Graham Clifford: Integration is needed for everyone to thrive
In Valley Runners Tramore Gerard Park Cork Sanctuary Mccarthy In Picture:
On the morning of Sunday, June 4 I’ll line up alongside 400 fellow Sanctuary Runners on St Patrick’s Street to take part in the Cork City Marathon — across 50 nationalities and including people of different cultures, legal status, religions, ages, and sexual orientation.
Weeks and months of training together, supporting each other, laughing with and learning from each other.
We’ll have refugees from Afghanistan, farmers from Mallow, students from Glanmire, lab technicians from China, occupational health therapists from Kerry, asylum seekers from Eritrea, dancers from Angola, solicitors from the city and dozens of people of all walks of life from Ukraine.
All together on one team of equals. Community integration in action — not just in words.
Undoubtedly, the work of the Sanctuary Runners is a model for how communities should come together across Ireland, but frustratingly ours is the only such national sporting organisation with community integration as its core mission.
And while the Government, in recent years in particular, has sought to support community integration initiatives, the reality is they are relatively sparse on the ground.
And what’s more, there is no effective national strategy on community integration. This is a Migrant Integration Strategy, but not one focused on the community.
A specific strategy which understands that for communities to function in a way where everybody is respected and supported, the key person is not always the migrant but rather those already living in the community.
I heard one woman on an RTÉ Radio 1 report this week speak of her “shock and horror” that asylum-seeking men had been moved into her community — a line which made my heart sink. Because, no matter how much we want to dance around the fact, this is about colour, this is about othering, and this is about a basic sense that because these men appear different, they are some kind of threat.
Many people across Ireland could be that woman in Clare. These are the very people we need to connect with.
In a study carried out by the Sanctuary Runners some 74% of Irish people who joined us had not knowingly had a conversation with an asylum seeker or refugee before.
That’s a shocking, but entirely predictable, statistic. After being part of our initiative for a few months, some 81% of that same cohort said they had developed friendships with people in direct provision. By building a bridge, people were able to learn, to educate themselves and to understand that we are all equal.
I hear lots of talk now about “community engagement” and “community integration” but still don’t understand how we expect this to happen without putting in places the structures, expertise, and resources to support it.
Community integration is not a “nice to have”, it is simply intrinsic for the maintenance of social cohesion.
And it is not just the morally right thing to do but also the sensible thing to do. If some Irish people have little interest in getting to know new arrivals and vice versa, it’s still a crucial and constant exercise if just motivated by self-interest alone.
More cohesive societies are more prosperous, innovative, and safe.
In Fermoy, where we set up aninternational community choir in 2019, upwards of 40 nationalities come together to sing and perform regularly.
Community resilience has been built. It means when people try to sow division because of the arrival of people seeking safety and sanctuary, there is immediate pushback.
The integration is deep, it’s felt on the street, in the places of work, on the sports fields. It’s not perfect and there’s much work to do, but the structure has been built. And on the back of the success there, we have started the One Town One Voice initiative, to build community singing groups across the country.
But what’s really needed is a national plan, a national conversation. During covid-19 I was gobsmacked by the lack of communication with people who don’t speak English or struggle to (that was almost 100,000 people at the 2016 census and surely many more now).
To be fair, this was the case across the world and highlighted the gaping holes in our public policy communication. Even still, Ireland has no co-ordinated translation service for those needing access to healthcare or in court settings.
In Canada, attitudes to immigration and community integration are facing similar challenges due to the rise of the far-right and right-wing conservatism. But there is a bedrock of shared experience which means communities are resilient. The Canadian government promotes and embraces a policy of multiculturalism and makes diversity part of the national identity. They embrace it, are proud of it and support innovation in this area. We could learn a lot from them.
Good work has been done in the area of community integration in Portugal and some cities and regions in Germany — but globally the bar is very low.
If we want to seriously ensure communities move forward as one in Ireland, we need to include all the elements of the state, every government department, every local authority, every national sporting organisation and community body.
We firstly need to see where we are getting it so wrong — where existing strategies look great on paper but aren’t co-ordinated and impactful on the ground.
Why a county’s “migrant integration plan” is absolutely meaningless without enough people to oversee it and ensure the ambitions are met.
We need to replace words with actions, hopes with outcomes, and platitudes with results. We need energy and a passion to get this right. To harness all that’s good about Irish communities, to ensure we build sustainable integrated places to live and thrive for all.
We need to hold a mirror up to Irish society and to be honest about who we are, because when it comes to community integration the greatest challenge often isn’t with those coming from another country — it’s with those already here.