Tuesday
Valletta
The international evening left its traces as some people weren’t able to make it to breakfast in time. Fortunately, by the start of the morning session, everybody was back in the world of the living.
We started off with the first guest-speakers of the day. A Maltese specialist gave us the Maltese view on migration and the migration policy. He was joined by a British lady who moved to Malta to give her side of the story about migration and diversity in Malta. After a coffee break we, split up in smaller group for the simulation game. We were supposed to be a “National commission of migration” and had the right to grant asylum for two people (out of the 10 who applied). Of course every person had a specific role to play during this discussion. As we were playing god and deciding which lives to save, we still had to realize that this was a simulation to a real life process. This is how it really happens.
The Afternoon was entirely on location, as we moved our business to the capital of Malta, Valletta. In the Europe-house, we met with a German who really deals with the integration problem on a grassroots level, the second session we had two guest-speakers – a representative of the European commission in Malta and a lector of the University of Malta specialized in the international/European law concerning migration – who gave us a (very) limited overview of the E.U. migration policy.
Diner was spent in a local restaurant and afterwards, we had some free time on our hands to spent in Valletta – luckily for us it had stopped pouring rain by the time we were finished with our diner. We decided to go for a small walk, before ending the evening at a bar, where else. We were back at the hostel around midnight.
Cédric Fernandez