“Immigration and multiculturalism are issues that this government is trying to address, but for far too long ordinary Australians have been kept out of any debate by the major parties. I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40% of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate. Of course, I will be called racist but, if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country.”

Former Australian Member of Parliament, Pauline Hanson (1996)

Politicians are big players in the immigration debate. In the New York Times article we discussed in class, the author suggests that lack of inclusive government policy on immigration creates ‘parallel cultures’ preventing migrants from joining the national community. Arguably the blame should not stop there. Particularly in countries where voting is non-compulsory, immigration debates are often characterised by heavily loaded rhetoric designed to foster a culture of fear and votes at the ballot box.

The above excerpt comes from the maiden speech of former Australian Member of Parliament, Pauline Hanson to the House of Representatives in 1996. While the speech was heavily criticised by fellow politicians and the wider Australian public, Hanson’s One Nation party went on to win nearly one quarter of votes in the Queensland state election two years later. Every country probably has their own ‘Pauline Hanson’. US Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain recently mentioned his ideal border protection fence would be “20 feet high, with barbed wire, electrified. With a sign on the other side that says it can kill you”. Fellow candidate Michele Bachmann also has strong views on immigration, on record saying “not all cultures are equal…not all values are equal”.

And while the names may be different, the rhetoric is not. These people coming to our country, stealing our jobs, ruining our way of life. The language is highly emotive and elicits a stronger emotional response than fact-based discussion. It is particularly effective in times of high unemployment where the concept of our jobs becomes my job, and the reason why I can’t pay my mortgage and feed my family. It is also extremely dangerous, normalising racist attitudes and igniting violence against migrants.

Luckily for Australia, Pauline Hanson has resigned from parliamentary duties. Somewhat worryingly she is still a fixture of Australian culture, reaching the final of Dancing with the Stars and currently starring in the local version of Celebrity Apprentice. Her speech stands testament to the influence of political rhetoric on the immigration debate. Should politicians feel any responsibility for national cohesion? Is winning more votes really worth jeopardising the safety of newly arrived migrants?

by Alex Bitcon

In Germany there are a lot of people who have come from Turkey to work here and eventually decided to stay. Those families have names that sound completely different from German names, and the children of those families sooner or later come across the problem of job hunting with a foreign name.

For people who have “strange” sounding names, job hunting can be really hard I think, because employers who see and read those names might have negative reactions. They would probably doubt whether the person can work as well as German people, or whether the qualities he wrote in his résumé are actually all true.

In reaction to that, German politicians once debated removing the picture from all résumés before they reach the people who decide whom to employ. In doing so they wanted to establish more equality among job-seekers, because they would not be judged based on their (maybe foreign) looks any more. Also the employers would no longer be able to prove their suspicions that the person with a foreign name looked foreign and therefore had to be a foreigner.

Not many people know it but the picture is one of the most important things in a résumé, because it triggers a lot of emotional reactions and completes the impression of the person we are looking at. So the politicians believed that it would be welcomed by everybody if they decided to officially forbid pictures in résumés.

But it had the opposite effect because now the most important thing in a résumé would be your name and that is, in contrast to a picture, something you cannot change as freely as you want. Of course mostly foreign people would have a disadvantage because of that but German people started to worry as well because there are also German names that are most unpopular and trigger negative associations.

In the end the politicians refrained from discussing this topic any further and the process of job hunting did not change. But I think it made many people realize that it is not just your name that counts in the end, but also the picture you send in along with everything else. In fact, it probably has an even bigger impact than the name.

So I think people do not have to change their name in order to get a job but maybe their pictures …

by Julia Lohmann

I come from China, and I am also a student of a university in Sweden. I meet many immigrants there, because the city that I dwell in is said to be a place in which the Swedish government put immigrants. I don’t know if that’s true, but when I traveled to the north part of Sweden, I felt there were not as many immigrants as the city I live in.

My landlord family is from China originally, and all the family members are immigrants in Sweden now, including the third generation. My landlord and his wife can speak Swedish, Chinese and their hometown accent very well, their daughter can speak Swedish fluently and a little Chinese, but their grandson can only speak Swedish. In my opinion, though they have Swedish citizenship, this family has not lost the ties to China yet. For example, the landlord couple go back to China once a year, and when I asked the reason for this, they said “we are Chinese, and we have relatives in China. We want to celebrate some festivals with them.” In China, people have the custom to celebrate the festivals with the whole family. My landlord family will invite some students who are also from China (like me) to celebrate the festivals together. We cook together, eat at one big table and talk in Chinese, which makes everyone feel we are in China instead of Sweden. As immigrants, they have lived in Sweden for 30 years, but they still enjoy the feeling of speaking Chinese and the Chinese atmosphere. I think this is because they grew up in China, and there is a strong lifestyle in their deep mind. However, for their later generations, the ties to China are weaker and weaker. Though the old couple tries to push their children to learn Chinese language and customs, the children seem to be unwilling. They may believe that they are Swedish, not Chinese, and they can live well in Sweden without knowing Chinese things.

As a foreign student in Sweden, I haven’t learned Swedish language or know many Swedish customs. But when I came back to China in summer holiday, my family members joking said “hey you are Swedish now”. Then a strange feeling appeared to me and I said a little angrily “I’m Chinese” to them. I don’t know why I got the anger, but I felt it was so uncomfortable to be “Swedish” when I knew little about Sweden.

Thus I think whether people, especially the immigrants want to keep the ties to their homeland or not, is depending on how they identity themselves. They can choose which lands’ culture and customs they want. For instance, if a person identity himself as a Swedish, he will absorb Swedish culture and customs, and the point is finally he is Swedish indeed.

by Xue Wang

The importance of language became apparent to me while visiting Hawaii in 2005, where I briefly talked to a cab driver who was one of the few natives that could still speak Hawaiian. When the Americans invaded Hawaii, speaking the native language was forbidden, and so it was forgotten by most people. However, she still remembered the language and told me that it gave her a sense of connection to her roots.

I can only imagine being forbidden to speak Swedish, the sense of loss I would feel. Language is strongly connected to one’s identity, and I would imagine that one feels a gap without one’s native language. Language also affects me while being in Japan, since I do not speak Japanese and therefore do not really feel a connection to the country. Perhaps this feeling is very individual, but it is frustrating not being able to communicate with people on a daily basis. Not learning Japanese while being here is a personal decision, but I sometimes wish that I knew the language in order to connect more with people and my experience here.

St. Joseph’s Women’s Health Centre in Toronto dealt with the topic of the importance of language when they interviewed women that have migrated to Canada about their experiences. In their report, they discuss the relationship between migration/resettlement and attachment, and language plays a big part in this. The women faced difficulties participating in society on many levels, including work. One woman said: “The fear I have right now is if I start working. Now it’s time for me to do something, something for me, and …see if I can work with the community, and I’m a little bit afraid because I’ve never done that in English before, and, I’ll be forced to take that step and it’s not easy. You know, it’s uncomfortable.”1

Another woman talked about the significance on a daily basis of her native language of Arabic. To her, it was more than just a language since it was connected to religion and prayer. She even went so far as to say “without Arabic I can’t function, I can’t be.”1

A third woman expressed her concern about connecting with people: “How can I be funny in English? Really, if I were to try, I would be so self-conscious. While in my own language I can say one thing and be funny, and everybody would be laughing. You know when you should be frivolous, when you should be serious. It’s everything is there, planned for you, as though life is known to you. Life is not really known to you in this country…And it never will be.”1

To sum up; Language is important in order to feel a sense of connection and belonging to oneself, to others and to a country, but learning a new language is not just about learning a language, it is about taking on a whole new culture and everything that entails.

by Erika Selander Edström

1) http://www.attachmentacrosscultures.org/impact/index.html

Notions of “globalization,” “multiculturalism,” and “cities as nodes of relationships” are best exemplified by the concept of “sister cities relations” that many communities have established with others abroad. Such relationships between cities are formed to promote mutual cultural understanding, build global cooperation, and encourage economic development.

According to Sister Cities International, a nonprofit citizen diplomacy network that creates and facilitates relations between the United States and communities abroad, there currently exists over 2,000 international partnerships in 136 countries on 6 continents. Among these partnerships, the number of sister city relations that exist between the United States and Japan is the greatest in the world. With over 400 sister cities, no other two countries in the world are interlocked as deeply as the U.S. and Japan.

The sister city relationship between my hometown of Chicago (U.S.) and my mother’s hometown of Osaka City, which has been continuing since 1973, has hosted and offered a myriad of events and connections that has brought and will continue to bring the citizens of both cities closer together. The Sister School Exchange program that was established in 2006 between Osaka City Senior H.S. and Chicago’s Walter Payton College Prep H.S. has provided opportunities each year to students of these schools to fly and visit their sister schools abroad; political, economic, and cultural ties are created between the two communities vis-à-vis the student exchanges. This past September, ten social service delegates from Chicago met with professionals in Osaka as part of the “Japan Social Service Exchange Program” to discuss matters of social welfare, encompassing topics ranging from the creation of a barrier-free (concerning both mental and physical-related disabilities) society to the development of policies that promote human potential and functioning, all the while overcoming cultural divisions. Just this year, the two cities newly created a “sister marathon relationship,” where the local Japanese community of Chicago supported Japanese runners in the 2011 Bank of America Chicago Marathon in the “Japan Cheering section” this past October. The frequent presentations and showcases about each city often organized by the partner city’s tourism organization or the consulate encourage tourism and the physical exchange of people and capita between the two sister cities.

By being exposed to America through a lens that is “Chicago,” Osaka first and foremost was able to establish a foundation of long-lasting relations with the city and country. Such foundations became essential in the creation of various gateways that Osaka utilizes to access new business markets, product lines, knowledge, and technology. Simply put, enhancing mutual cultural understanding and relations in the short term can promote commercial exchange in the long run.

With over 2,000 international partnerships (and counting.. Chicago has been forming new sister city relations at a rate of one every other year) directly connecting global cities together, the possibility of every single city, town, and village in the world sharing sister city ties with another community abroad may be unsurprisingly high in the foreseeable future. In 2005, Gilbert, Arkansas, a community with a population of 28, paired with Isle of Man (British Islands) as a sister city. A constantly expanding “global web” encompassing cities that catalyzes the exchange of ideas and commerce, paired with the ever-evolving potential of technology and the internet, may be “globalizing” our world faster than we think.

by Kenji Tran