Abstract
This chapter takes the events of 2015 New Year’s Eve in the city of Cologne, Germany as point of departure to illustrate distinct possible interpretations of migration and integration conflicts in the European Union. It first surveys the predominantly conflict resolution reading and solutions widely adopted by politicians and the public in order to contrast it to an elicitive conflict transformation analysis. This second perspective is operationalized through the method of elicitive conflict mapping, which aims at providing practical applications of the transrational peace philosophy. The insights derived point towards possibilities for dealing with these conflicts resulting in more functional and equal relationships, which necessarily imply openness to change and transformation for both Us and Them.
My special thanks to the organizers and participants of two events for their insights to this chapter: Participatory Lecture on Peace and Migration at the InKontra and Tao Sangha Zentrum (Dornbirn, January 2016) and the conference “Terror on Tour” (Innsbruck, March 2017). Heartfelt thanks also to Jenny Murphy for her careful editing of the final text.
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- 1.
Albers was soon after suspended from his post.
- 2.
Sexual violence against women was also reported on that night in other German cities, like Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and Bielefeld.
- 3.
On the night of Friday November 13, 2015, gunmen and suicide bombers attacked restaurants, bars and other meeting points in Paris, leaving 130 dead and hundreds wounded. While all of the identified terrorists were EU citizens, they had “an Arab background”, had fought in Syria for the Islamic State (IS) and returned to the EU without being detained (BBC News, 27 April, 2016).
- 4.
Practically, migrants who are not deemed deserving of refugee protection, are being returned to Turkey from Greece with the support of Frontex escort officers. Other asylum seekers, who might potentially qualify for protection, are sent in airplanes to European countries directly (ORF 4 May, 2016).
- 5.
A case in point is Austria, “one of the most politically exclusive democracies in the developed world, with large numbers of disenfranchised non-EU citizens and one of the most restrictive naturalization policies and rates” (1.1 in 2012 compared to 3.4 average in the EU) (Mipex 2015). In Austrian schools 58% of children whose first language is not German require special needs attention, for ‘Turkish children’ these numbers rise to 82% (ICMPD 2015, 3). Pupils with a migration background tend to drop out of school more than Austrians and 13% of pupils with a mother tongue other than German leave school without a diploma (ICMPD 2015). Especially female migrants are seen as carrying a heavier weight in the integration prospects of their children when influencing their choices in terms of education, language acquisition, values and norms (ICMPD 2015). Policies on integration highlight the role of women as mothers and transmitters of cultural norms, implicating them as accomplices of their children’s educational failures while erasing possible interpretations of their involvement in society – including the rearing of children – as democratic engagement (Umut 2011).
- 6.
An elicitive approach understands conflicts as part of our daily life, hence the aim of this analysis is not to provide a solution or a prescription to violence, since there can be no guarantee of its elimination. Lederach and Lederach (2010) further provide powerful arguments to change the metaphoric language that in peace and conflict studies implies a linear development from violence to violence and instead call on practitioners, theoreticians and policy makers to embrace a circular understanding of social conflict that might provide hopeful milestones in the progress towards nonviolent relationships, but that is likely to suffer violent episodes. The recurrence of violence should then not be made synonymous to the failure of peaceful conflict transformation.
- 7.
The principle of resonance in the ECM mind map, while an academic exercise, puts real limits to the scope of the current textual analysis, conducted without direct empirical research. The echoes of the parties’ needs that reach us have mainly been channeled through media in a way that from the onset, the tools available for this analysis are marking the contours of discursively studying the conflict at stake, yet these are the first strokes of a mind map.
- 8.
A case in point has been the 23 of June ‘Brexit referendum’, in which British voters decided to leave the European Union. The winning ‘pro-Brexit’ advocates signaled immigration as one of the main threats to protect and even restore the country’s identity: “its culture, independence and place in the world” (Taub 2016). While analysts are uncertain about what the positive referendum results will bring about in terms of migration, it seems clear that the Brexit referendum has accomplished an important identity task: it has helped to reinforce the idea that Britain has a distinct cultural, political and historical identity.
- 9.
“Wir halten Sonntagsreden, wir sprechen von Werten. Ich bin Vorsitzende einer christlichen Partei. Und dann kommen Menschen aus 2000 Kilometern zu uns, und dann muss man sagen: Hier darf man kein freundliches Gesicht mehr zeigen?” (Original in German by Angela Merkel, quoted in Der Spiegel, January 27, 2016).
- 10.
“Die Idee der Gründung der CDU war eigentlich eine ungeheuerliche Idee (…) Eine Partei, de im C ihre Grundlage findet, also in der von Gott gegebenen Würde jedes einzelnen Menschen. Das heißt, dass heutzutage keine Menschenmassen kommen, sondern dass einzelne Menschen zu uns kommen” (Original in German by Angela Merkel, quoted in Der Spiegel, January 27, 2016).
- 11.
The activist group “Noexcuses” (Ger. ausnahmslos) launched a social media campaign to call attention to both the anti-feminist grain of the attacks, as well as the racist tone of many of the critics. Examples of social media discussion about sexism in Germany and Europe, more generally, abound. See for instance, #imzugpassiert (Eng. ‘happened on the train’), which has become another relevant tweeter discussion about daily sexism in public transportation (Kollenbroich 2016). The petition, signed by more than 11.000 persons in one week according to their website, points to the hypocrisy of highlighting attacks against women “only when the perpetrators are allegedly the perceived ‘others’: Muslim, Arab, black or North-African men, i.e., those who are regarded as ‘non-Germans’ by extremists” (Ausnahmlos 2016). The website further raises the demand for political and societal solutions, which include making sexual harassment a criminal offence in Germany.
- 12.
Well known feminists like Shereen El Feki, author of Sex and the Citadel (El Feki 2014), brought into debate the fact that Islam is not hostile to sex, yet points to how the socially acceptable form of sexuality as heteronormative sex within the confines of a religious and state accepted partnership creates difficulties for a fulfilled sexual life, constrains and prevents alternative sexual expressions. Consequently, for El Feki, a free, safe and satisfying sexual life for those who challenge ‘the citadel’ becomes increasingly difficult to experience (El Feki 2016).
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Echavarría Alvarez, J. (2018). Sexuality, Security and Migration: Seeking Elicitive Clues in the Analysis of the 2015 Cologne’s Sylvesternacht . In: Echavarría Alvarez, J., Ingruber, D., Koppensteiner, N. (eds) Transrational Resonances . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70616-0_6
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