Stories behind moving on-Germany
On the 17th of December 2010, a Tunisian vendor called Bouazizi put himself on fire after suffering financial hardships. However, no one expected back then that this single incident would be the spark that led to a life change for millions of people. The Tunisian revolution started, followed by similar uprisings in several countries in the Middle East calling for freedom, democracy, and economic prosperity, a few weeks later.
The chaos and military conflicts, which followed the uprisings in some countries, drove thousands towards seeking shelter around the world. Germany was one of the countries that welcomed those who were searching for a safer place. In 2015, a total of 890,000 refugees came to Germany. Of these, around 34% came from Syria, followed by Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is cultural sensitivity between the new arrivals and the host German society, but there is also a lack of German knowledge about them, their culture, their customs, and their backgrounds. As a result, some were disappointed because they built misplaced expectations without sufficient awareness of the others and they built these expectations one-sidedly. Some people have the desire to Germanize everything else, but integration does not mean that you turn into a copy of the other and lose your identity. Integration requires both sides to make an effort to understand each other.
I included myself in the project to shed light on the state of press freedom in Egypt and on my having to leave after it became too dangerous to work there. I had to choose between giving up to work as a journalist or risking being arrested at any time. My experiences within German society are not far from those, which the people I interviewed have made.
Some have expressed, how they get angry over misjudgment, how they grieve or fall into a frustrated and stressful mood because they are faced with society, culture, job opportunities, and management structure that were completely different from what they knew in their home countries. How some are overwhelmed by the bureaucracy and complicated applications that they have to deal with as foreigners, and the fact that if someone does not have a German friend or acquaintance, it’s not possible to process things easily sometimes.
How they are perplexed by the transformations that affect their lives in regard to their families, their partner relationships, their children, and themselves. In some locations, they are confronted with racism and discrimination on a daily basis.
How some could miss the space to express their own identity: they are women and men, parents or childless, immigrants and refugees, workers and unemployed, well educated and illiterate, coming from big cities or small villages, integrated and non-integrated, happy and unhappy in Germany. All of this is related to coercive circumstances, most of which forced them to leave their homelands and start over in another place that they didn’t choose, in many cases, to live in.
There is an invisible burden that afflicts many of those who have been forced to leave their homelands and start anew. It is expected from them that they should always be accomplished at work and feel guilty when they get tired or don’t feel like doing something. It is a huge pressure to be under the spotlight and to have to be a role model for others all the time. And the pain they hold because of following the news of their homelands, where relatives or friends are still detained, killed by torture, or living in bad economic conditions.
Stereotypes also play a significant role in judging the actions of others and fearing the new culture that came into the society. One example for this is the misconception about the veil; that all Muslim women are forced to wear it in their home countries. This makes some Germans expect that when Muslim women come to the West, the first thing they will do is to remove the veil.
There are women who liberated themselves from the domination of a patriarchal society when they came to Germany. But this doesn't necessarily mean that they have to take off their headscarf and even if some did out of their own choice, that doesn't mean that others have to do the same. Some within the German society, who show how they get relieved because of this act, put even more pressure on other women in a way. Who defines the concept of personal freedom for women? Does anyone have the right to force a woman to take off her veil, masking it as attempted liberation? Isn’t that exactly the same kind of control of her personal freedom, she was seeking to escape, in her country of origin?
The insistence of some Germans to free others sometimes causes the opposite. Anyone who does not fully adapt to his surroundings in his or her behavior or appearance feels severe pressure and may suffer from exclusion and lack of acceptance. Without a deep understanding of people's privacy, it will be difficult to deal with them, which can cause great injustice when judging their actions without understanding the psychological and economic dimensions from which they came.
The chaos and military conflicts, which followed the uprisings in some countries, drove thousands towards seeking shelter around the world. Germany was one of the countries that welcomed those who were searching for a safer place. In 2015, a total of 890,000 refugees came to Germany. Of these, around 34% came from Syria, followed by Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is cultural sensitivity between the new arrivals and the host German society, but there is also a lack of German knowledge about them, their culture, their customs, and their backgrounds. As a result, some were disappointed because they built misplaced expectations without sufficient awareness of the others and they built these expectations one-sidedly. Some people have the desire to Germanize everything else, but integration does not mean that you turn into a copy of the other and lose your identity. Integration requires both sides to make an effort to understand each other.
I included myself in the project to shed light on the state of press freedom in Egypt and on my having to leave after it became too dangerous to work there. I had to choose between giving up to work as a journalist or risking being arrested at any time. My experiences within German society are not far from those, which the people I interviewed have made.
Some have expressed, how they get angry over misjudgment, how they grieve or fall into a frustrated and stressful mood because they are faced with society, culture, job opportunities, and management structure that were completely different from what they knew in their home countries. How some are overwhelmed by the bureaucracy and complicated applications that they have to deal with as foreigners, and the fact that if someone does not have a German friend or acquaintance, it’s not possible to process things easily sometimes.
How they are perplexed by the transformations that affect their lives in regard to their families, their partner relationships, their children, and themselves. In some locations, they are confronted with racism and discrimination on a daily basis.
How some could miss the space to express their own identity: they are women and men, parents or childless, immigrants and refugees, workers and unemployed, well educated and illiterate, coming from big cities or small villages, integrated and non-integrated, happy and unhappy in Germany. All of this is related to coercive circumstances, most of which forced them to leave their homelands and start over in another place that they didn’t choose, in many cases, to live in.
There is an invisible burden that afflicts many of those who have been forced to leave their homelands and start anew. It is expected from them that they should always be accomplished at work and feel guilty when they get tired or don’t feel like doing something. It is a huge pressure to be under the spotlight and to have to be a role model for others all the time. And the pain they hold because of following the news of their homelands, where relatives or friends are still detained, killed by torture, or living in bad economic conditions.
Stereotypes also play a significant role in judging the actions of others and fearing the new culture that came into the society. One example for this is the misconception about the veil; that all Muslim women are forced to wear it in their home countries. This makes some Germans expect that when Muslim women come to the West, the first thing they will do is to remove the veil.
There are women who liberated themselves from the domination of a patriarchal society when they came to Germany. But this doesn't necessarily mean that they have to take off their headscarf and even if some did out of their own choice, that doesn't mean that others have to do the same. Some within the German society, who show how they get relieved because of this act, put even more pressure on other women in a way. Who defines the concept of personal freedom for women? Does anyone have the right to force a woman to take off her veil, masking it as attempted liberation? Isn’t that exactly the same kind of control of her personal freedom, she was seeking to escape, in her country of origin?
The insistence of some Germans to free others sometimes causes the opposite. Anyone who does not fully adapt to his surroundings in his or her behavior or appearance feels severe pressure and may suffer from exclusion and lack of acceptance. Without a deep understanding of people's privacy, it will be difficult to deal with them, which can cause great injustice when judging their actions without understanding the psychological and economic dimensions from which they came.
