“Each sixth kindergarten child has a speech deficit” announced the Monday headlines on the front cover of the Berlin’s Tagesspiegel. The subtitle reads: despite immense investment in Berlin’s kindergartens, there is very little improvement. The biggest problem is in NeuKoelln [the neighborhood with the largest number of migrants in the city].

The opinion page, with the cover “speechless,” describes the “problem” even better:  directing the responsibility to “education politicians,” the anonymous writer says: even after many years of visiting the Kindergarten (it is free from age 3 in Berlin, and heavily , wonderfully subsidized otherwise), more than 3,700 children of Berlin, one year before they go to school, have significant speech deficits.  Among children with “non German Origin” the number is 34%. That op-ed ends with the sentence: “now time presses: society cannot afford to give up even one of these children before school begins.”

This makes me think of the classic catholic definition of Limbo, of the newborn that dies before they even get baptized by the church, but also about the excellent ethnography by Haim Hazan, the Limbo People—where he talks about the liminality of the elderly in a Jewish old age home in London. There I learned how time is organized to exclude them, over and over again, from partaking in what is otherwise life by, most significantly, obliterating the future, which in turn helps them ‘cope’ with the end of life.

Back to the Tagesspiegel article: The reader is led to conflate a child’s ability to speak at all with that ability as it is measured by the German test in the German language. The reader is also morally implicated as speechless, herself, facing the disappointing outcomes in language-abilities despite the investment. Then, proposes the newspaper op-ed, after we approach families with “remote education” problems, after we let their children register to the kindergarten when they are one year old and after we qualify teachers to better serve their needs, we need to direct our gaze to the families— “things go wrong there” (in direct translation from the German). Where do things go wrong?

We happen to be one of those families, so I can write about what a very privileged version of two “white” academics experience with a child at this age. Our five years old son speaks three languages and about a year ago was deemed as having “speech deficits” in German. We, then living in a part of town that has the least problem, in the former East Berlin neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, were also asked whether we heard of autism and very sensitively—that perhaps the problem is inherent in our language. Perhaps we do not speak clearly some consonants with which our son had issues.  From this we also learn that unification is finally a success story: the former East isn’t inherently a problem unless it is also poor, added Die Welt on the issue.

A few months later, we switched to a multi-lingual kindergarten across town in the former West Berlin that speaks all the languages (Hebrew, German, English) that our son speaks. We went Jewish, basically.

He loves it, but about two months ago we were summoned to the kindergarten and told that he has both speech and also social issues, that perhaps something is wrong with his brain and that he’ll possibly need another kind of school. Professionals should test him. We agreed and they did, four times, and found that the child is quite intelligent and likes to play on his own and do math. The doctor who tested our son first was perhaps the most telling. He showed culture-specific pictures that our son then needed to describe. The best example was a picture of an old man carrying a sack with round figures inside. On the right hand side was an apple tree, the left- a flower garden. Our son said—in the backpack there are flowers. The medical doctor, a cool looking guy a little bit older than me, told our son that in Germany many kids say that this the man is carrying a sack of potatoes. He then looked at me and said—perhaps your husband, the philosopher, would be able to explain your son’s answer.

It was indeed an existential question for us all (I, the sociologist, wanted to explain under which circumstances I am spoken to like that and my son fails to recognize the core of the local culture, but remained silent). The doctor then asked what we heard earlier—perhaps in your language there is no L and Sh. Then, confused, I said- but I just told you we speak English (and Hebrew). When we agreed that it would be best for our child to stay another year in the kindergarten, he asked me “will you send him there”?

I said of course. He is very happy in the kindergarten. I then heard: “well, some people with migration background (we do not name the monster “migrant,” mostly because the child in question is often third generation German born) when they hear that the child will not go to school [in the year dictated by their date of birth] say that it is too hard for them to send them anywhere.” I assured him that this will not be the case and thought what kind of a threat, and an assumption, it is on our working hours?

The unintelligibility of the migrant as a total other is so severe, so pronounced, that Berlin tries time and again to save the children from this fate, and fails. This ‘deficit’ is described in terms in language as such, and never in terms of potency, of multi lingualism. Without language these families have no history, or the wrong one. In the US and in the migrant country I come from, Israel, I know many people—some of whom teach in universities—that have no one mother tongue. But that never made their parents suspect in the way it does in Berlin. Our solution was to let the professionals assess the child, intervene, and make sure that we stay powerful enough when it comes to the definition of the situation. I cannot imagine what a less recognizably “western” mother goes through when she is first approached with stigmata—she is not catholic, she does not have Goffman and the Limbo People (even if she read them, she is not heard anyway) and she perhaps does not have time to read the newspaper articles in the very same Tagesspiegel that reveal that boys can get cured of autism.

The recent protests at the gated Refugees’ Camps in Poland remind us about the challenges that migration, refugees and multiculturalism bring – and about the inability, the shear clumsiness of our policies that attempt to address these challenges. Poland is not a country that has historically been the destination for refugees. We are having a hard time, though there are some signs of more promising responses.

The question of refugees hit the news October of last year, sparked by a refugee hunger strike at Guarded Centers around the country. Foreigners settled at these centers were demanding their basic rights: the right to decent living conditions, to have access to information, and to have contact with an outside world. Mostly, however, the strike revealed the injustice and cruelty of the system. These centers work, in effect, as prisons. They confine the under-aged (including young children), affecting them, especially those who have recently experienced war, in ways that are hard to imagine. They don’t have full access to education, nor contacts with their peers. Their situation excludes the opportunities for the regular development.

The news of these problems was alive for three weeks until the end of the hunger strike. However, the challenges of immigration, refugees and multiculturalism remain, in a society that has little or no experience with any of this. The challenges must be faced not only by refugees themselves, but also politicians, people working with refugees, and mainly Polish society. Polish towns are unprepared, as they are becoming increasingly multicultural.

In 2009, the information about a beating of two Chechnyan women in Lomza [in north-eastern Poland, actually close to Jedwabne, M.B.] made the news in the Polish media. A young man assaulted the women because they are Muslim and Chechnyan.  Both of them were living in Lomza. Their children attended Lomza school. They had Polish friends. Why, then, were they targets? What was their mistake?

Their first basic “mistake” was in appearing in a place (this town, but in fact Poland as a whole) in which the inhabitants were ill prepared for the emergence of a large group of foreigners, people of different language, culture, and religion. Nobody explained to the local public who the refugees were, why they had appeared specifically in Lomza, where they were coming from, and how long they would stay in town. The inhabitants were not prepared, nor were the employees of the institutions that were to take care of these Muslim refugees from Chechnya.

The Municipal Center of Social Support, the Town Department of Labor [these mainly work with unemployed – collecting information about job postings, organizing trainings etc., MB], and the public schools of Lomza – all these institutions had to work out for themselves the procedures of working with foreigners/refugees who had arrived.

At the beginning things, nonetheless, went smoothly, as the foreigners were present only in a close vicinity of the refugee center. Everybody followed the rule “they live their lives, we live ours.” But issues emerged when the foreigners began to participate in the town’s life: using public transportation, enjoying the right to get help from the Municipal Center of Social Support and the Town Department of Labor, moving to different areas of town. This triggered concern, mainly caused by a lack of knowledge. One of the opponents of the Center for Refugees in Lomza noted: “I don’t know what’s in their heads.”

The refugees began to evoke fear. Many people started associating “the Muslims” with terrorism, which is of no surprise, given that the Polish media present Muslims almost exclusively accompanied with guns or preparing for yet another attack.

These fears should have been addressed in open discussion with the population. Instead, the local MP, a Mr. Kolakowski, decided to solve “the problem” by advocating the closing the Center altogether. In his open letter to the Department of Foreigners  [part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs], Kolakowski supported his request by referring to the high rates of unemployment in town, as well as a rise of crime rates, caused by the presence of the refugees. He likely was attempting to “capitalize” on the fear of the foreigners, looking to increase voter support in upcoming elections.

A group of followers emerged, and we witnessed a true “festival” of hatred vis-à-vis Chechnyans: collecting signatures to support the liquidation of the Center, short clips in internet, comments on internet forums, anti-Chechnyan leaflets etc.

We can see how important it is to counteract the attitudes of this sort, through education about foreigners, their culture, religion and traditions. There is a real danger that if Poles don’t act towards mutual understanding, there will appear ideas and initiatives offering “simple solutions.”

Local authorities in Lomza offered a system of what I call a “seeming tolerance.” Repeated multiple times on various occasions, the term “tolerance” was in fact the keyword disguising ignorance. Both the refugees and the local community were devoid of support; no conditions were officially created to encourage encounter.

More promising have been attempts to build mutual relations through cultural projects: Caucasian Day, the Chechnyan Soiree, and the Day of the Refugee project – all organized by the “Rescue” Foundation in Lomza. In these, long time Lomza inhabitants watch movies about refugees, see the Caucasian traditional dance, try some specialties of the Chechnyan cuisine,  and most importantly, these events provide the opportunity to meet and greet, talk and exchange ideas. Thanks to these projects the Polish inhabitants of Lomza have had a chance to learn that the refugees share with them the same dreams, the same concerns.

This is the way to fight against the negative attitudes that blame the refugees for all the evil in town. It is important, however, to remember not to idealize the refugees. One should discuss any emerging issues – they cannot be silenced or ignored, with an excuse of wrongly understood “political correctness.”

It is clear that more refugees will arrive to Polish towns. By showing the true face of people who found in Poland rescue from wars, cataclysms and oppressions, we can take care not to create conflicts. We should create situations where the foreigners and Poles would be able to meet.

This post was first published in Respublica Nowa and translated for Deliberately Considered by Malgorzata Bakalarz.