Extending hands (or not)

[schneefink]

It's winter, so there are much fewer refugees arriving in Europe currently. A much needed break to figure out how best to deal with the situation. A recent mayors' conference in Austria came up with the slogan "after a 'welcome culture' we now need a 'welcome structure'", accurate.

The Austrian government had the great idea to set an "upper limit" of how many refugees the country will accept, or a guideline of how many people the country is currently able to deal with well, they're still fighting about that. Some politicians apparently think that you can count people and say "oh sorry, you're late, human rights don't apply to you because we don't want to spend money on you don't have space left." I absolutely get being annoyed at countries like England that are unwilling to take on refugees, but at the same time other countries take on more people by an order of magnitude and people are still drowning.

It's hard to get a good picture of what the situation here actually looks like because both sides, pro- and anti-refugees, exaggerate and/or obfuscate, so I try to be very careful. There have been some cases of refugees harassing people, especially women, and there have been some ugly racist actions.
From my family I know that the family the parish is housing is nice. LB says it's starting to be discouraging to the several people in the parish who are spending a lot of time helping them out with learning German, school, shopping etc. that they feel like their help isn't appreciated; gratitude is an important reward for volunteer work. I wonder how much of that is communication issues though and I can imagine that it'll change.

I knew cross-cultural communication difficulties would crop up, and one I did not anticipate are handshakes. Apparently in Syria/Arab countries unfamiliar men and women don't shake hands, for cultural/religious reasons. However here handshakes signal respect, and if someone shakes someone else's hand but not yours it's generally seen as a sign of disrespect. I know it bothered LB quite a bit, and we talked about if people who are living here should be expected to adapt, without really coming to any conclusions. On the one hand I don't think anyone should be forced to touch someone they don't want to touch, on the other hand socially it's an insult. In Graz a teacher is actually suing the father of a student: in a professional setting he shook all her male colleagues' hands but not hers, which she says is an insult and gender-based discrimination. I can definitely see her point, and I'm very curious how that lawsuit will go.

Comments

[isis]

There's an interesting article in the most recent (US) National Geographic, about women in Saudi Arabia which of course is one of the most rigid countries when it comes to gender roles. A woman interviewed for the story (a friend of the (female) journalist) who is a factory manager said that she has the joking nickname "Mrs. Noof Not Shaking Hands" because she does not want any physical contact with men, no matter how incidental, due to her religious beliefs.

And I think that's part of the issue of religious sensitivity: in a culture where shaking hands is considered socially polite, should a man refusing to shake a woman's offered hand be considered the same as a woman refusing to shake a man's offered hand? It's complicated!

[schneefink]

I think it's often perceived differently because of the common narrative about Arabic/Muslim society, especially about the oppression of Muslim women. When a man refuses to shake a woman's hand the first guess is that he thinks she, and women in general, are lesser than him and don't deserve that respect. Whereas when a woman refuses to shake a man's hand many people's first reaction is something along the lines of "these poor Muslim women have been forced to wear headscarves and aren't even allowed to touch other men", that it's something she's been conditioned not to do instead of something she doesn't do because she thinks she is better than the man. That doesn't mean it doesn't make the man disrespected/uncomfortable (it certainly felt that way to LB), but there's probably less personal/direct anger involved, I could imagine.

[muccamukk]

It's all very complicated. Having just ditched out Islamophobic PM, we're now just starting to take refugees in Canada, and yeah. Complicated. And logistically challenging. It seems like we're taking a set number for now (easier here as they can't just walk here), and then seeing how it goes.

(It's really frustrating being next to the States which literally has ten times our population, and is taking basically no one. But then we're still dealing with people not reacting well here, and the US is more conservative, so Lord knows how they'd do.)

[schneefink]

I was confused by the excitement and outrage over refugees in Canada and the US, especially the US. They are overseas! The only way refugees from Syria and other countries are coming is if you allow them to! Stop talking as if they're going to invade. In Europe they're literally walking in, or coming by ships (those who don't drown.)

Yeah, I imagine how Canada feels about the US in this regard is similar to how more southern European states feel about England. Both England and the US are, how best to put this, politically volatile and easily influenced by right-wing assholes

[muccamukk]

Well, they can come by boat, but there's really only so many people you can smuggle in in a shipping container, so it's not like that's going to over run us. Setting aside the xenophobic assholes who think burning down mosques and pulling off hijabs is an amazing idea (and I count our former PM as being on moral ground only marginally above that), the main concern is straining already pretty broken social assistance mechanisms, see also all the wonderful news coming out of the North over the weekend.

(I don't agree with that, because it's not fair to just drop bombs on the place but leave the mess to Southern Europe.)

Which of course we can decide because we have an ocean around us, as opposed to, say, Munich which sounds like it has tens of thousands of people just showing up and needing food and shelter so they don't die on the ground in front of people.

[schneefink]

Afaik, of the European states Italy and Greece have it the worst, and some of the Balkan states. Not sure what the current situation in Spain and France is. Some countries, most notably England, want to defund the boat rescue program in the Mediterranean Sea. If you do that, people die. It's very clear and simple. But they hope that if enough people die others won't attempt the journey, and apparently don't realize what a horrifying calculation that is.

Yeah, if the system is already strained refugees don't make it any easier. France has a similar problem, mostly a lack of integration and hope for young immigrant Muslim men, that they don't want to aggravate. Compared to many other countries Austria and Germany are in a pretty good position at least to start with, but nobody really likes sharing wealth.

[muccamukk]

I hadn't heard that about the boat program. That's awful. I remember similar discussions about the Tunisian refugees going to Italy, but they ended up keeping it, I think, because it was just to horrifying not to. Poor Greece is having such a rough go as it is right now. Last thing they need (though perhaps responding with ultra-rightwing nationalism isn't the best).

We are, as a nation, historically really really bad at sharing wealth, see also anything to do with first nations. Though perhaps it's a specific kind of racism, as mostly people seem to be happy to have the refugees so far. We did this after Vietnam and it worked out really well, so I hope people will keep that in mind.

[schneefink]

I read today that there are still 5,000 people arriving in Greece each day o.o I didn't think it was still that many. No wonder Greece is completely unable to keep up.

[amalthia]

I would worry about the refugee's safety, until they learned how to blend into the U.S. culture. From what I can tell there are too many Americans who do not like people who aren't like them...Plus we're killing our own people without any problems, I don't think they are going to feel bad about killing outsiders. Though I suspect that'll only happen to a few people, the rest will probably experience a wide range of discrimination, being kicked out of restaurants, and talked down to.

EDIT: In case it wasn't clear, I'd fully support refugees coming to United States, and I'd never talk down to anyone. I'm talking about my own experience as an American who is hispanic. People here are racist assholes.

[schneefink]

I was thinking something similar. Then I thought that surely I'm overreacting, sure there are always reports of shootings and racism in the US but the US is huge, it's probably not as big a problem as I think it is, because if it were then living in the US would be absolutely f*cking terrifying. Here, and in Europe in general, you have many racists as well, but at least fewer people killed! Small steps... Ugh, people suck sometimes.

[isis]

Yeah, the US is big and diverse and shooting and racism are bigger problems in some places and not so big in others. I think that cities and the rural South are the worst for this.

[amalthia]

I still keep hoping our future looks more like Star Trek (and not the mirror verse version!) in terms of equality and moving past petty differences.

[lilysea]

Somewhat tangentially, I wish there was a neat social short hand for "yes, I respect you, no I don't shake hands".

I have chronic RSI type hand pain, and a single handshake can mean 3-4 days of bad pain, not being able to type, difficulty opening jars, doors, pressing lift buttons. So I've stopped shaking hands.

But it definitely weirds people out, even when you say "I don't shake hands, I have RSI/a hand injury."

[amalthia]

I also wish we had a social short hand too, though my reasoning have more to do with my own anxiety in regards to germs.

[schneefink]

That sucks. Yeah, must be difficult, shaking hands is very ingrained here. But at least if you don't shake anyone's hand, instead of only select people's, it's less likely that it's seen as an insult.

[amalthia]

Yeah, the good thing about living in Alaska is that I get to wear gloves 7 months of the year. When someone offers me their hand I can't not shake it, you know? It's ingrained in me that it's polite to shake hands.

[geckoholic]

Yeah, it's getting to be a really difficult situation. I'm all for helping out people in need, I'm volunteering too, but... oooof. That'll be a theme, socially and politically, for a while to come.