The University of Évora now has a Local Support Centre for Migrant Integration (CLAIM), the result of a collaboration protocol with the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), signed last Wednesday. The new service comes at a time when the institution's international presence has been growing.
Among the university's approximately 10,000 students, nearly 650 are international, with approximately 600 coming from non-EU countries. The institution also has foreign researchers, faculty and staff, representing dozens of nationalities. Rector António Candeias highlighted that it is essential for a multicultural institution with more than 600 international students and people from over 80 countries to be able to welcome these members for full integration into the academy and the city.
In a first phase, CLAIM will focus its activity on the international academic community, but the university intends to extend support to migrants living in Évora and the region as well, through coordination with the local council and other entities such as Santa Casa da Misericórdia.
AIMA's president, Pedro Portugal Gaspar, highlighted that the centre's main objective will be to support the documentary regularization of foreign students, faculty and researchers. Gaspar also considered that CLAIMs in universities can contribute to the attraction of academic talent, drawing in short-term professors and researchers, and that Portugal can benefit from the mobility of academics from countries with greater instability in the university context.
