People and Politics

Presentation of Danish Case

22. September 2008

Title of the method

“ Learn to do by knowing and to know by doing” ( John

Dewey 1889)

Our aim is to examine and to learn if it is possible to establish an

attentive contact between persons (and groups) from different
cultures (incl. different languages) by using some very simple tools
and hereby bring about a dialogue across the cultural differences.
In practice we have had in focus to bring about a dialogue between
migrant-women and politicians in a local area (Vesterbro & Kongens
Enghave) in Copenhagen.

Short description of the method

Using the concept “culture” we had to ask: What do we mean by

“culture” and what are the consequences of using this concept?
To make it short and practical we decided
- To focus on one marker of culture: The language and
- To focus on how citizens and politicians cope with differences of
language and
- To work out simple tools that can be used by the participants.

Knowing that there in a meeting could be 5 to 6 different languages,

we prepared as well the citizens as the politicians on this fact.

As chairwoman we pointed out a two-lingual citizen.

We asked the citizens to come ½ an hour before the introductory

speaker (the politician) would come and in this period the women

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organized in language-groups (Berberian, Arab, Urdu and Turkish),
each group chose a woman who would take the task of translating to
the others. Also the women gathered and discussed the questions
they would like to discuss at the meeting and decided who should be
the questioner.

The introductory speaker was asked

- To talk slowly and
- Not too long sentences and
- To give time to translate in the groups.

The chairwomen governed the process in order to make the groups

concentrate on listening/understanding and not to start the discussion
during the introduction.

The method in practice described through a case study

Context
Within the frame of Fakhras Women’s Club 2 dialogue meetings are
arranged.
The groups of citizens who will participate are migrant women from
different countries and of different age. Some of them are members
of Fakhras Club, others are women whom we contact through a
personal network of migrant women with Pakistan, Arab, Berberian,
Turkish and Kurdish background. These networks have contacts to
other women from the local areas and they contact these women to
invite them to participate in two meetings, where two politicians will
be invited. The women got informed of the agenda, which includes
social political and immigrant political topics and which also will be a

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try of methods to support the dialogue across the cultural borders.

About 25 – 30 women participated in these 2 meetings. At the first

meeting the speaker was Margrethe Vestager, leader of the Liberal-
Centrum party in DK (Det Radikale Venstre) and at the second
meeting the speaker was Mayor of the labour market in Copenhagen,
Jacob Hougaard.

Key Outcomes:
Even with 5-6 different languages it was no problem to handle this:
- The quick-translation in the groups functioned well
- The groups showed respect to the chairwoman of the meeting
- The speakers followed our guide: Speak slowly, not too long
sentences, and make pauses.
- The atmosphere at the meetings was in general friendly, which
meant, that several of the women dared – without help from
translator – to take the word and ask questions.
At the first meeting there was an attentive contact between the
participants, which f.i. meant that the politician took position on the
questions or the problems that were presented to her. And vice versa
At the second meeting the contact changed through the meeting,
from being engaged at the beginning to be a bit aggressive.

Aims
Our aim has been to learn the consequences of different cultures, i.e.
languages and how to cope with these when having a dialogue
between migrant citizens and politicians on social political issues.

Problems encountered
At the second meeting the atmosphere changed during the discussion
between the mayor and the citizens. The citizens had questions –
some of them raised with a bit of anger about different social issues,
like:

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- Why do I have to participate in job training in order to receive
welfare money, when even my young son cannot get a job - and I
am old?
- The municipal stopped to give me welfare money even though I
was ill, why?
- Why did the municipal stop to give our Club money. We did a
good job?
When answering the citizens the mayor used a euphemism –
repeatedly – and this was:
“Look at this glass of water. You can look at it as half empty or as
half full. I suggest you look at it as half full – look at your life this
way, so you don’t look at the problems all the time” – and thereby
he did not take position of the questions and the contact between
him and the women lost quality.

Problem:
We experienced, that our method was not efficient to meet the more
complex problems, as when the participants decline contact and
thereby decline to establish a meeting with each other.
We asked:
How to understand the mayor’s speaking of the glass of water?
How to understand the hint of anger in the tone of some of the
women?

An answer could be, that “culturalism” appears:

- the mayor hides behind a sort of “management”-culture
- and a couple of the women hides behind a client-culture

Another answer could be, that the mayor interpretate the women’s
attitude as a matter of culture and not as a matter of a social issue.

Culturalism can be understood as a statement like:

- I have my culture in my country and you have your culture in your
country or

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-There is room for all cultures at the same space and at the same
time.

The consequence of Culturalism can be, that “culture” is used as a

hide of the social agenda and problem of poorness and unequalness:
The problem or the agenda cannot be solved or discussed because it
is a matter of culture!

Progress made
We now have a new experience concerning our method: It has
revealed that the strongest marker of culture, the language, is a
barrier of understanding that we easily can overcome with a simple
method using simple tools and thereby make a frame that can
support the participation of language-minorities.
But we have also experienced another type of cultural barriers: That
of Culturalism.

Strengths and weaknesses of the practice

The strengths of our case have been try of a simple method, which
was easy to disseminate to the participants and which solved a
problem of different languages and gave the participants this
important experience.

The weaknesses of our practice were that it did not help us to meet
the more complex problems of Culturalism.