EU citizens with a migrant background are perceived as ‘outsiders’ in European society, and therefore tend to stay away from politics, voting, or standing as candidates in the next EU elections, an organisation dealing with EU citizens with a migrant background told Euractiv in an interview.
#DiasporaVote! aims at encouraging EU citizens with migrant backgrounds to participate in politics at all levels, including voting for elections, has started its campaign for the European elections, which will be held in June.
The group asks for an effective representation in the public discourse, policy making, and campaigns for accountability of politicians’ electoral promises.
At the moment, there is no data available of EU citizens with a migrant background in Europe, despite the civil society organisations, together with other entities, such as the EU Fundamental rights agency, have asked for.
Anti-immigration and marginalisation
Anti-immigration propaganda, mainly from rising far-right parties across Europe, points the finger not only at foreign nationals coming to the EU from Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia, but also against EU citizens with migrant background.
The organisation denounced an established pattern of marginalisation through discrimination of people with a migrant background who have European citizenship.
That context makes it harder and harder for such a community to participate in politics at both the national and EU level, the group argues.
Euractiv spoke to several activists of #DiasporaVote!, all of whom asked to be mentioned only by first name.
“We are discriminated against because of the colour of our skin or our religion. That causes a shrinking of the civic space,” said Imtinen, a #DiasporaVote! activist.
“As a Muslim citizen in France, I do not think my voice would be heard. I do not see many opportunities for me to express my opinions, because of what I represent,” she added, specifying that marginalisation is part of the problem for the lack of both participation and representation.
Zaineb, another activist, who was born in Morocco and came to Italy when she was three years old, told Euractiv that “although I grew up in Italy, I did my studies here. I am still seen as a foreigner, an outsider. They consider people like me not Italians, although [people with migrant background] speak the language and feel Italian”.
“If you do not feel part of the society, if you feel excluded, why should you vote for elections?,” Zainab added, while Marianna stressed that it is “even harder to think of ourselves as candidates”.
Tokenism
Although only 3% of elected members at the European Parliament are people of colour, the association does not identify this kind or representation as their main goal, as it easily becomes ‘tokenism’.
When talking about identity politics, the association between racial representation and tokenism is particularly common, according to the activists of #DiasporaVote!.
Tokenism is a practice that identifies a pattern in which only symbolic efforts are made with representation processes, for instance, in a working environment, the act of recruiting a small number of people from under-represented groups in order to give the appearance of diversity.
According to the group, effective representation needs to address the challenge of the public discourse in politics and have an effect in policy making.
“Representation is almost becoming synonymous with tokenism. Whereby they get somebody that basically looks like us [people with migrant background from outside the EU], and they appear to talk like us, but they do not actually value or experience. You can easily say somebody like Priti Patel or Rishi Sunak represent people with our background, while their policies say the opposite,” argued Alimat, another activist.
Sunak and Patel, respectively the UK’s prime minister and ex-interior minister, have pursued an anti-immigration propaganda with tough border policies and a strong nationalistic narrative following the Brexit referendum.
Both have a migrant background.
“I expect a politician to challenge the mainstream narrative and deal more with real issues, and deal with minority communities and the working class,” said Kel, who denounced the lack of compliance with the reality of everyday politics and the lack of a counter-narrative against the far-right, which has built its consensus around the anti-migration narrative.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
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