Establishment of the European Research Network "Active Ageing of Migrant elders across Europe"
On 05 and 06 February 2009 the constituent workshop of the European Research Network "Active Ageing of Migrant Elders across Europe" took place at the Ministry of Health, Equalities, Care and Ageing of the State of North Rhine Westphalia (MGFFI NRW) in Düsseldorf, Germany.
The focus of the interdisciplinary, practice and application oriented work of this network will be on the competences and potentials of migrant elders across Europe and the identification and development of strategies how these competences and potentials can be supported and put to use. The heterogeneity of migrant elders within Europe and gender specific issues will be explicitly considered.
The set-up of the network is part of the "Active Ageing of Migrant Elders across Europe" (AAMEE) project initiated by the MGFFI NRW and co-funded by the European Commission's DG EMPL. The activities of the European Research Network are planned until the year 2012. Therefore the network will be a sustainable result of the AAMEE project which will terminate at the end of November 2009.
Up to now the MGFFI NRW has received 24 expressions of interest for cooperation within the European Research Network "Active Ageing of Migrant Elders across Europe" from Great Britain, Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland and Germany. A further geographical expansion of the network to other EU member states and central emigration countries such as e.g. Turkey are possible and welcome.
16 of the 24 members of the network attended the constituent workshop in Düsseldorf. They agreed upon a common concept, the network's aims and goals as well as a program of research activities and guidelines for their cooperation. Another important topic discussed were funding possibilities for the future work of the European Research Network "Active Ageing of Migrant Elders across Europe".
More information is available via:
Dr. Claus Eppe, Horionplatz 1, D - 40213 Düsseldorf (project leader)
info@aamee.eu
www.aamee.eu
contact person concerning the Exchange Programme of Voluntary Organisations:
Ms Claudia Förster, Tel.: + 49 (0) 211 8618 4574
contact person concerning the European Research Network:
Ms Martine Krause, Tel.: + 49 (0) 211 8618 4494
The first workshop of the network is a direct outcome of the AAMEE project's First European Conference "New Face for Europe - Migrant Elders across Europe - from Challenges to Opportunities" which took place in Bonn, Germany from 30 September to 02 October 2008. Conference forum 7 "Migrant Elders - Research in Europe" e.g. facilitated a first exchange of experiences between relevant researchers on the topic of active ageing of migrant elders across Europe and the overall results of the conference made clear that there is a lack of information concerning the life circumstances of migrant elders. The detected high demand for concerted and comparable European research activities on this topic led to the official agreement upon the establishment of the European Research Network "Active Ageing of Migrant Elders across Europe" at the conference on 02 October 2008.
