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Enhancing Migrant Integration Services in Portugal banner

Supporting reforms that help unlock digital growth potential and deploy innovative solutions for citizens and businesses

Funding Programme
Technical Support Instrument (TSI)
Year
2022

Enhancing Migrant Integration Services in Portugal

The European Commission is supporting Portugal to improve the integration of migrants and refugees in the country, including persons displaced from Ukraine, by enhancing the coordination and operability of its national and local services. 

Context

The National Support Centres for the Integration of Migrants (CNAIMs), based on the one-stop-shop model, have been playing a key role in supporting the integration of migrants and refugees in Portugal since 2004, together with the over 150 Local Centres across the country, and other remote services. All these comprise a National Support Network for the Integration of Migrants (RNAIM). 

In recent years, changes in the geographical distribution of migrants and the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the well-functioning model of service delivery in the RNAIM network. As more migrants started to settle outside Portugal’s main cities, the RNAIM network needed to strengthen the coordination amongst its services, upscale remote services and invest in digitalisation. 

An functional review of the migrant integration network, carried out between 2019 and 2021 with the support of the Commission, resulted in a set of recommendations on how to enhance accessibility and quality of integration support for migrants across Portugal. The current project builds upon these recommendations to help Portugal further modernize migrant integration services. 

Support delivered  

The Commission, in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), is supporting the Portuguese High Commissioner for Migration (ACM) to:  

  • Operationalize recommendations regarding mechanisms of dissemination and sharing of information between services within the integration network;

  • Assessment of strengths and weakness of ACM’s Emergency Teams established during COVID and drafting recommendations improving their response;

  • Providing recommendations for upgrading the functioning of newly designed digital platforms that ACM uses for migrants and its own staff;

  • Reviewing and designing ACM’s Training Plan of Staff.

Results achieved

The project will enhance the High Commissioner for Migration response to the evolving needs of migrants by having a stronger, more structured and integrated multilevel coordination among the services of its integration network with a multichannel approach of digital platforms and enhanced capacity of its staff in different matters such as intercultural mediation.

Its expected impact is a better and faster socio-economic integration of migrants across the country.

More about the project

More information about the project and the accompanying launch event on the IOM website.

Project Infosheet