We are going a little bit back in time – to Friday, November the second, the day when the Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) had its first official workshop in a statutory event. This workshop was titled exactly the same as this article: Are you stranger than a stranger? The word “stranger” when mentioned for the first time refers to you (potentially), and the second time it refers to a foreigner, or a person whose main crowd is “strange”. Yes, this workshop dealt with xenophobia; a serious topic, but also a topic everybody has an opinion about.
A brief introduction was given by Jonathan Mack, an activist of TernYpe, a Youth NGO for Roma and non-Roma youngsters. He explained the concept of stereotypes. After his welcome, he took part in the rest of the workshop as a participant.
Though the workshop was led by Marine Betrancourt and Maria Arends, HRWG-members Niklas Vaalgamaa and Anne Stikkers were eager to facilitate during the “World Café”. Our World Café consisted of discussion rounds in small groups, where they discussed four statements in turns. There were only a few minutes to discuss every statement, so people just had to share their first impressions. In the end, all the statements were summarized.
Statement one: “Stereotypes prevent Roma people from working”
“As all the other statements addressed in the World Café, it was vividly discussed,” says Marine Betrancourt, who facilitated the discussion of this statement. “Most of the participants agreed that stereotypes are not the cause of Roma people not working, but it is more a cultural thing where they tend to want to stay “special” and not fit in with the “normal” expectations. It has also been said that it might be about the lack of education, which prevents them from actually getting to learn about “normal” life – understood as getting a job.”
Jonathan, the speaker from TernYpe, brought an interesting input balancing the participants opinions. Although most of the participants tended to disagree on stereotypes preventing Roma people from working, some of them stated that they indeed thought that Roma people were prejudiced in their everyday life and that it could be one of the reason why they are not able to find a proper job.
Statement two: “Human rights are expensive, so they are not a priority in times of crisis”
This statement was quite radically phrased, so nobody really agreed with it. What people did think is that human rights are connected with financial matters and the poorer the country is, the harder they are to reach. On the other hand, Western countries spend a lot of money to have fair trials for criminals, which the participants thought to be a bit ironic. They also thought that human rights are absolute and we should not go backwards from what we have already achieved. They agreed on the financial influence though. Another point that was noticed is that there are some quite big cultural differences even among Europeans relating to certain topics in human rights.
Niklas Vaalgamaa led the discussion on this statement. He noticed that the process of discussing, in this case, was more important than the content itself. “Instead of the actual discussion result I think the basic discussion process was more rewarding,” he says. “First of all it made people think about human rights, but moreover it made participants understand that people think about things in really different ways and that sometimes it can be hard to accept or understand other people’s opinions. There was no arguing but hard debating,” he continues, satisfied.
Statement three: “People are immigrating to live on social support”
“Most reactions started with ‘That is not true!’ or similar remarks,” states Anne Stikkers. She made people think and debate about this topic. “Most participants did not feel like this was a big issue at all. Several people mentioned that it is unreasonable to think that people are going to leave all their family, friends, and home country behind just for the sake of receiving welfare aid from the government. Also it was mentioned frequently that people usually want to work – not having a job is depressing, not something positive. Besides that, it was recognised that in several Northern and Western European countries, this is a big political and economic concern (whether it is a valid one or not). It was concluded that in principle, everyone has the right to social aid, but people should prove that they are actually looking for a job.”
The participants thought that the government should help these unemployed people in some way, for example by providing language courses and making sure that employers do not discriminate based on national origin. In addition, this aid cannot go on forever. The example of Sweden, where social aid for immigrants is provided for one year only, was mentioned several times. So in the end, even though most participants did not feel like this issue was a pressing one, they did seem to agree that social aid should be provided for everyone, but on a conditional basis.
Statement four: “Foreigners should learn the language of the country they are living in”
At first you might not expect so much discussion on a topic like this, but when we discussed it during our meeting in September, we discovered that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. During the workshop it was clear that people thought quite differently about this topic. “There were quite some people thinking that it was okay, and even when I asked if it was okay if there was only one person at their job that did not speak their language and if they spoke in English all the time, for this group that was no problem,” Maria Arends says. “Also there were people who did not immediately disagree, but who thought that you cannot expect from someone to learn the language. Or not to learn the language, which was also quite a hot topic. Sometimes people expect foreigners not to speak their language, when they actually do”.
The opinions differed quite a bit. Some also mentioned that you should learn the language as a sign of respect for the culture you are going to live in. One thing everyone did agree on is that it makes life a little easier for yourself if you do this.
As you see, there is a lot going on in the field of xenophobia, and it is definitely not as narrow as you may think it is. This year, it will be one of the things the HRWG wants to focus on, so if you would like to learn some more, you will get the opportunity for sure!
Written by Maria Arends, Human Rights working Group