This year marks the 30th aniversary of the Maastricht Treaty. In this context, Studio Europa is organising a citizen’s panels, called the Conference on the Future of Europe. To bring the debate about prejudice towards migration from the conference venue to the streets, they invited us to put the Expats x Migrants photo project on display in bus shelters.
Personally, I am thrilled that the project is now visible to everyone in the city. I have always found displaying my projects in the public domain an important aspect as this allows me to engage with people who are not necessarily already invested in the topics or issues that I want to address.
About Expats x Migrants:
The term ‘expat’ is entangled with positive assumptions of privilege and class, whereas the label ‘migrant’ somehow connotes something lesser: ‘expats come to bring, migrants come to get’.
But if both groups consist of people who moved away from their country of origin hoping to improve their quality of life, then what are the criteria we use to make the distinction and what are the consequences thereof?
The project is funded by the Diversity and Inclusion center at the Maastricht University.
