HerInt · Cultural heritage participation patterns among immigrants and their influence on integration. The case of Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Norway.
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-10-01 → 2025-06-30
- EU contribution
- €155,794
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
HerInt: Cultural heritage participation patterns among immigrants and their influence on integration. The case of Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Norway.
How do immigrants engage with cultural heritage in both their countries of origin and new homelands—and what drives their participation? Can cultural heritage serve as a pathway to deeper integration in new societies? These were the guiding questions of the HerInt project, now fully completed, offering critical insights for policy-makers and cultural heritage professionals. The HerInt project, grounded in interviews with Polish immigrants in Norway and Ukrainian immigrants in Poland, has identified diverse patterns of cultural heritage participation. These patterns were analysed in relation to immigrants’ demographic, cultural, and economic backgrounds, revealing how different factors shape engagement with heritage. HerInt also evaluated how national integration policies—especially those promoting immigrants’ cultural expression and protection—impact their heritage practices. By analysing cultural policy frameworks in Norway and Poland, the project highlighted the varying institutional conditions influencing heritage engagement. Perhaps most importantly, HerInt found that cultural heritage participation is not just an expression of identity—it also has tangible effects on integration outcomes. Using the newly developed Emplacement Index, the study demonstrated that specific forms of cultural heritage participation are closely linked to how immigrants find a sense of belonging and agency in their new environments. These findings call on cultural heritage institutions, integration bodies, and policy-makers to actively use cultural heritage as a tool to support the integration of immigrants.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
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´ integration, and if so, how? These are the central research questions addressed in this project, which has an ambition to contribute to Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Societies cluster of the Horizon Europe´s second pillar. 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. While there has been quite extended scholarly attention to the institutional forms of minority heritage inclusion into the mainstream, the knowledge on the individual attitudes of immigrants regarding the participation in cultural heritage and its possible influence on immigrants´ integration to the new homeland is still limited. This presents a gap between theory and practice and herein lies the potential of HerInt action. The planned research aims at identifying the patterns of participation in cultural heritage by immigrants from Poland in Norway and from Ukraine in Poland and evaluating its influence on 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 and initiates an interdisciplinary and cross-sectorial dialog between migration and heritage scholars and cultural heritage stakeholders. This aim is supported by supervisors with an expertise in both migration and heritage studies and the stay at their institutions: Professor Agata Górny, Centre for Migration Research at the University of Warsaw and Professor Jacek Purchla International Cultural Centre.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101059766
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e51c524d9b&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5fc676637&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union