December 17, 2018 - Director of the Diaspora Directorate Predrag Mitrovic, Mayor of Bar Dusan Raicevic and Elvira Bekteši, Head of the Department for Legal Issues, Finance and Emigrant Booklets, visited the University of Toronto where they spoke with the Deputy Director of the Center for Diaspora and Transnational Studies Prof. Dr. Antonela Arhin.
Antonela Arhin was born and raised in Montenegro and has been working in the Center, unique in the world of study, for 12 years.
Ahin lectures on several subjects within the diaspora and transnational studies: children's rights, child migration, cross-border flows, crime and migration, human rights, law and cultural values, citizenship and identity.
Expressing gratitude for the first visit of the institution directly involved in the Diaspora of Montenegro, she met the interlocutors with the Center's program and expressed her willingness and desire, as a Montenegrin, to help Montenegro through her profession. She also expressed that she is extremely pleased that someone appreciates it and shows interest in studying the diaspora, its impact on the country of origin and the country of reception, its position and the struggle for the preservation of identity, culture, the tradition in the era of globalization.
The interlocutors raised a number of important issues, and the continuation of the communication on the possibility of establishing cooperation between the University of Montenegro and the University of Toronto, the exchange of students and professors, scholarships and, in particular, the study of diaspora as a very important social phenomenon, and the exchange of good practice in the work with diaspora and issues of cooperation between the diaspora and the motherland that Montenegro can and should try to apply in the design of its policy for the cooperation with the diaspora.
Toronto University is among the top 15 in the world and currently is estimated as the best university in Canada.
The library of this university is the third in the number of books available in North America, immediately after Harvard and Yale. The University of Toronto has about 90,000 students and as many as 980 programs.
The meeting was organized by the Montenegrin Cultural Society of Toronto which maintains contacts with Arhin and with which it has successfully cooperated so far.
Text by CdM, on December 16th 2018, read more at CdM
