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Events - 22.08.2016 - 00:00 

Migration in the public programme

The University of St.Gallen invites the general public to attend 38 public lecture courses in Autumn Semester 2016. This semester, too, the lecture series will take their bearings from current affairs. One topic: migration from different perspectives. The lectures will start on 19 September 2016.

23 August 2016. The "refugee crisis" continues to keep Europe on tenterhooks. The migration streams are unabated, and so are the reports about them. The new head of the public programme, Prof. Dr. Florian Wettstein, took this opportunity to view the issue of migration from different perspectives.

Differing reactions to what is foreign
People react differently to what is foreign: with fear or trust, rejection or openness, severity or empathy. Various speakers will focus on how we deal with the unknown in a psychological lecture series – from an ethical, philosophical and psychological perspective.

Children are also exposed to the issue on a daily basis – at school, in kindergarten or in the playground. However, they are less afraid of contact than adults, and other languages and cultures still hardly create any distance for them. Why there are also children who have to flee is what the youngest HSG audiences will learn in one of the four Children's University lectures.

Switzerland's first ever woman federal judge
The streams of refugees are also challenging deep-rooted cultural values such as gender equality. The Federal Act on Gender Equality has been in existence for 20 years. Has such equality been achieved? A societal lecture will take stock and debate the issue in a concluding panel discussion, with the panel including Margrith Bigler-Eggenberger, Switzerland's first ever woman federal judge.

The political lecture will also be topical: the focus will be on unsolved regional and global problems in order to put them in a historical perspective and subject them to critical analysis. This will not only disclose the general structural conditions and lasting features of international politics but also serve to recognise "new" developments as such.

photo: utoimage - Fotolia.com

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