“MAKING HEIMAT” AS A VIRTUE

At the beginning of the 16th century, Nicolò Machiavelli introduced one of the key concepts of modernity that contributed to building the idea that human beings are capable of engaging with their future, in contradiction to the prevailing God-centric notion of the time. According to the Florentine thinker, fortune was accountable for half of the actions of nature, whilst virtue was responsible for the other half. The former continued to be a force beyond human will, but virtue referred precisely to unique human skill. Machiavelli explained this through the following example: you cannot predict a storm (fortune), but you can build a dam to prevent the flood (virtue). Let’s say for the sake of the reasoning, that Europe and its member states incarnate the symbolic figure of the Prince, the ruler who has the capacity to take the decision.

 

The political dysfunctional management in the current so-called refugee crisis challenges Machiavelli’s thought. In 2015, more than 1 million people arrived in Europe by sea and 35,000 by land. In the same year, more than 3,700 died in the Mediterranean trying to reach European shores. So far in 2016, more than 250,000 people have entered Europe by sea and more than 3,000 have been reported dead or missing. Europe is facing one of the biggest political crises in its history: after the relocation plan for a total of 160,000 people failed in that EU Member States didn’t comply with their quotas, the EU externalized its borders with the EU-Turkey agreement, sending people to a country where there is no guarantee for the respect of human rights. Where did virtue go? How should a virtuous Europe react? Why is it relevant to create a new “Heimat” for the people arriving in our countries?

 

Starting with the latter question: if there is any ontological feature that defines human nature, it is its relational characteristic. We are a relational species: we exist to the degree that we recognize ourselves in others . There is no  “Self” without the “Other”. We learn, grow, and develop through mimicking, and we do that by using language, an inherited common knowledge. Avoiding “the Other” implies the negation of a constitutive part of ourselves, thus neglecting our intrinsic relational characteristic.  Making Heimat addresses this same idea. In order to create a real Heimat it is not only necessary to provide the material needs such as a house, food and education, but also to generate an integrative narrative in which the newcomer can identify itself in it and feel “at home”. This is why it is important to expand migrants and refugees’ effective choices about their livelihoods. Making Heimat should incorporate mechanisms where the perspectives and intentions of both refugee and migrant communities would take a role, as well as their political context and outlook for solutions. Structuring participatory assessments taking into account age, gender and diversity approaches are essential for achieving a successful integration process.

 

The idea of creating a space of horizontal cooperation and popular participation within refugee and migrant communities responds to two essential aspects of a process of integration and of the creation of a Heimat: on the one hand, the self-identification of refugees and migrants within the host city and community, and on the other, the opportunity for the Heimat project to adapt to their potential needs and, by reinventing itself, achieve a successful process of integration. In this regard, the articulation of monitoring mechanisms with a space for migrants and refugees is important since they would allow both popular participation and their input as policy recipients. While ‘Heimat’ refers not only to the inhabited physical space, but also to a place with emotional ties of belonging, it is essential that the beneficiaries can make their voice heard as one more actor of the project, within municipal authorities, civil society groups, and so on. These kinds of participatory programmes would help to have a more comprehensive understanding on the impact of policy and the changes that may developed, and, more importantly, they would be directed  at the identification of the newcomers with their daily environment.

 

Yet building Heimat should not discriminate among individuals. Participatory programmes should also be open to local urban residents with similar needs in order to bring into line local standards and newcomers’ heterogeneous objectives. While in some cases useful, separating the mechanisms performing a ‘Heimat’ for newcomers such as migrants and refugees on the one hand, and on the other for local communities, does not conform with the same idea of ‘Heimat’ since it may not construct a sense of belonging to the broader local community. More importantly, while institutional actors have an important role in this, they are the same migrants, refugees or local communities that need to be identified with a ‘home’. And so, the articulation of participatory mechanisms is essential for a successful process of integration. Indeed, whilst the challenge ahead should be to conceive how to set up institutional and social mechanisms in order to create a new or second ‘Heimat’ for migrants and refugees, it should also not be forgotten that this is to be directed towards the totality of the community. A virtuous Prince would understand that societies are formed by something else than merely the sum of all their individual members: namely, that there is a human need to symbolically identify with a safe place called home.