In our aim to advocate for a fair and inclusive society, we work with vulnerable and marginalized communities, channeling their grievances and voices to make sure they are heard. Through advocacy and awareness-raising activities, we highlight discriminatory practice and policies as well as the tools and mechanisms available to confront these.
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Acculturation, Validation, Integration: Working for a Sustainable and Multicultural Society (ACVALIN)
The Challenge
Cyprus is home to a growing and diverse population of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers whose languages, cultural identities, and skills often go unrecognized by the institutions and communities around them. Despite their presence and contributions, newcomers frequently face limited pathways to social participation, low visibility for their first languages, and inadequate recognition of the competencies they bring. At the same time, receiving communities often have limited spaces for meaningful contact and exchange with people from different backgrounds, reinforcing distance rather than connection.
These dynamics are not simply a matter of individual adaptation. They are shaped by broader social, institutional, and discursive processes that determine who belongs, whose language counts, and whose knowledge is valued. Without a clearer understanding of how acculturation actually unfolds in everyday interactions, in conversations, online spaces, families, and public life, efforts to promote integration risk being poorly targeted and insufficiently grounded in lived experience.
What ACVALIN Sets Out to Do
ACVALIN aims to strengthen the language rights and social inclusion of linguistic and cultural minorities in Cyprus. Grounded in the principles of acculturation, validation, and integration, the project investigates how language, culture, and identity are negotiated in everyday interactions, both online and offline, from the perspectives of newcomers and members of the receiving community alike.
The project uses a sociolinguistic, mixed-methods approach combining questionnaires, interviews, and discourse analysis. With a strong focus on youth and families, ACVALIN supports dialogue, skill recognition, and meaningful participation, with the goal of fostering greater understanding between communities and informing more effective integration practices.
Specific Objective
To investigate and identify the different dimensions of acculturation in Cyprus from the perspectives of newcomers and members of the receiving community, taking into account the complexity and variability of the acculturative process as reflected in private and public discourse, online and offline.
Key Activities
- Living Library (Video Profiles): Develop a Living Library of 15 recorded and edited video profiles capturing the stories, experiences, and perspectives of migrants in Cyprus. Each profile includes subtitles and is produced in close collaboration with participants, with consent documentation throughout. The video profiles will feed into a hybrid educational course focused on the cultural and linguistic heritage of newcomers.
- Ethnoscape: Conduct a geo-tagged visual and audio documentation of the cultural and linguistic landscape of communities in Cyprus, capturing 150 to 200 photos, 10 to 15 short interviews, and accompanying metadata. The resulting field notes report will contribute to the same hybrid educational course, offering a community-level portrait of how language and culture are expressed in everyday spaces.
Project Partners
ACVALIN is led by the University of Cyprus (the Department of French and European Studies and the Department of English Studies), with Generation for Change CY serving as a community implementation partner for the Living Library and Ethnoscape components.
Project Details
Duration: September 2024 to July 2026
