Immigration is a question of resources

We at Demos Helsinki (together with the centre liberal think tank e2) organised this week a future course for Finnish decision makers on immigration policy and the future of Finland. By focusing on the year 2030 we wanted to stress the fact that diversification will happen and it forces the society to rethink both cohesion and welfare. Detaching the participants from the current challenges, starting from 20 years from now and then counting backwards demonstrated well to them that change is possible as well as needed. Already in 2025 Finland is expected to have 500 000 pensioners and 300 000 immigrants more than currently.

We asked the twenty participants to narrow the outcomes into statements, which will be developed into a larger publication during the fall. Here are the outcomes:

It´s about resources.
Immigration cannot be solved purely as a question of attitudes and tolerance. It is fairer for all to talk about resources and needs. Immigration is already part of Finnish reality. Immigration will not save nor destroy Finnish welfare state but it offers a possibility for starting a rethinking process on welfare.

The work place needs to change.
Change is needed more in the work place and in professional communities than in the individual immigrant. Transformation training is needed in organisations faced with diversity. In order to open up the strong Finnish social networks we need financial support for extracurricular activities (sports, hobby clubs) around and within culturally diverse companies and public organisations. In order to speed up change, affirmative action can be used as a tool in recruitment for professions such as police officers and teachers (encounter professions).

We need a joint, hopeful future.
There is need for an inspirational concept of a Finnish future that is based on rights, responsibilities and goals of a better shared daily life. The best possible brand for Finland is created through happy people and communities. We need stricter equality politics in order to build a shared and fair future.



We need to learn Russia.
Understanding Russia and Russian are crucial for understanding immigration. Finland has already loads of unused competence on the issue, mutta purely mobilising that is not sufficient. There is a need to update the stuffy and narrow ideas of Russia into more exciting ones.

Politics of experimentation
We need courage to live with uncertainty. We need to openly acknowledge that we do not know what works. We need more research and more experimental politics. We need to support also unclear organisations.

Good Finland, happy families

We need to bring families to the core of diversity politics. Finland needs to strive to be the place for the happiest childhood on the planet without forcing families into uniformity. Schools need to be used as buildings and communities for parental volunteerism and non-governmental work such as hobbies, sports and clubs. Taking part in pre-school education only part time of the week needs to be possible in order to support various ways of combining work and parenting.

Nordic

Dagens Nyheter
Originally uploaded by Henrik

I sat the last two days in a seminar by the Nordic Culture Fund on diversity and Nordic cultural work. On the last day we ended up in a heated debate in our workshop on whether being Nordic is an identity and how does that come together with goals of inclusion and integration.

I said first in the discussion that I would see the Nordic countries rather as a natural area of collaboration rather as an identity with historic routes. The ethnic-cultural-historical argument for the Nordic countries easily stands in the way of true equality and integration. The links are obvious to those Europeans who claim that we share the same values and a history.

I realised towards the end of the seminar that my idea of the Nordic region was something special and I feel parts of it can be explained through the Finnish language. I realise that I have grown up with an idea of the Nordic region as something where peace and justice prevail. This is something I picked up from school, not that much which country oppressed which Nordic country at which time and who really had the vikings.

I was brought up with the idea that the Nordic identity and aspiration can be explained through actions of people like Anna Lindh, Olof Palme, Martti Ahtisaari or Hans Blix. That Finland was on its way to being Nordic. That Nordic means also peculiar people who do not fit to all conventions and who dare to touch our sensitivities like Tove Jansson, Lars von Trier or Ingmar Bergman. That Nobel Peace Prize illustrates Nordic actions by Nordic and non-Nordic people. That being Nordic means believing in the human being, having a clear sense of ethics, trusting your neighbours (passport-free border-crossing for ages) and working for the benefit of mankind. That here in the North we give from our own when we have enough. That Nordic is something we need to work for - hard. And more often than we would like to admit, we we fall short in living up to those noble ideals. That Nordic is not a state of being, it is a responsibility for action. And that of course we should not claim to own this package of ideals but that the combination of them makes our life up in these circumstances worthwhile.

I wonder if this articulation of the Nordic identity could also function as a tool for integration and inclusion. It may sound slightly naive but it gives me a sense of direction and a reason for optimism. In term of integration we wound need recognise those beautiful ideas, make concrete the individual and societal work needed to make our way towards them and be honest about the shortcomings in terms of greed, protectionism and selfishness. Of this we have a tremendous amount of examples from the last 20 years.

That we would consciously shift our focus to what we can become at our best and to our personal responsibility rather than obsessing over a shared past. The Nordic Dream seen here would be very different from the European or American one.

Right to Exclude

The Immigrant - Kildare - Ireland
Originally uploaded by ratemypub

I guess it is OK to post twice in a day if you run into really good stuff. The Finnish Institute of International Affairs published today a clear and important paper on the relationship of immigration and recession. Researcher Toby Archer´s concise clarification is highly helpful in understanding the current sentiments in Finland and elsewhere regarding populism and xenophobia. As Archer writes, "during the recession there is a danger that the EU single market and labour movement become seen as negatives - taking away sovereign control from states: stopping governments from protecting jobs or from restricting foreigners from taking work away from local people".

Archer´s paper addresses a point I discussed last week in my meeting with designer Reza Abedini and graphic design agency Lava in Amsterdam: the sense of entitlement. Anti-immigration sentiments are a logical result from feeling like you are losing something you are entitled to. Proverbs like "to be born a Finn is like winning in the lottery" or "Favour Finnish" characterise what I mean. A notion that just being born to a certain citizenship means automatically a right to a certain standard of living is in great contradiction with global solidarity and openness to immigration.

As easy as it would be to judge all this as selfish, some of it has also more sincere and primal feelings behind it - especially in countries such as Ireland and Finland. In both of these countries the national identity is built on being an underdog and on relative poverty. When incredible affluence hit both nations during the last 20 years, people felt that their time had come, the hardships had paid off and that they would be able to leave their children a better place than the one they inherited. In countries like Finland, the post-war generation has gone through an incredibly rapid rise to the middle class.

When immigration is presented mostly as an economic and security challenge, it risks this dream of leaving a good world for one´s children as it brings more people to the kitchen table. And more importantly, these would be people who have not gone through the national experience from rags to riches.

Of course most immigrants come from conditions far worse than Finland during the last decade. Many immigrants, especially refugees, have gone through things no human being should experience - such as torture, starvation and persecution. But this is easily cast aside when one carries concern over one´s immediate family. This is not always loaded with racism or xenophobia but with parental instinct. I would dare to state that the more we can create trust so that people - immigrants and non-immigrants - feel comfortable expressing these fears and worries, the more interaction natives have with immigrants in professional settings and the more the media portrays immigrants who have made a significant contribution to the society, the more there are chances to answer and ease the fears and work towards an inclusive society.

Encounter with Big Brother

kela
Originally uploaded by 1541

"What does työttömyysturvamaksu mean?"
"What does Ulkomaalaiseksi työnhakijaksi katsotaan mean..."

Understanding Finnish social security system is difficult as it is but it gets on the level of an Amazing Race challenge when your task is to simultaneously interpret non-native pronounciation of administrative Finnish consisting of sentences sometimes three lines long. I realised that grammatically many of the sentences were correct but their meaning had been lost in translation to Bureaucratic. Sentences like "you are not entitled to benefits which you are not entitled to based on your status" are correct but very often rather empty in terms of content.

The decision letter from KELA - Finnish authority for social benefits and pensions - that I was asked to help out with was immensely complex to understand, even for a native speaker. The letter listed segments of legislation and multiple terms from social policy but did not really answer the obvious - what you get and don't get. It reminded me a bit of this test Finnish Broadcasting Company once had on their website where you needed to explain phrases you hear constantly on the news only to realise that you are not entirely sure about the goals of Hamas or the way employer and employee organisations negotiate salary levels. I had no idea what all the benefits meant even after I have seen the phrases in my every single Finnish salary slip.

I do understand that decisions on social benefits need legal basis but the way the explanation is done needs serious improvement. Once again, we need a system starting from individual needs. In the letter format used now it sounds like someone is reciting the law rather than answering the citizen's inquiry on his or her personal situation. The letter on your rights as it stands now would be next to impossible to comprehend for an immigrant taking his/her first steps in Finnish language.

Tervetuloa Suomeen/Welcome to Finland. Perkele.

I Know Me

Plastic 52 15/52 - American Idol
Originally uploaded by Angelina :)

In the course of the last two years I have attended I think five British Council networking events on topics ranging from corporate social responsibility to social cohesion. And what do you get every time you put a group of young European professionals in a room: a discussion on immigration. And sadly, the discussion is always rather dominated by the Western Europeans extremely concerned for the reason of their existence.

Today’s most stimulating speech was Swedish Actor/Director America Vera-Zavala who showed a clip from her play Etnoporn. The monologue takes the position of a young woman with an immigrant background who wants to win the Swedish Idol competition and simultaneously start a political and sexual revolution. The highly acclaimed and popular play attacks the way Sweden deals with immigrants, immigrant women and tolerance. In her clip the main character is seen shouting:

“We are normal! We don’t want to be multicultural! We are Swedish!”
“We’re tired of multiculturalism. I am tired of project managers!”

Vera-Zavala herself has Latin American parents, was born in Romania and moved to Sweden in the age of three. She accused the European culture for being fundamentally racist and criticized heavily the way the Swedish establishment has for instance embraced the Gringo phenomenon where a group of immigrants started claiming back the notion of an immigrant through a magazine and other forms of media. She stated that she feels that things are not improving when the establishment is introducing notions like second-generation or third-generation immigrant and branding a range of social problems as ethnic problems. According to Vera-Zavala the focus has only shifted from 1970s’ “violent and abusive Latin American men” to today’s “problem with the Muslims”. As she said:“I don’t want another generation of girls needing to feel like they have to defend their fathers against stereotypes on violent immigrant men.”

She said it is absurd when a teenager with an immigrant background is all through childhood told that she is Swedish but at the age of 13 she seems to always turn into an immigrant or when a woman beaten by her husband is forced to a discussion over “your culture” with the police.

Vera-Zavala’s take was personal but according to some of the Swedes she was inaccurate and incorrect and thing were improving. As a British theatre director Karina Johnson rightly stated, we have a major problem where one’s personal experience of discrimination or racism is not valued but brushed off as a coincidence or as an exception to the rule.

The situation reminds me of an experience of my dear friend who was interrupted in an important seminar by a Finnish middle-aged multicultural expert when my friend stated in her talk that she as an immigrant feels more comfortable in Amsterdam than in Helsinki. The Finnish “expert” felt that she had the right to publicly invalidate someone’s personal experience of discrimination. The level of arrogance shown in this is just criminal.

Vera-Zavala’s presentation made me wonder what is the Finnish future in this respect. Just a few month’s back the lifestyle magazine Image praised in their editorial and in a big feature the Gringo phenomenon saying that we would need something similar in Finland. I am wondering whether these kinds of phenomena help the native establishment to “talk with and about immigrants” but whether they actually lead to equality of opportunities. Because let´s face it: this kind of critical self-distancing ironic reflection is the way we are used to talking about identities.

Our Shared Value

Where The Streets Are Paved With Gold
Originally uploaded by Darren Purcell

I realised again in the end of last week how much fun it is to spend 3 days with people who are passionate about what they do and what they believe in. Official sessions and plenaries in conferences like Network Effect are all nice but the most invigorating moments happen over lunch, dinner or in the bar table.

The Network Effect in Budapest gathered some 60 opinion makers from all across Europe with a strong Eastern European presence. It seemed to come as a surprise for some of the Western European participants that the East-West division was so present. This was most obvious in the discussion on the role of the nation and on ethnic diversity. This experience made me again wonder whose Europe are we talking about when we talk about common history and shared values.

When Western Europeans (myself included) were questioning the nation state, the Kosovar representatives were presenting their pictures from the independence celebrations some weeks back. When we (Brits, French, Dutch and some Nordics) got tangled into the Islam discussion, many of the participants could not really link it to their realities. And as we complained about the lack of energy in NGOs, the Russian and Ukrainian colleagues shared stories of personal excitement, engagement and risk-taking for things you believe in. It also felt that many people from the great old European powers tend to forget that for some of us independence is
1. rather recent
2. been contested rather recently

I sometimes wonder whether we could get further by recognising the differences out in the open rather than by pretending that we are all the same. I don't mean united in diversity, I mean saying things how they are, attempting to be precise and allowing confrontation. And above it all, asking questions rather than assuming. I caught myself assuming that a lot of people shared my Nordic ideals of parenthood only, to my surprise, finding myself defending equal parenthood alone in a group of five. And in the same way many people made great generalisations on the Nordic countries without recognising for instance the violent history of Finland.

I become more and more confident after experiences like this that the most powerful way to peace on the European level is to keep identity on hold and focus on areas such as common market, consumer protection, freedom of movement and environmental policy. Europe has to make sense, there are quite a few things already making us passionately believing in us and them.

p.s. Talking about image and reality: Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs Ilkka Kanerva admitted today that he has sent over 200 flirtatious text messages to a woman half his age described in the Finnish media as an erotic dancer. It is not the first time he has been caught from this sort of behaviour. Before he was appointed as minister, he was caught promising position to young women in the Sports Word Championships. Then he promised to his parliamentary group to stop this sort of behaviour. This in the country which takes so much pride as a beacon of gender equality.

Article on diversity

Tiernapoikakilpailu 2
Originally uploaded by Ereine

The Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA (Elinkeinoelämän valtuuskunta) just published my column on diversity. In the article I basically state that diversity needs an economic justification in order for big things to start happening. A bit like what the Stern report did for the climate change debate. My articles headline is Jääkarhuista ja murjaaneista, which is a bit difficult to translate. Jääkarhu means polar bear and murjaani is the character in the Finnish Christmas play whose face is painted black with shoe polish (see pic).

American Dream

MCX53.jpg
Originally uploaded by Saint Anselm College

There are moments when I would just love to be American. Like right now. I know it is a bit nerdy social scientist sort of thing but I just love elections and the buzz around them. I still remember the heated atmosphere at Columbia University's campus in 2004 when I joined a screening of an Edwards-Cheney debate. US elections are of that scale that even if you do not have the right to vote, you still need to have an opinion.

If the elections would be now, I would vote for Clinton. She is a realist and knows what she is talking about. I watched parts of the ABC-Facebook debate on Sunday and felt that she was right on the mark: actions are what counts in change and she has a god track record. And I would love the US to be led by a woman.
However, I find myself having warmer and warmer feelings towards Obama. He is a magnificent speaker (just check his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004), he wrote a compelling piece on the future to Newsweek and he talks of unity as Americans. The last thing that pushed me closer to him was that the widow of my political idol, Ethel Kennedy, endorsed him. And don't get me started again on Oprah.

Edward Luce wrote well on Obama in Sunday's Financial Times:
"But Mr Obama has succeeded in converting his mixed ethnic background into a novel persona in which he can remain black while appealing to the whites without - in the words of one commentator - reminding them the whole time that they are white."

In general, I have been excited about the US lately. Last week's Newsweek was entirely dedicated to giving advice to the US. If you can still find it, I would purchase it. Here are some of the best parts:

"Europeans tend to criticize the United States. They are much less good at offering alternatives." - Timothy Garton Ash

"Finally, don't hesitate to stand up for our values: democracy, the rule of law and human rights. But remember that the best way to get others to share them is by example, not coercion. Close Guantánamo. Join the International Criminal Court." - James Steinberg

"My father crossed an ocean to seek the dream of America. As a boy, I played barefoot with children in Indonesia. As a young man, I worked in the forgotten corners of America, where people struggled with violence and hopelessness. Whether I am at a G8 summit or in Africa, I will speak not just as someone who mastered my brief, but also as someone whose grandmother lives in a hut without indoor plumbing in a Kenyan village devastated by HIV/AIDS." - Barack Obama

"Overall, there is a widespread failure to manage people and their careers by strategically moving top performers to where they can learn the most and have the greatest impact." - J. Frank Brown

"Americans tend to understand who they are in terms of what they believe and who they believe it with. (...) Those who dismiss America as "behind" Europe on social issues often fail to appreciate where America is coming from, and how far it has travelled. Where gay equality is concerned, you can call the United States the most laggard of major secular societies, or you can call it the most progressive of the great traditionalist cultures." - Jonathan Rauch

"Like many young immigrants I never really understood what America meant beyond the oft-sung phrase I heard from my parents: we are lucky to be here. But in the last few years I've become less certain. I find myself loving America the way one does a sick parent. I pore over pictures of how she once was: never perfect, never without her conceits and cruelties, but still vital and pretty, a real smile at the corners of her lips." - Gary Shteyngart

I think the future of the US - and linked to that our future - seems brighter. Democrats are in better speed and we are doing rather well either with Obama or Clinton. The sick parent just needs some rehabilitation, soon. This 8-year stay in this hospital is not meant for people who come in to die.

Professional immigrants

A Big Spelling Mistake
Originally uploaded by Hard2Handle

A while back an organisation in Finland contacted me to ask what I feel are the big issues related to immigrants and the media. One of the issues that I listed in my bullet points was professional access to media: staff of printed media in particular is still exceptionally white. And if they do employ immigrants, they usually are assigned to report immigrant issues. A typical act in underdeveloped multicultural policy: an idea that an immigrant can only be addressed through the difference, the minority status.

Last week a friend of mine sent me a copy of her unedited column for a mainstream Finnish newspaper. My friend was not born in Finland and even if her Finnish after a number of years is understandable, she makes grammatical mistakes in every single sentence.

I found the column fascinating. Her take on an acute domestic political question was something that I think I could seldom hear from a native Finn. She addressed the issue - in a witty manner - by balancing on the insider/outsider fence. And above all, even if with a lot of mistakes, it was of supreme unique quality. I would estimate that it would have taken me 30 minutes or so to polish it for printing. And I must say with some expertise of editing, that a half an hour is a short time compared to a grammatically correct but structurally twisted article.

I am a language fanatic and always will be. I think anyone who works for a media outlet consumed easily by some one million citizens should be a good editor. But we need to broaden our concepts of quality. Hiring professional immigrants to act as multiculturality journalists is the wrong kind of positive discrimination. Hiring good writers who still need to work on their grammar is a far more sustainable route. I mean just look it on commercial/capitalist terms: they are able to enrich the final product which generated more consumer potential.

We seem to need a ´them´ for us to be ´us´

Sinut
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

A week ago I attended the 50th birthday party of a dear friend of mine in Helsinki. Many of the speakers emphasised how Helsinki is a European metropole - a true mix of cultures. All the speakers in that event were historians and therefore they looked things from a perspective of a century pointing out - rightly so - that in the beginning of the 1900s one could easily hear Finnish, Russian and Swedish on the streets of the city.

As living in Amsterdam in a neigbourhood with more than 50 % of the population with a non-European descent, Helsinki is still extremely homogenous. Helsinki is still far from being a city where white man would not be the default option. The level of multiculturalism can be explained by analysing the Finnish multiculturalism debate - in Finland the discussion dwells still around tolerance and anti-discrimination rather than inclusion, coexistence, joint rules and reciprocity.

When one looks at Helsinki and Finland on a scale of 20 years and from a personal perspective of a once migrant, the picture turns out to be somewhat different. My Finnish friend Umayya Abu-Hanna's new book Sinut is a moving and honest take on the way the small nation in the North deals with the world. Or in many cases, on the way that it doesn't.

Quote:
"I have never encountered that the taste of mämmi or sauna would cause problems. The basic problem is losing yourself, the attempt to recognise oneself in this individual who functions in Finland. Here I get back to the point that quantity matters. In big cities where one has lots of people who have arrived from different cultures and people who are outsiders even in those cultures, there is a greater probability at least at times to be heard as oneself. In a place like this also the majority culture has learned to interpret and see differing ways to be and live." (translation from Finnish by me)

In her book she goes through incidents of pure racism and xenophobia, often practised by highly educated people (like employers) and often without the people realising themselves the fu**ed up value structures they are communicating. She cleverly breaks and builds again the notion of identity. The book brought me into tears with its frankness for instance when Umayya writes about feeling scared in a Finnish hospital. What really made me love the book was the lively way she describes also incidents when she has fallen short or just given in but also when Finns have opened their hearts and homes for her.

Finland still has a long way to go in order to be sinut (Finnish word for being comfortable with yourself and the title of Umayya's book) with a mixture of cultures, habits and customs. We still simplify other cultures while demanding specificity when people deal with us.

Umayya's compassion and love for Finland is obvious throughout the book. I am confident that many readers will be irritated by her criticism. But by seeing her as one of us rather than as an outsider the criticism is only welcome - we all bitch every now and then about our loved ones but will get on barricades if we would hear the same things from outsiders. 20 years should be more than enough to claim one's experiences as Finnish. The best thing in Umayya's book, however, is the optimistic underlying tone - we are still far but we have travelled far in 20 years.

"When one has lived her entire adult life in this culture and feels being part of it, it is impossible to work if everything you do is seen from another angle. Every journalist feels that it is necessary and is expected that one is building the community with the observations, conclusions and stories. One criticises injustice. From my perspective my position is Finnish. Here is the biggest contradiction: when I see myself participating as myself in a discourse and building of my society, in the eyes of some I break an unwritten or maybe written rule which states that Finnishness is a clear definition which I do not fit in to."

Dysfunctional Pause Button

Eurovision Finals - Helsinki, Finland - May 2007
Originally uploaded by mekblom

It’s midnight as I am typing this. I should have been sleeping already for some hours as an airport taxi will pick me up in less than four hours. I can hear the sound of my parents sleeping across the apartment. My mind just does not stop and these things seldom work through forcing.

It’s quite clear where I come from. I realised it once again when visiting Helsinki over this weekend. The following may be something that only people who live or have lived outside their own country can in the end grasp. When visiting home, you realise that people’s lives do move on also while you are not there.

You see your young relatives who are not sure who you are. You saw them only a few months ago but you do not seem familiar anymore. They have learned new words and they run in a funny new way.

You see friends who are separated and you did not even know that they had problems. They thought that you knew.

You see dear friends, have one of those fantastic evenings, talk warmly about your relationship with them. You wait together on a chilly taxi stop at 1.30 a.m. jumping up and down to keep yourself warm. And then you realise that they can have this every single week.

It is not like life would be unsatisfactory where one lives. There’s friends, nice apartment, dear places and all that. It is not like life would be constant longing. There’s things that people here don’t have. Complaining is not the issue, it’s more a realisation.

It is just that the people who you have known for ages seem to somehow move on and you realise that Facebook is not a complete solution. It is not a question of blame as people move on in both ends. You are there and here and then again not.

Tough.

Unstuffy diversity

L1131881.jpg
Originally uploaded by Guido van Nispen

My landing to Amsterdam after weeks of holidaying was a smooth one. Uitmarkt is a free festival offering a preview to next season's cultural programming in Amsterdam. Sunny weekend and Uitmarkt made it feel like still being abroad.

Weekend's highlight was the El Hema project by Dutch cultural new media organisation Mediamatic. Let me explain it in short in my own words:

HEMA is one of the key Dutch household brands offering beautifully designed products in low prices. I and most people living in the Netherlands adore HEMA. Somehow their design concept reminds me of IKEA - beautiful does not have to be expensive.

Mediamatic wanted to test with El Hema what an Arabic version of HEMA would look like - what would the logo, the advertising and the products. The exhibition designed into a HEMA shop offered smoked halal sausage, T-shirts, scarves, wine and such. They were clear in their communication -rightly so- that the project focused on the Arabic cultures, not on islam.

When HEMA found out about the project, they sued Mediamatic for abuse of their copyrighted concept. But the story led to a happy end when HEMA realised that Mediamatic's goal was artistic and not commercial and actually the project just showed the importance of HEMA to the Dutch. Mediamatic's Director Willem Velthoven told me on Saturday that the Head of Marketing of HEMA is now in the jury of the design competition, HEMA approves the project and is already considering taking some of the products made by the artists and designers into their collection.

I think Mediamatic has once again mastered addressing stuffy subjects like multicultural society in a fresh manner. The exhibition is popular, fun, beautiful and intelligent and open for visitors until 4 November. I loved Willem's practical idealism when people asked him about the future:"After the exhibition it is up to HEMA and others what happens. We need to move to the next project." I think he is right - there is need for people setting things rolling and people who implement the realisation.

Mohammed-in-a-box

Men in a Box (What is your favorite????)
Originally uploaded by Liberoliber

I am writing this on Friday afternoon when making my way back to Amsterdam after an inspiring session in Stockholm. Since last year I have been on the Advisory Board for a British Council project called Network Effect which investigates young leadership in Europe and strives for building cross-border collaborations amongst people in Europe who have already shown potential in making things happen.

Today we revised the focus of the future events. The main working method of Network Effect are the conferences bringing together some 35 young professionals from all parts of Europe. We have learned a lot from the previous sessions and realised that the best results are achieved when the event has a tight and provocative focus and the main argument put across is somewhat divisive. The future events will most likely concentrate on Europe’s relationship with its neighbouring regions.

We had good debate on Big Issues such as market logic and on the ways Europe is seen from the outside. Most of us admitted not to be that knowledgeable for instance when it comes to the main views on European Union in Russia. When it comes to Americans we recognised that Europeans are often perceived as self-congratulatory, arrogant and self-obsesssed. Quite often for a good reason if I may add.

In my work I have very often heard remarks that Western Europeans very seldom show genuine interest towards the political and social agenda in countries like Turkey. We tend to come with our themes well prepared – with Eau de Colonial sprayed all over.

The link to my work in the European Cultural Foundation is very clear. One has to remain critical towards one’s own work, the way one builds partnerships and one's approach especially when dealing with issues such as intercultural dialogue and cultural diversity. The risk of boxing people in is constant.

On the plane I read a speech from British diversity intellectual Kenan Malik who I consider to be an interesting and radical thinker when it comes to freedom of speech and multiculturalism. He criticises both multiculturalists and assimilationists for mixing diversity of values and peoples.

He says – rightly so – that multiculturalism creates undemocratic structures where governments ignore their responsibility for connecting directly to all citizens as they address minorities via community leaders. This is the approach which has often been described as the even tribal Take Me To Your Leader strategy. What governments seldom forget to do is check whether the people these organisations say they are representing actually want to be represented by them.

At the same time Malik points out how assimilationists ignore clear cases of racism due to their obsessions with equal treatment. He takes France as the obvious example of this.

”Immigration, in other words, has not caused the fraying of a common set of values”, Malik writes and continues:”Rather multiculturalism is itself a product of such frayed values. Multiculturalism was the official response to the identity crisis within Western societies, as attempt to provide a positive sheen to this crisis, representing the lack of common identity as a new cultural pluralism, and the fragmentation of communities as an enriching kind of diversity.”

All and all, an intellectually stimulating Friday.

Out of Europe

Mosque in Casablanca
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

Quick slash before rushing to the hotel and to the shower. My work has taken me for this week to Morocco where we are organising a workshop for some 50 editors of European and North African pop culture publications. The weather is wonderful and the atmosphere is relaxed - just like it should be. Today's results:
- new friends and professional contacts
- good visibility for the ECF
- problems with bureaucracy
- pair of trousers and two pairs of slippers

We had today two Spanish speakers talking about their experience from working with North African partners. This quote was the most fascinating one:

"But I mean we in Spain have six centuries of Arab history. I feel we Spanish have a special responsibility for this relationship. I think culturally we are closer to Maghreb (North Africa) than to Sweden for instance."

Return of the family

Theo van Gogh memorial
Originally uploaded by jillpreditor

I realised that I have forgotten to link this article to my blog. I wrote an article (in Finnish) for the biggest Finnish student newspaper on the new government of the Netherlands. I wrote this already in April but completely forgot the issue. In the article I described the press reactions to the cabinet programme stressing the importance of the family as the most important bridge to happiness.

Well, here it is for those who understand Finnish.

(picture is the memorial of the killed film director Theo van Gogh)

We have this problem called diversity

Overcoming Cultural Diversity (with Free Food)
Originally uploaded by ~ BRIAN ~

It's been quite a hectic week which can be also seen in the frequency of posts during the last few days. I am currently rather busy with organising a journalistic workshop taking place next week in Morocco and also preparing a big funding application to the European Commission. At times I must confess that I feel more like a juggler than an organiser.

We had a chat at work about our current focus, personal experience of diversity. The ECF is working on a publication showing how we as an organisation address the issue in our work. I have promised to contribute on youth cultures so need to find time for some intellectual work during the next weeks.

The thing I find myself constantly pondering is the concept of community. Especially when working with immigrant groups, the word community is a frequent visitor in the sentences. People wish to address certain communities, get an access to a community and what have you. On a political level this is very much the way multiculturalism is seen, a society consisting of smaller communities.

I find myself running into problems with this notion especially when dealing with youth. I fear often that we impose an identity on people without asking them whether they want it and then we make assumption on what does this identity - as in ethnic or religious background - means to them and their daily life. I know several friends of mine with an immigrant background who have been driven into situations where they are being asked to interpret something that people with the same background are doing, like for instance a Moroccan businessman would by definition have some greater knowledge into the minds of Moroccan teens.

What I would like to see us working on are identities that people choose themselves and working with communities people associate themselves with. On a simple level I could see this working in a way that we see the online gaming community as a relevant community and the visitors of a local mosque as another relevant community (sometimes overlapping) but we do not expect that someone from the gaming community could by definition represent all teenagers owning computer games or that an imam can by definition represent all Muslims in his neigbourhood.

The headline of this post is a sentence I hear very often. The mindset behind it advocates for a simple straight-cut solution that would "take care" of diversity for good. I really detest this approach. With the educational level and access to information most of us, we should be able to do better and accept complexity and mediation as an exciting daily practice.

It's all made up

Kinderdijk-28.jpg
Originally uploaded by Manchester Snapper.

On Tuesday evening I took part in a wonderful evening at the Frascati Theatre here in Amsterdam. A theatre group called Dood Paard (Dead Horse) organised an evening on the state of the Netherlands. In a well built-up setting they showed three documentaries of public space in the Netherlands and invited six foreigners living in the Netherlands to make a statement of the country. I was one of those people.

In my own statement i talked about the difference in handling public space in Finland and in the Netherlands. I pointed out that at the same time as the famous Dutch ignorance (I don't care what the people in the next table are doing if it does not interfere with my evening) leads to diverse settings and relaxed atmospheres, it also turns easily to arrogance like very often on KLM flights back to Amsterdam (I can be as loud as I want to because it is my right). That is one of the things that at the same time disturbs me and charms me in this country.

From the other statements a phrase stuck to me head: land van mens. For the non-Dutch people, it means the land of man. One of the speakers rightly so pointed out that the Netherlands has no natural attractions. All the things that people come here for are things built up by men (not in the gender-specific sense).

I kept pondering that all through yesterday. In Finland we are always very much linked to the nature. Whereas the Finns live from their natural resources, the Netherlands lives from interaction. Somehow that also explains why the Dutch debating culture is so much more developed than the Finnish ones. If we would have been forced to negotiate everything and everywhere (plus make our income from that), maybe we would also be less awkward in the presence of others. As a Dutch historian Geert Mak once pointed out in a discussion about Dutch tolerance:"It is based on a business model. It is not economically wise to make people with money and connections feel that they are not welcome." I guess he is right. We all know that from a nice salesperson you end up easily buying more.