13th March
13rd March
Mercator Museum.
Our first day in Duisburg was very sunny and warm. The morning progamme was to visit a museum towards which we had a nice walk in the city. Finally we stopped at a mill which was supposed to give place for the exhibition. At the entrace a nice man was waiting for us who became our guide for the next one hour. We entered the room where it was almost dark to protect the papers from sunshine. In the middle of the room two globe faced with us both of them from the Middle Ages - Gerthard Mercator's works. Later we found out that he was a scientist of geology, cartography, astrology and was also a historian during the 16th century.
He was the first one who stopped creating handmade globes, instead he printed the black and white slices and sticked them onto the wooden globe. Later - because it was the cheapest way - his wife and children coloured the continents and astrological signs.
Also Mercator was the first who created maps where even though the size of the continents were not correct but he drew straight lines on the oceans for the navigators so that they could easily calculate the exact coordinates between two points. This invention became the basis of the GPS systems. We had the opportunity to see some of his maps. Usually the territories were deformed because it was very difficult to calculate the exact coordinates at montaneous places where the horizont is not visible. Of course everybody wanted to see how the cartographers saw the countries. It was funny to see Hungary and the lake Balaton upside down. (M.KSz.)
Life experiences of migration Duisburg.
The next programme, a debate with four people living in Duisburg with different migration backgrounds, was one of the most impressing debates we had. In the first part of the text there will be a short presentation of the CV from our four interview partners. After it there will be a shorter version of the very interesting debate. The first one, Fofo, a 40 year old man from Togo came to Germany in 1994, where he studied law and logistics. In Togo, it’s very expensive to get a good education, because you have to pay everything from primary school on to university. Fofo speaks 7 languages. Due to the fact that Togo was a former colony, he was allowed to come here. From his experoences on he could tell us, that he has never been a victim of direct discrimination, but sometimes he feels uncomfortable because of the way people look at him because of his different skin colour.
The second guest, Ercan from Turkiye, was a 46 year old man who was born in a small village near Ankara. His parents have tatarian origins. When he was three, his father came to Germany for a job. After 6 years his mother and his older sister joined him. At the age of 11 he also went to Germany, where he first attended a special preparation school for children with migration backgrounds for two years before he could go into a normal school. After he graduated his A-levels, he studied economics.
In 1984 his parents ans sisters moved back to Turkiye in the frame of Germany supporting immigrants to go back into their homecountries. Ercan has been living in Duisburg for 35 years. He works in a neighbourhood with a high immigrant percentage, but he is living with his German wife and his two children in another part of the city. His 3 and 8 year old children don’t speak his mother language, because he works all day long and it is the responsibility from his wife to bring them up. What he emphazises is, that it is more important for them to to learn German, although he would like them to speak Turkish as well. Thanks to the international centre he has the possibility to keep in contact with other people with Turkish backgrounds. From his point of view, he is well integrated in the German society due ti his education, his language skills and the family and friends of his German wife.
The third person, who presented herself, was Tham, a young woman, whose parents came to Germany after the Vietnam war when she was 3 years old in order to assure their children a better future. She grew up in Germany, attended the Kindergarden and the school and studied German and English. At the moment she is working in the international centre, teaching people with immigrant backgrounds English and German. All her family stayed in Vietnam. When she was 18, she visited her fatherland for the first time. It was a big shock for her to be faced with the totally different culture comparing to the one, in which she was brought up. Even though her parents created a so called “little Vietnam Island” within her family in Germany, she wasn’t prepared to what she found in the reality. Because of the fact that she attended the Kindergarden, school and unversity in Germany, she had difficulties to clarify whether she is Vietnamese or German. But now she feels German and European, although she can speak Vietnamese. In her opinion language and identity is not the same.
The fourth person, Michael, was born in 1971 in Krakow/Poland. When she was 11, he and his family went to Germany because his father had a one year job contract. Although they didn’t plan to stay in Germany, they decided to stay for more than only a year, because of the bad political situation in Poland. First they had to move to Stuttgart in order to apply for the status of political refugees. There he spent most of his youth, but he came back to Duisburg to study maths. Michael has a German wife and a son, who doesn’t speak but understands Polish. Neither he feels Polish nor German. When he came back to Poland ti visit his family the first time after his emigration, he felt like a visitor in his fatherland, because of totally different social developments. But when he started to go there frequently, he got used to it.
After this relatively short presentations of our four discussion partners, we started to discuss the first question, which concerned the expectations of the German people about how an integrated immigrant has to be.
In his answer Fofo from Togo explained that although the government takes measures to integrate immigrants, it is not the wish of the native inhabitants.
Erean from Turkey said that if someone can speak German, it already qualifies as integration. He added that other things do not seem to be important. On the contrary, Tham from Vietnam thinks that integration is beyond language skills, but of course it is an important, fundamental ability, the key that can open the door of integration.
Michael from Poland said that when Germans speak about integration, they actually mean assimilation.
The second question was about the responsibility German institutions should take for integrationg people better into the country.
The first answer was that they should be allowed to work, as it is not permitted for a political refugee and they are dependent on social welfare. In addition, not only the institutions, but the society also has to alter their attitude towards immigrants. Furthermore, the concentration of immigrants in ghetto-like areas is also to be avoided, as in this case they live segregated, separated from the German inhabitants.
Even if they have an academic degree and having been living in Germany for decades, their name reveal their migrant background, resulting in discrimination when applying for a job or renting a flat. A solution would be the anonymous CV, already widely used in Sweden.
In schools, where the number of children from a migrant background is relatively high, teachers are needed who are weel-trained in the field of integration. However, according to Fofo, many immigrants lack the motivation for going to school, thus they should be forced to do so.
All in all, the participants agreed that Germany has started taking the migration question seriously too late. Therefore, the inhabitants might not be mentally prepared for changing their way of thinking and being more concerned about the problem of integration.
Erkan said that it is a natural and general tendence that the more minorities live in a country, the stronger nationalism exists among them, because people need a point that they can refer to. What is crucial in the matter of integration is to give migrants equal opportunities, but nowadays only 8-10 % of young people with migrant background actually study. Although he knows that many them are talented, they will never be able to get their education. In addition, the word migrant is still, for many people, synonymous with problems, although a lot of them have a great potential. Living in a world of globalisation we have to forget about the idea of pure nations. And what´s more, the integration of immigrants in Europe is an economic necessity.
According to Fofo, none of the declarations about immigrants corresponds to reality. The crucial point, which still needs to be improved, is the information policy of the state about minorities living in Germany. What we must not forget about is that the cause of migration of people from Africa lies in the European trade policy. (P.B., C.W.)