DukeEngage participant Neal Pierre-Gatke discusses his work with Dublin City Council’s Office for Integration - and an enlightening visit to Áras an Uachtaráin
As I enter my fourth week in Dublin, I only have one word to describe my experience: incredible. Besides the lovely, vibrant city itself, my placement at Dublin City Council’s Office for Integration has been the most exciting work that I’ve ever been involved with. Our main focus is overlooking certain aspects of integration throughout the city, such as making sure migrant organisations are adequately funded. I can honestly say there has never been a dull moment – every day is packed with exciting challenges.
The office supports organisations that promote an intercultural mission by providing a platform for diversity to flourish. Through funding and providing useful information to these organisations, it plays a vital role in this increasingly diverse city.
Throughout the past two weeks, I have attended numerous events put on by different community groups throughout the city. Recently, my boss Declan Hayden and I attended an interfaith meeting that focused on how the intent of religion should be used to dissolve barriers to inclusion. The meeting stressed the diversity of the country (almost 20 per cent of people living in Ireland were born outside of the country) and provided a forum for the exchange of information on different religious beliefs and practices.
The education and exposure to different cultures and backgrounds has done for me what I would expect is the purpose of these cross-cultural engagements, erasing any surface-level or subconscious xenophobia between distinct peoples.
On my first day of work, Hayden told me my project for the summer: I would be evaluating the work of the office over the past six years to determine a new strategy to promote interculturalism in Dublin. I decided that the best way of doing this was to interview the leaders of NGOs that encourage integration and provide support for migrants and refugees.
As I write, I am currently in the process of interviewing 16 directors from bodies such as the Africa Centre, the Lantern Centre and the Integration Centre. My interviews primarily focus on asking questions such as ‘How intercultural do you feel Dublin is?’ and ‘What would you like to see done by the Dublin City Council’s Office for Integration to support your cause?’ And already, I have observed trends in their responses.
Many groups have expressed an interest in wanting to network and collaborate with other NGOs on ideas and events. This gave me the idea of creating a networking site that will allow for multiple organisations to converse on general ideas and events planning. My hope is for this site to become an intercultural hub for these bodies, because I believe this mutual support is extremely beneficial when there are various NGOs working towards a similar goal.
Another project that I plan to propose is the creation of a hotline to support victims of hate crime. After attending meetings and forums on integration, it appeared to be a recurring issue that the Government has not done enough in support of this issue. I believe the main reason leaders are not fully engaging with the more general integration cause is because they do not perceive it as a significant issue. As I have discovered recently, reporting racism and discrimination to authorities is tedious and complicated. The Government examines the numbers of police reports of discrimination or hate crimes annually, but they are getting an inaccurate perception of the frequency of these attacks because many go unreported. A hotline would enable victims of these occurrences to easily report discrimination or hate crimes. My aim is that the Government would have another source to look at when evaluating the amount of racist or discriminatory occurrences that take place in Dublin, and eventually nationwide
Aside from that important work, my meeting with the President of Ireland has undoubtedly been the highlight of my DukeEngage experience this far. After receiving a tour of Áras an Uachtaráin – the Irish ‘White House’ – President Michael D Higgins commended the work that Dublin City Council is doing towards making Ireland a culturally rich and diverse society. He said that immigrants coming into Ireland are here to stay and, therefore, we need to engage in the process of making them feel at home.
While I admired his words, I realised later, after speaking with the housekeepers at the President’s grand estate, that Ireland is still very much struggling – as are we in the United States – to become the country he envisions. The Irish-born housekeepers felt as if they were foreigners in their own country because of the rapid increase in immigration. They then went on to claim that “those people” will steal your belongings and run away, and that Ireland is not the place it used to be.
I was amazed by these statements, and felt that they chose to ignore the benefits that immigration brings. The contrasting views of the President and his staff made me realise the importance of the work in which I am involved.
Neal Pierre-Gatke is a student at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina in Ireland as part of the DukeEngage programme.
