"To hear from the villagers and refugees themselves is a much more complete and meaningful account of their experience, far away from the visiting cameras, reporters and journalists."
A TOWN CALLED SUMPTE
In The Useful Village, Mauk, Schmidt & Butler (2017) tell the story of Sumpte, a tiny German town with a population of 102 that was designated to host 750 refugees from Syria, Albania and Sudan during the European immigration crisis of 2015. It is a tale of the awkward, uncertain and controversial experience of it all- real life events that contain the stuff of novels. A town that previously boasted no social services or community facilities of its own winds up with internet, schoolrooms, a canteen, laundry service, teen and medical centers and more after the refugees touched down in Sumpte (p. 107). The implementation of this plan to house refugees drew the attention of nationalist extremists and sympathizers alike, and was covered by no shortage of reporters and news agencies. People expressed infrastructure concerns, fear for the villagers’ safety, and the safety of refugees themselves. But perhaps more loudly heard were the political agendas of some media platforms, reporting of “intruders” into the German nation by way of its liberal sanctuary policies (in part a direct result of post-World War II reconstruction) and some reluctant villagers whose lives were thoroughly and immediately impacted (p. 94-95).
The refugees in Sumpte eventually began to make the camp quarters into something more useful to them, and some key villagers did all they could to assure the newcomers felt as welcomed as possible. Needless to say, other villagers kept to themselves and were cautious in the face of immense change. Assimilation can be slow and unwieldy, and in Sumpte public opinion was varied. But in the end, there were no negative incidents to retell according to this account, save the attacks on refugee camps themselves in other areas of Germany. The villagers settled into the new arrangement as best they could. When the time came, some were sad to see the refugees move on to bigger towns and cities in search of work and more long-term settlement because of the liveliness they brought, not least because any hope seemed lost that a growing population could revive a dying town. The authors describe the rich diversity of interests, skills and opinions of these refugees, emphasizing their full-bodied humanity rather than the two-dimensional profiles of “refugees”. To hear from the villagers and refugees themselves is a much more complete and meaningful account of their experience, far away from the visiting cameras, reporters and journalists.
MEDIA AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON INTEGRATION
With the media becoming a ubiquitous presence in our lives and reporting on increasingly contentious matters, it is true that it enjoys significant influence on public opinion and has, seemingly enthusiastically, stepped into that role. In 2016, during Europe’s immigration crisis which started in 2015, Germany was a top ten hosting nation for refugees in raw numbers, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Hynie, 2018, p. 265). In the previously unknown and insignificant village of Sumpte, the media gave it a spotlight and a stage for publicity, often focusing on the controversy brought about by opposing views on immigration policy. The media amplifies political discourse and policy, which in turn affects public opinion and the way immigrants integrate into society.
THE NEGATIVE
The response to the refugee crisis has been hotly debated in liberal democracies on the economic and social cost of hosting displaced people, and “with this debate has come a rise in anti-immigrant attitudes, along with a shift in election patterns toward increased support for explicitly anti-immigrant parties (e.g., the Freedom Party in Austria, the National Front in France, and the Alternative for Germany) and initiatives (e.g., Brexit in the United Kingdom)” (Hynie, 2018, p. 265). Speaking about nation states which have restrictive immigration policies such as non-arrival measures, Gibney (2006) points out that “public discussions of asylum and migration, more generally, often degenerate into prejudice, political manœuvring, and unfounded anxiety” (p. 168). Not surprisingly, this anxiety predicts less support for more liberal immigration legislation (Hynie, 2018, p. 270). Leudar, Hayes, Nekvapil, Turner Baker (2008), highlight a study conducted on readers’ letters to newspapers revealing that the use of the phrase ‘asylum seeker’ was actually activated for ‘bogus asylum seeker’, with the media rarely reporting on legitimate refugees. In addition, Western media largely depicts immigrants as both threatening and passive, often using metaphors like floods, invasions, animals and weeds in reference to them (p. 188). They go on to explain their findings that “readers do not simply reproduce media representations but use them flexibly in locally situated activities, and sometimes irrespectively of the author’s original intent” (p. 204). Moreover, the authors suggest that hostility themes create community exclusion by characterizing them as morally and legally questionable in a socially coordinated way (p. 215).
The impetus to support restrictive policies is also driven by a desire to decide who belongs and who does not, something often dictated by race. Karakayali and Rigo (2010) note that “authors critical of mainstream migration theory have highlighted the extent to which legal rules and discursive practices construct and redefine the dichotomy between citizens and foreigners, as well as that between “legal” and “illegal” aliens” (p. 126). The exercise of national sovereignty driven by prejudice can look like making “strategic exceptions and concessions to maintain its hegemony, a hegemony that frames determinations of cost, responsibility and belonging” (Huynh & Neyland, 2020, p.112). The Sumpte authors muse, “if what Germany is trying to do is ever going to work, it will depend not on the purity or suffering of the migrants—where the media has chosen to rest its sights—but on the beliefs, prejudices, and fears of their hosts'' (Mauk, Schmidt & Butler, 2017, p. 105). Clearly media, political discourse, and public opinion are completely intertwined.
THE POSITIVE
Media efforts to depict immigrants in a positive light can likewise affect policy and public opinion. However, it is important to note the difference between discourse grounded in empathy versus rights. Mauk, Schmidt & Butler (2017) reflect that “if it is a dehumanizing lie to suggest that all refugees are criminals, as the right-wing press seems content to do, it is no less a lie to depict them as hapless victims” (p. 104). An empathetic approach can be in danger of conveying disparaging stereotypes of helplessness and dependence. However, Hynie points out how, for example, political cartoons can play a role in opposing the dominant discourse on refugees, as they highlight discrepancies and hypocrisies in public opinion and political discourse, which can help shape the conversation (2018, p. 272). She reports research in Austria which found that communities hosting refugees had the lowest increase in far-right support, in contrast to a higher general rise in far-right political leaning. Along the same lines, in Australian areas of resettlement residents reported that interactions with refugees were in general positive (p. 270). This is important because the inclusion and resettlement support refugees receive is in a cyclical relationship with public opinion.
In this regard, and more specifically within the community context, public policy and perception, which in part are shaped by media campaigns, impact immigrants’ experience of inclusion too, namely how they are interacted with and perceived. “More inclusive integration policies have been found to be associated with more positive attitudes toward immigrants, a finding that has been attributed to their impact on how immigrants are perceived. Public attitudes toward refugees and asylum seekers can affect refugees’ abilities to form new social relationships with other groups in the community. They can also affect the willingness of institutions to implement policies that meet refugees’ unique needs” (Hynie, 2018, p. 267). Not only that, but dependence on charity, stereotypes of idleness and uncertainty about the future impact refugees’ identities as well (p. 270). “Positive” media and public discourse which support immigration and integration has a negative impact if empowerment is absent from the rhetoric and actions that back it up.
Gibney declares that governments “need simultaneously to spread the culture of rights abroad and to work to create a political environment more receptive to asylum-seekers and refugees at home” (2006, p. 168). This is undoubtedly true and, as we have seen, both inclusive and exclusive policies affect media, which affect public discourse, which impact resettlement and inclusion experiences of refugees themselves. Leudar, et al., suggest that hostility toward immigrants discourages “the opportunity to assert their identity in public” (2008, p. 188), which results in disempowerment. Some refugees actively distance themselves from misappropriated stereotypes, and retell their experience as coming from an unliveable place where they were unable to be who they are (Leudar, et al., 2008, p. 216). It goes without saying that these sorts of blockades hinder integration and healthy social structure.
"They are the ‘vanguards of their people’, having the “potential to be at the forefront of forging new formations of political existence and community...”
CENTERING ON MIGRANTS
With all the sources of discursive input in mind, is it not legitimate for migrants themselves to enjoy greater representation, with their voices amplified as well? It is prudent to include those who have experiential knowledge in state-level trauma and statelessness into the conversation. Thomas Nail adopts an immigration framework that is centered on migrants. He argues that social movement and migration are and always have been much more primary human occupations than living within sedentary and rigid boundaries that define territories and societies, despite the fact that “contemporary anti-immigrant politics still rely, as they have historically, on the idea that those who move to the territory are not, or are not fully, members of that society” (2015). Mauk, Schmidt & Butler confirm this by way of example through a shortened migratory history of Sumpte throughout medieval Europe, emphasizing that this refugee camp is just another in a long history of migration in the area (2017, p. 106-7). Nail concludes that there must be a new framework which centers the migrant in order to more effectively address the immigration crisis.
Huynh & Neyland (2020) provide an example that represents a small step toward centering the debate on the experience of immigrants within the context of Australia. This approach acknowledges the burden of mass migration on the state while tempering it with both the reality of the reasons behind migration happening worldwide as well as the economic and social possibilities that inevitably result (p. 128). This sets the stage for a more balanced and appropriate response to the many systems at work within crisis. Applied to the United States, this reasoning could help combat American exceptionalism and create greater awareness of mass migration, by far not only into wealthy nations, directly resulting from climate change, for example. This is a clear example of one narrative that helps to move from center purely national interests to a more holistic perspective, but it does not go far enough to include others into the debate.
INTEGRATION
One aspect of centering on the migrant that I believe is particularly poignant is the public’s approach to integration, something Schmidtke believes is absolutely dependent on inclusion within public debate and policy-making (2018, p. 148). Hynie observes that “integration is a process whereby both the receiving communities and the newcomers change, and change each other” (2018, p. 267). When a community resists or has difficulty with integration, perhaps the receiving community feels a perceived loss, perhaps in cultural hegemony, rather than experiencing a gain in social and community richness. On the other hand, Schmidke observes that “immigrants and minorities find themselves as objects of integration requests rather than as subjects in the process of co-determining their meaning and socio-political practice. The result can be paradoxical: The very term that is meant to guide the way for equitable and fair social inclusion becomes a device for reproducing social and symbolic exclusion” (2018, p. 148). If the dominant narrative on migrants included ways immigrants can have a positive impact on their new communities, the discourse could be characterized by hope rather than fear. This hope could be fueled from the idea that they are the ‘vanguards of their people’ (Arendt, 2007, p. 119), having the “potential to be at the forefront of forging new formations of political existence and community”, as Nguyen describes it (2019, p. 122). Not only this, but it frees the receiving community from a prescribed role as well.
If hostility is accomplished through social coordination as Leuder, et al. suggests, Hynie proposes that “intergroup contact can encourage the development of integrated, and less stigmatized, newcomer identities, and foster positive intergroup relationships” (2018, p. 271). She goes on to explain that this is conditional upon group intimacy and equality, shared goals and participation, and institutional support for intergroup relationships. Schmidtke (2018) demonstrates one possibility for centering migrants that are within reach through integration and inclusion efforts in Neighborhood Houses (NHs) in Greater Vancouver. These local, decentralized efforts have proven to impact open immigration policies nationally, but were able to do so as a result of previously expanded immigration policies and an emphasis on multiculturalism in Canada starting in the 1960s (p. 148). NHs provide networks of grassroots settlement services with the aim to build community and social connectivity, and to bolster integration and inclusion. These services include employment support, daycare, youth activities, cultural events and recreational programs, just to name a few. NHs combat social isolation and bolster participation skills. The operation of the programs are often run by settled immigrants, and they are encouraged to take ever-expanding participatory and leadership roles, which transform into vital civic roles and political skills. Importantly, “the local and regional levels have generated some marked opportunities for civil society input and initiatives. In this respect, immigrant or minority communities gain—as Winders (2012) puts it in his study on urban politics in the US—“institutional visibility” in local contexts, thereby allowing them to make political claims” (Schmidtke, 2018, p. 150). This opportunity provides the chance to build social capital vertically between diverse community members, as well as influence political policy. Schmidtke drives home that it is national-level policies which encourage multiculturalism and strong integration that support the work of grassroots initiatives. On the other hand, he suggests that in Canada, initiatives like these have helped to inoculate the country against nationalist exclusion which has become the trend in other liberal democracies (p. 154). NHs and similar initiatives are the ground in which healthy integration and migrant participation take root to affect change everywhere. Both processes, at the national and local levels, are needed. Additionally, his work drives home Hynie’s point that the integration of groups, namely that the host community and the resettled population, having shared goals, should change and strengthen the social fabric of a community. This makes available an environment where migrants have agency to make provision for and affect change within their communities, and without pure assimilation- perhaps something they did not have in their country of origin.
CONCLUSION
Mauk, Schmidt & Butler conclude their article on Sumpte powerfully, declaring that the local citizens are “never invited to the table where their futures are written, the table where, since reunification, the land in the regions near Sumte has been suggested as a final repository for the country's nuclear waste. The high salt content of the earth makes it an attractive storage site” (p. 110). This could just as easily pertain to the refugees they housed temporarily, a scenario where refugees are treated as docile populations who are not allowed to participate in what happens to them. Yet, refugees in a spurned and dying village that is home to a somewhat receptive population (the “salt of the earth”, to invoke a biblical image), were able to create the social conditions needed to flourish. The “salt of the earth” undoubtedly might also pertain to the migrants themselves, the vanguards of their people, contributing new, rich civic participation and communal life to communities like Sumpte and greater Vancouver. Gibney’s suggestion that states need to have more receptive policies affecting refugees and migrants should be the first step to ultimately embracing inclusion measures on local levels, as we see in the case of the Vancouver Neighborhood Houses. However, it is not an absolute prerequisite. As media discourse and policy affects public opinion and the success of integration, which in turn affect policy and discourse, so too can healthy integration strengthen the social fabric of communities, which can influence policy and the perception of immigrants in a cyclical and uplifting manner.