Rethinking co-existence from the margins

How do we live together? Between growing diversity and rising inequalities, this simple question has turned into a challenge for many democratic societies. Beyond debates about integration and the alleged incompatibility between cultures, this project looks into coexistence in Finland and France. In each country, it zooms in into people’s everyday relationships unfolding in a cosmopolitan metropolis, a provincial town, and a rural area. Focusing the convergences between migration and locality, the project moves away from seeing them as distinct. Instead, it seeks to understand how the places people inhabit together, the bonds they form with others (or the lack thereof), and the ways they envision and make sense of their own lives illuminate how the social fabric is being maintained and transformed. Doing so, the project promotes constructive debates on coexistence with the objective to contribute to the advent of more inclusive and sustainable societies.