychological factors of integration, the relations between migrants and longer-term residents: what they think and feel about each other, how they behave towards each other and how frequently they meet.

With the help of different partners from civil society organisations, FOCUS has proposed a structured framework: the FOCUS Approach to dynamic integration, with four core elements:
– Incorporating mental health and psychosocial support to broadly reduce distress and improve wellbeing in society as a whole;
– Establishing and reinforcing quality intergroup contact between arriving and receiving community members, for example through volunteerism;
– Actively involving both arriving and receiving communities via co-creative and participatory approaches;
– Making institutions, NGOs and communities work together through multi-stakeholder partnerships and coordination.

FOCUS, an international consortium funded by the European Commission (2019-2022), has conducted broad surveys and focus groups with over 5.000 participants which have explored, for the first time in a European context, both the socioeconomic and sociopsychological dimensions of integration. FOCUS has shown that core socioeconomic and legal barriers to integration remain important: legal status…