Step 5

Find Common Ground

Finding common ground helps us deepen mutual understanding and empathy. It can help build bridges, open spaces for dialogue and invite a balanced debate on migration.

Find Common Ground

How does the world look to other people? Create opportunities for conversations and exchanges to listen to what people care about.

Focus on Common Experiences and Values

We have more in common than we sometimes realise. Explore how to find and build on common ground when communicating on migration.

This section of the toolbox will help you to:

Engage in
Active Listening

Active listening provides us with a more nuanced understanding of our audience and the opportunity to recognise shared concerns.

Provide Spaces for
Migrant Voices

Consider whether migrant voices are being heard, and if not, how you can help make that happen.

Adapt Messaging
to Fit Common Ground

Consider what you’ve learned through active listening. How can you update your messaging to resonate with your audience’s values and experiences?

Find the
Best Messenger

The messenger is as relevant as the message. Which messenger will resonate with your audience and help you build bridges?

Go to the activities

Examples

UN Human Rights and Nik’s Fudo MyGreat Cookbook celebrates the culinary journeys and experiences of women chefs who have migrated and shows the power of food in bringing people together around a shared meal to find common ground.

Download the cookbook in PDF format

In this episode of the UN Human Rights podcast, #StandUp4Migrants, we look at how finding common ground can help us deepen mutual understanding and empathy, build bridges, and help to identify and open spaces for migrant voices to be heard. Meet Sofija Stefanovic, author of Alien Nation, as she seeks to create a space where migrants can share their stories and listeners can revel in our shared humanity.

UN Human Rights · #StandUp4Migrants: Finding Common Ground

NoA, the international community of creatives behind TV2 Denmark’s video “All That We Share”, uses simple questions to challenge stereotypes and show how people are complex but united by what we have in common.

R.Age’s Chin-Up project highlights individuals from the Chin refugee community speaking about their hopes and dreams to bring about policy changes for the Chin in Malaysia.

Amnesty International brought Europeans and migrants together to show the power of looking in each other’s eyes for four minutes.

Hope Not Hate, the People’s Action Institute and others have held one-on-one conversations and used active listening to find common ground. This has helped them encourage a more human rights-based understanding of policy issues on migration and LGBTI rights.

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