| Summary: | The dehumanisation of migrants is an urgent international concern. This article looks at the way intercultural education interventions based on expressive writing can help counteract this trend by increasing empathy towards migrants among host community members. It specifically discusses the innovative model of an expressive writing cycle carried out with Central American transit migrants and host community students in Guanajuato, Mexico. The cycle consisted of two autobiographical expressive writing workshops at a migrant hostel, a workshop with students from the Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores (ENES), UNAM where participants wrote about the migrants’ stories, and a collection of items for the hostel. This interdisciplinary research was based on expressive writing, intercultural education and migration studies. Initial, qualitative results were promising. Expressive writing was experienced as unburdening by all participants. For the students, expressive writing proved an effective way of producing rehumanising and empathic responses, as well as eliciting a wish to help. The subsequent collection, apart from delivering needed goods, further established a nascent connection between migrants and members of the host community. Expressive writing workshops are recommended as simple, cost-effective intercultural education interventions for increasing empathy, well-being and a sense of common humanity among migrants and members of host communities.
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