INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
SÍLVIA VIEGAS REPRESENTS CIAC AT THE ENANPUR 2022 CONFERENCE
On May 25, 2022, CIAC researcher Sílvia Viegas participates in the XIX ENANPUR 2022 conference. Under the theme “Planning the Urban and Regional – Organizing Hope”, the event takes place entirely online, between May 22 and 27.
Inserted in the round table “African Cities: absences and emergences in the diaspora. Bodies, subjects and struggles”, Sílvia Viegas presents the paper “Inclusion Spaces or, What I learned from Alexander Kpatue Kweh“. Based on her direct testimony, her intervention aims to debate the importance of a more conciliatory and reformist activism in the construction of citizenship.
In Portugal, the last years have been marked by struggles for the right to housing and, consequently, by the production of policy instruments which seek to respond to this claim. Engrossing a vast social fringe living in situations of vulnerability, refugees, on the one hand, do not tend to integrate those voices and, on the other hand, they do not have access to housing programmes for their integration. Even those who benefit from Reception Programmes end up being the target of market logics. In this context, Fórum Refúgio Portugal, a platform for dialogue and the construction of inclusion mechanisms, led by Alexander Kpatue Kweh, has promoted the agency of refugees with the responsible entities and the public opinion, and has also promoted the creation of housing programs for their integration.
and public opinion, and practical actions in the field to solve problems linked to the suppression of rights in the city, such as housing.
In “Inclusion Spaces or, What I learned from Alexander Kpatue Kweh“, Sílvia Viegas seeks to reflect on the strengthening of solidarity networks, on a local and global scale, as an alternative to the most radical struggles for the right to the city; the balance of gains and losses of rights; and future trends of refugee inclusion in Portugal.
XIX ENAMPUR 2022 is an event promoted by the Post-Graduate Programme in Regional Development, at the University of Blumenau (Brazil), which brings together researchers from the field of urban and regional planning, in order to reassess the strategies that have been adopted for the formulation and achievement of different social projects (based on solidarity, justice, freedom and self-determination).
