Adapting to new cultures

VIETNAMESE Tran Thi Ngoc Diep had a shock when she arrived in Brussels in 2001 to marry her Flemish fiance.

The 34-year-old from a traditional Ho Chi Minh City family discovered that the Belgian tradition was to greet new acquaintances with three kisses on the cheek.

This level of intimacy took her by complete surprise, but she felt she had to reciprocate 'because I live in Brussels - I feel accepted when I accept their culture'.

In her conscientious effort to integrate, she also signed up for Dutch language courses - many Belgians speak a Dutch dialect - and social orientation programmes with local integration office Brussels Onthaalbureau.

Thanks to its assistance, the secondary school graduate obtained a diploma in early childhood education in 2006. And the mother of two boys aged seven and two now works as a kindergarten teacher, speaking Dutch, English, German and French in addition to Vietnamese.

Most EU natives believe that Tran has done the right thing - it is the migrant's responsibility to integrate, they argue, not the natives' job to adapt.

As Sabine Craenen of Brussels' migrant workers' rights group, Organisation for Undocumented Workers, notes: 'Europe still does not see itself as a migration country. So we have to protect our culture.

'It is very much a European idea that we have one culture and it always has to stay the same. People can come, but they need to adapt to our culture. We don't need to adapt to them.'

Many maintain that learning the host country's language is the bottom-line factor determining whether a newcomer successfully adapts to their new surroundings or not.

'How can you blend in if you don't speak the language? It's like if I were to go to Singapore and I couldn't speak English or Mandarin, how could I do anything?' asks Idriss Aurane, 26, an English-to-French instructor at the Centre of Innovation for Work and Social Changes (CIERES), an NGO providing free language training to migrants referred by a job centre.

'Obviously I have to get trained, learn the language, and motivate myself to learn properly so that I can eventually find a job.'

Chinese migrant to France, Ivy Fang Hong, plans to improve her French by taking lessons and applying to a university this year.

'If I want to live in France, I'll definitely have to adapt to everything about it. If not, I will not be able to integrate,' says the 29-year-old who relocated to her French husband's home town of Marseille last year.

But learning the language may not be enough in some EU states. The reality facing many migrants is that they will never be Belgian, French, German or British enough.

Thirty-year-old French language student Kim Littler moved from Australia to Marseille to be with his French girlfriend in July 2009, but has found it impossible to find a job.

'The French will always employ a French person who can speak English, but never an English person who can speak French,' he complains.

'It's just the whole French pride thing. They are very proud and they like to protect themselves.'

Beyond learning the language, many immigrants go the extra mile and make a concerted effort to blend in with their new hosts, for example by minimising their physical differences.

Turkish medical technical worker Serpil Annak, 33, is one of the many Muslim women who leave their headscarves at home. Pointing to her dyed hair, the daughter of Turkish migrants to Berlin said in exasperation: 'Look at me, I don't wear the headscarf, I even dyed my hair blonde. But I am still a foreigner to them .'Yet despite such disappointments, many still feel that leaving the hijab at home is a necessary sacrifice, given that it continues to be a focus of division in Europe, and is even banned in French state schools.

Ms Ulrike Seay, 48, a Hessen native who works as a research laboratory assistant, admits: 'The headscarf in Germany is associated with religious radicalism. It is not compatible with a democratic society, and this is how German society feels.

'If you wear a headscarf, it demonstrates that you do not want to be a member of a democratic society.'

However, for some, such efforts to assimilate are too uncomfortable to contemplate.

Rather than shake off elements of the old to better embrace the new, they stick to what they know best. And, instead of venturing out into their new environment to learn new languages and take on different cultural norms, they retreat into migrant enclaves that reinforce their cultural identity.

Mr Antonio Cruz, a Macau native and editor of the monthly Migration News Sheet published by Migration Policy Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, thinks migrants find safety in numbers when they stay together. When in groups, they also go out of their way to display ostentatious signs of their religion and culture.

This is particularly the case with Muslims who form the largest single group of migrants in Europe, given that government policies have allowed waves of follow-on migration in the name of family reunification and marriage.

Muslims in western Europe now account for up to 18 million of the EU's 497 million residents - a number expected to double by 2025, according to the US National Intelligence Council, an independent government body.

'When I first came here 30 years ago, I hardly saw women in the streets with veils. Maybe it was because Muslims were then numerically very weak, so there was pressure on them to integrate,' notes Mr Cruz.

It is now a different story. 'They set up their own communities, create their own lifestyles and even form their little ghettos. This is not something that is characteristic of Asians, blacks or Muslims. It's human nature.'

Ironically, the ghetto phenomenon is especially prevalent among second-generation and third-generation migrants born and raised in the host countries.

'It is a serious identity crisis because the migrants don't feel that they belong here, or in the home country of their parents,' Mr Cruz adds. 'So they try to form a group, and wearing a veil is a form of identifying themselves to a particular group.'

If unchecked, some fear that the growth of such migrant enclaves may lead to increased alienation and a repeat of the racial riots that hit parts of France in 2005 and Britain in 2001.

In 2005, youths took to the streets of Paris's migrant suburbs, torching thousands of cars, shooting and injuring policemen and killing at least one civilian.

The worst riots in four decades were sparked by high unemployment and the racial discrimination felt by French migrant youths - mostly of North African and Arab origin - who claimed they were being treated as second-class citizens.

Just four years earlier, in largely South-Asian populated parts of northern England, violent clashes broke out between whites and migrants. A government-commissioned review of the riots cited racial segregation as the deep-rooted cause. Britain's former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, claimed the creation of the ghettoes led to young people being 'alienated and disengaged from society'.

Not wanting a similar situation to deveop in Berlin, Mr Arnold Mengelkoch, the migration representative in the district office of Neuk�lln, Berlin, urges migrants to interact with the natives whenever they get the opportunity.

'Immigrants should adapt to German society - not isolate themselves - while keeping their own language and culture,' he says.

But immigrants cannot take all the blame for sticking together and failing to integrate with the host community.

Integration is two-way, notes Ms Zrinka Bralo, executive director of London's Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum, a non-profit organisation coordinating dialogue with migrant NGOs in London.

'People are pushed into isolation, and that has happened in northern England where you have Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities that have not integrated. When you are integrating, you have to be integrating into something. If the host community is closed to you, you can't integrate,' she says.

'It's like divorce, there's always two sides to the story.'

Social commentators note that Europe's migrant enclaves show little sign of breaking up. Indeed, many are growing in size as illegal immigrants are drawn to them. Liberal language policies to include mother tongue lessons in the national education system may not help either. Critics warn of further segregation, especially since schools in migrant neighbourhoods often have a large concentration of immigrant children, creating a comfortable environment to speak only in their mother tongue instead of the host language.

Still, some suggest that time is the best mediator.

Cultural clashes should be viewed as teething problems, they say, and be expected when people have to make large adjustments to alien cultures. Time will smooth the friction.

And, they add, once natives accept that immigrants balance Europe's ageing population and do the menial jobs shunned by locals, they will be more tolerant.

They point to how such tolerance is already being displayed at the heart of Europe in Brussels.

'Ten years ago, the authorities would not announce over the radio that Ramadan has started and Muslims need to fast,' points out Christine Kulakowski, the director of Brussels Centre for Intercultural Action, a non-profit group which promotes intercultural relations through training and provides support to voluntary sectors.

'Now the media is talking about it, when, before that, nobody knew. People were scared of the killing of sheep during Eid too, but now they understand that it is part of Muslim culture. The authorities have also given them space to sacrifice, so they don't have to do it in their houses any more,' adds Kulakowski.

And some migrants, like second-generation Turkish migrant in Berlin, Imge Tak, 15, maintain that cultural clashes and discrimination are already a thing of the past.

'I've never felt discriminated against. There was never a person who said to me 'you're a Turk and it is a bad thing'. People at my age find it normal to have more people who are not Germans in their class,' says the blue-eyed teenager who sports shoulder-length blonde hair.

'So I think the cultural clash is more with the older people, and this generation is more comfortable with differences.'

Hasan Togrulca, a Berlin-based deejay and political activist in his 40s, believes he has a more grounded view. The German-Turk asserts that true assimiliation has yet to become a reality for Europe's migrants - but it will by the fourth generation.

'For the first generation, it was working in the factories; for the second, it was going to school, and maybe opening businesses; the third develops a new culture; and the fourth integrates.'

Source: The Stratits Times