Four globalist newspapers have teamed up to work on an 18 month project they hope will “show the human side” of mass migration to Europe.
Each of the four European newspapers, one each from France, Germany, the UK and Spain, will follow a group of migrants in their respective countries seeking to answer questions including: “Will Europe change them or will they change Europe?” Le Monde has reported.
Topics to be explored reportedly include how newcomers feel about a “rising tide of resentment that they encounter in this populist age”, and which countries in Europe are “best at helping refugees settle”.
During the project, entitled ‘The New Arrivals’, The Guardian says that papers will “work closely” together to report on “how Europe looks through immigrant eyes”.
Both Le Monde and The Guardian say the 18 month project will look at the question of “whether European society is changing the new arrivals – and vice versa”.
El País journalists will be looking at the daily lives of a football team of Africans who illegally entered Spain individually via methods including arriving by boat and scaling the nation’s border wall.
Le Monde has chosen to follow a family of nine from South Sudan who are due to be moved to a village of just 850 people in Corrèze, France, after having lived in Israel for several years.
In Germany, Der Spiegel will chronicle the lives of a large Syrian family who relocated from Damascus to Lüneburg, while The Guardian will follow a farmer from Afghanistan and his nine-year-old son who are living in Luton.
“We will produce a series of films about our subjects in an attempt to find out what is the best way to handle refugees, what these uprooted people value in their new homes, and whether their new neighbourhoods welcome or reject them,” writes The Guardian.
Managing editor at El País, David Alandete, said that with the project his newspaper: “Aim[s] to tell [migrants’] stories: their pain, fears, wishes and projects. By following a soccer team in Spain we hope to reveal what the human side of the crisis is.”
Decrying “stereotypes and prejudices” as Bundestag elections are due to take place in Germany later this year, editor Eva Thöne added that Spiegel Online “hope[s] to find a way to combine moving stories and portraits with a differentiated view on immigration”.
Funding the project is the European Journalism Centre, whose partners include several projects funded by Hungarian billionaire George Soros including the Open Society Foundations and Open Society Georgia Foundation, via a grant by the globalist Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In January, José Manuel Sanz Mingote, director of the world’s largest Spanish-language news agency EFE, said that media corporations need to collaborate in order to “combat populism”.