Migrantour is an international project of guided tours given by migrants, who help tourists discover multicultural districts of European cities in order to promote respect and integration into the local culture.
Migrantour has been promoting the respect of diversity and integration by narrating stories of migrants and the multicultural history of cities. The project was created in 2010 in Turin by tour operator Viaggi Solidali, who organized the first "intercultural walks with migrants," the head of Migrantour in Rome, Marta Marciniak, told ANSA.
Since 2014, together with Acra and Oxfam Italia, the project has become an initiative funded by the European Union. Tours have been organized in Milan, Rome, Genoa, Marseille, Paris, Valencia and Lisbon. Starting in 2016, additional tours kicked off in Naples, Padua, Bologna, Sesto San Giovanni and Brussels.
The idea of Migrantour is to favor the integration of citizens of foreign origin, promoting reciprocal understanding and respect, the circulation of good practices and to give migrants an opportunity to earn money. The tour in Rome includes the neighbourhoods of Esquilino and Tor Pignattara, home to many foreign communities. "The guides have been trained and they are all migrants," she said.
Marciniak, who is Polish, is one of the guides in Rome, together with colleagues from Brazil, China, Bangladesh, Romania, Ukraine and Algeria. The tour of the Esquilino district "tells the story of the neighbourhood, mixing past and present to give the right insight into what it is today," she said, while the walk through Tor Pignattara "focuses on the Bangladeshi community" and includes Hindu temples, fabric and food stores.
The project's initiatives include thematic walks focusing on the cultures of different communities as well as old and new shops. "We discovered so many things we didn't think we would find at the beginning," she told ANSA.
Tours shed light on cohabitation
Students, citizens and Italian and foreign tourists take advantage of the project. A total of 11,000 people have taken a tour since the start of the initiative.
"We try to constantly enrich our tours," Marciniak said, adding that tour guides "talk a little bit about their lives and always add something about their experience as immigrants."
The tours highlight "the reality before our eyes," including negative things like situations of neglect, "but most of all, [the tours]] show communities, their habits and traditions and discuss the survival of different people and cultures," Marciniak concluded.