The Slovene Migration Institute (ZRC SAZU) is an observer of the project URGENT - Urban Re-Generation: European Network of Towns, coordinated by ALDA - the European Association for Local Democracy, Strasbourg.

In today’s Europe we are reaching alarming levels of urban fragmentation, inequality and structural socio-spatial divisions within our cities, feeding extremism and radicalisation. Most vulnerable people are often bound to concentrate in disadvantaged areas where social exclusion and deprivation usually overlap with multi-ethnicity, which further challenges social cohesion. Increasingly marginalized and stigmatised, these areas and their inhabitants are pushed into a vicious circle of poverty.

In this context, and through a bottom-up approach to raise local awareness on the urgent need to establish new connections among inhabitants of marginalized neighbourhoods and those of central areas, URGENT aims at tackling the growing fear of immigration, which feeds euroscepticist attitudes.

The co-observer of the project is the Association for the Development of Voluntary Work Novo mesto, Slovenia.