Interculturalism will require a bigger effort from the majorities

I like the discourse that has been held for a few years now, about moving on from the concept of multiculturalism to interculturalism. Even though i find what you do and why you do what you do more important than what you chose to call it, it is always interesting when we make the effort of gathering and reaching consent.

There is something though, that i miss in the discussions and in the intelectual interchange about this progression. The Intercultural cities network, that is an important platform for this, explains how the european cities developed from a guest worker/transit mentality, to a assimilation mentality, from there to a mentality of multiculturalism and now to the state of mind of interculturalism. The leap between multi- and interculturalism consists of developing from coexistance of cultures in multiculturalism, to interaction between cultures and cultural groups in the intercultural mindset. Very good.

From my point of view, it is important to have in mind that all people that have migrated or changed their home territory have had the natural instinct of the interculturalism. You have gotten to a place and wanted to both interact and coexist. The migrant have always looked for the possbility to share, trade and build relationships with the people in the new homeland. The reason why interculturalism didn't occur or become the natural state of things from the beginning, is that the people in the country of reception always have tended to reject this intent of interculturalism. Instead of welcoming, embracing and meeting up with a positive feeling to integrate - they have treated the new members of the territory with suspicion and rejection. Sometimes subtile, sometimes explicit. This created the state of multiculturalism that we have been in for several decades by now.

The irony of it is that it also has created a dynamic of blaming that is absurd: in almost every city with 10%+ of migrant community, you will hear people from the majority population saying that the migrants segregate themselves, don't want to integrate with the majority and want to stay by themselves in their "ghettos".

What i am missing in the discourse of interculturalism, is that we are returning to the natural and instinctive behaviour that was sabotaged by the majority population - the majority population whos' representatives are now trying to switch to normal again, instead of continuing to act in the destructive ways that led away from interculturalism, and settled with an approved multiculturalism.

Why is this an important nota bene? Because as for now what i see is representatives from the majority population talking as if they invented this concept that now will be implemented if everyone in an equal effort. Minority-groups and majority-groups are supposed to agree on this idea and implement it. But the thing is - the minority groups always agreed, always wanted this. It is by far a bigger responsability and a bigger effort required from the majority group than for the minorities.

What we are doing now is repairing something we broke, not inventing a spectacular new way of thinking.

The power of cities with short history

This January I was spending a few weeks in Las Palmas in the Canaries, where I started getting to know a culture I was not familiar with but that is turning out to be very welcoming. I was in the northern port area far away from the mass tourism in the south, and after having experienced all those foreign complex of soulless “plastics”, this was super interesting to me.

While looking around, reading and listening to stories about Las Palmas a few thoughts have crossed my mind. One thought especially encircles my mind this evening while I’m doing the dishes. Just before leaving Sweden I had a meeting with my editor concerning an informative I am planning about myths in Sweden related to the “million program”. The concept refers to what in Sweden is known as the living areas where all the immigrants have been accommodated since the sixties-seventies. For those of us who grew up there, these areas represent something completely different than the medial image of them that is manifested to the world.  I’m going to tell you more in general about that shortly. Returning to my meeting, one of the things that struck me during our conversation was a comment made about the myth concerning the people who want to integrate. Just to point out, in the world of myths nothing is crystal clear seeing as amongst the myths we discussed, some are pure myths and some are reality as well. Nonetheless, the comment my editor made was that in modern “nature-made” cities, there are living areas dominated by one ethnical or cultural group (whichever you want to call it) which emerge and survive incessantly.  Chinatown, Little Italy etc etc in the States are a few examples of this my editor brought up, who also happens to be an architect that works for a foundation that researches architectural issues and the physical planning of our global world.

Las Palmas, where I find myself for the time being, is a city founded relatively not long ago as well, although older than the States. There I witness the same kind of phenomenon reappearing, principally in the Korean and Indian areas. I find that interesting because in Sweden, I have always felt that I partly miss the people who claim that segregation is not dangerous to them in that sense. The many investigations that have been performed in Sweden and other countries furthermore demonstrate precisely this; that there are areas dominated by an ethnical group, where that group progresses better on their own. As such, this kind of demography is by itself not a problem. An interesting investigation from last year in Sweden also addressing the issue, coincidentally demonstrated that a group of immigrants by themselves do not generate/perform better/more positive results, but a group of immigrants from the same background do. We have a few examples of this in Sweden with the Kurds in Dalarna and the Syrians in the south of Stockholm, but not too many of them. The Swedish mentality has always taking it for granted that integration and happiness are obtained by placing everyone in the same IKEA-box and letting them put the pieces together.

My opinion on this has always been very clear: it doesn’t matter where people live. Although the media easily fabricates powerful images of segregated living areas, it doesn’t necessarily imply that their impact is real. It’s not just a question of dividing areas in two parts  where on one side a majority of immigrants live, “and on the other side of the highway/river etc” a complete opposite relation presides.

What matters are two things: For one thing that people, wherever they may live, have equal access to information about their rights and the services that belong to them as citizens. For instance, a good public service should be equal everywhere. Also, the possibilities of getting an employment should not be dependent on whether you have the right zip code or not; a crucial factor in the quest for the infamous integration. I find it self-evident that one’s connection to the world is established at work through the relationships one might find there. It is therefore at work where it becomes so important that people blend and mix with each other, and not solely in the backyard of one’s home. Wherever you as a citizen then may be forced or choose to live is an entirely different matter to me, one of much less importance.

Despite what seems only logical to me, the issues I have brought do exist: living in an area with a mixed demography or a high percentage of immigrants might imply that your public service is of less quality. It might additionally imply that a lot of the residents are uninformed about the most basic things. But what is worse of all: your zip code might deprive you of many jobs and opportunities. This is a disaster and something we must work on solving as soon as possible. Forget the baby steps and go for the giant ones instead. We are after all in the 21st century already, vamos!

Why are chinese spaniards speaking spanish fluently exotic?

Two summers ago a friend of mine from Alcorcon, suburb of Madrid, whom I met on the Spanish southern beaches of Murcia where we used to spend the summer as kids, told me about a guy she met while she was out one night. Apparently, she came across a guy from her neighborhood that was “Chinese but born in Spain and more Spanish than anyone of us”. I listened to her and replied that I honestly did not understand the “strangeness” of the matter. We started discussing the topic – and why it was still so strange and somewhat exotic for her to meet a man with this background, while it was so obvious and natural for me who had grown up with this kind of multiplicity in Stockholm, ever since I was born there in 1983.

My reaction has a logical explanation though; great waves of immigrants started coming to Sweden a long time ago as “more immigrants arrived in a decade than throughout the entire history”. This phenomenon started occurring during the seventies and eighties, and continued to overflow during the nighties and the “zero zeros” as well. Almost all of my childhood friends are born in Sweden or came here when they were really young, and are therefore just as neutralized as me, the “Chinese man” in Murcia or the former Barca Bojan. 

During our conversation we also talked about the Swedish friends that I have brought along on other occasions to spend the summer in Murcia.  Many of them have apparently caused somewhat confusion amongst the locals. For instance: “Aren’t all Swedes supposed to be tall, blond, and blue-eyed?” This preconception always amuses me. At least “my Swedes” aren’t, especially not considering that they have Latin-American or Persian roots, and as such not too many blue eyes or height to extract from them. But this is only part of the truth. In reality, it is nowadays no longer possible to claim that Swedes have blond hair, blue eyes or considerable height. Let me give you an example; sometimes when I give public speeches in Sweden, I ask the audience to raise their hands if they have blue eyes or blond hair. Unsurprisingly, not too many do. This is because a few centuries ago the migration currents from Belgium and Holland left very few people with blond hair and blue eyes amongst those who “look Swedish”, irrespective of them having been born in Sweden to Swedish parents and ancestors or not. This re-defining process of identity has continued to develop slowly, but just imagine: if it is running slowly within the Swedish borders, how is it running outside of them?

Yet this is the current situation. Sweden has 9.5 million inhabitants, and almost a million and a half of them are immigrants. Around a million of us Swedes are the fruit and loins of these 1, 5 million immigrants, not counting those who like my parents have emigrated again. This is also an issue I will address more thoroughly later on - I am referring to those who after immigrating decide not stay after all.

  

One thing for sure is that something similar to what I just described is going to happen in Spain. Considering it has one of the smallest populations in Europe, more immigration is in order unless you want a population with a median age of 60 in no time at all. And this is where the topic with which I started gets serious: if you insist on treating the Spanish with darker skin or bigger eyes as strange or exotic, you are going to end up  creating a society that is neither up to date with reality nor necessity. Naturally, a short time-period of admiration or interest might perhaps be inevitable in this case, but my advice is to avoid differentiation as much and as soon as possible.

For example, it should be natural for me in the Sweden of today to consider myself and my friends as Swedish. However, many of us are still seen and treated as exotic and strange, and what is worse – a danger in the eyes of the majority. We are consequently and ridiculously excluded from employment, studies and from many of the plenty of services that the Swedish society supposedly offers. I mean, isn’t it ridiculous that I have friends whose children are considered a problem to solve already as preschoolers because they have a Kurdish or Spanish name? That they are regarded as the grandchildren of immigrants? Nobody wants that society but many insist on reproducing it. The best thing is to stop it at once!