The Need to Integrate
Czech hope in times of a European crisis
PRAGUE — Prague was reborn in 1989. Communism was abolished, closed borders were opened, barbed-wire and armed watchtowers abandoned. But Czechs were still a closed society. A few Slovaks. Some Russians. But foreigners with a completely different background and culture were rare.
One of those unfamiliar faces was Sabe Soe. Originally from Burma, she arrived in Prague in 1988 to study. Learning Czech had priority because she wanted to communicate with the locals, wanted to become a part of Czech society. Her Czech classmates became her friends. Invited into their homes, she started sharing and together, they educated one another on their cultures.
Integration is important, she said. As a migrant “You are a different color, but you will make that society more colorful.”
Twenty-seven years later, Europe is being tested by a refugee crisis. Many still focus on how to control the influx of refugees. The important question for the future of Europe is, however, how we can integrate the ones already here.
Jiří Vesecký, Head of the Centers for the Support of the Integration of Foreigners, thinks integration can only be successful if we understand that it is not a one-way street.
“You have to work with foreigners and also with majorities,” he said. “If one of these parts doesn’t cooperate, it’s a problem, and integration cannot be successful.”
Soe is one of only 172 Burmese, but she feels integrated into Czech society. At the Burma Center Prague, she involves migrants and host society in the process of turning the Czech Republic into a true European melting-pot.
How far the Czech Republic has come on its journey into European multiculturalism can show us how far the idea of a united Europe has really come.
For centuries Czech society was open and multicultural, enjoying the exchanges with neighboring cultures of the Kingdom of Bohemia. All that, however, changed with the beginning of the communistic rule at the end of World War II. Suddenly, Czechs were cut off from the rest of the world and over time developed into a mono-ethnic society.
Times changed again in 1989 when communism lost its grip on Central Europe in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution. What ensued was a quest for a new identity — national as much as European.
According to Adéla Jurečková, Communication and Advocacy Coordinator for People in Need, Czechs have never had a public debate about its place in Europe, meaning Czech identity “is still very unclear.”
Czech society has progressed on its journey. Situated at the heart of Europe, it has become an involved member of the EU since its adoption in 2004 — one example is the Czech involvement in the EU’s European Neighborhood Policy, which tries to bring together the EU with its neighbors to the East.
Soe enjoys the cosmopolitan flair Prague emanates today.
“Czechs are now more accustomed to having foreigners,” she said. “It’s not strange anymore that a foreigner works here as a laborer, or as a teacher, or as a high-profile manager.”
On the other hand, xenophobic voices become louder. Besides right-wing nationalists, even the country’s President continuously speaks out against a multicultural future.
This kind of hatred has surrounded the Roma, with 300,000 the biggest ethnic minority in the Czech Republic, for years. Yveta Kenety, Country Facilitator Czech Republic for the Roma Education Fund, observed the media attention and public pressure dropping when the migration crisis started. Now that “the migration crisis stopped being interesting,” she said, “they shifted back to Roma issues.”
To be fair, though, a rise of nationalistic tendencies is a pattern across Europe. UKIP’s former leader, Nigel Farage, plans on spreading the idea of EU exit referendums on the continent, the nationalistic AfD just entered the German state parliament in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, reaching 20.8 percent of the popular vote, and Marine Le Pen plans on giving the French people a referendum on an EU exit in case she becomes President in the 2017 general election.
While refugees from the current crisis are still rare, surveys show that many Czechs are opposed to welcoming more refugees. In particular, xenophobic groups target Muslims, which make up less than 1 percent of the Czech population.
Describing the hatred a young Muslim woman in Teplice received at her school (but also the support from her classmates), Jurečková said she wouldn’t “want to be an obviously Muslim woman in this country.”
Xenophobia is a sign of fear, said Kateřina Tomanová, public relations officer at the Refugee Facilities Administration of the Czech Ministry of the Interior (SUZ). “But actually they don’t know what they are afraid of, because they haven’t really seen refugees. We have to explain to them that those people are not dangerous.”
Czech society is on a path out of communistic isolation and into European togetherness. It’s a process that takes time and people willing to work with host nation and foreigners to reduce fear.
The Center for the Support of the Integration of Foreigners in Plzen (CSIF) is one of the frontlines where this process is being shaped. The center works as a shoulder for foreigners to rely on. Whether it be legal and social counseling or Czech language programs and an introduction into Czech social life, every legal non-EU foreigner is welcome to use the center’s resources.
But educating migrants needs to start even before they start their journey into a new life. They need to understand what kind of life is waiting for them. Many refugees expect they’re “going to paradise,” Soe said. “It’s not like the people here are not working and everybody is having a car and a flat from the government and every month you get money from the government.”
Changing public perception of migrants is the other side of the two-way process. It’s an educational task that migration workers understand.
Soe and her team at the Burma Center, for example, brought together Burmese and Czechs at the height of the migration crisis in the fall of 2015. In a special cooking event, Burmese shared the rich food culture of their home with their Czech hosts. The event resulted in a recipe booklet that gives Czechs a permanent taste for this small facet of their own society.
Through events like this, the Burma Center tries to make multiculturalism a reality. People can get involved with one another — Czechs with foreigners and foreigners with Czechs.
It’s a two-way approach that is working for the small Burmese community.
“After all,” Soe said, “our Burmese refugees are living in 17 different Czech towns and villages and these people are living there very happily in their community.”
Jurečková also sees multiculturalism progressing. During a media workshop for students, the youngsters were asked to produce captions for a series of portraits, one of which depicted a construction worker. While the context made it clear the man was Ukrainian and Jurečková was expecting a comment on Ukrainians stealing their jobs, the youngsters didn’t make that stereotypical connection.
CSIF staffers — in Plzen and other places across the country — are trying to impact the public’s perception of migration in a similar way. A Vietnamese evening, Vesecký explained, was one of their recent activities. Czechs and Vietnamese came together, enjoyed food, and exchanged differences in their history and culture.
Vesecký realizes, however, the process of integration has just begun. They need both sides to participate and still “have a lot to achieve with the majority,” he said. “And still a lot to achieve with foreigners.”
In our globalized world, people like Soe believe the key to a multicultural Europe is the continued work with migrants and host societies, showing them the need and the benefits of living together.
Migration, she said, has been part of human identity since Columbus and Marco Polo. When we embrace the foreign, “we learn about a new world, we learn about other cultures. And that’s our curiosity. We want to know about others as well. That’s a part of our life.”
