In an intemperate moment, in reaction to the riots that have engulfed the suburbs of major French cities over the past fortnight, the French minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, called the rioters “scum.”. They should, Sarkozy said, be “washed off the streets”. Here in Ireland, the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell’s, attitude to immigrants is at least marginally more tolerant.
Still, McDowell is always banging on about the need to "control" immigration. He introduced a referendum last year that restricted the citizenship rights of immigrants and he has deported hundreds of asylum seekers since.
In their different ways, Sarkozy and McDowell are responding crudely to the fact that Europe, and increasingly Ireland, are now multicultural societies. The number of "foreign" nationals living in Ireland is now 400,000, up from 240,000 in 2002. That means that almost one in 10 people in Ireland can be defined as New Irish.
The rioters in Paris, even though the vast majority of them are French, still feel that they are treated as second class citizens. Do the New Irish experience such exclusion?
Shalini Sinha was born in Canada to parents from India. Shalini presents RTRs intercultural programme, Mono, and writes a column in Ireland’s only multicultural newspaper, Metro Eireann. Nine years ago, at the age of 23, she moved to Dublin to be with her Irish husband, who told her Ireland was the best place in the world to live.
“He didn’t notice the struggle for ethnic minority communities to express themselves here,” she explains. “When I moved to Ireland, I discovered my dream to become a professor of Hinduism had come to an end as no universities taught the subject here. My attention was then focused on the very apparent, yet unacknowledged, experience of racism.”
Shalini became one of the pioneering members of the anti-racism movement here, lectured on gender and racism in UCD for five years, and worked as a consultant delivering anti-racism training.
“Racism is neither personal nor intentional,” Sinha says. “It is systematic, institutional and deeply painful. If you are able to face the fact that racism exists here, then you must realise that we experience it. It is sad, but it is also true, that I have been hit in public, shouted at, ignored in shop queues and stared at on the street.”
In the past, men formed the majority of the migrant population but today, of 175 million migrants world-wide, 50% are women. There is a high demand for women in factory work, service industries and care work, which are typically low paid with terrible conditions.
Muslim women suffer discrimination because of misconceptions about Islam. Hebah Nashat (22) is of Iraqi origin, was born in Dublin and studies medicine at NUI Galway.
“I am treated as a foreigner until people become aware that I am Irish,” she says. “I was waiting for my Dad to pick me up from secondary school one day. I was standing next to a classmate of mine and her mother arrived. She told me later that her mother had asked was I attending school in Ireland because women weren’t allowed to go to school in my country. I was wearing the hijab (headscarf) at the time.”
Hebah’s parents came to Ireland in the early 1980s to complete their postgraduate studies – and stayed as a result of war, UN sanctions and US invasions in Iraq.
“There are many positive aspects to life in Ireland,” Hebah says. “Irish culture is very rich and there is a particular warmth and friendliness unique to Ireland, which is something I miss when I’m away on holidays.”
Hebah is most likely to experience racism when she wears, as practising Muslims do, the traditional Muslim dress and Hijab.
“When I go into shops, I am followed by security all the time,” she explains. “It is very unnerving and annoying. When I meet new people, they often speak slower or use hand gestures as they assume I cannot speak English well because of my appearance.”
She experiences misunderstandings about the treatment of Muslim women.
“People ask if my rights are affected as a Muslim woman,” Hebah says. “A friend of mine, who considers herself a feminist, had a very judgmental attitude towards the hijab. She said that it is oppressive and a result of men wanting to control women! After I explained to her why I wore it, my personal experience and the benefits, she changed her approach. She now respects the custom.”
Shalini adds: “It’s an incredible situation where white western societies believe that women in the west are liberated. The fact is that the majority of women are overworked, underpaid, if paid at all, certainly under-recognised and under valued, undermined in our thinking and used as pawns in relationships with men.
“There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done on sexism in all our cultures. Judging certain cultures as tangibly more oppressive than others, without knowing the full story, ironically, falls back into racism."
Benedicta Attoh arrived from Nigeria in 2000 to start a new life for her family. She lives in Dundalk and, since coming here, has started a business, run in the local elections of 2004, and is now a social worker with the Simon community.
“I have suffered racism and discrimination because I am a woman and black,” Attoh explains. “I was horrified when I found out that I would have to take a HIV/AIDS test in order to get a mortgage. It’s time that women’s voices and especially African women’s voices were heard, and women’s contributions both in domestic and work life were recognised."
The number of Eastern Europeans coming to Ireland has increased with the expansion of the EU to include 10 new states. Beata Malkowska (27), from Poland, works in an auctioneer’s office in Limerick city and writes a column on the local Polish community in The Limerick Leader.
Beata finds the Irish very open and friendly and has enjoyed her time here. She tries to hang out with Irish people as much as possible. “I don’t want to be closed off,” she says. “I do the same thing as Irish girls, going to the pub, the cinema, and the gym.”
While Beata enjoys going to the pub, Hebah doesn’t drink and prefers not to be with people who are drinking. This makes integration more difficult for Muslims because social life in Ireland is too often dominated by the pub.
An active social life is, however, the least of the concerns of many migrant women who are frequently exploited and badly paid as domestic and care workers.
Mary, a Filipina mother of three who worked as a nanny outside Dublin, was interviewed by The Migrant Rights Centre in Dublin in an investigation into the treatment of migrant workers here.
She worked on average 12 hours per day, six days a week and received a mere €189 a week, from which €53 was deducted for food and accommodation. Mary was frequently told that she was stupid and slow, and was often made to redo tasks. She feels that this was designed to humiliate her and keep her in fear of her employer.
Mary’s case is not unique. Bullying, harassment and physical assault of nurses from The Philippines takes place in nursing homes and hospitals across the country. But migrants are too afraid to speak up or act in case their work visa is taken away.
Polish workers, according to Beata, are being used as cheap labour as they find it difficult to stand up for their rights because of their poor English and the fear that they will be left with nothing if they are fired because they can’t apply for social welfare.
“We should look at what’s happening in Paris,” Beata warns. “It’s all connected. People who are exploited will one day wake up and say ‘enough, we can’t be treated like this anymore’. They will stand up for their rights.”
Sinha also argues that people in Ireland should recognise the cry for justice coming from the excluded in Paris.
“No one would resort to violence if they were the least bit heard or empowered,” she says. “To get things right in Ireland, we’ll need to listen to those who struggle.”
“The government here must make sure that laws protecting the rights of non-Irish workers are not only passed but also implemented,” adds Hebah, who believes that the protestors in France are rebelling against an oppressive government. “They want to be heard and are trying to send out their message in the only way they know how.”
This much we do know – as things stand, the support systems for migrants and their families in Ireland are terribly inadequate. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work or go to college; workers from Eastern Europe cannot get social welfare; and the work permit system is in effect bonded labour that enslaves you to one employer.
If this doesn’t change, it won’t be long before we will see East European, Asian, Chinese and African and Middle Eastern Irish youth, enraged with anger over their exclusion from society, protesting on the streets of cities across Ireland.