Integration

One day as a child, my friend stormed out of the room while I was talking to other friends. "She's frustrated because we are all talking and she's excluded," a family member explained. My friend was and is deaf. Though I knew a little sign language, I only used it when talking directly to her and didn't realize until that point what it meant for her when others talked. I realized what she must feel to sit in a room seeing everyone else talk and laugh. She was invisible, and it would take her considerable effort to join. I made more of an effort to sign when speaking after that point. It doesn't exclude anyone to sign and speak concurrently.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to speak multiple languages at once and to have two languages and cultures coexist.

Today,  I am inspired by the article "Unpacking the Emotional Labor of Immigrant Women" by Olga Mecking (a writer living in the Netherlands).  My impression of Europe, and Scandinavia in particular, is that there is a deeply felt difficulty in integrating refugees and that there is a desire to improve the process. I am, however, very concerned by the solutions being proposed.

The article seems to me an important one because it helps describe more about the problem than some people may realize. As you may know, I am a big fan of exploring and clarifying the problem before espousing solutions and using ideas for solutions as thought experiments in the exploration.

In Denmark, they are proposing and creating laws that limit refugees' abilities to speak in their own language and form communities. The goal is to motivate refugees to form relationships with native Danes and to become fluent in Danish. Nevertheless, as the article points out, any such policy often "mistakes integration, the notion of belonging in many places, with assimilation, which means letting go of one’s background and only accepting the majority culture"

I see these European thoughts, initiatives and ideas, and I recognize what we, European-Americans, did to Native Americans. We outlawed their customs and ways of life; we relocated them; we took their children and placed them in our own schools. We forced them to become Christian, speak English, and adopt our culture.

In our Euro/British-centric hubris, we sought to  "Kill the Indian... Save the Man" .

The Native American languages that still remain are mostly spoken in South America. North America has few speakers, with Canada faring a bit better than the United States. The most spoken is Navajo with 150,000 speakers. Compare that to Native American Quechua in the Andes with 8 million and European Basque with 750,000. 

From reflecting on our battle for cultural dominance in the Americas, the current battle for cultural dominance, rather than reverence for local customs, becomes clearer. 

My partner once lamented that Americans know more about Greek mythology than Native American mythology. It's true, I read Native American mythology thanks to my mother, but I barely remember more than Raven.

These policies won't eradicate cultures in the Middle East; But imperialist tendencies (by which I mean Western power and dominance) aren't isolated to foreign lands.

I appreciate the frustration felt about immigrants not sharing values or learning a language. We all have the same or similar frustrations about non-immigrants as well. It's natural to think, "Well I figured it out" or learned the language or adapted or contributed or overcame a hardship. It's also natural to then form a judgement that someone is lazy or taking advantage. 

We make these judgments regularly about everyone, but when that someone is a minority we begin to generalize that judgement to an entire group. That's when the judgement becomes dangerous and we must check ourselves.

As it says in the article,  

"Immigration is not easy work, and the women reconciling new identities, communities and experiences foster the successes of entire families and communities." 

It's important that we manage our own yearnings for cultural dominance - which really just stem from cultural perspective and limitations of our own knowledge and experience. We should try to understand our neighbors and treat them as the individuals they are. We should be aware of our own ignorance and lack of adoption of their language and their cultures. We should respect and appreciate each other and build solutions from that understanding.