The role of local councils in building sustainable and inclusive communities

Abstract

The scope of this research study is to seek the role local councils should play to build an inclusive society. The study is focused on the refugees and non-Maltese citizens living in Malta and how they integrated or not into the local communities. A distinction is made between refugees and non-Maltese citizens as they have different needs for integration. The study takes a general look at inclusive societies and integration. Then it focuses on the case study of the Staffordshire County Council which already initiated integration programmes. Later on, four localities from the four different regions of Malta (excluding the region of Gozo) were chosen and an analysis of the refugees and non-Maltese citizens currently living in these localities is made. These localities were chosen using purposive sampling, in order to gain representative data. The four localities chosen are Marsa, Birżebbuġa, Ħal Balzan and St. Paul's Bay. The analysis shows that every locality has different challenges to meet in order to integrate these people. The non-governmental organisations and the Catholic Church are working to integrate these people into the community; however there is no legal way or guidelines which help local councils to integrate these individuals into the community. Also they do neither have the human resources nor the financial assistance in order to initiate programmes of integration. iv The conclusion suggests that the national government should devolve more power to local councils especially in the social aspect. In return local councils must work on integration by working on action plans at the regional committee level in order to share the human and financial resources. During the drafting of the policy all representatives of different ethnic minority groups shou