Wicked Conflicts between Locals and Muslim Immigrants
Sep 11, 2016
What Happened over The Summer
This summer was probably one of the craziest historical moments in my entire life; While doing the internship in Berlin, I saw 4 terrorist attacks took place in a single week in southern Germany, England finally voted for saying goodbye to the EU, a maniac drove through crowds and killed 70 people in Nice and one French municipal government was tried to ban Burkinis at their beach.
Just a week after the axe attack on train in Würzberg, I took a long distance train from Berlin to Freiburg alone. When I found my reserved seat, I saw that four Muslim ladies, wearing black Niqab, already took my seat and staring at me with curiosity. At that moment, I was so terrified and hesitated to tell them “I’m sorry, but this is my seat.” Later I found that I was in the wrong car so I could leave there, feeling somehow relieved.
I felt kind of embarrassed of myself. Those ladies were just another tourists like many others. Strange thing is, when I lived in Seoul, I didn’t have any negative prejudice against Muslims and their clothing. I didn’t noticed before, but now I realize that my point of view on them has changed dramatically over the short period of time.
As it happens, today is September 11th and what happened to me during the summer made me think deeper about the hatred on Muslims. For this essay, I would like to choose ‘the social conflicts between local people and immigrants (especially Muslims in European countries)’ as my wicked problem and analyze who are the stakeholders, what are related to this issue and what might be the leverage points that designers can nudge.
Creating the Wicked Problem Map
Since I’m already familiar with the wicked problem map, I made a map for my issue and tried to figure out the relationship between stakeholders and factors related to the wicked problem.
Because the recent social conflicts are the result from the Syrian Refugee Crisis, I put these two as the problem topic (in pink notes). Then I made a list of all possible factors that affect the problem with yellow notes. Among those factors, I chose ‘Lower-class people’, ‘Muslim Immigrants’, ‘Mass Media’ and ‘Extreme Right Wing’ as the stakeholders (changed them to blue notes).
…and with those sticky notes I made the wicked map as below. This map reminds me one of the properties of wicked problems mentioned on Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, that “Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem”.* It is not hard to imagine that the conflicts between locals and Muslim immigrants causes racism, Islamophobia and segregation and each of them is the another big wicked problem. Then what exactly affect to my wicked problem and its subproblems?
While looking through the map and the list of factors, I could categorize them to four topics; Cultural/Racial Difference, Economy, Extreme Right Ideology and Historical Background. As you can see, these are deeply entangled to each other, which makes the wicked problem hard to solve.
- We Are Different from You
People often perceive different ethnic groups as a menace to their community, especially if their size is big enough to become a mainstream. According to Pew Research, Muslims are projected to make up 8% of Europe’s population by 2030.*** The conflict between Europeans and Muslims are emerged to the surface after the EU‘s decision to accept more than 1 million refugees.
On the other hand, language barrier and different culture make Muslim immigrants hard to assimilate themselves into their new community, causing the deep segregation and maladjustment to their social environment. As a result, they form the exclusive, isolated community in each city.
- It’s The Economy, Stupid!
The bad economy is critical especially for lower-class people. Most Muslim immigrants came from less developed countries and vast majority of them are still living in poverty. Meanwhile, the lower-class locals feel that their exotic neighbors are taking the jobs away. They have to compete with immigrants for the jobs requiring low level of skill proficiency. High unemployment rate in some countries also aggravates the conflict between them.
- Return to Nationalism
The lower-class might be so easily incited by the propaganda of nationalism and extreme-right ideology. The right wing political parties in Europe use mass media to scapegoating Muslims for the hight unemployment rate by using provocative catchphrases such as “Turks are coming to the EU”.
It is not surprising at all that a far-right German political party has got the most polls in one of the former East German states. These political events shows that the rise of Nationalism is deeply related to the social stratification.
- The Crusades vs. The Turk Empire
The long historical conflicts between two civilizations also results in the wicked problem in the 21st century. The hatred toward Muslims and Islamic nations (and also the hatred toward Christians and European countries) is so deeply rooted to eradicate. Starting from the religious hegemonic battles between the Crusades and the Turk Empire, the conflict is evolved to the social, cultural economic and ethnic discrimination. Turkey is spending over 40 years to join in the EU but they are still refused to be on board. What would happened if it was Switzerland not Turkey?
Summary
I saw that so many factors are intertwined with each other on the emerging conflicts between Europeans and immigrants from Islamic countries. In the nutshell, it is impossible to solve this big wicked problem by adopting solutions for the one single cause. Besides, I should admit that it might take a lot of time for me to shift my mindset to what it used to be. I feel so bad about it.
References
- (*)Horst Rittel & Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Science 4 (1973): p.165
- (**)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#/media/File:Model_of_ethnic_%26_ratial_conflict.png
- (***)http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/19/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/
