Palermo’s celebrated mayor, Leoluca Orlando, has described Palermo as a Middle Eastern city that “just happens to be in the EU.” The location of Sicily, far south in the Mediterranean, has ensured its reputation as a crossroads for millennia – its landscapes inscribed by the impacts of successive flows of peoples and its history animated by multiple “dominations”: Greek, Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and Italian.
This Study Tour posits Palermo as a European contrast with Stockholm – the former, an ancient city that has drawn its lifeblood from migrant communities over millennia, and the latter, a relatively new, comparatively homogeneous city, but both firmly situated at the center of global migration debates.
Tour Objectives
- Identify historical and contemporary flows of migrant and refugee communities in Sicily
- Describe the urban environment in Palermo and its most recent cultural and economic transformations
- Illustrate migrant spaces through mapping Palermo cityscapes
- Analyze approaches to migration in Palermo in comparison to Stockholm
Possible Activities
- Visiting the Legal Clinic for Human Rights, University of Palermo and hearing from one of their representatives
- Taking a walking Tour of Palermo: Palermo NOMAFIA and/or Street Art Tour Seeing a coworking space & restaurant collaboration with migrant communities
- Going to the Protection System for Asylum Seekers & Refugees to hear from a speaker