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Merkel denounces new anti-Semitism from Arab refugees
news@thelocal.de
@thelocalgermany
23 April 2018
09:30 CEST+02:00
Merkel denounces
new anti-Semitism from Arab refugees
German Chancellor Angela Merkel denounced the emergence of
"another form of anti-Semitism" from refugees of Arab origin in
Germany, in an interview with an Israeli television broadcaster on Sunday.
"We have a new phenomenon, as we have many refugees
among whom there are, for example, people of Arab origin who bring another form
of anti-Semitism into the country," Merkel told the private Channel 10
network.
Her remarks come after an alleged anti-Semitic attack
Tuesday in Berlin caused a stir in Germany.
According the German tabloid Bild, the main alleged
perpetrator, who surrendered to police, is a Syrian refugee who lived in a
centre for migrants near Berlin.
In the interview, Merkel said the German government had
appointed a commissioner to fight against anti-Semitism.
"The fact that no nursery, no school, no synagogue can
be left without police protection dismays us," she said.
Merkel also reaffirmed that Israel's security was a central
concern for Germany because of its "eternal responsibility" for the
Holocaust.
But she rejected the possibility that Berlin would follow
Washington's example and move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
"We must work for a two-state solution, and according
to that, the status of Jerusalem must be clarified," she said.
The US move has angered Palestinians who see east Jerusalem,
annexed by Israel, as the capital of any future Palestinian state.
Merkel also reiterated Germany's support for the
continuation of the Iran nuclear deal, which provides for curbs to Tehran's nuclear
programme in exchange for relief from international sanctions.
"We think it's better to have an agreement, even if
it's not perfect, than no agreement," she said.
Israeli leaders and US President Donald Trump's
administration think the deal - signed in 2015 between Iran and the world's
five nuclear powers, plus Germany -- is too lax.
Trump has threatened to restore sanctions against Iran and
withdraw from the deal if his European partners do not "fix" it by
May 12th.
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Germany and Immigration
The Changing Face of the Country
Many Germans feel foreign in their own country and are
afraid that immigration is changing their homeland rapidly. Every fifth person
in Germany comes from an immigration background and that number will continue
to climb. What does that mean for the country? By DER SPIEGEL Staff
Milos Djuric/ DER SPIEGEL
April 19, 2018 07:24 PM
Maike Manz runs her hand across the patient's belly and
hopes that the young woman in the hospital bed will at least have an inkling of
what she's trying to tell her. "We're going to conduct an ultrasound now
and then we will decide how to proceed," the gynecologist says, slowly and
as clearly as she can.
The pregnant woman is from Guinea-Bissau and has only been
living in Germany for the past nine months. She peers on helplessly as the
doctor does a miming gesture to try to help her to understand. Adhered to her
stomach is the sensor of a CTG device that measures babies' heart rates. She's
in her 36th week of pregnancy and is expecting twins. Aside from the word
"baby," she hasn't understood anything, because she doesn't speak any
German.
Manz looks at her mobile phone display in the hopes it will
provide some relief. It's quarter to five and the translator, a relative of the
patient, was supposed to be here 45 minutes ago. She shrugs her shoulders.
"Different cultures, different understandings of time," says Manz,
who has worked at the maternity ward of the Mariahilf Hospital in Hamburg's
Harburg district since last year.
During prenatal checkups and the actual birth, Manz, who is
the chief physician here, always carries index cards with basic vocabulary in
Arabic, Farsi, Russian, Romanian and Turkish. When she chooses new staff, Manz
also tries to make hires that can help her department cope with the new
challenges.
Indeed, that is one reason why Sufan Abdulhadi has become
something of a star at the hospital over the past three years. The Libyan began
his doctor residency in Germany in 2008 and he has been working at Mariahilf
since 2014.
Abdulhadi is something of a bridge between the cultures.
Arab families feel they're in good hands with Abdulhadi and it's easy for them
to explain things to him. "I've spoken more Arabic here in recent years than
German," he says. "It's unbelievably important for women who come to
us that during the most important moment of their lives, there is a doctor
nearby who can understand them."
Unique Challenges
Close to 40 percent of the mothers who give birth at Mariahilf
were born outside of Germany. Harburg, where the hospital is located, is
neither one of Hamburg's more prosperous areas nor is it particularly poor. The
statistics are similar at many other big city hospitals around the country. In
many parts of Germany, obstetrics has become a multicultural career field, with
the unique challenges that come along with it.
The latest numbers from the Federal Statistical Office show
that almost every fourth child born in Germany in 2016 had a foreign mother.
Female immigrants are indeed contributing significantly to the fact that
Germany's birth rate is rising again. Already today, one out of five people
living in the country has immigrant roots.
Germany has obviously become a country of immigration - and
one that is changing rapidly. And although economists and politicians are fond
of emphasizing all the positive aspects of this development - Germany's aging
society, for example, has been an issue for decades - there's also a large
segment of society that is anything but pleased by the development.
These people are asking themselves what their heimat, or
homeland, will look like in 10, 20 or 30 years. They harbor doubts that the
government is able to solve the problems already arising out from the lack of
integration among some immigrant groups. Some fear that German Chancellor
Angela Merkel is leading the country toward a bleak future with an aimless
immigration policy - a policy that allows migrants to come to Germany and apply
for asylum rather than a policy that actively seeks to bring in highly skilled
workers. A policy that ultimately means that even those whose asylum
applications are rejected are ultimately allowed to stay anyway.
Such fears of uncontrolled migration are nothing new. They
helped catapult populist German politician Thilo Sarrazin's 2010 book
"Deutschland schafft sich ab," which can perhaps best be translated
as "Germany Is Doing Away With Itself" to the top of the best-seller
lists. But at the time when Sarrazin was promoting his theories about Muslim
immigrants' fondness for procreation, only 40,000 new asylum-seekers were
entering Germany each year. At the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015, that
many people were arriving in the country within just a few days.
Swapping Out the Germans
Since then, just under 1.4 million refugees have arrived in
Germany. One indication of how deeply the anger and rage are simmering in many
people is the dangerous power of the conspiracy theory which holds that the
chancellor, together with other sinister powers, is planning to swap out the
ethnic German population and replace it with foreigners. Michael Butter, a
professor of American Studies at the University of Tübingen, who is also an
expert in conspiracy theories, says it is currently one of the most popular
conspiracy theories circulating in Germany right now.
Part of the reason it became so popular is that society,
politicians and the media haven't discussed some of the developments openly and
factually - at times out of fear of playing into the hands of xenophobes. Too
often, the debate is driven by people more focused on showing off their own
worldliness and tolerance than actually addressing the problems. But hopes that
the conflicts created through poorly managed immigration might somehow
disappear behind the optimism have been dashed.
Large segments of the German population are suffering from a
kind of stress relating to identity. Germans without any immigration background
in their own families fear that immigrants could strip them of their Heimat,
their sense of home. At the same time, Germans with immigrant backgrounds feel
marginalized and foreign. But it's an altogether different phenomenon for
refugees arriving here. When they think about home, it tends to be the one they
just lost.
'Rampant Feelings of Rootlessness'
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of the conservative
Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian
Democratic Union (CDU), reacted to that sentiment with his recent remarks that
Islam doesn't belong to Germany. Of course, the sentence in and of itself is
nonsense: Around 4.7 million Muslims call Germany home. Many were born here and
are very well integrated into society. There's at least one mosque in almost
every large city in Germany.
German as a Second Language
Schools often determine the share of children from families
who don't speak German at home by asking parents during registration. As such,
the results aren't always precisely comparable. Among pupils who come from
homes where German isn't spoken, some of them may speak good German. Source: DER
SPIEGEL queries sent to states
But even weeks after Seehofer uttered those words, the
debate over his comments still hasn't abated. In fact, polls show that large
parts of the German population agree with Seehofer. But why? Because saying
"Islam doesn't belong to Germany" is a way of expressing discomfort
with the ways in which the country is changing. A way of saying they would like
the development to stop.
Merkel's answer to Seehofer, though, namely that Islam does
belong to Germany, also isn't helpful, says Cornelia Koppetsch, a professor of
sociology at the Technical University of Darmstadt. She argues that both
politicians sought to "create a sense of community within their political
camps," but ultimately ended up promoting "rampant feelings of
rootlessness."
Germany is fond of such symbolic debates, which ultimately
ony serve to determine which side people fall on rather than actually
addressing the real issues at hand. There are constant debates over whether to
ban the burqa, even though very few women actually wear them in Germany. These
discussions serve largely to provide supporters of a ban with a vehicle with
which to express their sentiment that tolerance has gone far enough.
As Christianity Shrinks in Germany, Islam Grows
The CSU has now promised worried Germans that the country
will remain one shaped by Judeo-Christian traditions. At the same time, though,
it's also true that membership in Christian churches in the country has been
shrinking for years. In 2016 alone, 350,000 people left the church.
As Christian churches close in many places in the country,
Muslims are building new mosques - or they are taking over buildings that are
otherwise empty.
In Hamburg's Horn neighborhood, the Islamic Center al-Nour
community is even in the process of converting a former church into a mosque
with the help of funding from Kuwait. The church had been empty for more than
16 years with its members having either died, left the church or moved. Nobody
is being pushed out. And it also provides the Muslim community with a
convenient opportunity to make use of an empty space. Some nevertheless see the
conversion as symbolic.
"Allah" is now emblazoned in gold, Arabic letters
where the cross was once located on the 44-meter-high tower of this former
church. The Muslims want to move into their new house of worship later this
year. Until that time, they will be praying in a former underground parking
lot. Initially, an investor had bought the building, but his plans for the
property didn't pan out and he sold it to the Islamic Center al-Nour in 2012.
Former pastor Wolfgang Weissbach tenderly refers to the
former church as "my first love." Weissbach, who is now 80, began his
career as a pastor here. It's a recent Tuesday in April and Weissbach has come
to the visit the construction site together with two former parishioners, Ellen
and Heinz-Jürgen Kammeyer. The pastor suddenly grows uneasy. "There's the
baptismal font," Weissbach calls out, pointing to a white pedestal that
has been upended in the middle of the construction debris behind the fence.
The three aggrieved retirees stare at the sacrilege before
them. Weissbach once baptized children with water from a copper bowl that had
been placed on this pedestal. It was standing next to the Kammeyers when they
married in 1985.
The Kammeyers are members of the center-left Social
Democratic Party (SPD) and say they would never vote for the right-wing
populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). Even though they feel a bit odd about
the fact that Muslims will soon be praying in their former church, they did
join a demonstration organized by the Citizens' Initiative Pro Germany five
years ago to defend the Muslims' right to convert the church into a mosque.
Since their marriage, the couple has lived in a red brick
residential complex where they raised their two children and the couple still
has a framed photo in their living room of the church they used to attend.
These days, half the names on the doorbells here are now Turkish or Arabic. The
two SPD members try to maintain good relations with their neighbors, but the
extent to which their neighborhood has changed has not been lost on them.
"When you're in the minority, you feel foreign,"
says Heinz-Jürgen Kammeyer, his wife nodding in agreement. On some bus lines in
the neighborhood, she says, she hears more "Swahili than German - people
cut in line and show little consideration."
"Immigration isn't the only thing that makes it feel
like we are losing our home," says Ellen Kammeyer. She says the
neighborhood's social hubs have lost their meaning. "What, should I play
bridge at the senior center?" she asks. She says there is a lack of space
in society for the new generation of senior citizens to which the Kammeyers
belong.
Ellen Kammeyer has since left the Protestant Church, but
every time she goes past the construction site, she gets a lump in her throat.
Her husband, especially, is bothered by the idea that men and women will soon
be divided as they pray in the mosque. "Turkish families live here whose
daughters are covered as soon as they start to menstruate," he says. He
has nothing against Islam, he says, but the way some Muslims treat women is in
his view "incompatible" with the German constitution. "This
attitude that a woman is a whore just because she wears a bikini!"
A recent survey taken by Forsa, one of Germany's most
respected pollsters, showed that more than one out of four Germans agree that
Islam is something that "arouses fear." With its reign of terror in
Syria and Iraq and its numerous attacks in Europe, the terrorist organization
Islamic State has succeeded in increasing fears of the religion. Hardly a day
passes in which the media doesn't report about cases of anti-Semitism among
Muslims or about how Muslim children at elementary schools are bullying those
who think differently.
A Failure to Differentiate Between Islam and Islamism
Often enough, the rejection of Islam manifests itself in the
form of vandalism or violence. Statistics from the German Interior Ministry
show there were at least 950 attacks on Muslims and mosques last year. That
includes hate speech in the internet, but also threatening letters and Nazi
symbols or slogans daubed on buildings. In almost all of these cases, it is
assumed that the perpetrators had right-wing extremist motives.
Many Germans make little effort to differentiate between
Islam and Islamism. Muslims are constantly under pressure to justify
themselves, even if they have fully integrated into German society. That, too,
leads to a situation in Germany in which many feel like the country that they
call home is being taken away from them.
The fear in Hanan Kayed swells again after every single
terrorist attack - each time a self-proclaimed Islamic State stooge shoots or
stabs people - or drives a semi-truck into a crowd. When that happens, she
says, she would rather just curl up into a ball and stay in her apartment until
things have quieted down.
Kayed, 26, just passed her first state examination in law
and works for a small organization that helps refugees find rooms in shared
apartments. She also happens to be a pious Muslim. On the night of Easter
Sunday, she's sitting in a Berlin café with exposed brick walls, worn-out
leather couches and colorful metal stools. She wears a blazer, a floral-themed
shawl and an olive-green headscarf. Born in Cologne as the daughter of
Palestinian refugees, she has lived in Berlin for the past eight years.
"I have never had any doubt about the fact that I am
German," Kayed says.
It was after the attack on the French satire magazine
Charlie Hebdo that, for the first time, she heard someone on the train say:
"You Muslims deserve to die."
A Hefty Headscarf Debate
Kayed's headscarf often causes her problems. The law student
says she wants to apply for a traineeship in the public sector, but that her
chances of getting one are low, even though she passed her first state legal
exam with distinction. "If I didn't wear this piece of cloth on my head,
they would kiss my hand and hire me - but as things are, I will have to worry
the nobody will take me," she says.
Berlin is currently embroiled in a hefty debate over whether
the city-state should allow a neutrality law that bans female teachers from
wearing the headscarf in class to remain on the books unchanged. The current
state government, a coalition of the center-left SPD, the far-left Left Party
and the Green Party, is considering eliminating the legislation, but a campaign
that has more than 2,000 supporters is also trying to prevent that from
happening.
Last week, Serap Güler, a senior official at the state
Ministry for Families and Integration in North Rhine-Westphalia and a member of
Merkel's CDU party, launched the latest salvo in the ongoing headscarf debate.
"It's absolutely perverse to pull a headscarf over a young girl," she
said. "It sexualizes the child. And we have to take a clear stance against
that." Her boss, state Integration Minister Joachim Stamp of the
business-friendly Free Democrats is considering a headscarf ban for girls under
the age of 14 similar to the one announced by the Austrian government to
prohibit them in pre- and elementary schools. The scarf has symbolic meaning
for many because it provides a visible symbol of what they view as the threat
of Islam, making the issue a lightning rod for debates that, even after
decades, still haven't dissipated. Bülent Ucar, a professor of Islamic theology
at the University of Osnabrück, speaks of a "pathological fixation"
on all sides over the headscarf.
That may partly explain why Germany seems so worked up over
the issue. Few other conflicts demonstrate as clearly how difficult it can be
for a country of immigrants to establish the right rules.
Because if you allow teachers to wear the headscarf, you are
accepting the risk that girls will feel increasing pressure from the community
to do the same. People of authority are also role models. At the same time, if
you prohibit women like Hanan Kayed from being able to work as a judge, you are
creating barriers for Muslim women who are self-confidently seeking to pursue a
career. Ultimately, this requires tough decisions over who is worthier of
protection.
Law student Kayed still dreams of one day becoming a judge
or a prosecutor. She also hopes that, at some point, she will be able to live
more freely in Germany than has thus far been possible.
Only one month ago, she was again attacked on the street.
She was on her way to the university library when a man jostled her at a train
station in central Berlin, almost pushed her to the ground and insulted her.
"Headscarf-wearing bitch, miserable Muslim whore - get the fuck out of my
country." It's wasn't the attacker who scared her the most - it was the
passersby who stood around and stared but didn't do anything. Kayed has already
made changes to her life in response. She never leaves the university past 9
p.m., she avoids public transportation and uses a car whenever possible.
What Is 'Heimat'?
There are many definitions for the German word Heimat, which
doesn't quite mean home or homeland as a literal translation would suggest, but
actually mixes the feeling of home with a sense of belonging. Each person has
their own idea of what it means. Most of the time, the feeling of familiarity
plays a role. Hermann Bausinger, a retired cultural studies professor at the
University of Tübingen once wrote that "Heimat is the product of a feeling
of conformity with a person's own small world. When people are no longer secure
in their surroundings, when they are constantly exposed to irritations, then
that Heimat is destroyed."
It's a sentence that Hanan Kayed would likely agree on, as
would tile shop owner Ralf Fessler.
The 48-year-old is leaning on the railing of his balcony, which
offers a sweeping view of the Swabian town of Sigmaringen and he can even see
the tops of the towers of the Hohenzollern Castle, a symbol of the entire
region. "It used to be so nice here," says Fessler. In the yard
downstairs, two rabbits nibble blades of grass in their cage next to a pond.
"Wait, there's another one coming," he says. A
black head of hair is bobbing next to the hedge, which Fessler says he last
trimmed before the refugees moved into the former military barracks up on the
hill. It's an African man walking toward the town center wearing headphones.
"OK, at least he was quiet," says Fessler. "But normally that's
not the case." He says they used to shout over to "please be
quiet." Usually, though, he says, the reply he received was something like
"fuck you" or "I kill you."
'We're Afraid'
Fessler has lived for the past 28 years in the home that his
father built. In 2015, the state of Baden-Württemberg repurposed the former
military barracks into an initial reception center for refugees in the state.
It's located just a few minutes by foot from Fessler's home and around 350
people live in the facility, with most coming from Nigeria, Morocco and Gambia.
The route they take into town invariably leads right past Fessler's hedge.
At 4 p.m. a week ago Monday, men could be seen passing by on
the street every few minutes. "It's hell at night," Fessler says.
"They buy booze at the discount supermarket, get drunk or stoned at the
train station and in the park and then stagger by us on their way back."
He says he's unable to sleep half the night and that he feels like he's being
terrorized.
Part 2: Facing the Challenges of Integration
April 19, 2018 07:24
PM
Fessler is angry about the stress it has caused him,
especially because of the feeling he has that no one is willing to help him in
this difficult situation. He says that, not too long ago, when his wife tried
to take out the trash, a group of men stood in her way and spit in her face.
"We were panicked that she might have caught something," Fessler
says. He also claims that another man groped his daughter's genitals as she was
going to the mailbox, but neighbors intervened. When Fessler travels for
business, his wife and daughter now stay in a hotel or with their grandmother.
"We're afraid," he says.
The businessman has pursued several possible solutions. He
wrote the word "city" in Arabic on a sign in an effort to redirect
hostel residents onto a different route into town. But local authorities told
him that doing so wasn't allowed. He also hoped that the city would build a new
sidewalk along the main road so that they wouldn't all have to walk past his
home. But the municipal council rejected the idea almost unanimously. The
council, said an SPD politician, didn't want to "send a message of
exclusion and racism."
"Of course," Fessler says. "They also don't
have a single African walking past their homes." Fessler used to be a
member of the CDU but he left the party in protest against Merkel's refugee
policies. In the last election, he cast his ballot for the AfD. "I am a
protest voter," he says.
Fessler isn't the only former CDU voter to have turned his
back on the center-right party. Many have done so for reasons relating more to
a feeling of cultural alienation than to the absolute number of immigrants
taken in by Germany. They were concerned about excessive immigration, but they
also felt shut out by a societal expectation that they view the newcomers as a
benefit to the country.
The legacy of the 1968 generation, the changing role of
women, the acceptance of homosexuality, the multicultural ideal: To voters like
Fessler, such ideas make their homeland feel just as foreign as do minarets and
women wearing headscarves. With the CDU following Merkel to the center, they
lost their political home as well. The further to the left Merkel led the
party, the further to the right one element of society drifted.
A Global Shift in Sentiment
In her book "Strangers in Their Own Land," U.S.
sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild examines why white workers in the American
South supported the right wing Tea Party movement and then Donald Trump. Her
central argument: People had the feeling that as they were struggling to obey
all the rules, others -- including women, minorities and immigrants -- moved
past them in the line waiting for the American Dream. And it seemed like they
were allowed to ignore the rules.
A global version of this view has since developed,
Hochschild argues. In Germany, it could be seen in the heated debate in
February surrounding the charity Essener Tafel, which provides groceries to the
needy in the city of Essen. The organization temporarily ceased accepting new
foreign customers because poor German pensioners felt like they were being
crowded out by immigrants.
The fact that left-wing politicians consistently told these
people that their feelings were incorrect, and that immigrants and others would
not steal their jobs and homes only made them more furious in the U.S.,
Hochschild says. Indeed, they began to believe that their problems were being
ignored and covered up.
In Germany, people adhering to such views have identified
politicians and the media as the primary culprits. At the height of the refugee
crisis, Green Party floor leader Katrin Göring-Eckhardt launched an effort to
reduce prejudice, but it backfired, proving more divisive than reconciliatory.
She referred to the newcomers as a "gift for Germany."
But it was a gift that many in Germany didn't want to
accept. And those like Fessler who had a problem with the new reality weren't
particularly receptive to appeals that they change their worldview. Fessler now
speaks of wanting to emigrate to somewhere like Uruguay or Hungary. He believes
his family would have a more promising future in such places than in Germany.
A Small Minority of Troublemakers
The fact that there are occasional problems at the refugee
reception center in Sigmaringen is well-known. Even as the number of crimes
committed by refugees has dropped nationwide, there has been a clear spike in
the Sigmaringen district, police have said in a statement. Every fifth crime
suspect in the area is a refugee, the statement notes. The train station
concourse in the town now closes its doors at 5:30 p.m. instead of 7:15 p.m. so
that drunks can no longer create problems there.
Neff Beser operates Alfons X, a club and bar located in the
train station building. Last summer, patio sales plunged by 30 percent and at
times, he has even imposed temporary bans on refugees attending his club
because too many women were complaining of harassment.
"The situation has actually improved again since a
group of North Africans that had been creating problems suddenly disappeared.
That has to be repeated over and over again to avoid an inaccurate image of
refugees," he says. "It is just a small group that causes problems,
but they do so quite effectively."
The police force in Sigmaringen has now been boosted by
eight officers, a significant number in a town with a population of just
17,500. Nevertheless, the mood hasn't improved much, says Beser. The bar owner,
who himself has Turkish roots, blames politicians. On one occasion, his doorman
had to intervene because an asylum applicant had gone after a police officer
and pulled her to the ground by her hair. "For too long, we were given the
feeling that there was little that could be done about the troublemakers."
The fact that the number of refugees has sunk significantly
hasn't done much to mitigate such concerns. In February, only 10,700 refugees
reached Germany. In November 2015, that number was north of 200,000.
As is the case in Sigmaringen, it is usually just a small
minority that is responsible for much of the crime, a group that generally
wasn't particularly well-liked in their homelands either. Many of these people
will never be able to integrate here in Germany -- but will stay nonetheless.
The German government has said it intends to deport a
greater number of people. But such returns often fail because would-be
deportees disappear, resist or are suddenly able to present medical
certificates precluding their deportation. Just under 230,000 foreigners are
currently subject to deportation and more than 60,000 of them don't even have a
temporary residency permit and technically have to leave the country
immediately.
Criminal elements among the migrant population also dominate
coverage in the mainstream media. Reports of refugees who have raped or even
killed women leave a more lasting impression than features about Syrians who
are quickly able to establish themselves as dental technicians in Germany or
about successful second-generation entrepreneurs from Turkey.
This has led to an additional problem: Terminology. Terms
like immigrant, German, foreigner or "immigration background" no
longer work particularly well in a country of immigration. Is a
third-generation Turkish immigrant who even pronounces his name in the German
way a migrant or a German? Or both? For how many generations after immigration
can you still say a person has an immigration background? What do people really
mean when they say that the number of foreigners is on the rise? Are they
referring to the number of refugees? The number of foreign-looking people? Or
the number of those without a German passport?
Often, they are all lumped together under the single term
"immigrant:" the doctor with Turkish roots, the North African with no
chance of receiving a residence permit, the seasonal laborer from Eastern
Europe and the war refugee from Syria. Usually, though, there is very little
connecting the various groups.
Indeed, there are huge differences between how well
individuals come to terms with Germany and how well Germany comes to terms with
them.
Troubles in the Education System
It's a recent Wednesday morning in April, and Malte Küppers,
a 30-year-old in jeans and a hoodie, is walking through Duisburg's Marxloh
neighborhood, past mobile phone shops, bridal fashion stores and three police
officers who are standing around on the sidewalk. Küppers is a social worker at
the Henriettenstrasse Catholic elementary school in Marxloh, a district
notorious throughout Germany for its social problems. Some 95 percent of the
pupils at Henriettenstrasse have immigrant backgrounds -- or, to put it another
way, only 10 of the 200 pupils at the school come from German families.
This morning, Küppers is on his way to a Romanian family
whose three children, he says, haven't been coming to school since the fall
break. Nobody knows why. A short time later, Küppers is standing in front of
the apartment building, the residents of which have scrawled their names in
permanent marker on their mailboxes. The Romanian family lives on the ground
floor. Küppers rings their bell and knocks, but there is no answer.
"You can't do anything about it," he says turning
around. The social worker makes such house visits in Marxloh around three times
a week to families whose children have missed school unexcused at least 20
times. Parents are legally obligated in Germany to send their children to
school and have to pay a fine if they don't do so. Local authorities step in if
the situation doesn't improve. "Many are unfamiliar with our school
system," Küppers says. He usually brings an interpreter along when he
makes home visits.
Back in his office at the elementary school, Küppers takes a
seat. An even-tempered soul, Küppers is also a de-escalation trainer and has
been working at Henriettenstrasse for the last six years. Up until three years
ago, most of the children at the school came from Turkish families and some of
them were German -- but almost all spoke German. Today, most of the children
come from Bulgaria, Romania, Syria and Iraq -- and three-quarters of the
first-graders don't speak the language at all.
Küppers strokes his beard when asked what that means for
day-to-day life at the school. He then says: "Hardly any of the children
complete elementary school in four years, most of them need five or six. We
can't stick to the normal curriculum, that's impossible. In the first months,
we have to communicate with hand gestures and our focus is on the children
learning the language as quickly as possible. Teachers pay for pens for their
pupils out of their own pockets."
Nevertheless, Küppers hasn't lost his optimism. In the Ruhr
Valley industrial region, where Duisburg is located, Turkish guest workers
worked in the coal mines alongside Germans and they became friends. "Why
shouldn't the same thing happen again?" He sees it as part of his job to
help schoolchildren find a new home. But, he says, "there is a lack of
social work and teachers brave enough to start out here. And once they are
here, they will need to have learned what to do when you are standing in front
of 20 children who don't understand a word you are saying."
Like Küppers, educators and teachers across the country
complain about the lack of support and understanding from political leaders.
They have written impassioned letters and gone to the media, efforts that all
too often end in disillusionment when their appeals go unheard.
"The focus needs to be on the second-generation
immigrants," says demographer Reiner Klingholz of the Berlin Institute for
Population and Development. "Germany has to make huge improvements
there." One of the biggest problems is that social intermingling hardly
takes place at all in the cities. Often, the share of immigrants is
particularly high in those schools already located in problematic
neighborhoods. Around 70 percent of children with immigrant backgrounds in
large cities go to elementary schools where a majority of the student body is
made up of immigrants and the socially disadvantaged.
In generational comparisons, slight improvements have been
made, but many immigrant children are still far away from reaching their potential.
The share of second-generation immigrants from Turkish families with a
university-prep high school diploma, for example, is 25 percent while for
Germans it is 43 percent. "It continues to be the case that many
immigrants pass down their limited education to their children," Klingholz
says.
Many education experts point to Canada as an example to be
emulated, a country that regularly comes out near the top in the comparative
PISA study of global student performance carried out be the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development. In Canada, there is little correlation between
social status and achievement in school. Second-generation immigrant children
sometimes even do better in school than children from families who have been in
Canada for generations. But the comparison is of only limited utility due to
the fundamental differences between Canadian and German immigration policy.
Canada carefully chooses its immigrants and they tend to be well-educated and
fluent speakers of English. In 2016, the country only took in around 50,000
refugees.
A situation such as the one Germany was confronted with --
in which a huge number of immigrants came into the country as asylum-seekers,
with many of them poorly educated or even illiterate -- is not one that Canada
has ever experienced. That also helps explain why people in Canada have a
different view of immigration.
A Need To Recognize and Address True Problems
Statistics from Germany's labor market would appear to
support the concerns of the skeptics. More than half of those of working age
who receive Hartz IV welfare benefits for the long term unemployed have
immigrant backgrounds. One out of every 10 Hartz IV recipients is from Syria.
Most aren't able to earn a living, instead focusing on learning German or
receiving training. There was a hope in some quarters in 2015 that the incoming
Syrians might help resolve Germany's shortage of highly skilled workers, but
that has proven illusory. Still, a debate as to whether Islam belongs to
Germany or not will certainly not help Syrians find jobs and accelerate down
the path of integration.
It would be better to recognize that there are problems
associated with immigration as it is practiced in Germany. And then to explore
how many of those problems can be overcome by way of education, jobs and
opportunities for advancement. A system such as the one used in Canada is
largely impossible simply because of Germany's geographic location. No
immigration cap will be able to change that. But the German government does need
to muster sufficient courage to impose more regulation on immigration, reform
the European asylum system and find effective ways to send rejected asylum
applicants back to their home countries more expeditiously.
Jens Schneider from the Institute of Migration Research and
Intercultural Studies at the University of Osnabrück is one of the optimists in
the immigration debate. That perhaps has to do with the focus of his research:
He looks into the chances for social advancement among immigrant families living
in those cities that are, as he puts it, "super diverse." Among that
group of cities, there are positive examples to be found, and several of them
are in southern Germany, such as Stuttgart or Augsburg, "where more than
half the population has an immigrant background." In Augsburg, the share
of immigrants was 46 percent in 2016. Soon, people without immigration
backgrounds will be in the minority there.
'Work Is the Great Equalizer'
For many AfD supporters, that prospect is terrifying, but
Augsburg is hardly known as a troubled city. "Because of the many jobs in
the region, integration goes quietly and with little friction," says
Schneider. The mantra of many political parties like the AfD or the CSU that
the best immigrants are the ones that aren't there, Schneider says, has little
to do with reality. In Augsburg, 64 percent of residents under the age of 18
have immigrant backgrounds. "The German majority that has to integrate a
foreign minority into society: That model hasn't existed for some time
now." Yet, he adds, a clash of civilizations is not taking place.
France tightens immigration law, sparking division
The law has brought widespread criticism from human right
defenders and sown rare divisions within Macron's own party (Photo: Consilium)
By NIKOLAJ NIELSEN
BRUSSELS, TODAY, 09:09
The National Assembly in France has passed new immigration
laws that toughen up asylum rules by speeding up the application procedure and
making it easier to deport people.
The controversial law has brought widespread criticism from
human right defenders and sown rare divisions within French president Emmanuel
Macron's own Republic on the Move (LRM) centrist party.
French lawmakers passed the bill 228 votes to 139, with 24
abstentions on Sunday (22 April) following a marathon debate that lasted 61
hours and attracted around 1,000 amendments.
Some 14 members of the LRM party abstained with another
voting against the bill. The Senate is now set to debate it in June.
"I am not sure we're sending to world citizens the
universal message that has always been ours," said LRM party member
Jean-Michel Clement, who voted against the bill, in a statement.
Macron's party introduced the bill in February as part of a
wider presidential campaign effort to wrestle support away from defeated
far-right and anti-immigrant candidate, Marine Le Pen.
It allows authorities to keep child asylum seekers in
detention for up to 90 days as they await deportation. The tough stace is not
unique to France. Hungary keeps children as young as 14 in shipping containers
along its border with Serbia.
Early last year, the European Commission told reporters that
locking up children is a means to protect them from smugglers and traffickers.
EU law allows detention to last for up 18 months. A few weeks later, it then
issued recommendations on how best to protect children.
But the French bill also reduces the asylum application
filing period from 120 days to 90 days and shortens the deadline to launch
appeals from one month to 15 days.
Such measures render the application process much more
onerous for the asylum seeker and risks unjustly sending home people who
require international protection, according to Human Rights Watch.
In 2017, the French national court of asylum granted
protection to over 8,000 people who had appealed their negative decision.
Around 100,000 applied for asylum last year.
Those given refugee status under the new law will be granted
easier access to work.
The move also comes amid a greater push at the EU level to
ensure that people denied the right to asylum are sent home, given that only
around 36 percent actually leave.
"We need to significantly increase our number of
returns, all member states must streamline the return process. Return decisions
should not just be given but also enforced," said EU migration
commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos last September.
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