Dissemination

Sílvia Leiria Viegas takes part in the 23rd IOPD Conference

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Sílvia Leiria Viegas, a researcher at CIAC, will take part in the OIDP – 23rd Conference of the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy.

OIDP is an international network of more than a thousand cities, organisations and research centres that implement and exchange experiences of participatory democracy at local level. The 2024 conference will be held in Valongo from 17 to 19 October, will focus on ‘Populist Threats: Building Democratic Resilience with Participatory Communities’ and will feature Cas Mudde, one of the most prominent experts on the subject of populism, in its opening session.

The forums and debates of this conference will be mainly dedicated to identifying the forms and mechanisms of participatory democracy that best defend communities from authoritarian drifts based on disinformation, typical of some populist phenomena.

On October 18, from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the VALLIS LONGUS FORUM, Sílvia Viegas will present her paper under the theme “Inclusion and Diversity”, dealing with “Refugees and immigrants, and access to housing in Portugal. Policies, practices and citizen participation”.

“This presentation follows on from the article by Viegas and Santinho (2025) on the subject under discussion. Its aim is to briefly frame: the urban and housing paradigms of exclusion in various contexts and localities (touristification, gentrification, attracting foreign capital, peripheralisation, rural exploitation, etc.); political dimensions that affect the global structure of support for refugees and forced immigrants; and the importance of the various actors in the search for local approaches and situated alternatives. Another objective is to present the experience of activist work and collaboration at the Refuge Portugal Forum,” says Sílvia Viegas.

More information (here)

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