Morus is a voluntary association that focuses on migrant inclusion. The association supports a small number of refugees in the Valli di Lanzo region, northwest of Turin. The association works with those individuals who have been granted refugee status in Italy in order to help them find housing and employment in the region’s rural towns and villages.
To this end, volunteer workers take time to map the individual needs and competencies of refugees with a view to matching individuals with appropriate opportunities in the area.
In addition, this process helps identify cultural and sporting activities capable of building relationships between new arrivals, longstanding residents and local authorities. To date, the Morus association has supported a range of inter-cultural projects such as the fashion initiative (MoroStyle); a community choir (ComoMoro); and a football team (MoroTeam).
This case study was developed in the framework of the Mediterranean City-to-City Migration Project (MC2CM), a project coordinated by ICMPD and funded by the European Union and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. The MC2CM project has been working since 2015 with Amman, Beirut, Lisbon, Lyon, Madrid, Tangiers, Tunis, Turin and Vienna to increase the knowledge base on urban migration.
Additionally, the project has sought to nurture a peer-to-peer dialogue and mutual learning on specific urban challenges such as social cohesion, intercultural dialogue, employment and provision of basic services for migrants, among others.