14th March
14th March
Mayory of Duisburg.
It was a beautiful sunny morning and the day was expected to be very interesting. All the group, we were going to the mayory of Duisburg to have a round table discussion with the mayor. The topic was: “Migration and integration in the city of Duisburg”. After a little official ceremony, during witch we were asked to sign the book of the city, we went to the conference room where the real round table discussion began. The mayor first made a little introduction of the actual situation in the city: the population is nearly 500 000 people, of witch 20% have an ethnical background as a “non-German”. The city council consists of 74 members and is elected for 5 years. From those 74 members, 28 are social democrats; 28 – christian democrats; 7 form the Green Party, 4 members of a leftish group; 2 members from the “Burger Union”; considered to be situated in the political scale even more right than the conservatives. There were also 3 independent members.
One of the first questions that we asked was how many of the members of the council were having an immigrant background. The answer was: only 4. Even though that 1/5 of the population of the city was immigrants they had only 4 representatives in the council. The mayor explained that the actual situation looks like this, because big part of the immigrants didn’t want to participate in the elections, for one or another reason. And the other problem was that some of the people didn’t have German citizenship and according to the German laws, people that are not a EU citizens and don’t have a German passport are not allowed to vote.
During the conversation we learned that of those 100 000 immigrants 70 000 had a Turkish ethnical background. We also understood that according to the political core of the city the most important problem of the integration of those 100 000 people was the language. Even though most of them were feeling integrated in their small society groups, a big part were finding problems to find a job, because they were preferring to speak their mother language and their skills in the German language were not so good and that was the basic reason for the unemployment of the immigrants in the city. From here came the question on what language should the children of the immigrants learn the different subjects in school – on german, or on their native language – Turkish, polish, etc.
We also learned that in the city the locals had began to construct the biggest mosque in the region…
Unfortunately, after only an hour and a half of discussion our time was over and we had to say goodbye to the mayor, with a lot of questions still anaswered. (D.A.)
National identity, European identity: official history.
The national identity come form the process of Nation State building, States needed to create a official history and a mythology of the Nation. Of course it ias a social and political construction so it means that there is differences between the official history and the reality.
Usually States and people keep in there mind that there a beginning which is the “pure” of the beginning “before that things changed”. This way of thinking can give the impression that there is an essence of a group. For example, to think that Europe “normaly” is white, Christian, etc. And that things started to be different because of migrant for exemple. But It cancel for exemple, the part of the European history which is composed since centuries and centuries of what people where and bring from Africa, orient, Middle Est during several tims of exchange in Medditerranean area. Europe never was only white and Christian. We are also influenced by Islam culture (sciences, literature, humains and political sciences, etc.).
The consequence of what we choose to keep as official history is very important because it will definiy also the place in the society and the feeling to belong or not more and less to the European group for people who have no direct christian and “white” background. And also it will make blind European people about a part of “them”!
The idea that there was a beginning is artificial. But usually States and people keep in there mind that there a beginning.
The industrial park EmscherPark Nord.
After lunch it was time for visiting EmscherPark Nord. Due to delays with the lunch and the tram traffic we arrived at the park later than planned. Therefore our guided tour had to be a little shorter than scheduled. Although the tour only lasted for 45 minutes it was really interesting. During many years this individual park produced a lot of steel and iron. However, in the 1980s almost all production was closed down due to harder competition, primarily from Asia. So now it was this big industrial park standing alone with almost no activity. Today it might seem lika an old closed-down area from the outside, but in fact the old factories and buildings are nowadays widely used for different purposes. An old tanker has become one of the most used scuba diving pools with a height of 13 metres and a diameter of 45 metres. An old factory has been rebuilt and is nowadays a theatre, one is used for concerts while another one becomes an outdoor cinema during the summers. (D.I.)