Angelicum and Institut M.-D. Chenu start joint research project

Foto: angelicum.it

[01.11.2020] A research group consisting of professors from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas ("Angelicum") in Rome (PUST), run by Dominican Order, and the Institut M.-Dominique Chenu Berlin (IMDC) has been awarded a contract for a research project on "Social solidarity in Europe. Labor migrants from Eastern Europe for Western". Members of the Faculty of Social Sciences (Prof. Dr. Inocent Szaniszló OP, Prof. Dr. Francesco Compagnoni OP) and the Faculty of Theology of the PUST (Prof. Dr. Marco Salvati OP, Prof. Dr. Augustine Agwulonu OP) as well as the directors of the IMDC (Prof. Dr. Thomas Eggensperger OP, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Engel OP) had submitted their proposals in the context of the call for proposals "Christian responses, in solidarity, to crisis" (CRISIS) jointly applied for the research project. We are very pleased with the selection of our project and the upcoming cooperation between researchers from the Dominican Order working in Italy and Germany.

Labor migrants are part of everyday economic life in Europe: harvest workers from the Ukraine in Spain, Romanian workers in German meat factories, and Slovakian geriatric nurses in English families. Usually they are "invisible”. Many of themes are exploited both humanely and economically. After their work they live in poor community accommodation – or they have no free time at all. In the Corona crisis these invisible migrant workers have become visible. The line of exploitation often runs between Western and Eastern Europe. In order to achieve humane conditions for migrant workers, the Church needs 1) to criticize the real legal or illegal existing conditions, 2) to raise public awareness of the fate of migrant workers, and 3) to make concrete proposals for improving the situation in the sense of a new social solidarity in Europe. To this end, the research project examines concrete actions of the Catholic Church and asks about the impact of the Church's social teaching. 

 

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