21 May 2021

Invisible Migrant-Workers and Visible Human Rights

Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas

ANGELICUM, Faculty of Social Sciences, Rome

in cooperation with Institute Marie-Dominique Chenu, Berlin

A half-day summit of talks, activities, and workshops

May 21, 2021 from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

with simultaneous translation from English into Italian and vice versa

RSVP

Part of the 2020/21 CRISIS Project:

Social Solidarity in Europe.

Labour Migrants from Eastern Europe for Western Europe.

CRISIS AND COMMUNITY

The search for a new solidarity in Europe by recognizing the plight of "Invisible" Migrant Workers

Migrant workers are part of the everyday economic life of Europe. Today we find Ukrainian agricultural workers in Spain, Romanian workers in German meat factories, and Slovakian, Czech and Hungarian geriatric nurses assisting Austrian families - to name a few. Usually these workers are "invisible." Many of them are exploited both socially and economically. During their time of employment, they live in poverty level accommodations. Employee rights, such as hours or work breaks, have been ignored. During this time of COVID crisis these invisible migrant workers have become visible. The lines of exploitation often run between Western and Eastern Europe; but also occur between EU and non-EU states.

In order to uphold the dignity of the human person with humane conditions for migrant workers, the Church can advocate in the following ways:

1) To evaluate and critique legal or illegal existing conditions

2) To raise public awareness of the fate of migrant workers

3) To help with concrete proposals for improving the situation in the sense of a new social solidarity in Europe.

To this end, this research project examines concrete actions of European society's care of migrant workers in the light of Catholic Social teaching.

Description of Research Methodology

In the first step, the situation of "invisible" migrant workers in Europe is surveyed. This is not done in the sense of a quantitative survey. Instead, individual cases accessible to the public (internet, news, literature) are presented as examples.
In the second step, prophetic commitments of ecclesiastical institutions and persons are presented with a paradigmatic intention.
In the third step, relevant texts of the Church's social teaching are examined for relevance to the problem of "invisible” migrant workers.
From there, a new practice of solidarity between Eastern and Western Europe will be examined from a systematic-theological perspective. In this fourth step of the investigation, the research will sketch socio-ethically viable solutions for a European coexistence between East and West that does not exploit migrant workers.

The goal of this event is

1) To raise awareness of a system of hidden inequalities between Eastern and Western Europe

2) To clarify the prophetic role of the Church in advocacy for the "invisible" migrant worker

3) To examine and apply the Church's social teaching to this current concrete crisis in Europe

4) To develop solutions for a new solidarity between East and West.

Target Participant(s)

1) Church leaders

2) Communities and Institutions

3) Responsible persons in European institutions

4) Trade unions and employers

Editorial Guidelines for the authors of contribution

Dear colleagues,

We are very happy dear colleagues that you were chosen by our team to present your contribution at our CRISIS conference, or for its subsequent publication in our publishing house Angelicum Press. We would like to draw your attention to the time available for each section for the lecture and discussion, as well as other good news, that we have managed to provide the Zoom Pro platform for the possibility of simultaneous translation of our contributions from English into Italian and vice versa.

For the subsequent publication of your contributions, we ask you to consult the page of our conference for the form of publication. Our team needs your contributions by June 11, 2021, so that they can then have them scientifically evaluated by two independent reviewers. Only after their positive answer will the contributions be sent to the Angelicum press for publication. We would also like to draw your attention to the latest decision of the organizing team that the publication must not exceed 40,000 (space includes) characters per document, including the bibliography. the abstract should have a maximum of 10 lines and keywords a max. 7 words.

Please 10 pages with Editorial rules

The typescript must clearly present the structure of the work: titles, subtitles, paragraphs, etc.

Fonts must be different for body text, mid-text citations, and footnotes.

The rest is up to you, namely the page size, margins, spacing. I can suggest this: