Berlin’s
Hipster Ghetto
Refugees
and cool kids are living side-by-side -- but not together -- in one
of Germany’s most immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.
BY RENUKA
RAYASAMJANUARY 18, 2016
BERLIN — Gül-Aynur
Uzun weaved her way down Berlin’s Karl-Marx-Strasse, greeting women
wearing black chadors in Turkish while chatting with me in German. It
was a Saturday afternoon in September, and everyone was scrambling to
get their errands finished before stores closed on Sunday; the street
was crowded with outdoor displays from discount stores and produce
markets.
We were walking
through Neukölln, a former West Berlin neighborhood and longtime
immigrant enclave. The streets were lined with squat, flat postwar
buildings occupied by disparate businesses: Within a few blocks,
neighborhood residents could stop for Turkish tea and pastries, pick
up a hot-pink handbag, attend services at a mosque, or visit a
19th-century theater. Uzun had just come off a morning of leading
tours through the area. Today, people from more than 160 countries
call Neukölln home, andjournalists and politicians take Uzun’s
tours to better understand one of Berlin’s most diverse
neighborhoods.
We turned the corner
into an alleyway where the bustle of shops and people gave way to
cobblestone streets and farmhouses with window boxes full of flowers.
Within a matter of minutes, we were standing in front of a statue of
Friedrich Wilhelm I, the Prussian king, set on a high pedestal that
dwarfed us both.
This is where Uzun
takes her tour groups. Here, she tells them how the Rixdorf quarter
of Neukölln has actually been home to immigrants for centuries: In
the 18th century, King Friedrich invited Bohemian Protestants to help
settle the land here, even freeing them from taxes and exempting them
from military service.
“They were allowed
to keep their language,” said Uzun, pointing out a street sign
still in Czech. “It took them 140 years to really integrate.”
Nearly 300 years
after the first Bohemians settled in the neighborhood, Neukölln
remains a hub of immigration in Berlin and laboratory for the
country’s experiments with integration. Today, more than 40 percent
of the neighborhood’s 325,000 residents have an immigrant
background, which Germany defines as either being from a different
country or having foreign parents or grandparents; about a quarter of
the residents don’t have a German passport, according to Neukölln’s
district office.
The story of
Neukölln is, in some ways, a success story. Located in the far
reaches of former West Berlin — about as far away as immigrants
could be settled while still remaining within city limits when the
Berlin Wall was up — the area has managed to stay integrated with
the rest of the capital. Unlike the banlieues of France, Neukölln is
well connected to Berlin’s center both practically, with a subway
line that runs directly to the middle of the city, and culturally: In
recent years, the neighborhood has become home to young Germans
attracted to more affordable rents. Cocktail bars and restaurants
followed, and what started as a place settled by foreign workers
brought in to rebuild a war-torn country has become a popular part of
Berlin.
But in other ways,
the area continues to struggle. Today, about 15 percent of the
neighborhood’s residents are unemployed — higher than Berlin’s
overall unemployment rate of 11 percent and more than double the
German average of around 6 percent. About a third of the area’s
residents are on welfare. And while the neighborhood may feel
integrated into the rest of the city, many of its residents say they
still don’t feel like full-fledged members of German society.
Today, migrants are
streaming into Germany in record numbers. Neukölln’s history
offers warnings for the future — and lessons for policymakers of
the present.
“So much went
wrong with previous efforts at integration,” said Maria Macher, who
is a project manager at a social work organization for migrants in
the neighborhood. “Now, with a new wave of refugees, we have
another chance.”
* * *
“Because of our
demography, Germany is forced to be a land of immigrants,” wrote
Heinz Buschkowsky, Neukölln’s longtime mayor, in his bestselling
2012 book, Neukölln Is Everywhere. Buschkowsky meant that Germany’s
aging population and low birthrate at the time he was writing would
require the country to import labor. But in reality, Germany has been
a land of immigrants from the beginning.
After its
unification in 1871, a rapidly industrializing Germany faced a dearth
of workers — the result of decades of war and famine, which sent
young people fleeing to places like the United States. So Germany
invited guest laborers from other countries — mostly Poland — to
help build the economy. By World War I, the country was home to more
than 1.2 million foreigners, according to the Federal Agency for
Civic Education. It was a strategy Germany would pursue again in the
20th century: In the 1950s and 1960s, it invited guest workers from
Italy, Turkey, and elsewhere to rebuild after the devastation of
World War II.
But Germany never
expected these guest workers to stay. For decades, in fact, the
country’s policies actively worked against immigrants trying to
build a permanent home: Authorities granted guest workers temporary
visas and, in some cases, restricted where they could live. Yet many
immigrants, like Uzun and her family, did stay. Today, about a
quarter of Germany’s population has an immigrant background,
according to a study from the Federal Agency for Civic Education
released in June. Of those with immigrant backgrounds, nearly 18
percent are Turkish. And many call Neukölln home.
Uzun’s experience
is typical for many immigrants. More than 40 years ago, her mother
moved to Germany for a job assembling light bulbs, bringing along
6-year-old Uzun and her two older brothers. Her family swapped a
comfortable house with a garden in Istanbul for an apartment in
Rixdorf close to her mother’s work. Like most of the neighborhood’s
apartments, it was inexpensive and had no bathroom and kitchen.
Rixdorf was one of the few areas where they could settle: During her
tours, Uzun likes to whip out her mother’s Turkish passport from
1987, filled with two-year visas that stipulate the Berlin
neighborhoods in which she was allowed to live.
Uzun stayed in a
pure Turkish-speaking school until the fifth grade when she was
suddenly thrown into a German-speaking school, where the other kids
would have little to do with her. When she finished school, she began
working in a printing shop where she met her husband, also the child
of a Turkish guest worker.
Today, she speaks
fluent German and has raised two kids in Germany. In addition to
being a tour guide, she works at a neighborhood organization that
helps women from Middle Eastern countries navigate foreign aspects of
German life, like how to register for kindergarten or separate trash
for recycling. But she still holds a Turkish passport and has to
renew her German visa every few years. “I’ve always been treated
like an outsider here,” she said.
That experience is
common in Germany, which has traditionally pursued an assimilation
model of integrating newcomers. It’s similar to the approach
pursued in France: The onus is placed on immigrants to make the
effort to become more German, rather than Germany opening up the
definition of what it means to belong, said Ines Michalowski, a
research fellow studying migration and integration at the WZB Berlin
Social Science Center. “Germany just doesn’t see itself as a land
of immigrants,” she said.“Germany just doesn’t see itself as a
land of immigrants,” she said.
Despite decades of
experience with newcomers, it wasn’t until 2005 that Germany
finally passed a national immigration law aimed at helping arrivals
from other countries feel more at home. The new provisions eased the
process of getting visas and offered free German-language and
integration classes. From 2005 until 2013, about 1,333,000 people
have taken the classes, according to the Interior Ministry.
While the law was at
least a step toward recognizing that Germany was becoming a land of
immigrants, it hasn’t been completely successful at boosting their
prospects. The Berlin Institute for Population and Development
published a 2014 study called “New Potential” showing that
Germany still has a long way to go toward integrating immigrants,
especially if it wants to use their talents to fill jobs. It found
that only about 25 percent of immigrants’ children have completed
some form of higher education, compared with 43 percent of
native-born Germans. The result is that immigrants from the Middle
East and Africa face higher unemployment rates — around 20 percent,
compared with 6 percent nationally, and also earn less.
* * *
When Arnold
Mengelkoch, the area’s current migration commissioner, first took
the job eight years ago, the neighborhood seemed to be on shaky
footing, he said. It had been on a downward trend since the early
1990s, when many companies left the neighborhood. Turkish guest
workers found themselves without jobs, and the area struggled with
drug trafficking, crime, and unemployment, Mengelkoch said. At the
same time, Neukölln swelled with refugees from Lebanon, Palestine,
and other conflict-ridden regions.
“Kids inherited
the frustration of their parents,” he said. “Teachers gave up
trying to get kids to go to school.” A lot of the area’s
residents, he said, “felt hopeless.” Many throughout Germany saw
Neukölln as a symbol of the downsides of immigration.
About six years ago,
Mengelkoch was part of a group that put together a manifesto in
Neukölln, in an attempt to codify how to integrate newcomers
successfully. While the manifesto does talk about the responsibility
that society has in integrating immigrants, it places most of the
burden on newcomers to learn and adapt to German culture. In the
preamble, it states that “newcomers must bring along a willingness
to assimilate, learn, and a willingness to adapt” and then goes on
to list various ways they should strive to fit into German society.
These integration
efforts, which include programs that encourage immigrants to send
their kids to free daycare and measures to boost security, made the
neighborhood more welcoming. They reduced crime and helped attract
non-immigrants to live in Neukölln, paving the way for high-end
shops and eateries. But they did little to help immigrants and their
families feel welcome.
In the section on
education, for instance, the manifesto states that immigrants who
withhold their daughters from swimming lessons are violating Berlin’s
education law. But many Muslim families in Germany simply don’t
feel comfortable having their daughters wear bathing suits in front
of males — a feeling that the manifesto’s implied threat did
little to change.
Even when Germany
has made more help available to immigrant families, that help is
often out of reach for new arrivals baffled by the country’s
bureaucracy and culture. The problem isn’t that immigrants don’t
want to assimilate or give their kids opportunities, said Macher, the
social worker. More often, she said, it’s that they don’t know
how.
Macher is a project
manager at an organization called Diakoniewerk Simeon. In 2004, using
public grant money, Macher started a neighborhood mothers’ program
that trains immigrant mothers in Neukölln to reach out to other less
assimilated immigrant mothers in their native language and help them
integrate into German society. The program consists of 10 home visits
where neighborhood mothers explain aspects of German life like how to
make doctors’ appointments, get library books, enroll in language
classes, and read nutrition labels. Uzun is a program alumna. After
the training, these mothers are sent out into the neighborhood to
find more conservative women at schools or mosques and tell them
about the free program.
Since its start,
Macher said that the program has reached 8,000 families. Now more
than 90 percent of neighborhood toddlers attend free public
nurseries, which she says is partly the result of her group’s
outreach. “Now the problem is that we need more nursery spots,”
she said.
With the sudden
influx of migrants over the past year, Germany has recognized the
need not only to step up integration efforts but also to rethink its
approach. Most of the 1.1 million asylum-seekers who registered in
Germany in 2015 remain in temporary housing scattered around the
country while awaiting the outcome of their applications. But some
have begun making their way toward neighborhoods like Neukölln,
where they’ll be largely left to fend for themselves.
In a speech to
parliament at the end of November, Interior Minister Thomas de
Maizière said Germany has to think about what the influx means for
the country over the long term. “Many will stay here longer. It is,
therefore, one of the most important tasks to give people who are
staying a long-term perspective,” he said, requesting an additional
326 million euros, or $356 million, for integration efforts in 2016.
“Successful integration is essential for long-term acceptance and
our social cohesion.” But Germany’s plans remain short on details
and have largely revolved around more language and integration
classes.
There are emerging
signs that Germany is coming to terms with what it means to be an
immigrant nation. Today, 34.5 percent of children under the age of 5
have an immigrant background, and that figure looks poised to rise.
At the annual conference of her conservative Christian Democratic
Union in December, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her
“refugees welcome” message, calling for more effort to integrate
those from other societies. But since the New Year’s Eve attacks in
the city of Cologne, where German woman complained about assaults
from mobs of men with largely foreign backgrounds, many in the
country have become increasingly wary of newcomers, putting Merkel on
the defensive.
Still even in one of
the most diverse parts of the country, confusion reigns over what it
means to be an immigrant nation. In June 2015, recent law school
graduate Betül Ulusoy made headlines when she showed up to sign a
contract for her new job as a trainee in the Neukölln city
government. She wore a headscarf to the appointment; Neukölln told
her it was reconsidering the job offer, before relenting and granting
her what they called an exception.
Carsten Koall/Getty
Images
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário