Extending hands (or not)
Jan. 25th, 2016 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkIt'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 wedon'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.
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
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.
