Cultural Heritage Participation Patterns among Immigrants and Their Influence on Integration. The Case of Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Norway (HerInt)

How do immigrants engage with ancestral and new homeland heritage and what factors stand behind their heritage participation patterns? Can cultural heritage participation facilitate the process of immigrants’ emplacement, and if so, how? These are the central research questions addressed by the HerInt project. Public institutions in European countries promote the heritage of immigrant minorities in various ways, as well as encourage the participation of immigrants in heritages of new homelands with a goal to enhance integration. These actions are supported by Art. 167 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. They are also promoted by the European Commission, indicating that attempts of integrating minorities through cultural heritage are welcomed and supported. While there has been quite extended scholarly attention to the institutional forms of minority heritage inclusion into the mainstream, the knowledge of the individual attitudes of immigrants regarding the participation in cultural heritage and its possible influence on immigrants’ emplacement into the new homeland is still limited and HerInt addresses this gap.

The planned research aims at identifying the patterns of participation in cultural heritage by immigrants from Poland to Norway and from Ukraine to Poland – two European countries with different integration policy models. Further, HerInt evaluates the relationship between cultural heritage participation patterns and immigrants’ inclusion in the new homelands. HerInt, therefore, aims at bridging the gap between migration and heritage studies by addressing the relevance of cultural heritage participation patterns to the issues of integration of immigrants. Its ambition is to deliver knowledge on the topic and initiate an interdisciplinary and cross-sectorial dialogue between migration and heritage scholars and cultural heritage stakeholders.

Duration

2022 - 2024

Source of funding

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Horyzont Europe