Actual news and data on immigration show on one side the constant increase of both regular and irregular mobility from outside and within the EU, on the other, a sharp growth of racism episodes. According to Eurostat, the foreigner population in Europe in 2008 was about 31 million people, 1/3 of which (about 10 million) coming from other EU countries, and the remaining 2/3 (about 20 million) coming from non-EU countries. Within the non-EU, in 2008, the number of asylum seekers and refugees were about 6 per 1000 of the EU population.
Being e.g. asylum seeker in a foreign country requires the competence to deal with bureaucracy. While migrants need to acquire new terminology and different culturally determined communication practices, also service providers need to acquire awareness of the communication difficulties involved in this bi-directional interaction.
The project sets out to develop blended training courses for interactional parties involved in 'first-impact' bureaucratic-institutional interactions. These courses revolve around a collection of real-life communication materials from a range of bureaucratic-institutional contexts from different countries. Additionally a multilingual online depository of communication materials is made available that can be used by educators as well as migrants and service providers.
The project BRIDGE-IT is based on the results of the project e-SPICES and involves partners from Italy, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, and Turkey.
The partnership intends to work out a solution through the creation of learner-centered e-learning modules (in English, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, and Turkish) through an Open-Source (DOKEOS), adaptive and conducive learning environment which provides both migrants and service providers with the necessary spoken and written communication and relational skills to manage bureaucratic-institutional interactions. Furthermore a training course for e-tutors will be delivered.
