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Arab Muslim Immigrant Women in Iceland: Immigration experiences and future expectations

In the last two decades the immigrant population has increased greatly in Iceland (Statistics Iceland, 2020a). Immigrants come mainly from Europe and Scandinavia. Recently, due to the war in Syria, Iceland has experienced an influx of refugees from the Arab world. The most visible symbol of these new arrivals is seeing women wearing headscarves (Hijab) in Iceland.

There are cultural challenges involved in moving from an Arab country to Iceland, particularly because many Arab countries limit the participation of women in decision-making in almost all public and private aspects of life (Valentine, 2004). Arab Muslim societies are mostly considered to be patriarchal cultures, in which men have power over women (ibid.). Moving from this culture to Iceland, which prides itself as a leading country for gender equality, creates challenges.

The present study explores the perceptions and experiences of Arab Muslim immigrant women in Iceland. At this time only one MA-thesis has been done on the self-image of Muslim women in Iceland (Guðmundsdóttir, 2012), which focuses on their relationship towards Islam. The intention of this research is to gain more insights into the Arab Muslim immigrant women’s post-immigration experiences, the social and cultural challenges they face in Iceland and how they deal with conflicting norms and values between home and host society.

Background, theoretical framework and literature review

In recent years Iceland has experienced a growing number of Arab immigrants.  In 2010 Iceland was home to 342 Arabs, up to 430 in 2015 and 833 in 2018 (Statistics Iceland, 2020b). The majority of Arabs in Iceland in 2018 were from Syria, with 217 individuals, and 215 from Morocco. From the total number of Arab immigrants, 279 are female and 554 are male. Compared to the Scandinavian countries, the Muslim community in Iceland is small (Seddeeq, 2017).  The participants in this study are either refugees or women who immigrated to Iceland with their families.

Immigrating to a new country is a challenge for every immigrant (Kim, 2017), but the experience of immigration to a new country varies between individuals. Each immigrant has his/her unique immigration story. In general, when people immigrate to a new country, they bring with them their social and cultural capital, which encompasses their language, skills, education, behaviour, habits, traditions and experiences (Erel, 2010). Thus, when immigrants try to adjust to a different social and cultural environment, acculturation may occur (Berry, 2005). Acculturation is defined as “the dual process of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contact between two or more cultural groups and their individual members” (ibid.: 698). Moreover, the acculturation process is related to two basic issues which challenge individuals and groups (ibid.). The first issue is the extent to which one can maintain one’s heritage, culture and identity, while the second is the proportion of contact and participation in the host society and with other ethnic cultural groups (ibid.).

When ethnic immigrants like Arab Muslim women move to a new environment like Iceland, many of them face cultural clashes between their own and the new culture. One of the options for Arab Muslim women to confront these cultural challenges is to use acculturation strategies by selecting and adopting cultural values and traditions from both cultures. In Norway, which is culturally similar to Iceland, Predelli (2004) describes how immigrant Muslim women in Oslo use the flexibility and complexity of Islam to define gender roles and to support their own views and practices like getting jobs or getting help in their homes.

The effect of the new society’s values on Arab Muslim women and families varies from one individual to the next, depending upon different factors such as religiosity, the effect of their own culture and traditions, education and class. Immigrants who live in an environment with a strong emphasis on tradition can find it more difficult to change their roles and values, while those with a more open mind may find it easier to accept these changes (Erel, 2009). In addition, the adaptation process for Arab Muslim women in the new society is affected by how flexible they are and by how the host society treats them (Barkdull et al., 2011; Kim, 2001). In his study on immigrant women from Turkey living in Germany and Britain, Erel (2010) discovered that if immigrants were flexible and able to change their cultural capital, the integration process was facilitated, even if it was difficult for these women to adapt completely to the new culture.

Being a minority group surrounded by a different culture with its values, traditions and beliefs leads immigrants to reassess themselves and their identity (Duderija, 2007). The development of a new identity for a Muslim Arab is closely dependent on his/her primary religious-cultural identity. There is a tendency for immigrants belonging to minority religious groups to become more religious after leaving their countries. For many Muslim immigrants in western societies, religion is considered to be an important component of their identity because it helps them to feel in control, and gives them a sense of belonging while living in western culture (ibid.).

In western societies, Muslim women wearing Islamic outfits are easily recognised. This visibility adds another challenge to adaptation. Arab Muslim immigrant women are the group of “others” because of their appearance. Studies have shown that the migration process may lead to isolation and the feeling of loneliness (Bereza, 2010; Ísberg, 2010). It is common that immigrant women feel isolated and culturally homeless when they move to a different social and cultural environment where they have less access to social life and less support (Bereza, 2010; Ísberg, 2010).

Methodology

This research focuses on the social and cultural changes and challenges faced by Arab Muslim immigrant women in Iceland. The aim is to gain a deeper understanding of the women’s post-immigration experiences and to map the experiences of Arab Muslim immigrant women who live in Iceland outside the capital area; their main social and cultural challenges, which are related to life changes, religion and cultural identity, differences between Iceland and the Arab world, adaptation, future expectations and how they experience the attitudes of the locals.

To answer these questions, a qualitative research method was used. As Creswell (2009) states, qualitative research is an adequate method used as a “means (of) exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem” (p. 4). While doing qualitative research and during data collection, the researcher uses what he sees, hears and notices; it helps him to develop new concepts, to analyse the data, and to answer and justify the research questions (Patton, 2002).

The method applied consisted of semi-structured in-depth interviews with nine Arab Muslim immigrant women who live in Iceland outside the capital area for one to four years. The women were of three different nationalities. The age of the women ranged from 18 to 70 years old, and they had all lived in Arab countries for more than 15 years before moving to Iceland. By using semi structured interviews, the researcher is able to use a set of core questions in all interviews, but the structure is not set in stone; it is also possible to add questions or explore some topics in more detail or follow a new thread that the interviewee introduces.

The data was analysed and interpreted by using the grounding theory approach tools. The grounded theory method uses a very systematic and structured strategy to analyse the data, which helps to delve deeper into the interviews materials and elicit meanings from the data (Woods et al., 2002). The grounded theory process is based on three coding steps: open coding, axial coding and selective coding. These three steps help break the original data down and clarify and arrange the concepts (Woods et al., 2002; Lawrence & Tar, 2013).

The participants grew up in different environments; three of them lived in developed cities. while the others lived in rural areas where it was not common for girls to go to school. Three of the participants do not read or write, four had only finished elementary school, while two are studying in secondary schools in Iceland. All but one wore headscarves.

Issues of confidentiality were raised at the beginning of the interviews and the participants were briefed about the research. At the beginning of each interview, the aim of the study was explained and permission to record the interview was given. The duration of each interview varied from 40 minutes to one hour. The location and the time of the interviews were chosen by the interviewees. They were carried out in Arabic. They were transcribed in Arabic and then translated into English. All the transcriptions were reviewed and analysed to bring out categories that related to participants’ experiences and attitudes, and themes were identified and explored in the following sections.

Data analysis procedures

Grounded theory is a systematic approach that helps the researcher to analyse the data through three steps. The first step started during and after each interview by writing notes and comments. The second step was coding the data. The coding includes three steps to find the core categories: open coding, axial coding and selective coding. In the grounded theory approach, you can use more than one coding at the same time. First, the interviews were read carefully and analysed line-by-line. Many codes that reflected the main concepts were created. This is called open coding. By doing this step the codes and concepts that were the basic units of analysis were discovered from the data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Before going deeper into the codes, the codes were given similar labels to outline the primary categories for the analysis (Crang & Cook, 1995). Fourteen categories were found and labelled according to the aim of the research; lifestyle changes, social life, following their country’s traditions that the participants brought with them, culture shock, adaptation, language barrier, cultural and social differences, religion, dress code, gender roles, reactions of the host society, expectation vs reality, children’s happiness, children’s future prospects and educational approach in Iceland.

Secondly, the concepts and the codes discovered in the first step were connected, this step is called axial coding. Axial coding helps to find the connection between the codes, the concepts and the categories since “the use of the grounded theory approach allows the connection of codes and categories in the data to be established and theoretical propositions to be developed” (Woods et al., 2002: 46). The categories were combined and reduced to six sub-categories. These sub-categories were: lifestyle changes and traditions, differences and adaptation, isolation and social life, gender roles, religious identity and children’s school.

The third step was to select the codes and concepts which were related to the research aim and this stage of coding was the final step of coding and is called selective coding. Selective coding identifies categories that build the framework (Woods et al., 2002). This third step identified five categories which were labelled: life in Iceland, adaptation and lifestyle changes, social and cultural values, cultural and religious identity and children’s schooling and future expectations.

Ethical issues related to the study

All participants were willing to take part in this study voluntarily and gave informed consent. Before each interview, the purpose of the study and the benefits that would come from it were explained (Akaranga & Makau, 2016). Issues of anonymity and confidentiality were raised at the beginning of all interviews. To increase confidentiality, all personal information like real names, nationalities and ages, the name of the cities where the women live were removed. All women were given pseudo names in the findings chapter for confidential reasons. These names are: Aya, Fatima, Hanan, Hiba, Lubna, Maryam, Marah, Qamar and Zena.

Findings

The main findings are discussed in four main themes. The first theme explores the purpose behind migration and explains the challenges faced by the women; the second theme explores adaptation and lifestyle changes, the third discusses gender roles and values and the fourth theme is concerned with the women’s religious and cultural identity. These themes are all interconnected and highlight issues that affect Arab Muslim immigrant women’s lives in Iceland.

Life in Iceland and its challenges

The women have different stories behind their immigration to Iceland. Nevertheless, most of them implied in the interviews that they came to Iceland involuntarily. Marah and Fatima immigrated to Iceland because their husbands were already living there. For the refugee women in the study, the decision to move was mostly for safety and a better future for themselves and their children, since they had all left their native countries because of war. The opportunity to come to Iceland was arranged through the UNHCR resettlement program which does not give refugees the opportunity to choose the country of resettlement and leaves refugees without much agency in the decision process (UNHCR, 2018). Aya was the only woman who came to Iceland by choice.

The women’s first impression of Iceland was a shock due to the different environment and culture, and the distorted image they had of life in the country. Maryam had built up her ideas about Icelandic culture through Western media and movies. When Maryam came to Iceland she was surprised that “people in Iceland are respectful and they (Icelanders) wear conservative clothing”. She thought that “in Europe” she “would see naked people” and “people kiss or hug each other in the street” but was “totally wrong”.

Most of the participants had very little knowledge about Iceland before they immigrated. All the women agreed that when they tried to look for information about Iceland, the cold weather was the first occurrence they read about. The first image they had was of a very cold snowy country. Hiba was laughing when she explained that she thought she was going to live in a “freezer”. Lubna shared her experience: “We looked for information about Iceland on the internet because we didn’t know anyone living there, but the biggest difference was the weather. There was too much snow when we arrived. It is colder than we had expected, and the darkness and the daylight were different to what we were used to. I found it difficult in summer to see only the light, I like the darkness more.”

Socio-cultural challenges

The findings showed that most women experienced socio-cultural challenges when they first came to Iceland, because of the differences between the two countries. Lubna explained: “Men and women here like to hug and kiss and shake hands, which is unacceptable in my culture. Also, I was shocked when I went to the swimming pool for the first time. Women there take a shower near each other and without any clothes on. They don’t even try to cover themselves.” Zena also talked about cultural differences: “I am always afraid about my daughter, I don’t want her to have any sexual relationship outside marriage, it is shameful and forbidden in our culture. I am not afraid about my boys simply because they are boys and that makes them different.”

Aya grew up in a traditional Arabic society but her family was “open-minded” and gave her a lot of freedom. She could have friends of both genders even though that was not common in her society, however, she also experienced a culture shock in Iceland, when she met transgender people for the first time. She admitted that she was avoiding contact with them as much as possible. Aya was confused about the way to interact with them because it was something she had never experienced before moving to Iceland.

Language was one of the main obstacles in the participants’ lives in Iceland, since they found Icelandic very difficult and complicated. Still, the women agreed that learning Icelandic was important for their integration because it would build bridges between them and the Icelandic society. The findings indicate that learning the language was even more challenging for illiterate women. Zena was quite “happy” learning Icelandic but being unable to read and write made it more “difficult” and it might take her a “longer time” to be able to speak it. Fatima stated that Icelandic was “very difficult” and she was “not sure” if she would learn it.

Due to the lack of language skills the participants had trouble communicating with others, particularly professionals and institutions. They found it very hard to express themselves without a translator. Being unable to communicate and express their feelings and needs led to anxiety when they first arrived in Iceland. Hiba said: “Language is the most difficult challenge for me. It is hard and new, and because I don’t speak any other language like English I always need a translator when I go to doctors or to the bank or to my children’s school.”

Even the women who had been living in Iceland for a longer time still considered language as one of the biggest challenges. Marah expressed her disappointment at not being able to communicate without a translator: „Language was and still is the biggest challenge for me. It is very difficult and because I don’t speak English I always need someone to translate for me (sigh).” Like Marah and Hiba, Lubna was frustrated about how complicated she thought Icelandic was. She added that people did not understand her because of her “different accent”. In a similar way, Qamar was aware of the difficulty of the Icelandic language but she was also aware of the importance of the language in order to build her future, continue studying or find a good job. Qamar missed communication with her classmates and other people because she did not “speak Icelandic or English”. Consequently, she felt lonely and isolated.

 

Loneliness and isolation

The other participants felt lonely and isolated too. The lack of language proficiency, which creates communication difficulties, isolated the women to some extent from the local community. All the participants came from a cultural background where they had strong family ties. The extended family lived in the same area and they visited each other frequently. They also had a very active social life within their neighbourhoods. All the women had in common that they missed the social life they used to have back in their countries. Hiba explained: “I have a nice home here and my life is better but I am bored and I feel lonely here, I am sitting at home almost the whole day. I used to go out and see my friends and meet my family almost every day.” Zena’s story is similar: “My life has changed since I left my country […] I am sitting at home almost the whole day. I used to go out and see my friends and meet my family.”

It is common among immigrants who come from very different ethnic groups to attempt to keep the connections to their culture of origin in order to decrease the feeling of homesickness and loneliness. Two factors were important in the participants’ immigration experience: ability and flexibility. For example, Hanan, the oldest woman in the group, did not find it hard to adapt to the Icelandic society. Hanan was flexible and open to the Icelandic culture. She was grateful, “happy and satisfied” to be in Iceland. Even though she experienced many social and cultural barriers to be accepted and welcomed in Icelandic society, it was enough for her to feel “stable and secure”. The biggest obstacle for Hanan was being far from her family but she dealt with that by communicating almost every day using social media.

Marah had a different experience. She felt that adaptation was very hard and slow because she wore a headscarf and was worried about people’s reactions. After Marah first came to Iceland she “preferred to stay at home and never go out”, because of her Islamic outfit. She was depressed and withdrawn for a long time. Marah was isolated until she made a personal decision to “integrate more into the society by learning Icelandic”. When she started to learn the language, she felt more confident and she decided to find a job to communicate more with people. Marah was very stressed in her first days at work, worrying about communication and she was afraid that people might not accept her headscarf. However, she mentioned that everyone was willing to help her and that no one bothered her because of her headscarf. She was happy at work and continued to learn the language.

Qamar’s experience was similar, she found it hard to adapt because of her headscarf. She noted that learning the language was the key to adapting to the Icelandic society. Qamar was one of the refugee women who started to learn the language soon after she arrived. She participated in an organised program for refugees which included learning the language and some aspects of Icelandic culture. Getting to know the Icelandic society helped the women and was an important part of their adaptation process.

Arab Muslim immigrant women in this research described very different cultural and religious backgrounds which affected their adaptation processes. The women who came from very conservative families found it harder to adapt than the women who came from more liberal families. Aya had no problem shaking hands with men or even friendly hugs. Hiba’s experience was very different, she felt “guilty” when she had to shake hands with men, but she was too shy to tell them that in her society people do not shake hands with the opposite sex. In her country, the opposite sexes greet each other by leaving a space between them and putting their right hand over their heart. Likewise, Lubna claimed that she was unhappy that men and women sat together when they visited each other because, in her country, men and women would be seated in different rooms.

The interviews reflected that all the participants experienced positive and negative transfers in their lives after they immigrated to Iceland. Some of the changes in the participants’ lives helped their adaptation processes. For example, for Maryam, Lubna and Marah, working was a big transformation in their lives; they used it to meet people and learn about the Icelandic culture and also to learn the language, which they considered as the key to understanding the social structures.

The findings indicate that the most obvious changes in the women’s lives occurred in their lifestyle and personality. One of the women thought that she had a “more organised life”. In her opinion, she had started to think like Icelanders who “have time organised for everything; for work, food, family, study, and holidays. They work during the winter and travel in the summer”. Another woman said that she is more “responsible” than she used to be in her country. She has learned how to “respect and deal with people”.

The women feel that living in Iceland gave them more control over their own lives. Seven of the women said they used to spend most of their time in their home country caring about the family and its needs. After moving to Iceland, they were able to do more for themselves and “not only for the family”, like learning the language and having a job. This was a big change for them and they said they were more satisfied and confident and trying to be independent, even though the majority of them agreed that their roles within the home would not change.

Maryam, who had already found a job, expressed her feelings by saying: “I have a job and I feel that I am doing something for myself not only for my family, I am also learning Icelandic. I feel more confident and appreciated.” Similarly, Lubna’s lifestyle has changed. She “used to stay at home most of the time” caring for the children and doing housework. Going out alone was not possible for her and “her husband always had to be with her if she wanted to go out”. After she moved to Iceland, she was very happy that her life is “totally different”. Lubna said that in Iceland she is a “stronger woman”. She is “looking for a job, goes shopping alone sometimes, takes her children alone for a walk”. She also added that “the women who work or study are more appreciated and responsible”. Lubna’s husband supports and “encourages” her “to study and work which was impossible” in her country because of the traditions which made women feel “guilty” if they decided to get a job.

The support of the husbands played an important role in the acceptance and adaptation to the Icelandic lifestyle. Marah’s husband “helped and supported” her “a lot” to adapt to her different Islamic dress. He also helped her to understand the different lifestyle and gender role values in Iceland. Marah explained how her life is different in Iceland by saying: “My lifestyle has changed a lot. There were many things I couldn’t do in my country but here I can, like driving and learning another language. Now I am studying. It is just different here.”

Gender roles and values

The women all experienced differences in gender roles from their home countries. According to the women in this study, traditionally women have fewer rights in their countries, for example in education, work and choice of a husband. The women explained that girls have limited freedom in their countries and parents restrict girls’ social life because girls are special and have different roles. Five of the women did not go to school or stopped studying because of traditions which consider girls as a source of honour that has to be protected by their families. As Hiba described: “I studied only to 6th grade because it is thought that it is better for girls to stay at home and marry early. Only boys can continue studying and go to university.”

The women pointed out that in Arab societies men and women have different responsibilities. The women’s priority is inside the homes, doing housework and raising children while men are obliged to take care of the household expenses. As Hanan explained: “it is shameful for men to help with any housework […] In Iceland men clean and cook and wash the dishes. In addition, women are often financially independent.” Similarly, Zena explained the responsibilities of men and women in her country: “Men’s responsibilities are to go and have a job and make money while women’s responsibilities are inside her home, doing housework and caring for the children. Even if a woman has a job, it doesn’t give her the right to ask for help in cleaning or cooking but if a man helps her that means that he is a very good man.”

The findings indicate that women who are married to Arab men who have lived for a long time in Europe have different experiences from the women who are married to men who have always lived in Arab countries. Marah said she was happy that all the responsibilities inside her home are shared between her and her husband because “he has been living in Europe for a long time, he knows about women’s rights”. He supported her integration by helping her with her Icelandic language homework.

On the other hand, Fatima’s husband, who has also lived in Europe for a long time, was different. When she first came to Iceland her husband was very helpful but after a while he “began behaving like a typical Arab man, giving orders, controlling” her life and limiting her freedom. She said: “My husband didn’t want me to go out or learn the language”.

The different gender roles in Iceland have positively influenced these women. Most of the women participating in this study have tried to adopt new roles at the same time as accepting their traditional responsibilities.  Fatima explains: “The way of thinking is different. Men here (in Iceland) respect women and help them while in Arab countries they try to control them as much as they can.” This adoption could be comprehended in the common desire of most of these women to learn the language and to get jobs outside the home. Hence, most of the women believed that their responsibilities at home would not change even if they got a job and shared the household expenses. Lubna said: “Even if I had a job he (her husband) would not help me with cleaning or cooking. Arab men are not used to doing it and they would not.” The home is still a very private place, as exemplified by Luban: “if my husband does anything bad to me I will not complain or go to the police, and I will not ask for a divorce because this will affect my children and my family and my life, I am happy like this and I can deal with my problems inside my home.”

Cultural and religious identity

Religion plays an instrumental role in the lives of all the interviewees. Their religious identity is reflected in their commitment to religion: praying, fasting, reading and following the Holy Quran and the Islamic dress or hijab. Religion is also the foundation of their cultural identity and a way to maintain their traditions and lifestyle. This was clearly demonstrated in their responses when asked what specific cultural traditions they brought with them to Iceland. Lubna said: “My commitment to my religion, praying, fasting and reading the holy Quran.” Hiba agreed: “The most important things which are always with me and I bring here are my commitment to my religion, my prayers, reading the holy Quran, not shaking hands with men, and my Islamic outfit.”

As Muslim women, religious practices before immigration mostly occurred inside the home. However, the lack of an Islamic religious atmosphere outside the home made them feel that they do not belong. The absence of a religious atmosphere was a big concern for the women who were afraid of losing their identity. Zena found it strange not to hear the voice of the Adhan (the call to pray which is heard loudly five times a day in all Muslim countries), and she was very emotional when she said: “They don’t have a mosque […] I miss our religious atmosphere.”

In addition, being recognised as a Muslim woman was important to the participants after immigrating to Iceland. The Islamic outfit or headscarf which makes Muslim women visible is a very important part of the interviewees’ religious and cultural identity. Hiba describes: “My Islamic outfit is my identity and I am happy to wear it.”; Lubna said: “I am proud of my headscarf. It is only for me and I don’t like to be criticized because of it, but luckily here in Iceland people accept me as I am.”

The women in the study explained that Icelanders are very curious to know more about the Islamic outfit. Most other immigrants in Iceland are from Eastern Europe and they are not identifiable, whereas the Arab Muslim women wearing headscarves stand out. When asked about her feelings when they wear the Islamic outfit, Zena said: “When I am wearing my Islamic outfit I feel people are very curious about it, they want to understand why we wear it.” Some worried if they would be accepted, as Maryam explained: “I was afraid about how people in Iceland would treat me with my Islamic outfit. They are curious to know more about it, so they ask many questions and sometimes I feel they don’t believe that we have hair (laugh).”

Nevertheless, all of the women agreed that this curiosity about the headscarf makes them feel uneasy. All the participants faced either questions about their headscarves or uncomfortable looks, although these questions about the Hijab did not bother some of my interviewees. Hanan described: “My Hijab is part of me and people here respect it. Sometimes they ask me why I wear it or they want to see my hair. These kinds of questions don’t bother me and my answer is that this is my religion and God asks me to do it.”

On the other hand, the younger women were more sensitive to these kinds of questions or looks. They explained how young people have strange ideas about the Hijab. They said most Icelanders do respect and appreciate them as Muslim women, although a few of them do not, especially young people. For example, Qamar was not sure if people respected her Islamic outfit. She was very upset when she explained that one girl thought that she wore a headscarf because she did not have hair: “I am not sure if people respect my Islamic outfit. They tried to tell me that I would be more beautiful without it. Sometimes they ask strange questions like once a girl asked me if I have hair… can you imagine!!”

The one woman who chose not to wear the headscarf was challenged by her own community. Aya was a bit excluded and she explained that her relaxed dress code was taken as a sign of excessive freedom in other matters, especially by Arab men. She blamed the Arab traditions which make her be judged according to her appearance by saying:

I don’t wear a special costume like a headscarf or long tunic and that causes me to have troubles, not with Icelanders but with other Arab people who live here especially men. I feel that I don’t belong to the Arab community in any way. They judge me by my looks and my clothes and forget other things. This is the Arabic way of thinking, unfortunately.

When asked if they consider their Islamic dress as a barrier to accessing the facilities in Iceland, most women said it does not. They felt glad that they were respected as they are. In addition, they are all planning to have jobs and some already do. Fatima explained: “My religion is very important no matter where I am. I wear the headscarf and inside my home, I sometimes wear the traditional dress. I don’t consider my headscarf or dress as barriers to accessing the facilities in Iceland. People respect me as I am and do not judge my dress at all.”

Others described their experience as similar, except for one younger woman who thought her Islamic outfit was a barrier. Qamar felt that there would be people anywhere who did not understand her Islamic outfit and would need time to accept it. She said: “I consider my Islamic outfit as a barrier to accessing services, and not just in Iceland because people need time to accept and understand me, it might take time until they become used to my Islamic outfit.”

The findings revealed that all women have a common hope to preserve their culture and traditions for their children. The interviewees thought it is important to preserve their religious and cultural identities and this was obvious when they insisted on teaching their religion, culture and traditions to their children. Arab Muslim immigrant women’s traditions, norms and values are influenced by Islam, which is considered as a way of life for most of these women. The women preserved a strong sense of their own religious and cultural identity, but their identity was also changing by having jobs and learning the language which helps them to integrate more into the Icelandic society.

One of the important factors which help the participants maintain their religious and cultural identities was the supportive local community, especially for the refugee women. Before moving to Iceland some of the women felt stressed because they had so little information about the people in Iceland. These women were worried about the way they would be treated in Iceland because of their different cultures and special outfit. After they moved to Iceland, some of the women were surprised about how welcome they were, which made their adaptation process easier. Hiba explained: “Yes, I feel welcome, all Icelanders I have met have shown me respect and they are happy to have us here. They have helped us a lot since we arrived. In the same way, I also respect them and always try to show my best behaviour.” Other women described their experiences as being similar.

Discussion

The findings indicate that the immigration of Arab Muslim women to Iceland created a cultural conflict, which led to social and cultural challenges. Even though the different environment and the weather was the first shock for all the women in this study, the cultural shock has had more effect on the women’s lives and adaptation process in the long run. The findings showed that the women adopted two acculturation strategies: separation and integration. When it comes to Islam, the women chose to maintain their religion and said that Islam is the foundation of their lives. It plays a prominent role in their lives and it influences every aspect of their daily activities. The women adapted to the new society while keeping their commitment to their religion and celebrating their religious festivals. For some of them, religion is considered as a culture and tradition which they grew up with and which they feel a need to maintain and keep their commitment to and teach to the next generation. The women coped with their membership of a minority religious group by putting an extra effort into ensuring that their children kept their home country’s religion, traditions and beliefs. The women were dissatisfied with the unequal gender roles in their countries, while at the same time they maintained this gender regime, for example by being more relaxed about raising boys than girls.

The feeling of being unwelcomed and discriminated against based on their race make immigrant women feel isolated and disappointed (Kim, 2017). However, the women in the study all felt welcomed and appreciated in the Icelandic society. The supportive welcoming society made the women’s immigration experience more positive. Social networks in the new society play an important role in supporting immigrants and may reduce the loneliness and the trauma of family separation. These social support networks assist immigrants during their adaptation process to the new life in the new country (Kim, 2017). Still, the women in the study expressed a feeling of loneliness and some felt isolated.

Kim (2017) found that immigrants tend to have a special social connection with their ethnic group and in line with that all the women in this research have good connections with Arab society. Ethnic groups tend to keep their original identity as part of their ethnic community. In the host country, they meet to share, among others, language, music, food which they had in their culture and which may help to decrease the acculturation stress and the loneliness of the family separation (Kim, 2017). The relationships with the other women from the same ethnic group helped the participants mentally and emotionally when they needed help. Although strong relationships between the same ethnic group members help ethnic immigrants in their early adaptation, this may limit their integration and active involvement in the host society which can lead to more isolation after a while (Kim, 2001).

The women integrated into the Icelandic society by adjusting to some of its values and behaviours. Most of the women showed that they respected and accepted the new culture with a positive attitude and showed an interest in adapting to new values in Icelandic society like gender role values. This is in line with Perdelli’s (2004) findings from Norway where Arab Muslim immigrants use the flexibility of Islam to be employed outside the home and to get help from their male relatives. The participants in this study were empowered by the Icelandic gender roles values and most of the women had tried to find a job (some already had one) or were learning the language to become more integrated into the Icelandic society. Hence, they had faced many challenges and obstacles related to the different cultural values between the two societies.

Language is considered to be the key to the adaptation of immigrants. Learning the language is an effective way for immigrants to get to know the new culture with its beliefs, norms and values and to manage the daily activity in an effective way and deal with obstacles in the new society (Kim, 2001). By having a job or being able to speak Icelandic, the participants felt more appreciated and confident. Increasing the ability to interact with the locals using the host society language is one of the highest achievements for immigrants (Kim, 2001). All the women, except the oldest one, were aware of the importance of learning the language. Most of them were enrolled in Icelandic courses and some had private teachers to help them at home. Learning the language is important for immigrants, not only to build a bridge with the host society, but it is a sign of integration in the host society (Kim, 2001).

The participants introduced themselves as Arab Muslims. They shared a heightened sense of their cultural background. However, because of their immigration experience, the women faced a change in the construction of their identity. These women immigrated from countries where they belonged to a majority (religion and culture), while in Iceland they belong to a minority group. This relocation between the different societies produces new hybrid identities, often with religion as their foundation. Religion plays a significant role in the construction of the new identity for many immigrants especially when they are a minority religious group (Duderija, 2007).

The women’s new hybrid identity is a mix of their ethnic identity and the new values and behaviours that they are adopting in the new culture. The participants selected the Icelandic cultural values which suited their way of thinking as Arab Muslim women. However, the women were caught between the two cultures in some ways. None of the women felt fully integrated into Icelandic society, they chose to balance the two cultures and adapted themselves to the new environment while preserving their own cultural identity and background (Kim, 2010). They had different degrees of acceptance of the new Icelandic cultural values depending on their personal flexibility and the extent they wanted to keep or change their own cultural values. Some women had difficulty incorporating their own Arabic cultural values into Icelandic western cultural values. For example, shaking hands with the opposite gender was a problem for at least three women in this study, whereas others did not mention it at all.

The process of developing the new mixed identity is challenging for immigrants because of the importance of maintaining their religious identity (Berry, 2005; Bereza, 2010; Kim, 2010). The participants insisted on being identified as Muslim women outside the home by wearing their Islamic outfit. The women’s Islamic headscarf confirmed their Muslim identity and is a highly salient aspect of their religious identity (Guðmundsdóttir, 2012; Ólafsdóttir, 2017). Arab Muslim women who wear headscarves agreed that their Islamic headscarf was one of the biggest challenges they faced in Iceland outside the capital area. None of the women mentioned any kind of racism regarding their appearance. However, the women were challenged by the curiosity of people who wanted to know more about it. Identity construction is related to how the host society perceive immigrants and not only the way they introduce themselves (Eriksen, 2002; Ólafsdóttir, 2017). The women hoped that the Icelandic society would not judge them according to their appearance but would appreciate them for their personal qualities and behaviours.

Conclusion

The findings revealed that Arab Muslim immigrant women are generally doing well in Iceland. However, they need more time to integrate fully into Icelandic society. The study found that there are varieties of cultural and social barriers which make Arab Muslim immigrant women’s integration process slow. The different environment, cultural and social differences, the variety of cultural values like gender roles and childrearing values, language, dress code and children’s schooling and future are the main challenging factors faced by the women and cause some struggling to adjust to the Icelandic society.

The participants perceive themselves according to their ethnic identity. On one hand, the women admitted to some adaption to new western values and ways of thinking. They found themselves caught between the two different cultures struggling with different values and norms, which led to mixed identity to help them define accurately who they are and where they fit in. The women were not able to separate their religion from their ethnicity since religion plays a significant role in their lives. Life in the new country was organised around following and respecting Islamic teaching. This influenced the type of clothes worn, their ability to have communication with the opposite gender, to find a job and to control their family life inside and outside their home. On the other hand, the women were able to control and choose the values and behaviours which were not dictated by their Islamic roots and beliefs. In addition, the findings showed that the longer Arab Muslim immigrant women had lived in Iceland, the more they had become open to Icelandic values.

One of the important factors affecting and making the women’s immigration experience more positive is a supportive society. The locals’ positive attitudes towards the women, especially the refugee women, encourage them to integrate more into Icelandic society and to learn the language or find a job. Nevertheless, the lack of language skills limited the women’s social activities and interaction with the locals which caused a feeling of non-belonging. The findings suggest that learning the Icelandic language would lead Arab immigrant Muslim women to a better life and ease adaptation into the new society.

 

References

Akaranga S.I. & Makau B.K. (2016). Ethical Considerations and their Applications to Research: A Case of the University of Nairobi. Journal of Educational Policy and Entrepreneurial Research 3(12), 1–96.

Barkdull, C., Khaja, K., Queiro-Tajalli, I., Swart, A., Cunningham, D., & Dennis, S. (2011). Experiences of Muslims in four Western countries post—9/11. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work 26(2), 139–153.

Bereza, M. (2010). Immigrant adaptation and acculturation orientations. Unpublished BS dissertation. University of Iceland, Reykjavík.

Berry J.W. (2005). Acculturation: living successfully in two cultures. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 29(6), 697–712.

Cook, I., & Crang, M. (1995). Doing ethnographies: Concepts and techniques in modern geography. Norwich: School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia.

Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed.). Sage Publications, Inc.

Duderija, A. (2007). Literature Review: Identity Construction in the Context of Being a Minority Immigrant Religion: The Case of Western-born Muslims. Immigrants & Minorities 25(2), 141–162.

Erel, U. (2009). Migrant women transforming citizenship: Life-stories from Britain and Germany. Routledge.

Erel, U. (2010). Migrating cultural capital: Bourdieu in migration studies. Sociology 44(4), 642–660.

Guðmundsdóttir, V.B. (2012). „Þetta er ekki bara hlýðni“. Sjálfsímyndarsköpun múslímakvenna. Unpublished MA dissertation. University of Iceland, Reykjavík.

Ísberg, R. N. (2010). Migration and Cultural Transmission: Making a Home in Iceland. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of London, London.

Kim, Y. Y. (2001). Becoming intercultural: An integrative theory of communication and crosscultural adaptation. Sage.

Kim, Y. Y. (2017). Cross-Cultural Adaptation. Communication. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.21

Lawrence, J. & Tar, U. (2013). The use of grounded theory technique as a practical tool for qualitative data collection and analysis. The Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods 11(1), 29–40.

Ólafsdóttir, H. (2017). Mitt val: Sjónarhorn múslimskra kvenna á aðlögun og notkun blæju í nýjum menningarheimum. Unpublished BA dissertation. University of Iceland, Reykjavík.

Patton, M.Q. (2002). Two Decades of Developments in Qualitative Inquiry: A Personal, Experiential Perspective. Qualitative Social Work 1(3), 261–283.

Predelli, L. N. (2004). Interpreting gender in Islam: A case study of immigrant Muslim women in Oslo, Norway. Gender and society 18(4), 473–493.

Seddeeq, A. H. (2017). Islam in Iceland. In Bilá, A. (Ed.), Muslims are: Challenging stereotypes, changing perceptions. Baštová: Nadácia otvorenej spoločnosti – Open Society Foundation.

Statistic Iceland. (2020a). Population. Retrieved from https://statice.is/statistics/population/inhabitants/background/

Statistic Iceland. (2020b). Population. Retrieved from https://px.hagstofa.is/pxen/pxweb/en/Ibuar/Ibuar__mannfjoldi__3_bakgrunnur__Faedingarland/MAN12103.px

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2018). ‘Refugees’ and ‘Migrants’ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Retrieved from https://www.refworld.org/docid/56e81c0d4.html

Valentine M., M. (2004). Towards Gender Equality in the Arab/Middle East Region: Islam, culture, and feminist activism. Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Retrieved from http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/towards-gender-equality-arabmiddle-east-region

Woods, L., Priest, H., & Roberts P. (2002). An overview of three different approaches to the interpretation of qualitative data. Part 2: Practical illustrations. Nurse Researcher 10(1), 43–51.

Alexandra Délano Alonso, From Here and There: Diaspora Policies, Integration, and Social Rights beyond Borders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)

Since the pivotal work on transnationalism by Glick-Schiller, Basch and Blanc-Szanton (1992), a number of studies have investigated transnationalism as a perspective on migration that goes beyond earlier concepts of one-way assimilation. Whilst the boundaries between host country and receiving country are becoming increasingly intertwined, studies on transnational migration have for the most part focused on the perspective of the receiving country. Immigrant integration is frequently framed as processes that are taking place in the receiving countries alone, placing the responsibility for integration on actors on immigrants’ countries of destination, e.g. migrants, migrant organizations or the government of the receiving country. The receiving country bias in migration research prevails (Castles, 2010; Czaika & De Haas, 2014). There remains a gap in the literature on the impact of actors in countries of departure on the well-being and incorporation of immigrants in the societies in which they reside.

Alexandra Délano Alonso book, “From Here and There: Diaspora Policies, Integration, and Social Rights beyond Border”, goes beyond the prevailing focus on the destination country in research on transnationalism as it looks at institutions supporting the integration of Latin-American immigrants in the United States and Canada, highlighting the role of the destination country. The book is a case study of initiatives in the United States and Canada, focusing primarily on Mexican diaspora organizations and other Latin American diaspora organizations. A central claim and contribution of this work is its focus on the responsibility and accountability of various actors, particularly actors in immigrants’ countries of origin, which have not been largely discussed in the literature. In order to analyze this claim, Alexandra Délano Alonso analyzes actors on several levels, such as civic participation and diaspora organizations as well as the consulates of the countries of origin and the country of destination.

After providing an overview of the theoretical background of looking at diaspora policies as integration, the book focuses especially on two case studies, namely two programs offered to Latin American immigrants in the United States by Mexican diaspora organizations: Ventanillas and Plazas Communitarias. While Ventanillas focuses on health care of migrants, Plazas Communitarians are a provider of adult education, for example English language training. Then, the analysis is extended towards collaborations between different diaspora organizations in the United States and Canada. Alexandra Délano Alonso demonstrates that there is a significant number of examples of collaborative projects across various Latin American diaspora organizations. The role of Mexico is in this context in some cases a best-practice example and Mexican diaspora organizations further provide resources used by other diaspora organizations. Subsequently, the author discusses aspects of return and reintegration.

Alexandra Délano Alonso discusses the efforts of diaspora initiatives and the countries of origin to support immigrant integration into both the destination countries and immigrants’ countries of origin. The author particularly highlights imbalances in efforts of immigrants’ countries of origin, which tend to focus on the integration of immigrants in the destination countries, especially “in relation to migrants with precarious status” (p. 158).

In her work, Alexandra Délano Alonso raises questions about “Rethinking transnational responsibility for the well-being of migrants, including their social and political rights in another country” (p. 174). This approach, therefore, shifts the responsibility towards the perspective of the governments of the sending countries. The book further highlights various points and limitations in research, for example that the programs and initiatives discussed in the research have favored certain groups of migrants and that efforts of the governments discourse have for the most part focused on the integration of migrants in the country of destination. Drawing on these findings, Alexandra Délano Alonso makes a claim for an extension of these efforts towards more intersectionality and increased inclusion of groups of migrants, which at the point of this study benefit less from the organizations and programs discussed in this case study than other groups of migrants.

The term “integration” features prominently in the title of the book. Alexandra Délano Alonso highlights that her work looks at integration as a two-way process in contrast to previous notions of one-way assimilation. Whilst being one of the key word in the title of the book, in the conclusion the term “integration” is discussed in a rather short paragraph. As, in fact, the book does not simply look at integration as a two-way process between the destination country and migrants, but includes actors on various levels and across several borders, the study provides a new perspective on migrant integration. While the author does acknowledge the need for new theoretical perspective, discussing migrant integration and concluding that a “multilayered approach” (p. 186) is much needed, this aspect is not emphasized in the contribution. The conclusion primarily emphasizes the relevance of the work in the context of current political developments in the United States. In addition, however, the data collected and the original angle of this work could provide material for a more in depths discussion of the implications of this work and its original contribution to transnational migration research from a theoretical angle. As mentioned earlier, the work does for example provide material to rethink “integration” as a concept through the findings of this case study.

The book shifts the perspective of the analysis towards the responsibility of actors in immigrants’ countries of origin to support the incorporation of immigrants into the receiving countries. Even though the author does not provide an in depth discussed of the findings of the study on a theoretical level, the shift in responsibility suggested by the researcher can be adapted to other case studies as well. As the receiving country bias in migration studies prevails, this work provides an interesting angle on the role of immigrants’ countries of origin. Alexandra Délano Alonso’s work is thus a continuation of immigrants’ involvement in the receiving countries from a transnational perspective and provides valuable insights for a further reconceptualization of theories of immigrant integration.

 

 

References

 

Castles, S. (2010). Understanding Global Migration: A Social Transformation Perspective.      Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(10), 1565–1586. doi: 10.1080/1369183x.2010.489381

 

Czaika, M., & Haas, H. D. (2014). The Globalization of Migration: Has the World Become More Migratory? International Migration Review, 48(2), 283–323. doi: 10.1111/imre.12095

 

Schiller, N. G., Basch, L., & Blanc-Szanton, C. (1992). Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 645(1), 1–24. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1992.tb33484.x

 

The Changing Feelings of Otherness: Surprise, empathy, hostility as evidenced in Frank Westerman’s El negro and me

We are in a time of changes. Climate change, population change, social change, political change, identity change (in many countries).

It is very likely that, in the past, people often had the sensation that they were living in a time of change. It is even possible that one of the things that never change in human history is the fact that people have the impression to live in a time of change. The Heraclitean way of looking at things existed and probably prevailed since a very long time. Nothing is new under the sun, including the impression that things are changing.

However, something is different this time because the change does exhibit certain specificities. First, the change is not restricted to a specific area: it is global. It is physical (warming) as well as demographic (population change) and it has diffuse and complex consequences on identities. For these reasons, it is not comparable to previous experiences of change. We are thus not only in a time of change but also in a time of a new kind of change.

And one could ask: Can we adapt to the changes that are going on? Can we absorb the changes that are coming? Or are these changes too massive to be bearable for many of us? If these changes are involving our identities, is the plasticity of human identities sufficiently elevated to render these changes possible? Indeed, the plasticity of identities is at the core of any change and specially of those that involve mixing people of various origins as it has been already noted by thinkers of identity  (see, for instance, Taylor, 1989).

One of the ways to address these questions is to examine, not the change itself, but the feelings associated with that change. Indeed, although this change has new features, it involves also traditional forms of feelings that can be analyzed through many ways.

 

 

El negro and me: a book from Frank Westerman

Among these ways, I chose to take a careful look to a book from Frank Westerman called El negro and me because it describes very vividly a large array of feelings that persons can experience from each other when a change in their vicinity occurs (Westerman, 2004).

Frank Westerman is a Dutch writer and a journalist. He published El Negro and me in 2004. The book tells the story of a stuffed man who was exposed for decades in a museum in Spain. But it is also a reflection on multiculturalism. Multiculturalism, Westerman argues, is not about cultures but about feelings. This idea can also be found in the work of Charles Taylor who published an important book on multiculturalism in 1992 that has, since then, become a classic: Multiculturalism (Taylor, 1992). More precisely: it is about feelings that arise when cultures are coming close to each other.

What are the feelings that are described in El Negro and me? At a first glance, the book seems to be full of political correctness. In other terms, it conveys or, at least, seems to convey, good feelings (an entity that is always suspicious in the debate on multiculturalism, although probably unavoidable) more than rigorous thoughts. When Westerman discovers «El Negro» for the first time, he would confess, he felt ashamed to see that people could have done this. He relates these feelings with his Christian education. But this is only, as one will see, a first impression. Indeed, the analysis of feelings that Westerman would be lead to conduct turned out to be very insightful.

 

 

History of « El Negro »

Let me describe briefly the content of the book. From its opening in 1916 to 2000, in the museum of the city of Banyoles, in the north of Spain (almost in the midst between Barcelona and the Perpignan), a stuffed black man could be seen. The book is the history of what happens to «El Negro», as he was called by the inhabitants of Banyoles.

The man called «El Negro» is a «bechuana» that comes from South Africa and that has been stuffed like an animal after its death, probably around 1830, by a Frenchman named Jules Verreaux, an animal stuffer and the son of an animal stuffer that was, at the time, commercializing many kinds of stuffed animals (lions, crocodiles, elephants, turtles and many species of birds) in Place des Vosges, in the very center of Paris.

Jules Verreaux did «dig out» a freshly buried man from Bechuana (now called Botzwana) in South Africa. He had to proceed very carefully, because this is one of the thing that can lead to a deadly trial if people from Bechuana discovered it. He thus took important risks when he decided to do what he did. And he felt that these risks were giving him some rights on the cadaver.

Jules Verreaux took «El Negro» with him when he went back to France. He expected to have a great success with the exhibition of a specimen of humanity that was quiet unknown in Europe at that time (first part of the XIX th century).

People in France (or later in Spain where he was exhibited, as we will soon see: this point is not clear) probably found that the specimen was not black enough because someone decided to spread shoe polish on its skin in order to give him a brighter tincture. However, the success of the «piece» (as he was called) was not as great as expected and Jules Verreaux finally decided to sell «El Negro». It has been acquired by Francesc Darder, a doctor from Barcelona, presumably directly in Verreaux’s shop in Paris.

The stuffed man was exposed in the anthropological museum created by Francesc Darder that opened in 1916 in Banyoles. At the beginning, the exhibition was not well accepted by the population of the city who found strange to have a black person exposed in a museum. But later, «El Negro» became a sort of attraction and the most remarkable piece of the museum. El Negro was thus «adopted» by the population of Banyoles who finally found that it was part of its identity. This change of feelings of the population of Banyoles regarding his calm and painted guest is very remarkable and is the focal point of the analysis that Westerman will develop on the case. Let me continue the story before turning back to that point.

Meanwhile in 1991 a man from Haïti named Alphonse Arcelin, physician in Cambrils (at about fifty kilometers in the south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast), who married a Spanish woman, heard about the presence of « El Negro » in the museum of Banyoles. He was immediately shocked and felt aggressed by the presence of such a piece in the museum. He was even shocked by this term of «piece» used to described the stuffed man. Indeed, the adequate world to describe it is not without rising problems: it is not a thing, it is not a person, it is not a statue, it is not a cadaver either, although it has been prepared from a cadaver. But the term «piece» that contributes to agglutinate El Negro with things like potteries and weapons that were making a large part of the things exposed in the museum was not a correct term, according to Arcelin.

In fact, Arcelin always refused to see «El Negro». He only heard about him. The simple idea of the presence of a man stuffed in a museum was repulsing enough for him. He felt that exposing dead people like animals was a kind of disrespect. Arcelin consequently began a struggle that would last for nine years and that were to result in the «restitution» of El Negro to South Africa where «El Negro» is now buried, invisible for anyone.

 

 

Changing feelings

So let me turn back to the feelings described by Westerman. Very interesting are the changing feelings triggered by «El Negro». I said that Westerman was first ashamed when he saw the «piece». But it turned out that his feelings were much more complex as the inquiry he was conducting did goes on. This is partly due to the fact that Westerman adopts the feelings of the people he describes in his story. As a journalist, he was trying to describe the often-contradictory nature of these feelings.

These feelings involve religious values, as we have seen, but they also involve money and profit, as well as a notion of identity, a notion of national (or local) pride, political commitments, a kind of empathy, sometime, they involve a feeling of distance, sometimes, a kind of hostility, a sense of humanity, and so on.

In other terms, it is not a feeling but rather a bunch of contradictory feelings that Westerman had to describe when he was investigating on El Negro. Westerman shows that the encounter with the otherness involves feelings that cannot be subsumed under a single concept. In such a way that in the course of its inquiry, instead of finding answers, he found emerging questions which prevent him to formulate any definitive conclusion.

But the fact that the author cannot conclude is, in itself, an interesting conclusion. In the description of these feelings, Westerman was thinking to build a kind of multiculturalist theory of being with others. He did not achieve to build such a theory. But because it gives some clues to those who are seeking to do the same thing, it is interesting to look carefully at the points he did mentioned and to address these points as objections to the contemporary theory of multiculturalism.

 

 

«El Negro» integrates into the identity of the inhabitants of Banyoles

Westerman showed that «El Negro» progressively became a part of the identity of the city of Banyoles, in such a way that when Arcelin attempted to make its stuffed body go back to Africa, a large part of the population of the city of Banyoles did demonstrated under the cry of «Queda’t»: «He stays».

Thus, we have a complete inversion of roles: Arcelin who presented himself as the one who was acting for the dignity of «El Negro» finally did contribute to make him disappear, while people from Banyoles were ready to fight for him and were seeing him as a symbol of what they are and of their openness to others. This is showing, at least, how versatile and changing the feelings of identity can be. What can appear as strange and curious at a given time can turn out to be a part of identity a few years later. The history of all populations and of all countries provides many examples of such «changing» identity.

Multiculturalism is sometimes criticized for diluting social cohesion or for creating cultural fragmentation, or even, for destroying national identity and for providing a ground for radicalism, for encouraging a restriction of freedom of expression, amongst other things (Prins and Saharso, 2013).

In a debate that grows since decades «multiculturalism» is opposed to «republican integration», the latter being supposedly a remedy for the bunch of feelings that Westerman has identified: all these feelings are indeed supposed to melt in a common «republican feeling».

The opposition of these two models, the republican model and the multiculturalist model, is the focusing point of a large discussion in which many aspects of the opposition has been evaluated. Canada, partly because of the structure of its population and partly for historical reasons (the country did develop a multiculturalist policy at the end of the 20th century), has been a case in point in the debate. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor did propose a thorough investigation of the notion of multiculturalism and was also appointed by the Canadian government to elaborate propositions for the policy of the country.* Taylor argues that «we define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us» (Taylor, 1994).

 

 

The correct question to be addressed

The feelings generated by the encounter of the other depend, Westerman shows, on the changes of identity that are experienced in the encounter itself. When the changes are occurring rapidly, the feelings of hostility predominate. Examples in contemporary Europe could be found easily. However, identity being itself a highly changeable feeling, it is also very sensitive to time.

In other terms, the otherness of today is the identity of tomorrow but with an important «if»: If time is given for the new identity to be build. Thus, to go back to the initial question, the question is not «can we absorb the new changes that are coming?» but rather «do we have time to absorb the new changes that are coming?»

This is, in fact, a very different way to address the question of identity than the way from where we started. Identities need time to change. Taylor and Bouchard, in their report to Canadian government write: «Identities are thus shifting and assuredly constructed, even occasionally contradictory, but not artificial for all that» (Bouchard-Taylor, 2008). Thus, the question is not are identities changing but how fast does identity change? How long does it take to rebuild identity according to a new situation? And, above all: is the situation changing faster than identity can change or is the opposite true?

These are the questions to which the reading of Westerman can lead. Accordingly, the reading of El negro and meis presumably more helpful to displace questions than to answer questions. But precisely: displacing questions can be more important than answering questions. Therefore, it constitutes an important matter in the debate.

 

 

References

Barrett M. (ed.) (2013), Interculturalism and multiculturalism: similarities and differences, Strasbourg, Council of Europe Publishing.

Bouchard G. and Taylor  C. (2008), Building the future. A time for reconciliation, report to the Gouvernement du Québec, Legal deposit – Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec.

Bouchard G. (2015), Interculturalism, a view from Quebec, Toronto, University of Toronto Press.

Joppke C. (2018), “War of words: interculturalism vs. multiculturalism”, in Comparative Migration Studies, 6 (1): 11.

Kymlicka  W (1995)., Multicultural citizenship, Oxford, Oxford UP, 1995.

Kymlicka W. (2016), “Defending Diversity in an Era of Populism: Multiculturalism and Interculturalism Compared”, in N. Meer, T. Modood, & R. Zapata-Barrero (eds.), in Multiculturalism and Interculturalism: Debating the Dividing Lines, Edinbugh, Edinburgh UP.

Prins B. and Saharso S. (2013),Multiculturalism and Identity”, inThe Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics, ed. by G. Waylen, K. Celis, J. Kantola and S.L. Weldon, Oxford, Oxford UP.

Taylor C. (1989), Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Harvard, Harvard UP.

Taylor C. (1992), Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”, Princeton, Princeton UP.

Taylor C. (1994), “The Politics of Recognition” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, A. Gutmann (ed.), Princeton, Princeton UP.

Westerman F. (2004), El Negro and me, tr. en. by David Colmer, Amsterdam, Atlas.

* As the report states (Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, Building the future, A time for reconciliation, report to the Gouvernement du Québec, Legal deposit – Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, 2008): «On February 8, 2007, Québec Premier Jean Charest announced the establishment of the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences in response to public discontent concerning reasonable accommodation. The Order in Council establishing the Commission stipulated that it had a mandate to: a) take stock of accommodation practices in Québec; b) analyse the attendant issues bearing in mind the experience of other societies; c) conduct an extensive consultation on this topic; and d) formulate recommendations to the government to ensure that accommodation practices conform to Québec’s values as a pluralistic, democratic, egalitarian society». In 2013, Gérard Bouchard published a book partly based on the work he made with Charles Taylor: G. Bouchard, Interculturalism, a view from Quebec, University of Toronto Press, 2015. On the difference between multiculturalism and interculturalism, see: C. Joppke, “War of words: interculturalism vs. multiculturalism”, in Comparative Migration Studies, 6 (1): 11, 2018 ; see also: W. Kymlicka, “Defending Diversity in an Era of Populism: Multiculturalism and Interculturalism Compared”, in N. Meer, T. Modood, & R. Zapata-Barrero (Eds.), Multiculturalism and interculturalism: Debating the dividing lines, (pp. 158–177), Edinburgh, Edinburgh UP, 2016 ; see also: M. Barrett, Interculturalism and multiculturalism: similarities and differences, ed. M. Barrett, Strasbourg, Council of Europe Publishing, 2013: «First, it is important to note that interculturalism shares a number of features with multiculturalism […] However, over and above these similarities, interculturalism places a central emphasis on intercultural dialogue, interaction and exchange».

Exercising Empathy: Ancient Rhetorical Tools for Intercultural Communication

Can multiculturalism work? Can people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds live side by side peacefully and, even better, enrich each other? There are two ways social scientists can deal with this question. The first one, which I would label as “macro”, focuses on statistics and opinion surveys. A macro approach would, for instance, analyze the effects of an increase in religious and ethnic diversity on social indicators such as trust in neighbors, civic engagement or political participation (Bloemraad: 2006; Kesler & Bloemraad: 2010; Heath & Demireva: 2014). The second one, which I would label as “micro”, focuses on the skills citizens need for a better management of cultural diversity (Ruben: 1976; Bennett: 1986; Hammer et. al.: 2003; Walton et. al.: 2013). This paper falls into the second category and will provide support for two claims: (1) training for intercultural communication should focus first and foremost on empathy; (2) ancient rhetorical exercises offer an effective way to develop empathy.

To support the first claim, it will be argued that for a multicultural society to be peaceful, citizens need to be willing and able to use empathy when interacting with their fellow citizens of different religious, ethnic or ideological background (section I). A method to develop empathy using rhetorical exercises will then be described (section II)[1]. Finally, I present the results of an experiment to test its effectiveness with secondary school teachers (section III).

 

 

 

Empathy: a key skill for a better management of cultural diversity 

Intercultural communication research presents empathy as a skill, among others, that people have to master in order to manage cultural diversity[2]. I would argue that empathy plays a more fundamental role for the smooth running of a multicultural society: it is not just a component of intercultural competence, it is a necessary condition for peaceful intercultural contact.

A flaw in research on intercultural competence?

What is perceived as polite or important in one culture might be considered as rude or frivolous in another. The field of intercultural communication reflects on the means to avoid such misunderstandings (Beamer: 1992; Gudykunst: 1993; Fantani: 2009). For this purpose, several methods aim at forming effective intercultural communicators, able to be understood well while maintaining friendly interactions (Ruben 1976; Olebe & Koester: 1989; Bhawuk & Brislin: 1992; Olson & Kroeger: 2001; Deardorff: 2011; Hammer: 2012). I would, however, argue that those methods might not be relevant to meet the challenge of facilitating peaceful multiculturalism. Indeed, they were designed for and tested with people who are already willing and able to brave a multicultural world. For instance, Hammer (1984), Chen (1988), Williams (2005), Portala (2010) and Penbek (2012) conducted their experiments with international students; Ruben (1976), Graf (2004) and Hammer (2012) worked with staff members of international companies. Of course, students and professionals might need to fine-tune their intercultural competence and the above-mentioned methods are useful to this end. But the challenge of peaceful multiculturalism is of a different nature. It is not primarily about ensuring that students make the best out of their study abroad or about making sure that business expatriates are tactful enough to secure international deals. The challenge of multiculturalism is to allow people from different religious and cultural backgrounds, who happen to live side by side, to develop the willingness and the ability to interact peacefully. With regard to this challenge, empathy is the key skill.

The fate of multicultural societies depends on empathy

It has often been argued that empathy is a critical skill for peaceful intercultural contact. Indeed, several studies have demonstrated a link between empathy, the ability to mentally simulate others’ subjective experience (Decety: 2004) and altruism, that is caring for others’ wellbeing in our words and actions (Feshbach: 1975; Batson: 1981; Eisenberg & Miller: 1987; de Waal: 2008; Young & Waytz: 2013).

The way from empathy to altruism can be pictured as a Russian doll (de Wall: 2007). At the core of it lies a mechanism of emotional contagion: when we see somebody injured, sad or stressed this impacts us[3]. Emotional contagion often leads to sympathetic concern, an example of which is consolation. The upper level of empathy is an ability to perceive things from someone else’s perspective. Perspective taking relies on the lower level since emotional contagion gives us access to others’ subjectivity (Damasio: 2003; Ferrari & Gallese: 2007)[4]. But perspective taking also requires an ability to differentiate oneself from others. Empathy is thus more effortful and less immediate than sympathetic concern. Finally, altruism occurs when all levels smoothly run together: emotional contagion makes us care about others and perspective taking allows us to understand their needs. Altruism is almost automatic for people who are close to us. When dealing with people outside of our circle of care, the chain from perception of suffering to altruistic behaviors is much easier to break, especially when the target person is perceived as an outsider (Crisp & Meleady: 2012; Davidov et al.: 2013; Rhodes & Chalik: 2013). The fate of multicultural societies might thus depend on our ability to fix those empathy failures (Meier & Hinsz: 2004).

The causes of empathy failures in intergroup relations are well documented (Cikara et al: 2012). Among those causes, extreme ideologies are probably the most serious threat for peaceful multicultural societies (Pinker: 2012; Ginges & Atran: 2009). Ideologies are consistent sets of ideas that help us make sense of the events around us. Although ideologies are useful in this respect, they ultimately tend to increase empathy toward some people and to decrease empathy toward some others (Staub: 1990; Candace: 1997; Pinker: 2012; Ferry & Zagarella: 2013)[5]. During the process of indoctrination, one can even get locked in one single negative narrative about other communities (Berthoz: 2010; Costello & Hodson: 2014)[6]. A crucial challenge for multicultural societies is, therefore, to prevent those indoctrination processes by habituating citizens to take into account different points of view on events and people around them. It is especially important to start developing such a flexibility in one’s point of view’s during adolescence since the damages of indoctrination can be difficult to repair (Berthoz: 2004). This is where rhetorical exercises come into place.

 

 

The rhetorical exercise of empathy

Many scholars would agree on the importance of encouraging empathy early in citizens’ education (Nussbaum: 2010; Pinker: 2012); many of them would also propose their own method to do so (Gerdes et. al.: 2011). Why, then, use rhetorical exercises and how to do so?

Why use rhetorical exercises to develop empathy?

There are two main reasons why rhetorical exercises are especially relevant to engage development of empathy with teenagers and young adults: (1) rhetorical exercises are suitable for classroom work since they are stimulating and empowering (Heath: 2007; Woods: 2009; Ferry & Sans: 2014; Sans: 2017); (2) rhetorical exercises confront participants with the limits of empathy and help them develop the skills to overcome those limits.

It can be difficult to work on civic education with teenagers. There is always a risk that they, or their parents, will perceive the proposed activities as an attack on their values [7]. One should, therefore, think twice about the message sent to the target audience. Unfortunately, most empathy training misses that point. Indeed, many influential scholars conceive empathy training as engaging teenagers in activities (such as watching movies or listening to testimonies) aiming at triggering their empathy toward a specific group of people (Stephan & Finlay: 1999; Vescio et. al: 2003; Crisp & Turner: 2009). In those cases, the message seems to be: “we believe that the world would be a better place if you had more empathy toward group X or group Y” [8].  For the training to be effective in the long run, one has to think of a better goal to offer to the target audience. Rhetorical exercises offer this better deal: by following a rhetorical training, teenagers develop empathy as a skill that will help them to succeed in their professional life[9]. Indeed, rhetorical exercises were originally designed to help citizens win their cases in democratic institutions (Aristotle, Rhet.). The most effective way to do so is to be well aware of others’ points of view. Rhetorical training develops this awareness through the practice of twofold arguments (Pearce: 1994; Danblon: 2013; Ferry: 2013): on any issue, the apprentice is asked to find good reasons to support opposite opinions. This ability to switch between different points of view is at the core of empathy as a skill (Berthoz: 2014) and experimental studies have shown that this practice leads to greater moderation of opinions (Tuller: 2015). Moreover, a four-year field-project demonstrated that teenagers actually enjoy those exercises (Sans: 2017). Finally, in the process of finding arguments to support opposite opinions, participants will gain a better control over their empathy failures.

Although there are several existing tools to measure empathy (Davis: 1980; Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright: 2004; Favre: 2005; Jolliffe & Farrington: 2006), those tools are of little help in counteracting empathy failures. Indeed, those tools (i.e. self-report questionnaires) give participants an empathy score but no instructions on the ways they could do better. By contrast, when engaging in rhetorical exercises, participants will gain awareness of three limits of empathy: technical, ethical and situational. The technical limit comes from the fact that humans are hard wired to look for confirmations of their beliefs (Houdé: 1997; Danblon: 2002; Mecier & Sperber: 2011; Kanhman: 2011). Once one has an opinion in mind, it might be difficult to conceive that others might think differently. The ethical limit comes from the fact that humans have values. As soon as values come into place, humans tend to behave as if they were engaged in team-sport (Angenot: 2008; Haidt: 2012): they don’t want to have anything in common with those who belong to the other team. On sensitive issues, we tend to be reluctant to consider and express opinions opposite to ours[10]. Finally, situational limitations come from the fact that humans tend to switch off their empathy as soon as they perceive others as competitors (Singer et. al : 2006 ; Takahashi et. al.: 2009)[11]. Proper empathy training should focus on people’s ability and willingness to better control those limits.

 

 

How to develop empathy with rhetorical exercises?

The method is straightforward: (1) participants support opposite opinions on non-sensitive issues; (2) they do the same exercise on sensitive issues; (3) they publicly defend their judgments in front of contradictors; (4) they finally give each other feedback on their ability to display empathy in disagreement.

Exercising flexibility in points of view

Rhetorical training begins with a task in which participants are asked to find good reasons to support opposite views on controversies such as this one:

A man had a son. When he lost the boy’s mother, he married another wife. The father, the wife and the son lived happily for one year until the son fell seriously ill. The doctor explained to the father that the boy would die if he drank cold water. One day later, the boy was thirsty and his stepmother gave him cold water. He died. He was only 12 years old. The stepmother is accused of poisoning by her husband.

(From Ps-Quint., Lesser Decl., p. 350)

 

In this case, participants are expected to find reasons to charge the stepmother as well as reasons to exonerate her. This kind of controversy is suitable to stimulate participants’ ability to overcome the technical limit on empathy (that is, the difficulty to switch from one point of view to another because of our natural tendency to seek confirmation). To do so, participants use a rhetorical tool: the common places (Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata). The idea of these is that on any issue it is possible to draw arguments from the same “places”. For instance, when judging someone’s deeds, one might argue on intentions (did the person have good intentions), on responsibility (was the person fully responsible?), on circumstances (are there mitigating circumstances?) or on consequences (will the judgment do more good than harm?). In practice, participants are asked to fill in the following table:

 

Common places: Opinion A Opinion -A
Intentions
Circumstances
Responsibility
Consequences

Figure 1: The common places of argumentation

 

For instance, to exonerate the stepmother in the above controversy, one might argue on circumstances by saying: “The accident happened only one day after the doctor gave his diagnosis to the father. Maybe the father didn’t inform his wife?”  Conversely, one might use the same common place to charge the stepmother: “In a normal family, the father would make sure that the mother has all relevant information about the son’s illness.” Using such a table habituates participants to the fact that there will always be good reasons for supporting both sides of any issue. The practice of common places also habituates participants to suspend their judgments (Houdé: 1997; Danblon: 2013), inhibiting their tendency to seek confirmation of their opinions in order to perceive to good reasons to support alternative views. Participants have to master this skill before moving to sensitive issues.

 

 

Empathy on sensitive issues

The following controversies were created by school teachers from their experience in class[12]:

In a high school, a 15-year-old boy, Paul, no longer considers himself a boy. He begins to dress like a girl and asks that his teachers and classmates call him Marie. Does the school management have to accept the student’s request?

(Controversy 1: The boy who felt like a girl)

 The English teacher works with his students on the American elections. He organizes a vote on the programs of the two candidates: H. Clinton and D. Trump. Programs are presented to students anonymously. After the vote, a student realizes that he voted for Hilary Clinton. He tells the teacher that he wants to change his vote because he would never have voted for a woman knowingly. Should the teacher respect this opinion? Should the teacher sanction this opinion?

(Controversy 2: On equality between man and women)

During the biology class devoted to evolution, a student tells the professor that he doesn’t want to follow the course anymore. He explains: “The theory of evolution is a form of disbelief. One cannot say that man descends from the ape and Adam and Eve at the same time. It’s against my religion”. Can the student be allowed not to attend the class?

(Controversy 3: Science vs. Beliefs)

 

Such issues will lead to a clash of values. In particular, they often reveal oppositions between liberal people, who tend to value equality and care above other values, and conservative people, who tend to value authority, in-group loyalty and sanctity above other values (Graham, Haidt & Nosek: 2009). Consequently, those issues are suitable to examine ethical limits to empathy. To do so, participants are asked to fill in again the commonplaces table (fig. 1). In this process, some participants might be reluctant to consider opposite opinions. It is, therefore, important to be clear on the benefits they might gain by recalling that the most effective way to get support for our opinion is to treat others’ opinions with respect and accuracy (Perelman & Olbrecthts-Tyteca: 1969; Caldini: 1987).

 Empathy in disagreement

The next step is a real test for participants’ ability to better control their empathy. They are asked to publicly defend their judgments on a sensitive issue and to do so in a way that would be acceptable for a universal audience (Perelman & Olbrecthts-Tyteca: 1969). This requires real efforts to identify and overcome the differences of opinions. In front of the “judge”, some participants play the role of contradictors: they carefully listen to the judgment and then try to push the judge out of his/her comfort zone. The setting of this disagreement lab (Ferry: 2015) looks like this:

 

The Disagreement Lab

Figure 2: The disagreement lab

 

The more accurate and respectful the judge will be in his/her treatment of others’ opinions, the more difficult the contradictor’s job will be[13]. The soothing effect that the judgment might have offers a first empirical indication of the participant’s skill for empathy. The second empirical indication is the ability to display empathy in a situation of disagreement, that is, a situation in which one would spontaneously switch off empathy.

 

 

Evaluating empathy

In order to evaluate empathy in the disagreement situation, “observers” use a rhetorical scale (Ferry: 2016). The rhetorical scale takes into account three dimensions of communication: logos, ethos and pathos (Aristotle, Rhet.). Logos refers to the content of the speech, ethos refers to the orator’s credibility and pathos refers to the affective dimension of communication. Thanks to this rhetorical scale, it is possible to evaluate the three dimensions of empathy: cognitive, affective and behavioral (Preston & De Waal: 2002; Decety & Cowell: 2014).

The cognitive dimension refers to the accuracy with which one manages to grasp what the other has in mind (Nichols & Stich: 2003; Decety: 2004). In an interaction, the scale measures cognitive empathy as the accuracy with which one is able to refer to others’ points of view[14]. The lack of empathy in logos typically gives exchanges like:

 

  • So, you’re telling us that (…)
  • This is not what I said![15]

 

In its emotional dimension, empathy refers to the ability to understand others’ emotions (Favre et al.: 2005; Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia: 2008). In interactions, the rhetorical scale measures this dimension as the awareness one demonstrates of appropriate emotions (Aristotle, Rhet, III, 7, 1408a; Micheli: 2010, Ferry & Sans: 2015)[16]. The mastery of emotional empathy appears in relevant references to the emotions one can legitimately feel (for example, “I understand that this might sound shocking”). The lack of mastery of this dimension results in emotional contagion (for example, “You calm down!”) or by rejecting others’ emotions (for example, mocking the other’s anger).

Finally, in its behavioral dimension, empathy refers to benevolence toward others[17]. Typically, one will show empathy if one is able to listen to the other and to give him/her space in the discussion. On the contrary, one will demonstrate a lack of empathy if he/she tries to fill the space for discussion with aggressive gestures, rapid speech flow and high voice volume. Here is the evaluation form[18]:

 

Logos

The participant refers to his/her opponents’ opinions accurately

1                      2                     3                    4                    5

Not at all                                                                           Absolutely

Ethos

The participant shows respect for his/her opponent(s)

1                      2                     3                    4                    5

Not at all                                                                           Absolutely

Pathos

The participant shows awareness of appropriate emotions

1                      2                     3                    4                    5

Not at all                                                                           Absolutely

Figure 3: The rhetorical scale for empathy

 

Thanks to this evaluation form, participants learn, session after session, to identify the practices that are likely to block or to stimulate empathy.

Does the method work?

The key-test for a pedagogical tool is whether actors of the educational system are willing to own it. Concretely, there are two main reasons why teachers would be willing to experiment a new method in their class: (1) they find it useful; (2) they find it enjoyable. This section presents the results of a first study to test whether the rhetorical training for empathy meets those criteria.

During the academic year 2016-2017, I gave 7 two-day training sessions to secondary school teachers. At the end of the training, participants had to fill an evaluation form. The items were designed to verify that the training met standards of the Belgian institute for in-service training (IFC). Among those items, two were relevant to assess the enjoyableness and the usefulness of the rhetorical training: (1) “I am satisfied with the training”, which informs on the enjoyableness of the method; (2) “The training answered my professional needs”, which informs on the usefulness of the method. Here are the participants’ answers to those questions:

 

(Number of participants: 83)

Strongly disagree Slightly disagree Slightly agree Strongly agree No answer
I am satisfied with the training 0

(0%)

3

(≈ 4%)

33

(≈ 40%)

45

(≈ 54%)

2

(≈2%)

The training answered my professional needs 1

(≈ 1,5%)

6

(≈ 7%)

50

(≈ 60%)

25

(≈ 30%)

1

(≈ 1,5%)

 

The next step is to verify whether regular rhetorical training leads to: (1) a greater convergence in participants’ judgments on good and bad empathy performances; (2) an increase in participants’ empathy scores. In this regard, the data collected so far are encouraging: the fact that participants appreciated the workshop gives confidence in the possibility of replicating it.

 

Conclusion

It is not clear yet whether multiculturalism generates more good than harm as intercultural contacts can increase prejudices as well as reduce them (Pettigrew & Tropp: 2006). Processes of ghettoization in European societies increase the risk that people lock themselves in negative narratives about other communities. What is clear, however, is that we can give citizens a better chance to make the best out off multiculturalism with a strong political commitment to equip them with skills to deal with it. The rhetorical training for empathy is a contribution to this challenge.

 

 

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Endnotes

[1] This method was designed during a four years fieldwork project with teenagers, secondary school teachers and university students (Danblon: 2013; Ferry & Sans: 2014; Ferry: 2015; Dainville & Sans : 2016).

[2] For instance, according to Ruben (1976), there are seven dimensions of intercultural competence: display of respect, interaction posture, orientation to knowledge, self-oriented role behaviour and empathy.

[3] This tendency to automatically match others’ states relies on our mirror neurons (Gallese : 2007 ; Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia: 2008).

[4] As Ferrari & Gallese (2007) put it: “Every time we observe an action made by another individual, we are able to understand its goal because the observed action is matched on our internal representation of it”.

[5] For instance, it has been demonstrated that strongly adhering to the liberal ideology according to which one will succeed if he/she tries hard enough tend to reduce empathy toward poor people: their poverty is seen as a consequence of their laziness  (Candace: 1997).

[6] For instance, an explanation for suicide bombers’ atrocities is that the process of indoctrination destroyed all their empathy towards out-group members (Ginges & Atran: 2009).

[7] An interesting example of this happened in France, in 2014, when the ministry of education tried to implement a policy to promote equality between genders and tolerance toward homosexual and transgender people. This was perceived by some people as charge against traditional values. Some parents, alarmed by far-right political parties and islamist lobbies, protested by keeping their children one day out of school (Chetcuti: 2014; Vilchez: 2015).

[8] The risk is thus to foster competition between memories (Stora: 2007): “Why do we always talk about group X while group Y also suffered a lot?”

[9] For instance, it can be useful to be able to put oneself in the recruiter’s shoes when writing a cover letter or when preparing a job interview.

[10] I experienced this with two colleagues of mine, Emmanuelle Danblon and Loïc Nicolas, during a workshop in a summer school (2011). After giving the audience the reasons why we believed rhetorical exercises were good pedagogical tools to develop critical thinking, we proposed them to actually produce twofold arguments (dissoi logoi) on same-sex marriage. Most participants refused to do so and some of them justified their refusal arguing that they didn’t want to make “their mouth dirty” with arguments against same-sex marriage.

[11] For instance, a football fan might experience pleasure (‘Schadenfreude’) when seeing a player from the opposite team being injured.

[12] During the academic year 2016-2017, I gave a series of training sessions for secondary school teachers. In one activity, teachers had to describe a situation in which they experienced a clash of values in class and reached their tolerance threshold (Cohen-Emerique: 2011). They then had to turn those situations into controversies. For a development on how to design  good controversies, see Sans (2015).

[13] It is indeed difficult to argue against somebody who is careful and accurate in the discussion of the different opinions at stake: such a speech would not create many cognitive conflicts in the listeners’ chief. Cognitive conflicts are the starting point of argumentation (Dessales: 2008).

[14] Self-report questionnaires measure cognitive empathy with items such as : “I find it difficult to explain to others things that I understand easily, when they don’t understand it first time” (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright: 2004). Now, the problem with self-reported questionnaires is that they measure empathy « off-line »: they cannot predict how much empathy someone would actually display when interacting with someone else.

[15] To use a term from argumentation studies, the lack of cognitive empathy leads to the straw man fallacy (Walton & Macagno: 1996).

[16] That is, the socially awaited emotional reactions in certain situations (for example, it is embarrassing to be seized by laughter at a funeral). Self-report questionnaires measure emotional empathy with items such as : “I find it difficult to tell when my friends are afraid” (Jolliffe & Farrington: 2006).

[17] Self-report questionnaires measure this dimension with items such as: “When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective toward them” (Davis: 1980).

[18] In a first study to test the validity of this rhetorical scale for empathy, I assessed the inter-rater reliability. To do so, I asked 83 participants to perform two tasks: (1) evaluating the level of empathy (from 1 to 5) of debaters in three different videos (the “intuitive measure of empathy”); (2) performing the same task using the rhetorical scale for empathy (the “rhetorical measure of empathy”). I then compared the degree of agreement between raters in those two tasks using the Fleiss’ Kappa (1971). The degree of agreement was higher when using the rhetorical scale. I interpret this result as an evidence that the rhetorical scale helps participants to evaluate empathy more objectively (Ferry: 2017).

Speech of Dr. Luigi Patronaggio, Chief Prosecutor of Agrigento

I wish to express my gratitude to the organizers of this meeting, all belonging to a remarkable psychological field and I apologize to them in advance for the diversity of my language and for the incursion in “other knowledges”, hoping that this diversity could represent a source of mutual enrichment.

Part 1 – From retributive justice to restorative justice.

In more than thirty years long of professional experience, I have often bumped into the shadows of evil: how much vile darkness there is in a raped child, in a colleague magistrate or in some friends, policemen blown up by mafia-related criminals. Orin those innocent victims blown up while they are going to the beach, to a concert or to watch a football match at the stadium, or even in the bodies of young women, children and men floating in the same sea where new slave traders, unscrupulous merchants, have dragged them with the promise of a better life.

After a pistol shot, a burst, after the cries of the shipwrecked victims on a sinking boat … after all … it remains only darkness and quiet. Where there previously was life and joy, now there is silence. Darkness replaced the light.

To continue the metaphor, dear to people who are familiar with symbols, the legal order of a democratic State is a rational construction, and generally an ideal, geometric and illuminated city. Any time this order is violated the geometric shape is compromised and the lights turn off or dim according to the entity of the crime that has violated the law.

Rationality gives way to emotionality.

From the earliest times the violated law, or better the violated order, is restored through the punishment and the expulsion from the civil cohabitation of the criminal.

Since the earliest times,men have always responded to evil with evil: this happened with the vengeful God of the Jews (… it will take centuries until he becomes the Merciful God of the Christians). It happened with the Romans up to the Islamic world. If you do evil you will receive evil.

But be careful: it is a good thing that the order has laid down certain rules to overcome the rupture and go ahead, otherwise, we would still be stuck to the ordeal.

The Western juridical civilization has provided rules with universal validity:  “Nullumcrimennullapena sine lege”, stated the Latins, the creators of the principle of the strict legality in the criminal law. This principle is still a pillar of the Western civilization. Likewise, the principle of non-retroactivity of the criminal law and the one corollary to the right to a fair trial,are fixed points in our civilization, codified in the European Convention on Human Rights.

And nonetheless, our human and legal sensibility has been more and more refined to get to understand that the violated order doesn’t always recreate through the punishment and the expulsion from the civil cohabitation.

This is not the place where to reaffirm (something too obvious) the necessary re-educative function of the punishment or the rejection of the death penalty. Or even, the tendential unconstitutionality of thelife sentence with the “never ending serve the term of imprisonment”.

What we want to highlight here, is that there are moments and contexts where it is necessary to go beyond the concept of retributive justice and enter the restorative or reconstructive justice: the so called “Restorative Justice” in the Anglo-Saxon world.

A justice that allows the executioner and the victim to communicate and together overcome evil. Only then, the violated order can be recreatedthrough the germination of healthy cells instead of being mutilated of its sick parts through surgical operations.

There are now many examples of this “other” justice, and all are renowned. The best-known of all is perhaps the one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa.

Where the apartheid was brought to an end not through the victory of a faction against another and with the imposition of the criminal law from the winner, but through a process of voluntary participation where was given voice to the victims;where the executioners recognized their own faults and promptly act to fix them; where everybody made every effort to create a new state and where the prosecution intended as a punishmentremained in the background of this process until it disappeared.

Other examples of restorative justice are found in the juvenile criminal law, in the criminal mediation and now, at a European level and in the international legislation, the principle of a “different” justice is also appealed in official documents (see the Council of Europe Recommendation of 1999 on the criminal mediation).

There are also olderexamples, such as the extended amnesty issued by the Italian Minister of Justice Togliatti that, by the pay off of crimes, committed both by the winners and the losers, allowed the Italians to resume apeaceful and democratic dialogue with each other after the civil war following the 8th September 1943.

For instance, the latest laws on the matter of stalking, highlight the need to take actionnot only on the victim but also on the stalker in order to understand its push toward violence and to educate him tothe respect for women and more generally for vulnerable people.

Furthermore, family mediation tries to make a couple, facing an hard communicative time, in a dialogue situation in order to help them solve together their troubles, in the main interest of their children, leaving as a last resort, the authoritarian decision of the judge.

Thus, rebuilding starting from the victims, giving them voice and helping them to dialogue with the responsible for the crimes committed against them.

Then, restoring the order not through the isolation or the state violence, but through the restorative reconstruction where the voice of the victim, in a central position, is able to generate a process of reviewing of the evil by the criminal, with the aid of a third impartial mediator.

Certainly, this is an easy-to-apply paradigm in case of less serious crimes, i.e. a paradigm to apply in case of global and complex situations where the basis for the dialogue still exist.

But, is it possible to apply this paradigm against the international terrorism that threats us inside our houses, or against the humanity and war crimes? The most obvious reply is negative: the answer to the most serious crimes can be only a punitive reply, although with the most evolved forms of the international criminal law with which we have hardly endowed ourselves, since the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi war criminals.

Anyway, the choice of a proper international criminal law appeal doesn’t exempt us from the duty to understand and to face the shadow… to keep satisfying the symbolic language, well appreciated in this forum.

This is not the right place where to discuss the matter of the international criminal law, its entitlement as a non-codified right applicable to any person recognized as a guilty of crimes against humanity, regardless of where the crimes have been committed, or to reject the accusation put forward to that punitive claim as the criminal law of the enemy, as the winner’s right.

It must be stressed that, with the creation of the International Criminal Court (The Hague – July 2002), the western society, once again, has tried to overcome the de-structuring of the civil cohabitation through the rational means of the written law, the certainty of the rules and the punishments, by codifying fair and guaranteed procedures, overcoming a principle that had established after the tragedy of the Second World War, according to which “ in delictisatrocissimispotestjudexjuratransgrendi”, i.e. “in delictisatrocissimisjuratransgrendi licet”.

Principles that unfortunately came again to the surface after the 11th September in USA with the use of legalized torture and the opening of special detention centers, such as Guantanamo.

Moreover, not all States took part to the Rome Convention, and as a matter of fact only 124 States approved the Rome Statute, and 32 signed but not approved the same agreements, such as USA, Russia, China and Israel.

“To Understand” is now then the new imperative to overcome, restart and restore.

Essential condition to face any attack to the civil cohabitation is to nevergive way to irrational and authoritarian temptations. It is also necessary a big effort of all social sciences and the combinationofall methods for the development of a social heuristics.

Who’s then this terrorist that threat us right inside our home, that prevent us from going to a concert, enjoying an exhibition or enjoying the right to democratic participation?

Part 2 – The identity of the terrorist.

Speaking of Mafia, as I already marked before, I defined the mafia-related criminal as an individual without identity who finds it inside the mafia organizationby moving the ideals of this selected group which is in contrast to the others, and whose language is only violence and prevarication. A cooperating witness used to say that before becoming part of “CosaNostra”, he was “nudduimmiscatucùnenti” (Italian translation in the text: I was anyone mixed up with anything).

Likewise, I would like to define the denominational terrorist (and I deliberately adopt this definition, not only to be politically correct) as a weak individual in search of a strong identity.

On the basis of our experience in investigation, we know that the terrorist organizations recruit young people in the occupied territories by the illusion of a status and the flattery of belonging to a selected elite, that the systematic recourse to acts of violence is justified in the name of a higher project; that all those people who don’t belong to the group are considered inferior because they are traitors, unfaithful and corrupted.

They usually wear black uniforms and have a long beard to underline the difference between them and the others. We all know the images of the ISIS troupes on the Internet, with a black background and waving black flags. It’s no coincidence that they choose this color: black is the denial of all colors, as the Nazi aesthetics had already stated about 100 years ago.

Certainly their weak, or better, wounded identity, is the result of centuries of a western ethnocentrism that turns a deaf ear to the claims of the third world countries.

It is no coincidence that terrorism develops in the occupied territories where people live in marginal conditions, but also in the suburbs of the European cities where the cultural integration process hasn’t occurred.

And I want to dispel here a cliché that identifies terrorism with immigration.

And I will dispel it with my long professional experience and the strength of the actual numbers issued by the Italian Ministry of the Interior: the terrorists don’tarrive here with the immigrants on the boats in the Sicilian Canal. Andeven if a terrorist that is running away from the war in Libya, reaches our shores, he doesn’t travel on unsteady boats, but only on comfortable motorboats for deep-sea fishing. It means only under safe conditions.

The terrorists are in our houses, in the suburbs of our cities, in our prisonswhere they often  radicalize themselves. Descendants of past immigration,result of the post-Colonialism period, never integrated into the cultures of the host countries, they are often unemployed andexpress their hate towards the West culture through terrorism.A culture thatthey envy for its level of well-being and quality of life; hatedand denied at the same timebecause unreachable.

The terrorist is often formed on the Internet that deliberately provides him theimage of a fake and virtual world, just and ordered, opposite to the real world, represented as corrupted, that for the aspiring terrorist is a source of desire and frustration at the same time. And even the “holy war” is represented on the Internet as a triumphal advance full of violence and cruelty that the Foreign Fighters will experience and that probably theywill never be able to leave.

I would like to make it clear that terrorism has nothing to do with immigration.

The terrorist is in search of a strong identity, the immigrant instead, has a clear and rooted identity and he is only in search of a country where he can express its identity, denied in his own country because of wars, famine and persecutions.

 

The terrorist exports blind and angry violence. The migrant instead, only uses violence against himselfby putting at risk his own lifeand the one of his family,undertaking journeys under unsafe conditions,during which they are often physically and sexually abused.

We shouldn’t be scared; we shouldn’t fear the immigrant; we shouldn’t fear the cultural influence because it is only a source of enrichment; we should feed from the culture of acceptance; we should have the ability to distinguish between hate and fear, to recognize other people’s roots, to listen to the other: the victims of this epic phenomenon.

I would like to conclude my speech by going back to the need to listen to the others, the victims, and inviting you to listen to these people coming from the other part of the Sicilian Canal and to pay attention to their stories.

Stories full of pain and violence. They travelled thousands of miles through the desert, in the hands of unscrupulous human traders that drive poor people on overloaded old off-road vehicles letting them to die of thirst in the desert.

Stories of human traders that sell these poor people to the best bidder; migrants that are sold to different military factions, raped, divested of their belonging and harassed; traffickers that extort considerable amounts of money from their victims by blackmailing them with their abandonment; traffickers that cram the immigrants inside sheds located along the coasts of Lybia, under the burning sun and in slavery conditions.Stories of migrant women that quietly accept to be constantly raped by their captors, trying only to avoid unwanted pregnancies. The government forces are absent, legality is absent, there are only armed and violent factions and tribes that live by trading human beings.

These are the voices we must listen to, voices that make us act and qualify what happens on the Libyan coasts and in the Sahara desert as crimes against humanity. Those voices must lead us to  strongly claim the opening of an humanitarian corridor from Libya, under the ONU signatures, to accommodate and redistribute migrants in Europe.

There is a right that must be affirmed as “Human Right”, and as such protected, and that is the right to migration, the right to escape from wars and deportations, to famines and epidemics. It is mandatory to stop military operations, and its political strategies and reversals between the various European nations committed to governing the Canal of Sicily. Stop with political disputes made of ephemeral and uncertain boundaries to be protected.

Pope Francis said: “it is necessary to become builders of bridges not of walls”.

Let’s just look inside, we should not be afraid, but believe in our Western, lay, tolerant, relativistic culture, produced after the dark years of the two World Wars. A cultural model open to multiracial and multi-confessional society. A cultural model we must insist on building a Europe of Nations, of people, not a Europe of banks and markets.

Pragmatic Universalism – A Basis of Coexistence of Multiple Diversities

“You who live safe

In your warm houses,

You who find, returning in the evening,

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider if this is a man”

P.Levi, If this is a man (1947)


Introduction

Despite numerous initiatives to encourage combating discrimination against race/ethnicity and cultural diversity the problem of peaceful coexistence and positive integration surfaces again when new examples of discrimination, mortification of those of different faiths or different ethnic origins arise in Europe.

Continue reading Pragmatic Universalism – A Basis of Coexistence of Multiple Diversities

Francesco Giacomantonio, Introduzione al pensiero politico di Habermas. Il dialogo della ragione dilagante (Milano-Udine: Mimesis, 2010)

Our age of crisis has taken many more forms than just the widespread rejection of Enlightenment ideals. Possibly, its most visible contemporary manifestations are: (a) the devastation of the planet’s “ecological equilibrium” (25); (b) the consistent anthropological impoverishment and individualistic atomisation of human societies (e.g. “social conflicts” read as individual “psychic problems” [26]; “anomie” [31]; “confusion between… [individual] success and… [collective] understanding” [32]); and (c) the undiminished international instability (e.g. religion’s “self-destructive forms” [63]; “Western military interventions in various areas of the planet” [77] ).

Patiently and laboriously, Habermas has addressed in his complex oeuvre all of the aforementioned forms of crisis of our age. It is Giacomantonio’s task to survey Habermas’ accounts in this slender book (99 pages).

Specifically, Giacomantonio praises the erudite, articulate and abstract “theoretical wealth” of leading German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) as a rare exception to current scholarly and scientific trends (78). Avoiding academic partisanships and specialist parochialisms, Habermas is said to have scrutinised and engaged with an “ample spectrum of stances” in the attempt to provide a reasoned, synthetic as well as analytical understanding of the enduring age of crisis (77). Swimming against the current, Habermas believes the Enlightenment project—modernity itself—to have to be brought to completion, not discarded.

Habermas’ first major intellectual accomplishments are claimed to be his 1960s and 1970s studies in the economic and administrative structures of late-modern Western industrial societies. Then, Habermas focused primarily upon the legitimisation of such structures via political procedures of mass participation, as well as upon the growing class fluidity, which Giacomantonio describes as the “dissolution” and “fragmentation” of traditional class consciousness and discourses (25).

According to Habermas, the post-war decades had seen capitalist societies benefiting from large-scale entrepreneurial pursuits, under the cooperative scrutiny and sophisticated direction of the State, which allowed these pursuits to serve vastly accepted inclusive social aims (e.g. “urban and regional planning”, “research and development”, “unemployment benefits”, “public welfare”; 25). These aims facilitated the legitimisation of the pursuits themselves, as well as the State’s own authority. Then, this virtuous circularity ended. For Habermas, the 1970s mark the beginning of the age of crisis.

The 1970s “late” or “mature” capitalism (23) continued to display massive State intervention in the economy. Yet, an increasing outgrowth of private interests started to escape from State control, leading to “systemic” failures (24) and to a generalised loss of faith in the State. This reduction of legitimacy was indicated by declining political participation, which was due too to the opacity of class consciousness in now tertiary-dominated economies. A variety of rescue plans were implemented by national governments, often via ever-increasing State intervention and techno-scientific legitimisation thereof. Regularly, these plans proved of little success, at least as the previous inclusive social aims were concerned.

Rather, the recurring reliance upon science and technology as grounds for political action induced considerable “de-politicisation” (28) of collective life and institutional decision-making. Within this novel frame of reference, whereby political issues were turned into “technical problems”(28), the public opinion was morphed into a passive spectator or sheer recipient of the diktats of a self-enclosed—and often self-serving—“expert” bureaucracy. In any case, the vastly accepted inclusive social aims of the post-war decades started to wane, becoming a more and more remote memory of better, foregone times.

It is Habermas’ opinion that the highly educated “expert” bureaucrats of recent decades have failed consistently to perceive the unavoidable connection between factual scientific investigation and value-driven technical application. To counter this phenomenon, Habermas has recommended the establishment of a more open critical exchange amongst experts and between experts and the public at large. In this perspective, communication should serve as an antidote to the former’s intellectual insularity and to the latter’s political disaffection.

Concerned with the de-politicisation of socio-political phenomena and populations of democratic countries, Habermas began to explore the socio-political relevance of “communication and linguistic dimensions” that were to become the hallmark of his later intellectual production (31). Indeed, the 1980s witnessed a vast output of studies by Habermas on the deeper structures of anthropological impoverishment and atomisation in modern nations. In them, Habermas came to conceive of “society” as comprising: (a) the “system” of professional, formal networks of “strategic behaviour”; and (b) the personal, informal “life-world” of existentially meaningful behaviour (“Lebenswelt”; 31). On the one hand, human activity was being described by Habermas as the “success” or “influence” of the competitive individual; whilst on the other stood the truly life-defining, cooperative linguistic (“communicative”) praxes seeking mutual “understanding” and engendering shared “identities” (32).

Initiating the age of crisis, the former dimension had been invading the latter by using communication instrumentally, i.e. the shared linguistic means for genuine self-expression and social cohesion were turned into sheer means of self-maximisation. To respond to this invasion, Habermas has recommended the overcoming of national barriers and the creation of a “cosmopolitan… deliberative democracy” centred upon ethical and normative issues and aims (35). Roughly speaking, more conversation about justice, the common good and the like–as already anticipated in his reflections on science and technology of the 1970s–would mean more democracy; more democracy would mean more legitimacy; more legitimacy more effective laws; and more effective laws more social and socially acceptable results. All of this, however, should be taking place on a global scale.

Habermas’ reflections on democracy became even more relevant in the 1990s. Then, in the face of an even faster-paced post-Cold-War economic and cultural globalisation, it was the very cradle of modern democracy that was to experience its deepest crisis, i.e. the nation State as such. Apart from intensifying the problems that Habermas had already tackled in the 1970s and 1980s, fin-de-siècle globalisation further deprived States of the crucial means of control over the “economic dimension” (40). In particular, free capital trade robbed the State of those vital “fiscal” resources that were needed for its administrative functions (44). Weaker States became even less credible to the populations, whose interests they were still expected to serve. The legitimacy of their power and even their own raison d’être became shakier. In the process, the vastly accepted inclusive social aims of the post-war decadeswere even openly rejected by leading parties and statesmen, who engaged actively in the persistent reduction of the public sphere. Deprived of the State’s support, larger and larger sectors of the population found themselves poorer, marginalised, and more vulnerable.

In the final decade of the 20th century, Habermas stressed further his commitment to a “cosmopolitan” solution of the ongoing crisis (43). In his view, a global economy needs a global deliberative democracy. This is not the same thing as to say that the world needs a world State. Rather, the world needs actual world politics and actual world policies. International organisations are already in place (e.g. the “United Nations”, the “World Trade Organisation”, the “International Monetary Fund” [46]). What is missing is the democratic appropriation of those institutions as positive means for global governance.

Interestingly, the “European Union” has been described by Habermas as an example of existing trans-national coordination and a possible force for progress, which he understands as the generation of a new political community reflecting truly democratic values and substantial ethico-political aims, such as solidarity and social inclusion (45). As an opposite model of global governance, Habermas has often highlighted the “hegemonic unilateralism” of the United States of America, which has accompanied throughout an economic globalisation capable of producing a “more unjust… more insecure” world and a threat to our “survival” as a species (48).

In particular, Habermas has stressed of late the centrality of the rule of law for the proper functioning of any complex social arrangement. As opposed to the brutal force exemplified by military intervention, a binding legal framework springing from democratic deliberation would constitute in his view a powerful means to a noble, desirable end: “to include the other without assimilating him” (50).

As further explained and substantiated in Habermas’ works of the 2000s, democracy should be thought of as much more than just a set of public institutions and formal procedures, for it is also an array of informal social praxes and individual forms of conduct. Within his deliberative and cosmopolitan model of democratic rule, Habermas has ended up combining the “liberty of the ancients” with the “liberty of the moderns” (51). In other words, both republican active participation and liberal individual-rights-protecting public guarantees are embraced as important components of actual democracy. Societies need both enduring compromises amongst rights-endowed self-interested individuals and the formation and expression of collective will via societal “self-clarification” (37).

Habermas resolves in an analogous manner the tension between liberals and communitarians on the much-debated issues of multiculturalism (51-6) and religious tolerance (61-8). Both universal, trans-cultural principles and cultural rights are said to be important for the socially inclusive survival of democratic States in a more and more inter-connected international reality. Disagreements and problems are bound to arise; still, what matters most is to have enough institutional and conceptual resources as to be able to tackle such disagreements and problems without falling into either coercion or social disintegration, which destroy genuine social cohesion and solidarity (54-6).

This, albeit sketchy, is the overview of Habermas’ intellectual production that Francesco Giacomantonio offers in his new book. It is indeed a clear and effective account of Habermas’ nearly unique oeuvre, as the author of the Introduction to the Political Thought of Habermas cites Touraine and Castoriadis as the only other equally daring grand theorists of recent times (80). The book comprises six chapters, an introduction, some final considerations and an appendix by another author. The presentation waves between a thematic subdivision and a chronological organisation of the material. Either way, the book addresses all the essential aspects of Habermas’ vast production. By this feat alone, it deserves much praise.

If any criticism is to be passed on it, then it must be pointed out that the book could be even more slender: the appendix by Angelo Chielli is redundant and unnecessary (83-90); whilst the 6th chapter, which deals with Habermas’ relevance to contemporary academic pursuits (69-75), could have been reduced to, and included with, the author’s final considerations (77-81). Also, the book would benefit from an analytical index of cited topics and authors.