BELONGING - CONNECTED - NOTICED
Bobbie Gilmore SSC
[Migrants Rights Centre – Dublin]
Today, nobody noticed
me
and I have not lived.
You have noticed me
and I live again.
The
word, integration, from the Latin word,
integrare - to make whole, unite, subsumed into, has captured a lot
of interest and usage of late particularly in relation to immigrants.
Integration is hardly ever related to the settled or indigenous population.
However, it is a challenge that everybody is confronted with in many
other aspects of life's journey. Integration is taking place from
the day a child enters a family, goes through the various aspects
of development, education and socialization until reaching a point
where one feels integral to, belongs to a particular place, identifies
and is identified.
There is a difference between
belonging and being subsumed. The latter almost denotes losing all character,
individuality and personality, when in actual fact integration is the
ongoing formation of an amalgam between recalling bits and pieces of
the old story and continuously becoming acquainted with the unfamiliar,
starting a .new story. It is a process that for some happens unnoticed
and is taken for granted. But for many that is not the case. In adolescence
it frequently happens that a young person does not feel, in touch or
integral to his or her surroundings, indeed may feel alienation, rejection
and marginal. But, it seems that in discussing a solution to a person's
isolation, that may be arising from a confused identity, alienation
or rejection seldom does one hear the words integration and participation
as a solution to a person's rehabilitation. Really, integration is being
able to connect the old and the new in a way that is empowering and
fulfilling,
Sometimes in prison situations
solitary confinement is used as punishment for disorderly behaviour.
Prisoners who have experienced solitary confinement have no hesitation
in admitting that it is the most severe form of punishment. So, this
poses the question, if isolation is the lowest point of the human spirit;
what is the highest aspiration of the human spirit? Obviously, it is
the nature of human beings to aspire to be in association with others,
to belong, have an identity, be participants and decision-makers, love
and be loved, be responsive and responsible. If this is so, how then
can integration be facilitated by society particularly in the case of
immigrants who are from different cultures or between citizens of the
member states of the European Union?
The character of migration
in its various appearances implies that people leave familiar surroundings
of home and enter new and unfamiliar environments. While the new can
be exciting and invigorating, sooner or later an experience of anomie
sets in that will continue while a person feels the loss of the old
identity and the discomfort of the pain of the unfamiliar and strange.
If there are no facilities in place that understand dislocation and
enables a move from liminality to connect with the networks of life
the probability is that immigrants will become submerged in loneliness,
meaninglessness and be marginalized.
How are immigrants moved
on from the initial shock of the unfamiliar to begin new lives of belonging,
fulfilment, feeling connected as participants to what is happening around
them?
The main networks of life
are political, economic, cultural and social.
Usually, the first network
of society that immigrants interact with on a daily basis is in the
economic arena, where they work. Most people assume that such
an interaction is easy because all immigrants have to do is show up
and do a particular task. However, that is not the case. If such is
the cultural insensitivity of workplace managers the presumption is
that they see both their local staff and immigrants as units of labour
who perform a task. They see no relationship between the task and the
person whose effort and ingenuity results in a finished service or tradable
product. They are unable to recognize any human relationship between
the person or persons and the item produced,
Mercantilism in colonial
times saw no connection between the bale of cotton and the person whose
toil produced it. Likewise, in a neo-mercantile culture, for such managers
the worker has little significance and is treated as a commodity. An
example of this is the doctor who remarked, "I don't need orientation,
I have read the National Geographic", when requested to attend
a seminar on cultural integration in the hospital where he worked.
Unfortunately, this is
the kind of impolite, culturally insensitive dismissal that many immigrants
experience. Such an incident instead of giving creative meaning to migrant
lives renders them and their culture of no significance, their contribution
meaningless, demeaned, and leaving them with a feeling of being unnoticed
and disposable. Workplace preparation is necessary for integration of
people whose diversity is recognized and creative output appreciated.
The atmosphere of the work place is a keystone, a first step in the
journey to integration. Appreciation and recognition doesn't cost money,
The second group of networks
that immigrants relate to is of a social nature. These are recognized
points where one is able to meet locals as well as others of one’s own
nationality, culture, leisure pursuits and migrant experience to discuss
interests both of local and home relevance. These are important because
it is here that one feels the freedom to tell their story, be recognized
as having a past somewhere, pick up information and gradually gather
confidence to make one's way.
Other important social
networks are churches, temples, mosques, and other places of worship.
Then there are schools, extra mural education, local and ethnic centers
of interaction, as well as leisure activities in the area where one
lives. Of course, trade unions and support groups are very important
points of interaction and protection because of the tendency in settled
societies to exploit the stranger and the unaware. However, immigrants
are slow to become involved in such support groups and indeed are equally
slow in seeking information regarding their rights and responsibilities
as residents of a particular country. The reason for this tardiness
to become involved arises from a strong initial return home mindset.
This gradually changes as one settles.
In an era when globalization
is trumpeted as the panacea for all ills it is important to remember
that all political networks function at a local level and it
is only through the local that one can be involved in the global. Again,
it is in this area that immigrants are frequently remiss probably because
their primary relationships are at home and hence a strong hope of return.
Of course many immigrants
who having been marginalized in the political structures of their home
countries see little purpose in becoming involved as they see politics
as the domain of the rich and powerful whose policies are the root cause
of their emigration. However, access in the political arena is important
for immigrants because it enables them realize that as workers, residents
and taxpayers they are neither worthless nor voiceless,
The cultural network
by the very presence of people from other cultures implies that culture
will always be dynamic, never static. Here probably lies the greatest
challenge in migration, learning about and from a new culture. The easiest
thing to do is to roll up, hedgehog fashion and become isolated and
indifferent to the local way of seeing and doing things. Children associate
and make progress easily enough. They gradually look for an identity
under their feet. However, parents are inclined to get their cultural
nourishment from over their shoulders and try to reinvent a mental "home"
in exile that bears little resemblance to what "home" actually
was on leaving. It is the protective shell of the tourist brochure memory
of home that copes best with the initial confusion of the
new but in the long term
if imprisoned by it is impoverishing to all concerned. Disengagement
with the new world may seem a safe haven or a sanctuary from the tension
of involvement but one cannot healthily work in one place and mentally
and emotionally live elsewhere.
Of course the xenophobia
of the new environment, a common problem throughout Europe at present,
frequently leaves immigrants with few options. There is a hesitancy
to assert one's presence and participation if the covert and sometimes,
overt message being received is one of being unwanted and being perceived
either as a burden or a risk to local security, culture and identity.
These messages are loud and clear during election campaigns as state
governments compete with opposition parties using immigration as a badge
of patriotism and tin-pot nationalism. There is lately a tendency in
the European Union for member states to define themselves by those with
whom they differ rather than by their own unique worth, value and belief
systems.
The language being heard
by immigrants in the heat of such encounters sends a message that they
are seen as a problem, under suspicion and unwanted when at the same
time immigrants know that the economy would not function without them.
Institutional leaders are more inclined to listen to the message of
Huntingdon, DeBray, Brimelow, Buchanan, Le Pen and others rather than
be guided by objective research. This unwelcoming atmosphere coerces
immigrants to retreat into ethnicity leading to pools of disaffection
that expresses itself in extremism of both left and right fundamentalism
seeking identity elsewhere and posing a threat to general security.
Evidence of this is the ongoing financing of wars and conflicts by immigrant
diasporas over the past few decades
However, in the recent
past many new voluntary organizations and support groups have emerged
and are effectively counteracting the indifferent and ambivalent attitude
to immigrants in the European Union member states. Settled people are
personalizing their own homelessness due to both forma! and informal
contact with immigrants in the various networks of life. It is these
efforts at a local level that enables both the immigrant and the
This is what this young
Italian diplomat wrote in a report he made to the Italian government
on finishing his tour of duty in Germany in 1942.
"They (Germans) have
no idea that no economic order can rule if not based on a political
order, and to make the Belgian or Bohemian worker work, is not enough
to promise him a certain wage, but one must also give him the sense
of serving a community, of which he is an intimate part, which he feels
an affinity with and in which he recognizes himself"
Is the European Union
missing something?