Immigrant Day is celebrated this Thursday (25th) in Brazil, and education has a decisive role in combating xenophobia and welcoming those who migrate.
To help with the teaching of Portuguese and the right of migrants to start over, the (Federal University of São Paulo) It has a laboratory that offers, among its activities, free Portuguese classes.
The Course for Migrants, Refugees and Stateless Persons is an initiative aimed at serving as a welcoming language, intercultural communication and strengthening access to rights.
The ongoing edition has 30 students, started in April and runs until October.
The events take place on Saturdays, from 9am to 1pm, at the Flávio da Fonseca Amphitheater, on the Unifesp São Paulo Campus, located in Vila Clementino, in the south of the capital.
According to , there were more than 80 registrations, with people from countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.
The course is one of the initiatives do Liminar (Research, Teaching and Extension Laboratory in Migration, Nation and Border Region), linked to the Department of Social Sciences at Unifesp.
The Liminar coordinator states that the project’s proposal is to contribute to the debate against and discuss the obstacles experienced by migrants in accessing work, education, housing, public services and social participation.
“The course and the laboratory’s other actions encourage us to think about the role of the public university in constructing responses to the issue of migration, seeking to strengthen links between universities and migrant communities through university extension as a promoter of inclusion, interculturality and human rights”, says José Lindomar Coelho Albuquerque.
Created through collaboration between students, teachers and researchers, the laboratory combines other academic, cultural and social activities.
In addition to teaching Portuguese, Unifesp promotes seminars that discuss contemporary migrations and the appreciation of migrants’ trajectories.
