Promoting communication, cultural diversity and solidarity inside organizations. The educational European project Codes

The October first 2017 is the opening day of the three-years European project Codes – Communication Diversity Solidarity. Its goal is to design a course focused on intercultural competencies. Such course is intended to train future experts in this field that will be working as “attachés of the communication for cultural diversity” in several types of organizations. Codes is based on the idea that professional organizations living in multicultural societies need to develop specific sets of competences, to answer to complex situations and to communicate with groups of people who are victims of socio-political, ethnic and gender asymmetries. Indeed, asymmetries create not only vulnerabilities and barriers to full citizenship in public life, but also a not optimal distribution and efficiency of human resources inside the companies. A distinctive feature of Codes is that the planning of the course has to be consistent with the EU approach to intercultural competence, cultural diversity, and specialized training for professionals. Formally, Codes is a partership among the following research groups: Lumière University Lyon 2 (the leader project), Sapienza University of Rome, University of Bucharest, University of Coimbra, University of Flensburg, Panteion University of Athene. Method Codes project is a very emblematic case in the landscape of educational policies. It is a unique experiment in Europe, that is mean a unique occasion to compare different concepts about intercultural issues, different approaches to the management of diversities, different ideas of the role that public and private institutions can have in national life. Other 3 aspects worthy of attention: the network supported by the European community is made only by public universities (with the exception of one private enterprise, for the fast supply of the digital technologies); secondly, the partners come from all the different areas of Europe; thirdly, every steps of the work has to be presented and discussed with different kinds of stakholders (students, media, local institutions, Ong, companies). This proposed paper will inquire the development of this projects, by focusing on the different meanings that different social actors give to cultural diversities and to strategies to counter them, and to the opportunities and difficulties that the co-construction produces in the field of high education. The empirical study will be conducted by using different qualitative technique: interviews, ethnographic research on the ground, analysis of original project documents, communication materials and evaluation reports. As the authors are members of the Sapienza team, they can count on the availability of the entire network. Outcomes (expected) The proposed paper intends to discuss the first outcomes of the projects, both on theoretical and practical sides. Especially, it would bring to light the different conceptions on cultural diversities that different national cultures can have, and the different ways to “manage” them they imagine.