Sienny Thio Global Studies Department of Social Sciences and Business Master Thesis, Spring 2019
SPISDATING AND MULTICULTURALISM
How is multiculturalism contested through food practices and storytelling, as seen in SpisDating project?
Project Title Spisdating and Multiculturalism: How is multiculturalism contested through food practices and storytelling, as seen in SpisDating project? Project Seminar Global Studies – Master’s Thesis Prepared By (Name/Student nr) Sienny Thio / 61665 Name of Supervisor Sune Haugbølle Submission Date 01/01/2019 Number of keystrokes incl. spaces 192,000 Permitted number of keystrokes incl. spaces 144,000 – 192,000
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Table of Contents Abstract ...... 4 Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 5 Thesis Overview ...... 5 Research Question ...... 5 Introduction to Crossing Borders and SpisDating ...... 6 Outline of Thesis Paper...... 7 Chapter 2: Theories and Methodology...... 8 Theories and concepts ...... 8 Civic multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism ...... 9 Everyday nationalism and gastrodiplomacy ...... 10 Methodology ...... 11 Positioning as a researcher: Ethnographic fieldwork ...... 11 Interview ...... 13 Narrative: “I tell my story, therefore I am” ...... 15 Thematic Analysis ...... 16 Chapter 3: Literature Review ...... 17 The transformation of discourse in the Danish politics ...... 17 Towards more selective policies on migration and integration ...... 19 Frikadeller as a Danish signifier and Muhammed cartoons as a symbol of freedom of speech ...... 20 Political correctness and Anti anti-racism ...... 22 Chapter 4: Analysis ...... 25 The philosophy behind SpisDating ...... 26 Universality of food and stories ...... 26 Equality, diversity and social inclusion ...... 27 The role of food as a medium...... 28 Food as facilitator for dialogue and activism ...... 29 Food and national identity ...... 32 Learning aspect of SpisDating...... 36 Reflective learning ...... 36 Connectivity of networks: Towards social mobilization ...... 41 The state of multiculturalism: Multi-angular perspectives ...... 44 Limitations of SpisDating ...... 53
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Chapter 5: Discussion ...... 57 Chapter 6: Conclusion ...... 65 Bibliography ...... 70 Appendix ...... 74 Interview 1 ...... 74 Interview 2 ...... 84 Interview 3 ...... 94 Interview 4 ...... 99 Interview 5 ...... 106 Interview 6 ...... 111 Interview 7 ...... 120 Interview 8 ...... 126 Interview 9 ...... 135 Fieldnotes 1 ...... 142 Fieldnotes 2 ...... 145 Fieldnotes 3 ...... 149
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Abstract
Kultur i Danmark opfattes ofte som noget, der politisk relaterer sig til grænsekontrol og identifikator af selv- identitet, der oftest står i modsætning til integrationsprocesser. Med et stigende pres for at blive assimileret forsøger danskboende folk med udenlandskbaggrund at finde en vej mellem forventningen om at ’blive dansk’ og samtidig bevare deres egne kulturer for at opretholde traditionelle værdier og kulturel identitet. Blandt mediernes og politikernes opmærksomhed om emnet eksisterer mange ngo'er, der beskæftiger sig med sociale og kulturelle projekter - en af dem er Crossing Borders, som er vært for SpisDating-projektet, der forsøger at bygge bro mellem kulturer med henblik på fredelig sameksistens. Specialet undersøger, hvordan SpisDating benytter sig af madpraksis og historiefortælling for at imødekomme deres mål, og hvordan det påvirker eksistensen af multikulturalisme i Danmark. Med data fra faglitteratur, deltagende feltarbejde samt kvalitative interviews, undersøger specialet hvordan subkulturer og subsamfund trives i et land, der idealiserer homogenitet blandt borgerne.
Stikord: Multikulturalisme, fødevarepraksis, historiefortælling, identitet, undersamfund, mangfoldighed.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Thesis Overview Multiculturalism in Denmark has been discussed largely in the country at the political stage due to, among other reasons, high unemployment rate among migrants dating back to the 1970s (Bevelander and Taras, 2013). While it may seem like 1970 is a while ago, the discussion surrounding whether Denmark should or should not be a multicultural country remains constant. This prolonged debate is no longer new, as it has also reached other Nordic countries operating under similar welfare system, as well as the rest of European countries in the era of refugee crisis. It is rather difficult not to argue that multiculturalism in Denmark is under attack, at least at political level. As Holtug (2013, p. 190) quoted Søren Pind’s 2011 condemnation of multiculturalism following his appointment as Minister of Integration, “I really don’t want to hear anymore about integration. Please stop – The right word must be assimilation. There are so many cultures and people can go elsewhere and engage with them if this is what they want.” While it may be true that multiculturalism has never been Denmark’s final destination, as such policies never gained much popularity in the first place (ibid.), it is interesting to see how both everyday Danes and migrants living in Denmark form sub-communities not only to interact, but to learn from each other. As a result, identity and sense of belonging are on the cross-path between a society that is becoming increasingly multi-ethnic and a state where multiculturalism is often politically debated as an impossible and unrealistic form of resolution (Hedetoft, 2006).
This is the case of SpisDating, a project conducted in Copenhagen by an NGO named CB (CB), which focuses on intercultural education. While SpisDating does not mention the intended political discussion on its agenda, the project does claim to bring people together, to share a space free of judgement in which participants can learn from unique life stories over dinner (Crossing Border’s website, 2018). This brings to the table the combination of food practices and storytelling elements that the organization has utilized in order to spark a complex discussion of multiculturalism in Denmark, in the hopes to create a more open, multiculture- facilitating society.
Research Question This thesis therefore falls under the field of multiculturalism as a macro topic, and the utilization of cuisine and narrative to cater for cultural learning. The research question I want to address is as stated below:
How is multiculturalism contested through food practices and storytelling, as seen in SpisDating project?
In answering this research question, below is a list of working questions compiled to guide me through my research:
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1. What is the current state of multiculturalism in Denmark according to the debates in the media, literature and the informants involved in this research? 2. What roles do food practices and storytelling in SpisDating play in providing transformative experience among attendees? 3. What influence does SpisDating have on multiculturalism in Denmark?
The research takes upon SpisDating project as both a facilitator of a sub-community as well as a place of ethnographic fieldwork, where all data gathering processes will be conducted. The individuals involved (participants, guest speakers, cooks, and project founders) will be the main data source where my analysis are derived from.
Introduction to Crossing Borders and SpisDating A brief introduction to CB and SpisDating is useful to understand of which values and motivations the organization performs under. This will help to illustrate how the organization uses SpisDating as a tool of intercultural communication.
SpisDating is one of the many projects done by CB, operating under the principle of “creating space for dialogue and peace building.” (CB website, 2018). As a non-profit NGO, the organization’s mission is to provide a safe space for open dialogue and, ultimately, to take action. As seen from their vision, “we believe in a world where young people see themselves and are seen by society as active global citizens whose human, civic and social rights are integrated and mainstreamed in the development policies of their home countries.” (ibid.). It is worth noting that for the practicality of this thesis, the delimitation is within the context of Denmark, as SpisDating is only conducted in Copenhagen. In addition, CB functions under the scheme of education and authenticity, in which they believe everyone is in the process of on-going learning and development, and that authentic personal stories from real people is one of the most efficient ways to broaden one’s way of thinking (ibid.).
SpisDating is a public cultural dinner and storytelling event that occurs weekly every Thursday evening. Based on their motto of inclusion and diversity, everyone is welcome on a first-come basis, limiting to only 25 attendees at a time to ensure facilitation of questions and discussions after the talk. It is based on the idea of enabling people to learn from and be inspired by, life experiences through narrative in an inclusive environment. As their tagline suggests, “I tell my story, therefore I am” (ibid.).
My encounter with CB started two years ago when I was a student in their global studies course. It has since given me many opportunities to dive deeper into their organizational values and structure through different volunteering projects that I previously took part in. This has become one of my main motivations to study
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SpisDating project further, to see how CB utilizes different aspects to strengthen multiculturalism. My initiative started from the realization that even though the project has been running since early 2017, no research has been done on its mechanism and implications to the attendees. It is therefore crucial to analyse the underlying motivations as well as the aim of the project, what has been done, how it has been done and what effects it has on the audience – to ensure the sustainability and effectiveness of the project. More importantly, the research provides an alternative way to assess multiculturalism through narrative and cuisine.
Outline of Thesis Paper The thesis is divided into six different chapters. The first section is introduction, where the overview and brief background of this thesis is presented. In the second chapter, theories and methodology are explained, to give an explanation on under which perspectives I have adapted for my analysis. As such, it is divided into 2 different sub-chapters, which contain theories from multiculturalism and food. Methodology is also explained within chapter two, to present my positioning as a researcher and how data is gathered and triangulated. Literature review is discussed in chapter three to illustrate the notion of multiculturalism in Denmark through media, scholarly work, politics and previous researches that have been done, as well as literature on food, narrative, and identity. Next, chapter four presents analysis where I expand on the patterns within the data gathered, and how they can be examined using the theories, current literature and earlier researches as reference points. The thesis then proceeds to discuss how SpisDating fits to the bigger framework of multiculturalism and assesses possible improvements derived from the analysis. Finally, the thesis will end with the last chapter, where I draw on my findings to show how it can contribute to the current research on multiculturalism, food, and narrative, along with suggestions for future research.
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Chapter 2: Theories and Methodology
This chapter will examine the theories and methodology I use throughout the research to analyse SpisDating and its elements. Each theory contributes directly to a more in-depth understanding of the overall topic of multiculturalism, food and narrative – all the elements that made up SpisDating. In addition, anchoring my analysis to these conceptualizations provides a better pathway to answering the research question.
Theories and concepts Multiculturalism, being a broad topic as it is, would need some delineating to clarify which aspects of multiculturalism will be discussed in this research. For this, it is useful to turn to a brief overview of the current debate of multiculturalism in Denmark.
In 2015, a debate between former leader of Social Democratic Party, Helle Thorning-Schmidt and former leader of Venstre, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, was aired on TV. When asked the question “is Denmark a multicultural country?”, the former prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt answered, “No, I don’t think so”, while the current prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said “No, but we are in danger of becoming one”. These responses led to many critical comments on the newspapers and social media. The main argument was that by stating that Denmark is not a multicultural country, that automatically means that the politicians denied the existence of Danes of non-Danish origin and that they are not welcome here. What Sinclair (2015) argues in this case, it is important to understand that there are two dimensions of multiculturalism: descriptive and normative. Descriptive refers to the physical condition of the existence of more than one cultures in Denmark, while normative multiculturalism refers to “a practice where authorities support the rights of minority groups to uphold distinct social or cultural behaviour.” (Sinclair 2015, p. 5). This means that, it is true that minority groups with different cultural backgrounds live in Denmark, therefore making the country appear multicultural. However, at the political stage, multiculturalism is debated as something that would threaten the Danish cultural homogeneity.
This research focuses on the dilemma, debates, and frictions of descriptive multiculturalism and normative multiculturalism, particularly the conflicts and demonization of others as a result of cultural differences. While migration has become common in a globalized world resulting in the multiplicity of cultures in one country, so has the heightened insecurity against everything that is considered ‘foreign’. As Bude and Durrschmidt (2010, p. 486) suggest, this has created the ‘migration paradox’ in the age of globalization. This paradox is comprised by “the growing discrepancies between mobility as a technical possibility, on the one hand, and attempts at political governance that effectively immobilize unwanted migrants.” Within this
8 paradox consists multiple agencies that contribute to the dispute of multiculturalism in Denmark, particularly civil societies and the government.
The following theories help me to understand the belief system that made up CB as an organization that focuses on the betterment of cultural inclusion in Denmark. As such, SpisDating is a form of a tangible extension of these values that revolve around culture transformability and open intercultural dialogue as means to learn from other cultures. Additionally, these theories aid me in my analysis by identifying what impacts SpisDating have on multiculturalism in Denmark.
Civic multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism The theory of civic multiculturalism believes in an open dialogue interaction of various cultures within a given society. It does not concern itself with the process of culture preservation, instead the theory argues that culture possesses transformative capability. A community’s identity therefore, as argued by Tempelman (1999, p. 23), “is not a substance but a cluster of interrelated and relatively open-ended tendencies and impulses pulling in different directions and capable of being developed and balanced in different ways.” This means that the survivability of a culture can only be sustained through collective traditions and institutions. As well as claiming the transformative ability of cultures, civic multiculturalism admits the possibility of conflicts and cultural clashes. Nonetheless, it focuses on the progression of changes brought by these conflicts as a part of the mundane interaction between people. As cultural differences and challenges occur during these interactions, that is when the issues are being dealt with, thus creating solutions (ibid.). This communication across boundaries is considered a process of negotiation between what is culturally acceptable in one culture to another, where debates and discussions are provoked not only between different cultures but also within communities in the same culture.
Cosmopolitanism aligns well with the theory of civic multiculturalism, in which it highlights the aspects of inclusion of others within one’s identity and how this process is reflexive. This means, cosmopolitanism is a term used for the process of “internal pluralization and interaction of different cultures; it highlights moments of openness, exchange, creativity and dialogue” (Delanty 2011, p. 642). Cosmopolitanism is interested in the dynamics of identity and culture, and how self-transformation can happen when someone is exposed to people from other cultures. This self-transformation process thus presupposes the likelihood of learning within cross-cultural interactions. The significance of cosmopolitanism theory is that it “provides a framework in which culture and identity can be examined in ways that do not reduce it to an underlying collective identity” (ibid.). Its emphasis on the learning aspect, however, poses some concerns. Learning is a process where individual’s current knowledge is being expanded, challenged, or changed. The assumption that learning will take place does not necessarily mean that it will happen. There are cases where cross-
9 cultural interaction causes regression, for instance, stereotype empowerment, prejudice, disagreements, or clashes. Regardless of the outcome, cosmopolitanism can be used as a useful perspective in analysing how culture is perceived as a sphere of contestation.
These two theories are useful in understanding the underlying principles of SpisDating as well as the broader values of CB as a social organization. Within my analysis on a later chapter, I utilize these theories as means to conceptualize informants’ claims and statements to provide a connection between SpisDating and broader concepts of multiculturalism.
Everyday nationalism and gastrodiplomacy Everyday nationalism stems from the belief that everyday actions of individuals reinforce as well as contest a dominant idea of a nation. Since food plays an essential role in our survivability and day-to-day life, it is not surprising that how we think about the food we consume and what we do with it is highly related to our origins. As Ichijo and Ranta (2016) suggest, the food people eat is directly linked to the place and traditions where they grow up in. Consequently, traditional food that is shared within a community can be a medium of definition and reinforcement of group membership. In an increasingly hybridized world as today, traditional food is constantly contested through the process of transformation, known as fusion food. By combining and excluding various ingredients, family recipes are tweaked to create food palette that is not entirely unknown, but not conservative either. These innovations relate to the “levels of cultural diffusions, desire for integration and family relations. They might, for example, arise in mixed marriages” (ibid., p. 25). As a result, meanings assigned to food becomes mutable. By changing the flavour of a formerly traditional dish, “individuals transform and manipulate not only flavours and textures but also meanings, which can be used as a vehicle for engaging with and expressing national identities.” (ibid.). The question is, if fusion food is a combination of different flavours that does not necessarily conform with the idea of one specific traditional food, which national identity does it then belong to? Everyday nationalism challenges the notion of classical nationalism by giving individuals the option to choose which nationalities they want to project, by looking at the decisions they make around their consumption habits.
Gastrodiplomacy is a concept that combines public diplomacy and food. While public diplomacy is related to communicating policies, values and cultures to foreign entities, gastrodiplomacy is “the act of winning hearts and minds through stomachs” (Rockower 2012, p. 235). It uses a country’s culinary delights as means to promote the nation brand awareness. As an act of diplomacy, food is used as a medium for engagement. In other words, food unites and encourages people through a universal language of sharing a meal. Within this process, hierarchy is blurred to facilitate for intercultural communication, as Rockower (2012, p. 243) suggests, “the intimacy of eating a meal together can take the edge off what can otherwise be a potentially
10 antagonizing situation”. The benefit of using food as diplomatic tool is that food can be used to induce soft power, therefore functioning as an indirect way to gain favour and connect with foreign audiences – audiences that are not familiar with a country’s traditional dishes. In a globalizing world, food items and ingredients become contested as interconnectivity is heightened, causing debates on claim to originality of formerly claimed traditional dishes. This is where country’s gastrodiplomacy strategy becomes more complex, as traditional food consequently has to be defined by the standards set by a country; or rather, the standards need to be negotiated to define what are the acceptable ‘traditional’ ingredients used in a dish in order to claim it as theirs (Ichijo and Ranta, 2016). What could be argued further, is that with the pressing needs of defining traditional food, comes the urgent matter of defining national identity. Immigrants come to a country bringing along their traditions and culture, therefore transforming – no matter the degree- how food is cooked and served in the host country. This is what gastrodiplomacy believes as a ‘people-to-people’ approach, stating that the strategy is no longer only used in a state-to-public level, instead is used as a form of citizen diplomacy to cater for various needs related to facilitation of multiculturalism (Rockower, 2012). This concept is particularly useful when applied in an organization to enforce branding by making “a foreign culture tangible to the taste and touch” (ibid.).
These concepts related to food practices assist in explaining the strategies behind SpisDating. These theories play an essential role in illustrating how food can be both a tool that is universal as well as a medium that can be transformed and reconstructed to facilitate for various purposes. In the context of multiculturalism, the theories function as instruments for further exploring the power of food to enhance nationalism and sense of identity, and how food can be used as a form of activism.
Methodology The methods undertaken in this research falls under qualitative method, consists of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with organization founder and key informants chosen from the audience. Furthermore, by realizing that both ethnographic fieldwork and interviews highly consist of stories collected from different perspectives, narrative is included within the framework of methodology.
Positioning as a researcher: Ethnographic fieldwork As SpisDating is a regular gathering event within a specific context, I decided to conduct a fieldwork as it seems as the most plausible way to not only experience the event itself but also seeing how the audience interact with both other audiences and with the environment (this includes the guest speaker and the food). In addition, the underlying motivation to do this fieldwork is to see SpisDating at work, witnessing the entire process from the beginning to the end, by first-hand experience instead of from secondary data sources. As SpisDating is held every Thursday and open to public, to gain access to the event was not particularly difficult.
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In total, I attended 3 SpisDating events that are on the record shown as field notes (throughout August until November 2018), as well as around 4 SpisDating that I attended before my research period commenced. The 4 SpisDating that are off the record are not featured per se, however act as a foundation of knowledge and familiarity of my involvement with SpisDating. It is thus quite evident that I adapted the position of participant observer, in which as defined by Kawulich (2005) is a position where the researcher is a part of the group being studied, and the group is aware of the research activity. The researcher takes part in the activity; however, the main role is to observe. This definition of participant observer has proven to be complicated to follow, as during the research it was evident that as a researcher in a dinner and talk event, it was not an easy task not to be involved in the thinking process during and following the guest speaker talk. Additionally, interaction between audiences furthers my participation rate. However, as a result of the heightened participation, it provided me with a more in depth understanding of SpisDating and the individuals involved. This is particularly useful when choosing individuals to take part in the interview process. These different axes of participation and observation during research is, as Kawulich (2005) puts it, a “schizophrenic activity”, because the researcher is participating in the setting, but not to the extent that he or she becomes too consumed to observe and analyse. Moreover, focused observation was also adapted to facilitate for triangulation and to provide a more comprehensive data collection. Focused observation allows the researcher to support data gathering by using interviews to get participants’ insights (Kawulich, 2005). For the purpose of this research, fieldnotes are taken during SpisDating events to assist observation. To ensure the relevancy of observed elements, theory-based observation is adapted, which means that my observation is constantly linked to theories that are used in this thesis to identify patterns that support, challenge, or contest these theories. This is particularly beneficial to establish gaps within and among theories as well as developing new theoretical connections and analytic understandings (Emerson, Fretz and Shaw, 2011). In writing up fieldnotes, I decided to include personal feelings and emotions to facilitate for in depth description of sensory experience. This practice facilitates for explanation of the potential shared attitude or reactions within the group, as well as providing analytic leads that could be used to explore and probe the informant’s responses during the interviews. The method of integrating fieldnotes into finished texts that I used for this thesis is an integrative strategy, meaning that various data derived from fieldnotes, theoretical framework, literature reviews and interviewees’ interpretations are weaved together to form analysis (ibid.).
It is important to note that this ethnographic fieldwork as well as the entire thesis writing was carried out from the perspective of someone who was born and raised in Indonesia, spent 9 years in Australia and 2 years in Denmark throughout her lifetime. As a third-generation descendant of Chinese (my grandparents from both sides were from China fleeing from war) throughout my childhood I was exposed to both Chinese- Indonesian culture as well as indigenous Indonesian East Java culture. My sociological education background
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I earned from studying in Australia and living there most of my adult life, as well as being an international student in Denmark has further broadened my multicultural perspective. Admittedly, my observations were passed through these multiple lenses I collected throughout my journey as an expat, a foreigner, a semi-local, a student and a curious learner of cultures.
Interview The total of 9 interviews were conducted as a part of qualitative means of gathering data. This method when paired with ethnographic fieldwork enables me to provide justification of the data gathered during observation, since multiple interviews give multi-angular perspectives from informants that were chosen from different backgrounds. It is crucial to realize that data derived from interviews is a form of narrative that is highly subjective, as individual knowledge varies according to their background (even on the same topic or questions). One of the reasons that makes interview an ideal method for this research is its ability to explain and connect individual’s account to a larger subcultures and cultures to which they belong (Hammersley, Martyn and Atkinson, 2007). Since the purpose of this research is to answer an abstract question of how, the use of semi-structured interviews is the most effective to encourage elaborative and descriptive answers from interviewees. Interviews were conducted separately after the SpisDating event (except for repeated participants) to ensure the interviewees had time to reflect on their experience.
The selection process started from the beginning of the research (August 2018). However, prior to this time I have also attended SpisDating before, therefore establishing various contacts within the event as well as the organization. The positions covered in the interviews are: Founder of organization and project, repeated attendant, first time attendant, guest speaker, and guest cook. Each of them has played different functions and contributions to paint a more ‘complete picture’ towards this ethnographic research. The list of individuals interviewed are as follows:
Garba Diallo, founding director of CB organization and SpisDating project initiator. A Mauritanian that has worked in the area of non-profit NGO for 19 years. Garba is also a global studies teacher in Krogerup højskole in Humlebæk since 2008. Interview with this individual is particularly useful to provide both general background of SpisDating and its principles.
Shana Baban, a SpisDating’s guest speaker from Northern Iraq. As a child she fled from war to Denmark, in which she proceeded to live for the next 22 years of her life. She works at CBS as project manager and a head of communication for an entrepreneur incubator project. My interview with Shana contributes to the wider matter of the state of multiculturalism in Denmark, as well as the cultural differences and sense of belonging from an individual of ethnic minority.
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Yechiela Pojanamesbaanstit (Nice), a Thai guest cook in SpisDating. Due to her feminist political activism, she now lives in Denmark as a political refugee. She has been involved with various social and activist projects both with CB and other NGOs. As a guest cook, Nice helps me to identify the relationship between food and identity, and how she produced Thai dishes as a form of sharing her home with the participants.
Lorena Torres, a repeated participant of SpisDating. She is originally from Equador and has worked extensively with the ministry of education in Equador and ActionAid. Lorena is affiliated with various NGOs in Denmark, including the Trampoline House and is a part of the advisory board of CB. As a repeated participant, Lorena is useful for illustrating what impacts SpisDating has on attendants and what elements that motivate individuals to come back.
Marcus Krebs, a first-time participant of SpisDating. He is a young Danish film-maker student who has lived in Poland through his childhood years. Out of the other interviewees, Marcus is probably the only individual that does not come directly from a culture-related field of study. Marcus is pro-Liberal Alliance and Venstre, making this individual vital to the enrichment of data due to a more critical approach compared to the rest of the interviewees.
Mohsin Khan, a Pakistani that lives in Denmark and works as a social worker. Mohsin’s relationship with CB started as an expansion of his interest in the charity and social field, thus the nature of his SpisDating’s interest is networking. As a migrant, talking with Mohsin helps me to understand how Denmark is perceived from a migrant’s perspectives.
William Leman is an Indonesian that lived in Denmark for 6 months as an international student. Throughout this time, he was exposed to the Danish culture in a folk high school in Humlebæk, forming close relationships daily with Danish students and Danish values. Through William, I see the transformation one is exposed to when coming from a culture that is completely different than the Danish culture. William’s reflections of his past and present has also assisted me to see what roles SpisDating has to facilitate for a personal transformative process.
Gabriel Botton – as a French national that has lived in Switzerland and Denmark, Gabriel is used to the idea of being multicultural. He is a humanity student that provides me with his reflections as a first-time attendee of SpisDating, through his cultural and humanist perspective. Gabriel’s views on sub-communities helps me to analyse SpisDating as a form of a sub-culture that unites ‘the same kind of people’.
Juliette Lloren (Jules) is a Philippino who has lived in Denmark for more than 30 years. She is a project coordinator in CB. Talking to Jules has provided me with various insights and reflections of SpisDating’s positioning, identity and core values, as well as the people who attend to the event. Additionally, her
14 thoughts on migrants, ethnic minority, and refugees gives depth to the paradoxes and double standards of social labels in Denmark.
Each individual represents a diverse spectrum of attributes and positions to build a more comprehensive understanding of the contestation of multiculturalism in Denmark seen in the SpisDating project. Consequently, the research adopts ethnographic, anthropological perspective about multiculturalism in Denmark as it studies living experiences of various individuals related to the project as well as myself as the researcher.
Narrative: “I tell my story, therefore I am” The decision of integrating narrative as a method came after the realization that it acts as a ‘floating’ method, in which it takes its shape around socio-constructivist theory of science. Narrative have long been applied to many researches to analyse how people interact as well as make sense of the world through stories, both the stories we tell others and the stories we tell ourselves. It is thus not ground breaking that the act of storytelling shapes our identities, as Mayer (2014, p. 3) states, “we humans are, among other things, storytelling animals who use narrative to interpret our experience and imbue it with meaning, to establish our identity, and to script our actions.” He furthermore argues that, since stories are imbued with meanings, they act as an interpretative medium that can trigger emotions of others. Due to its competency to influence others, shared stories can exist in multiple minds, consequently aligning individual beliefs and interests to form a collective identity. Similarly, the socio-constructivist approach states that individuals are never separate entities. Instead, social categories are human made, sustained by constant negotiation via communication processes among individuals. According to this approach identity is not an entity that belongs to individuals (that is, someone is not born with an identity), rather it emerges and constructed within social practices and discursive communication (De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2011). Through narrative as a discursive tool of communication, existing knowledge is contested, expanded and negotiated to create a sense of social drama within a collective narrative. This is because, in the words of Mayer (2014, p. 4), “when we are engrossed in a shared narrative about collective action in which we see ourselves as actors in a social drama, autobiography and history align. Playing our part in the collective narrative becomes an act of personal meaning and an expression of our identity.” When a collective narrative has been created, it can further be utilized as an instrument to drive collective action. Collective narrative gives justification of mobilized collective action by providing peer support, moreover it is equally important to understand that within collective narrative, the actions of individuals are motivated by the calling for participation to answer the big question of “what did you do when history called?” (ibid.). Narrative is not only a tool for individual identity expression and negotiation, it is also a vehicle to drive collective action. Seeing narrative as a tool
15 enables me to analyse the interaction between people as well as people with their surroundings. The behavioural adaptions, adjustments, and modification people take upon when they tell their stories is a form of how they perceive the world from their lenses. As this study is highly ethnographic, narrative as a method helps me to establish the connection between people’s behaviour and their cultural and religious backgrounds, belief systems, group affiliations, career path, and so on, to weave a picture of how they interpret SpisDating.
Thematic Analysis This method is used as an analytical tool to process data from both fieldnotes and interviews. By using thematic analysis, researchers search for recurring patterns, themes, opinions or arguments within the data gathered, to provide insights to specific problems and issues (Hawkins, 2018). This means, a researcher needs to locate themes within data by examining them multiple times to build sensible set of themes that can be analysed. Themes that are used in thematic analysis can be taken directly from the words of interviewees, or from the researcher him/herself to indicate recurring thoughts. There are two approaches that are commonly used by researchers who use thematic analysis: Inductive approach and deductive approach. Inductive approach builds themes based on data collected, while deductive approach seeks to build themes according to existing theories (ibid.). This research uses both approaches due to two reasons: 1) inductive approach is seen appropriate as semi-structured interviews lead to variety of unanticipated responses, facilitates for deeper understanding of the topic seen from different perspectives, and 2) deductive approach is useful to identify elements that exist in both theories and data. This hybrid approach enables me to, as Fereday and Muir-Cochrane (2006, p. 81) put it, “complement the research questions by allowing the tenets of social phenomenology to be integral to the process of deductive thematic analysis while allowing for themes to emerge direct from the data using inductive coding.” The coding used in this research is put through a process of thorough, multiple readings of both fieldnotes and interview data to identify nodes that can be used for analysis, both within theoretical framework as well as those that exist outside the theories chosen. To assist me with node and theme identifications, NViVo as a data management program is used, therefore creating a database consists of literature, theories, interview data, fieldnotes, and articles collected from the media.
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Chapter 3: Literature Review
This chapter will cover the current literature and research surrounding the topic of multiculturalism, to contextualize the topic and explore the different elements that are at play when discussing multiculturalism in Denmark. In investigating the state of multiculturalism in Denmark, various scholars draw their analysis and arguments from the media, political field, research on migrants’ experience, as well as case studies regarding the narratives around migration and collective identity of the Danes. This chapter will start with the discussion of the process of discourse transformation and shift, which has encircled the highly debated topic of immigration in relation to attitudes toward refugees in the Danish society starting from the 1970s. Within this discussion, Dansk Folkeparti (DF)’s ideology will be analysed as a representation of a political entity that believe the collective identity of the Danish people is being threatened by incoming outsiders. This fuels the drive toward a more restrictive migration policies, in which the latest radical changes were brought in August 2018 to increase the selective process of permit grant. To illustrate the political discourse on refugees (particularly Muslim refugees and migrants), the case study of traditional Danish food called Frikadeller and Muhamed cartoon will be presented, then contrasted with the debate on the concept of political correctness, in which political correctness is portrayed to be a form of denial to wider problems brought by migration.
The transformation of discourse in the Danish politics There was a time when the co-existence among the locals and foreigners was portrayed as unproblematic. This happened when external labour was integral to the expanding Danish economy, particularly around the 1970s. The spark of discourse against migrants only begun when there was surplus of workers and the demand of migrant labour had diminished around the early-middle 1980s. Consequently, the process of ‘othering’ and externalization of migrants began here (Wren, 2001). Mogensen and Matthiessen (2000) on their book ‘Mislykket Integration?’ gathered and analysed newspaper debates on asylum seekers from 1983 to 1995 and found that attitude towards refugees was highly determined by its number. This is indicated by the ease of media – and the Danish population – to accept refugees when the number is relatively low. Their research has found that the attitude of (most) Danish newspapers was generally positive towards refugees in the beginning of the research period in 1983. However, the shift in attitude towards the negative started in the middle of 1980s, after the number of asylum seekers rose significantly.
The frequent argument that has often been used to support the discourse that refugees have impacted negatively to the Danish society, is the higher rate of unemployment among refugees or migrant families compared to natives. This argument has been a popular one and was further boosted by the global economic crisis in 2008 (Bevelander and Taras, 2013). With this came questions whether multiculturalism, as a result
17 of globalization, was the best model for managing diversity caused by migration – particularly among the right wing. The high tides of critics on multiculturalism suggested that the term ‘multiculturalism’ is often used to conceal the dissatisfactory rate of integration among migrants into host societies. As a result, “The taboo on crypto-racist, xenophobic, intolerant and exclusionary discourses was unravelling” (ibid., p. 5). This resulted in a desire for more restrictive immigration and integration policies.
Tracing back to the shift of discourse in the Danish politics regarding immigration, Dansk Folkeparti (DF) was and still is one of the major actors that is often debated both in the media and among scholarly political work. Growing out from the former Progress Party which was founded on 1973, Pia Kjærsgaard launched DF in 1995. Ever since then, the party has aligned itself with the issues surrounding nationalism as the core ideology of the party which guides DF’s principles and approach to immigration (Andersen, 2007). This ideology is accompanied by the understanding of the Danish society as one collective identity that is “historically developed through rules, routines and institutional arrangements”, in which “outsiders can become members of the community, but only by participating in the local practices and institutions and by slowly adopting the customs and even the modes of reflexive criticisms thereof.” (Tempelman 1999, p. 18). Following Parekh’s widely cited work on ‘Multicultural Society and the Welfare State’ (2012), he explains the rationality behind this perspective of nationalism and DF’s protective nature of the welfare state:
“The values, customs and practices of immigrants are different. Many of them do not even know the language of the receiving country. Their history relates to another land. The diversity represented by them is ethnic, religious, cultural and sometimes racial, hence both wider and deeper. They question the values of the receiving society, demand accommodation at several levels, and erode its identity. The receiving society therefore not only does not and cannot identify with them but feels positively threatened by their presence” (Parekh 2012, p. 53).
This is particularly heightened that the welfare system operates based on trust and the sense of shared resources. After all, if one feels threatened, how can they share their resources with their enemy? To understand DF’s idea of nationalism, the argument put forth by Kvaale (2011) may shed some light. In her explanation, she points at the state as being different as the nation. While state is a group who occupies a given political territory, nation is the “emotive groupings of human beings” that shares a common ideology, institutions, historic roots and a sense of homogeneity (Kvaale 2011, p. 225). However, the two are often used in parallel, creating a requirement for civil-political integration and ethno-cultural request for assimilation – this strategy is called nation-building. Kvaale (2011) furthermore argues that within the research field of nationalism, this strategy is used to legitimize the need of a cohesive state to avoid clash between identities, a strategy that is used by DF. The underlying ideology of DF comes with a contrast to the
18 belief of multicultural society, in which it contains multiplicity of cultures, identities, historical background, religions, and races. DF’s party programme that was written in the year of 2000 states the following as a threat to democracy and freedom: “Immigration from countries that are far away from Danish and European culture and way of life’ – groups that are ‘impossible to integrate in Danish society’. Due to high birth rates, marriages and family reunions, this ‘can transform Danes into a minority in Denmark within the 21st century” (Andersen 2007, p. 107). The party disapproves and actively fights the transformation towards multi-ethnic society as a way of biological, survival mechanism.
Towards more selective policies on migration and integration In 2018, the changes in migration policies towards a more restrictive approach can be seen in the strategies to target people of higher income group. This is confirmed by the Danish minister of immigration and integration, Inger Støjberg, who states that the new rules allow high-earning and highly qualified Danes to bring their partners and spouses to the country (thelocals.dk, 2018).
For example, as it can be seen on the visa requirements for those seeking residency as a spouse or a partner on the Danish Immigration Service and the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI) webpage:
• Changes to the housing requirement means that family-reunified couples who live in underprivileged areas will not be able to get their residency granted (the list of residence that is denied from residency application can be found here, nyidanmark.dk, 2018). • The amount of collateral (this acts as ‘economic insurance’) that needs to be posted by the family applicant is raised to 100,000 Danish Kroner, doubling from 50,000 Danish Kroner for the previous years. • Raise of fee for submitting an application for family reunification to 6,700 Danish Kroner. • Applicant must pass 2 Danish language tests according to the given deadline, otherwise residency permit will be revoked. Due to restrictive budget cuts, Danish lessons given to foreigners are no longer free starting from July 2018, thus for this applicants have to pay much higher fees.
These are some of the changes effective August 2018. As Støjberg states, "all things being equal, this will mean fewer family reunifications in Denmark. We want more people in Denmark that can contribute," (thelocal.dk, 2018). This new set of regulations are designed to target specific group of people, particularly middle to higher class that are assessed to have the resources to be self-sufficient enough to minimize the state’s and welfare’s spending in integration processes. As Holtug (2013) suggests, these changes respectively intend to make Denmark unsuitable for those seeking refuge – mostly from Islamic countries –
19 seen as the regular exposure of ‘the negative side’ of Muslim migrants in relation to crime rate, educational underachievement and unemployment rate. As DF’s member of parliament Kenneth Kristensen Berth said on an interview with CNN in 2016, “we are not interested in getting a whole lot of people who we are supposed to integrate, but we know as a fact that it is impossible to integrate these people.” When asked why, he stated “second generation (of migrants) are more crime prone than inhabitants in general are in Denmark, they have lower frequency of working than Danish people have, and we have arising Islamic problem in Denmark […] I am advocating that we are getting the wrong people to Denmark today.” (CNN, 2016). This statement opens a gate to a matter of integration based on religious grounds as well as heightened cultural differences and superiority (identified in the expression used: ‘getting the wrong people to Denmark’). As Kenneth furthermore state, “it would be fair to say that Muslims in Denmark have not done a good job integrating, whereas people for instance, from Thailand, the Philippines, China and so on have done vastly better. They are not as crime prone as the people from the Middle East and Africa.” (Ibid.).
There is a widely dominant pattern within the research of multiculturalism in Denmark (and in the wider European context), and that is the overwhelming number of debates between Muslim immigrants or refugees on one side, and ‘western’ cultures on the other. Islam being a religion is often mixed with an identity that is incompatible with the ‘western’ identity, therefore threatening the existence of Western values (for example, democracy and freedom, as argued earlier by DF). In other words, it is often “held in a hierarchy of enlightened Christian modernity over Muslim obscurantism” (Haugbølle 2013, Politikens debatindlæg).
The following two cases of Frikadeller in 2013 and the notorious Muhammed cartoons in 2006 helps to understand the ‘battle between Muslim and Danish identity’ in the perspective of real-life events. The first being a local event that resembles the argument over Danishness, while the later has much broader exposure that gained international attention to Denmark.
Frikadeller as a Danish signifier and Muhammed cartoons as a symbol of freedom of speech The Frikadeller case boomed around July / August 2013, when the Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet reported that Hvidovre Hospital has been serving only halal meat for its Muslim patients for the past ten years (Gatestone Institute, 2013). In separate articles, the tabloid also reported at least 30 nurseries, preschools and day care centres in Denmark banned frikadeller, the Danish national dish, because the meatballs contain pork – therefore might not be accommodating for Muslim children. This was followed by many discussions from opposing sides, with right-wing parties argued that the practice was a form of hyper political correctness as well as an attack to the Danish identity. As stated by DF’s spokesman Martin Henriksen in an interview with Jyllands-Posten, “It is disconcerting that our public institutions are educating Danish children to give
20 exaggerated deference to Muslims. Those practices are illegal because they unceremoniously discriminate against those who value Danish food culture." Furthermore adding, "the next thing one would imagine could be that Danish nurses are forced to go under cover as Muslim women, in order to please Muslim patients." (ibid.). It is now referred to as frikadellekrigen (the frikadeller war, Cekic 2016), as the arguments swirl around the preservation of Danish identity and tradition in the form of serving pork dishes against the demand of catering for pork alternatives for Muslim citizens. This case is an example of how cultural food reflects a country’s shared identity, therefore questioning its existence is considered an offense to the Danish society (although it is problematic to fully define what ‘being Danish’ means).
The case of Muhammed cartoon happened in Denmark around 2005-2006, and one of the major examples of the interplay between freedom of speech and discrimination based on religious grounds. The debates that followed are divided accordingly, with one party stated that they should not bow to violations of freedom of speech based on customs of another culture and the other underlined the offensive portrayals of the Prophet depicted as terrorism. According to Kingsley (2012, p. 90), “this is the heart of the issue: the cartoons weren’t really about preserving open debate. They were intended to provoke and humiliate an already marginalised section of society.”, further arguing how the general Muslim society in Denmark value free speech due to the suppression they had experienced in the many countries they were from, however that is not to say that they should be provoked and offended. Following the publication of the cartoons, several politicians commented of the cartoon’s publication:
“Minister of culture Brian Mikkelsen had called Islam “medieval”. The DF MP Louise Frevert described Muslims as a tumour that needed to be removed from Europe. Søren Krarup, a DF MP who doubles as a priest, has described the headscarf as the “equivalent to Communist and Nazi symbols”, and thinks that a teacher who wears one is essentially wearing a Nazi uniform. The Koran, he adds, is like Hitler’s Mein Kampf.” (ibid., p. 91).
These comments coupled with restrictive immigration policies has resulted in the unwelcoming notion, if not hostility from the host country, felt among foreigners of Muslim backgrounds.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the discussion is the right to defend freedom of speech. As conveyed by Prime Minister Rasmussen at the time after declining meeting with the Muslim ambassadors, the Danish government chose not to take any action against Jyllands-Posten (the newspapers that published the cartoons) because he believes that the government should not interfere with the media, in order to protect free speech (Lindholm and Olsson, 2011). The Prime Minister’s new year’s speech in 2005 further highlighted Denmark as a “secular society, which safeguards the rights of individuals, women, and freedom of speech.” (ibid., p. 262).
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Similar to the frikadeller case, what it means to be Danish, however blurred and indirect it may be, is portrayed as a direct opposite of what it means to be Muslim. This is what Vertelyte and Hervik (2018) establish as entitlement racism, where the West claims superior position, therefore has the right to insult those that have different perspectives and way of life. In the case of Muhammed cartoons, the Danish government assumed the privileged position, therefore “insist[ing] on the right to offend in the name of freedom, regardless of its impact on others. At the very core of this racism is the humiliation of the other in order to elevate the self” (Vertelyte and Hervik 2018, p. 176).
In a research done by Simonsen (2018), which involved second generation immigrants of Middle East descents living in Denmark, shows how national belonging is often treated as a property rather than a flexible concept to be negotiated when different cultures meet. The interviewees in the research often expressed how they were seen as not being ‘Danish enough’ due to their appearances, while their peers of Danish ancestry can just be Danish. Because of this, they are consciously “avoiding speaking Arabic in public because they feel that people are afraid of Arabs and might think they are terrorists […] and the women who wear the Muslim headscarf have a clear idea that “Danes” think they are oppressed (rather than having freely chosen to wear it).” (Simonsen 2018, p. 129). The narrative of being Danish is often put as a contrast between multiple different identities to establish who is ‘we’ and who is ‘they’, and the widening gap is often highlighted and be used to justify actions taken at the political stage to control the gate of immigration and tackle diversity (Holtug, 2013).
Political correctness and Anti anti-racism The controversies of the above cases (among others), further sustained the long, already often discussed issue of race. The work of Wren (2001) may provide a more focused path of looking at racism in Denmark. As she suggests, what happens in the country (predominantly at the political stage) is a form of cultural racism, in which it roots from the notion of all significant cultural innovations originated from Europe. Therefore, it implies the idea that Europeans are culturally superior, more ‘progressive’ and ‘modern’ in contrast to non- Europeans who are ‘traditional’ and ‘backward’. Cultural racism hence refers to the idea that Europeans are “not racially, but culturally superior” (Wren 2001, p. 143). This is reflected in the frequent arguments that Danish politicians bring up to refer to immigrants being culturally ill-fitting to the Danish cultures (as beforementioned ‘Islamic problem in Denmark’, as Kenneth Kristensen Berth claimed). This is a dangerous territory, as Wren (2001, p. 144) further argues, because it provides justification in the structure of power, to exclude others on the grounds of cultural incompatibility and “glossing over issues of social and economic inequality by cloaking discussion of these issues in ‘cultural difference’”.
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In a country as progressive as Denmark, where human rights and gender equality are seen as the basic values of being human, Wren (2001) furthermore argues, it is not difficult to portray outsiders (refugees, migrants) with different ‘basic values’ as threatening and oppressive toward women. Given the wide exposure of stereotypes that is always readily available in the media and political discourse, the Danish culture is perceived as combatting ‘alien’ cultures to preserve the progressive, democratic ways of life (ibid.).
Additionally, Mathias Danbolt’s work on retro racism (2017) also supplies significant contribution to the discussion of racism and culture in Denmark. One of his case study analyses of Haribo’s Skipper Mix being claimed as racist due to its candy designs, including “mask-like heads with crude racial stereotypes, including an Asian ‘coolie’ face and several ‘African’ faces: a masculine head with large eyes, flat nose and big lips; a feminine head in profile with large protruding lips, earring and hair in bantu knots; and a childlike ‘golliwog’ head with frizzy hair, large lips and round eyes” (p. 106), has put the spotlight on racialized consumption in the Danish public culture. On this case study, it was not the presence of racialized imagery that caused the major debate, instead, it is the proclaim of how ‘ridiculous’ that candies can be perceived as racist. Esben Lunde Larsen, Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party commented: “I have grown up with words such as “negro” and “Spaniard”, which have been prohibited due to political correctness. Now, my favourite sweets have been prohibited…! What next?” (Danbolt 2017, p. 107). Retro racism therefore refers to the notion of race as being retrograde, and that discussing racism should no longer be taken seriously as it is an outdated topic, both politically and historically. This is because the narrative of racism in Denmark is assumed to be a form of discrimination based on biological appearance, in which it exists in history far away or in the past (ibid.). It is then perceived if someone even mentions the word ‘racist’ it automatically transforms them to be one of the ‘politically correct’ people, who is considered as self-righteous hypocrites who are blind to truth (Danbolt and Myong, 2018). At the political level, political correctness is often used as a bottom line insult, a “showstopper for serious discussion and critique” that frequently occur during the debate of race. As such, “feminists, multiculturalists, and other minorities as well as supporters of minorities are typically criticized for taking special positions (in neoliberal logic “special interests”) as politically correct”, as stated by Vertelyte and Hervik (2018, p. 175). One of the explanations of why this is happening, quoting Kristeligt Dagblad’s editorial (as cited in Danbolt and Myong 2018, p. 51), is that “the concept of racism has been used and abused to the extent that it has lost its independent force and in some instances it says more about the person using the word”. However, within this logic, not only the term itself is being bullied, it also provides justification to use racist slurs without having any consequences. The narrative of racism has now shifted from being something that should be combatted against, to anti anti-racism, where challenging or protesting something on ground of racism is treated as: blind to the truth, self-righteous hypocrites, trying to limit free speech, and/or an attack to culture preservation and nationalism. This reductive restructure and dislocation
23 of the meaning of racism has further reached its impact in the research and study of cultures, as well as been used against researchers whose work focus on racism as a critical analytic (Danbolt and Myong, 2018). The debate marks the widespread recognition of “anti-racist research and knowledge production as a destructible, oppressive force that has gone too far” (ibid., p. 57). According to this view, what needs to be done is not battling racism, rather the wrongly demonization of the Danes by calling them racists.
The debate about multiculturalism in the Danish society is complex and rich with layers of back-and-forth arguments between different axes. The dynamics between descriptive multiculturalism (the physical realm, the admittance that there are more than one culture exist in Denmark) and normative multiculturalism (the ability of authorities to facilitate for multiculturalism, Sinclair 2015) continues to create friction in globalized Denmark, in which two major axes are most often put as opposing contrast: Muslim values versus Western values, tradition versus democracy, multicultural versus nationalist. This pattern is highly dominant across academia, media, and research. It indicates the widening gap between the portrayed opposing identities, witnessed in the high usage of ‘we’ versus ‘them’ in the context of welfare society as being the primary theme in the works of scholars such as Holtug (2013), Parekh (2012), Tempelman (1999), and Andersen (2007). Additionally, Haugbølle’s (2013) article for Politiken contributes toward pointing out the paradoxes within the Danish society, particularly in relation to ‘Danishness’ and Danish identity, illustrating the notion of living in ‘isolated globalized Denmark’ ideals that is often projected by right-wing parties such as DF.
In the hopes of mapping out history to detect the shift in discourse beginning in the late 1970s through 1980s, academics such as Mogensen and Matthiessen (2000) provide thorough statistical reports via media and trend studies in migration and refugee fluctuations, as well as its influences on migration regulations in Denmark. The debate is also often linked to racism as a form of anti-multiculturalist approach, in which the work of Danbolt (2017) on retro racism and Wren (2001) on cultural racism explores how racism has evolved into different versions and labels, and now has ways to be justified in the name of speaking the truth. Their work has led to the discovery of the multitude of layers of racism and how to understand racism in a new perspective, a version of racism that is often cloaked and easily justified within the institution of politics and governmental affairs.
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Chapter 4: Analysis
Using thematic analysis, the data ethnographic data gathered from both fieldwork notes and interviews are read multiple times and patterns are drawn to create nodes. Within this analysis, I reflect upon theoretical framework and literature reviews from the previous chapters, then to be cross-checked with accounts from informants and observations in the field. Thematic analysis is therefore, derived from a reflexive and iterative process (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006). The primary objective for data collection was to present the subjective accounts of SpisDating participants through the lenses of the theories presented and with the knowledge framework of the literature review. Thus, the themes detected in the interviews are greatly positioned according to these two major elements as my restrictive guidelines. Thus, it is a conversation between theories and literature reviews, using interview data and fieldwork to bring this analytical conversation to life.
The accounts of informants were conducted orally, recorded, and transcribed manually by re-listening of the files. In building analysis, themes are derived and explained as a form of conversation between three sources: theories, literature review and informant accounts. These themes were not created at random – I used the frameworks that have been established in the previous chapters as my lenses to detect the patterns within the interviews I conducted.
There are 5 subchapters that will be discussed. They are structured as such to allow me to build my analysis from one point to another. This is not only to ensure a proper flow of the analysis, but also allowing me to make sense of the patterns and themes detected as interlinked and not individually independent.
1. The first sub-chapter will be the philosophy of SpisDating as analysed from an interview from the founder of the organization, Garba Diallo. The interview with this individual will act as a background motivation of SpisDating, as well as to demonstrate in which theoretical framework Garba’s ideologies, consequently the underlying raison d'etre of SpisDating, falls under. 2. The second sub-chapter will be the analysis of food as a medium. This theme possesses a cross- sectional analysis between theories and interview transcripts, as well as fieldnotes that I have gathered as a form of my field observation. 3. The third sub-chapter will discuss SpisDating’s learning aspect to explain the experience attendees get from SpisDating that has transformative effect on their knowledge. 4. The fourth sub-chapter will discuss the state of multiculturalism in Denmark according to the literature, theories, interview reports and fieldnotes. My analysis on this builds up from the previous sub-chapters above, to paint a more complete picture of multiculturalism in Denmark, seen on multiple angles and perspectives.
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5. The last sub-chapter will discuss the limitation of SpisDating. Here, I will assess the effectivity of SpisDating and the effect it has on multiculturalism.
The philosophy behind SpisDating Garba Diallo, having a multicultural family of his own, aspires to connect people from various background to create a peaceful world. Topics such as refugee crises and immigration propel him to create a platform that raises awareness through storytelling and food, as he said “the easiest way to the heart is through the stomach”, along with the effect of storytelling on provoking deep personal reflections, indicated by his statement of “tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces”, after having succeeded in holding SpisDating as a part of a non-formal education in one of the schools in Denmark.
This section will present the ideologies behind SpisDating, and within my analysis I integrate the theories of cosmopolitanism (as seen from the works of Delanty, 2011, Sanahuja and Ghia, 2015) and civic multiculturalism as established by Tempelman (1999). These two theories are used as reference points to analyse the interview with Garba, in which it leads me to the elaboration of the ideals of ‘the third culture’ by Patel, Li and Sooknanan (2015). These theories have helped me to understand the core values and ideals of SpisDating, therefore deepen my subsequent knowledge of what I elements of SpisDating I should pay attention to, in the rest of the interviews with my informants. Overall, my interview with Garba has led me to identify two major ideologies that fuel SpisDating into being: universality of food and stories, and equality and social inclusion.
Universality of food and stories The claims to universality through food and stories are quite apparent from the beginning of the interview with Garba, when I asked him about the vision of SpisDating.
“This is universal human things, food, people love food (laugh) and also stories, no matter how high or whatever if you tell someone come I want to tell you a story, you disarm them. So that's the reason: using story and food to promote contact, mutual understanding and dialogue and building bond across borders” – Garba Diallo (14 September 2018).
He mentioned the ability of storytelling to ‘disarm’ people, something that he borrowed from SpisDating the evening before, featuring Özlem Cekic’s brief speech on demonization of people. One of the causes of demonization is negative stereotypes that are developed through the many layers of life that individuals are exposed to everyday. As argued by Patel, Li and Sooknanan (2011) one of the major negative stereotypes is the period post 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers which triggered the stereotype of Muslims as terrorists, therefore further impacted government policies, custom checks and immigration policies internationally.
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Garba thus argued that SpisDating utilizes the framework of food and storytelling to bridge cultural differences through the simple practice of food and story sharing, to see pass all the stereotypes and find the humans within. Why food and stories? It is due to the uncomplicated reality that everybody needs to eat. As F. K. Fisher (as cited in Counihan and Esterik, 2008) has eloquently puts it, “the easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.”
Equality, diversity and social inclusion Another core philosophy of SpisDating is the concept of creating a collective community that is inclusive, as Garba further suggests. This works in parallel with the conception of equality and social inclusion. He began by illustrating the contrast of anti-globalization today:
“We live in a very interesting or strange time where we have all the possibilities to connect but at the same time we're building walls. It's totally opposite of the idea of globalization - we used to talk about global village and now many countries are going back to their small shells. Building walls - the EU is now Fortress EU […] People start to build walls between communities. So, we want to break those barriers and let people meet as equal human beings.” – Garba Diallo (14 September 2018).
The last sentence indicates what he believes is the value of SpisDating, the solution the organization offers to the interpreted problem of anti-globalization seen by ‘wall-building’ between communities. Recurrently, this ‘breaking of barrier’ to include others to become ‘equal human beings’ that he stated aligns well with one of the aspects of cosmopolitanism, which is the increase inclusion within communities, whilst maintaining differences, as Sanahuja and Ghia (2015, p. 10) state, “every form of cosmopolitanism involves the idea of a single community beyond “borders” of different kinds: political, moral, economic, cultural and other relevant diversities that very often divide people into groups, distinguishing between insiders and outsiders.” These differences, as Garba argued, is the DNA of CB. Diversity is “what keeps the world in the balance”, as Garba said – a perspective that aligns with Tempelman’s (1999, p. 23) Civic Multiculturalism theory, in which “civics do not ask how ‘different’ cultures interact or conflict with each other. Rather, people interact with each other and work through their differences in the process.” This is also the reason why in SpisDating, people are seated facing each other. As Garba said, it is to to create “the idea of a circle - it's equal, not somebody over and someone sitting down.”
The two ideologies of cosmopolitan and civic multiculturalism within the philosophy of SpisDating as analysed within Garba’s statements may lead to the building of what Patel, Li and Sooknanan (2015) named ‘the third culture’, that is premised on interdependence that highlights the transformative process within intercultural community in order to survive. The third culture is both an expansive and inclusive approach, and it encourages diversity as it treats it as an asset rather than a disadvantage. This is because the third culture
27 builds on the belief of creating an environment that allows respectful, dignified and just relationships among cultures. This is the fundamental aim that SpisDating aspires to achieve.
The next sub-chapter will discuss food as a medium. This sub-chapter is based on the marriage of informant accounts, fieldnotes, and the theories on food, particularly gastrodiplomacy and everyday form of nationalism. This theme was discovered through a holistic approach of data reading from these sources. Additionally, academic literature is included as a vital part of the analysis. The academia is filled with literature on food and gender roles, as such done by DeVault (1991), food as relation to diplomacy and politics such as done by Rockower (2012), numerous literatures on food and nationalism such as done by Ichijo and Ranta (2016), political economy of food and food movement or activism by Counihan and Esterik (2008). These literatures have certainly helped me in analysing the role of food as investigated in SpisDating, and by combining various works from different academic fields, it allows me to deepen the analysis on food as a medium.
The role of food as a medium This theme is evidently seen from the data gathered and corresponds directly to answering the second working question proposed in the beginning of the thesis, which is: ‘What roles do food practices and storytelling in SpisDating play in providing transformative experience among attendees?’ Before going to the analysis, I’d like to point out that there are distinctions between the positioning of these informants, as, depending on who and what they do, could impact the accounts they produce. This is because, as a socio- constructivist would argue, ideologies are not formed merely within oneself. Instead, they are formed through one’s participation in using the voices of others that they have come to familiarized in the chains and threads of utterances we find ourselves in (Evans, 2018). Therefore, one’s way of perceiving the world could be different then another’s. The informants that I will be highlighting here come from diverse socio- economic, cultural, racial, professional background. They are often quoted in parallel to each other, to illustrate the diversity of those who attend SpisDating and thus provide depth of angles in the analysis. When the necessity to point out the differences between two individuals arises, I will further elaborate how the differences have any impacts on the comments they have produced.
In analysing the role of food as a medium, there are two dominant patterns within the discussion of cultural cuisine expressed by interview participants: (1) food as a facilitator for dialogue and activism, and (2) food as a projection of national identity.
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Food as facilitator for dialogue and activism “I think food and beverages – they are the way to connect to people without even talking. You can speak different languages but if you want to introduce something, the best way is through food. Everyone needs to eat.” This statement by William (8 October 2018) illustrates the role of food as communication facilitator. Through further analysis, there are several other statements from other informants that resonate with this statement, as Jules (30 September 2018) states, “the precondition for anything of communication needs to be pleasant. A well-received communication requires pleasant conditions. That’s why there’s food in it.” Out of the 9 interviewees, 7 of them stated that food plays an essential role in building a friendly atmosphere in the SpisDating event to facilitate for dialogue. It is also considered a conversation starter and an ice breaker as well as to spark further, often more difficult discussions revolving around topics that are complex and abstract, often multi-sided. Both William and Jules highlighted the notion of food being able to create ‘pleasant conditions´ that is universal enough for people that can even be done across ‘different languages’. As the topics of discussion in SpisDating frequently involve cultures, conflicts, politics and ideologies, food acts as a medium to help ease into the atmosphere of mind-provoking dialogues. As Lorena (18 September 2018) suggests, “Some things are very hard to talk about, so it’s also fun to come together and to eat together.”
To analyse this process, the theory of gastrodiplomacy could be beneficial in explaining how food plays the role of facilitator. As Rockower (2012) suggests, gastrodiplomacy appreciates the manner in which food can take the duty of connecting with foreign audience in a non-aggressive, non-threatening way, thus alleviates the process of building bonds between cultures to create further possible gains. In the interview I conducted with the founder of SpisDating, he admitted that he “never thought about it (gastrodiplomacy) in connection to SpisDating” (Garba, 14 September 2018). This led me to believe that even though SpisDating may not deliberately adapt the way of gastro-politics, the processes of the observed project closely resembles how gastrodiplomacy is depicted in the academia. This is particularly the case considering the need of the organization, as a non-profit based entity, to sustain itself through projects. Thus, the ‘further possible gains’ obtained from SpisDating may be in the forms of increased number of memberships and like-minded individuals that align with the organization’s values to further expand and raise awareness of the organization’s ideologies. Gastrodiplomacy lends a useful toolkit to analyse the usage of cultural cuisine as a way to attract end entice audience to engage in interaction, as Counihan and Esterik (2008, pp. 500 – 501) suggests, “there is a tradition of symbolic analysis of dietary cultures, whereby foods are treated as messages and eating as a way of social communication.”
Another aspect of food to spark dialogue is used by the cooks to tell their stories. The food served in
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SpisDating comes consistently from the minor ethnic group in Denmark. One of the most frequently served is Middle-Eastern (Syrian and Lebanese) food and African (Eritrean) food, with occasional Asian (Thailand, Indian and Korean) food. The cooks comprise mostly of people of refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds, with assistance from volunteers who work for CB. This is fuelled by the idea of “giving voice to the voiceless”, as quoted from Garba (14 September 2018). The usual procedure involves the cooks to present the food that they cook for the evening and tell a short background story about where they come from and the events that led them to come to Denmark as refugees. However, it is important to note that this feature is not always readily available across all SpisDating event, making it an irregular occurrence that is not normally noticed by SpisDating attendees. This is shown by the analysis that this theme is detected in 4 out of 9 individuals that were interviewed, and three of these individuals are related to the organization (the founder, a member of advisory board, and a project manager of the organization). Only one of these individuals is an external entity, who is an occasional volunteer cook for the project. This pattern is not detected in other informants, which makes it strictly internal to the organization. Consequently, if this feature of giving voices to the ethnic minority or refugees through food is supposed to be on the organization’s agenda, there is a necessity to make it more regular and consistent so the audience of SpisDating would recognize it. Regardless of this, I have decided to include this theme as a part of my observation, as it could also lead to suggestion for improvement as well as potential detection of gaps in literature.
“The cooks are volunteers, it’s their way to contribute to sort of their own cause. They want a dialogue, a platform, where they can contribute.” (Jules, 30 September 2018). This was Jules’s answer when asked about the positionality of food in SpisDating. This comment also resonates with Lorena’s (18 September 2018) comment, in which she stated: “The cooks have their own stories as well. They present the food and a bit of their backgrounds as well – why are they doing this, why are they in Denmark and most of the time highlighting an issue they are facing at the moment”. This puts into the spotlight food as a platform for refugees to voice their stories and often contribute to the topics surrounding refugee politics in Denmark.
For the motive to capture a more whole picture, I’d like to present the off-the-record observation that have come to embed my perspective on food as a tool for activism. As mentioned before, SpisDating invites cooks that are dominantly from refugee background. Although I did not have the chance to interview Manal and Eden, the other two refugee cooks for SpisDating, I have come to know them during my ins and outs of attending SpisDating. Manal and Eden are both refugees. Manal is Syrian, and Eden is Eritrean. One commonality these individuals share (including Nice, a cook that I did have the chance to interview and will be featured dominantly in this sub-chapter) is the utilization of food as a platform to tell their stories, just as Jules and Lorena said above. They are not selected randomly, and they agree to cook for the event because
30 they themselves would like to contribute toward a cause that is personal to them, as soon we will be able to see in the case of Nice. As Adamoli (2013, p. 68) argues, “food is political […] but it is also more than politics […] Food is a powerful communicative tool because it is used to maintain and identify socioeconomic inequalities in our society and the parties involved in this unequal democracy.” The analysis on food will feature Nice as a focal reference point to the topic, as well as Lorena and other supporting voices in the interviews.
Nice is a political refugee from Thailand. As a previous professional fixer for international journalists in Thailand, she had involved herself in several activism activities, especially ones that relate to feminism. She later got herself in trouble with the government in Thailand due to her activism, a course that led her to seek asylum in Denmark. An interview with Nice is thick with feminist perspective – she talked about how Thai women do not have the best image in Denmark and are perceived most often as South East Asian wives of white Danes to better their living conditions. An off the record conversation with her additionally gave me the knowledge that she had experienced the pressure to perform sexual services while she was working for Thai massage parlour in Copenhagen, a practice she despises because she thought it reinforced the portrayal of Thai women either being exploited or taking a ‘shortcut’ to get quick money through prostitution. Nice is one of the volunteer cooks in SpisDating. I asked her about her motivations to get involved in cooking for the event, and she said that cooking there has given her the platform to improve the perception of Thai women in Denmark:
“I think I contribute the dignity of Thais, especially the women. I try to open up about the issues they face, through food. A lot of people don’t know why we are more prone to prostitutions that other countries – all the submission stereotype and stuff. So, through food I tell people why and how these stereotypes developed. Through food, I can also challenge these stereotypes and broaden the knowledge in the Danish society.” (Nice, 21 September 2018).
Food as a form of resistance is also spoken by Lorena, an Ecuadorian activist with long history of NGO career that advocates herself in the intersection of art and human rights. Lorena came to Denmark when she was recruited by CB to participate in a youth informal education, but her first encounter with CB was when she attended a workshop on Israel-Palestine conflict, an event she described as ‘powerful’. She never left CB since then. When asked about how she perceived the food cooked by volunteers with refugee backgrounds in SpisDating, she said:
“Even the person who makes the food, that is exactly what the government doesn’t want her to do. They want her to be in the camp, without any money, very far away isolated, it’s just a matter of fact that she’s there and she might only be one person I think that’s challenging the structures and what’s
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happening in Denmark that is going towards more extreme right-wing ideologies.” (Lorena, 18 September 2018).
Both statements from these two different individuals with different backgrounds suggest the use of food activism, in which by doing so individuals challenge the existing system of thought or politics, depending on individual’s agenda. On the first statement, food can be viewed through the scope of food as a relation to gender roles, empowerment and stereotypes. In her work, ‘Conflict and Deference’, DeVault (1991) discusses the dilemma of gender roles in domestic setting, stating that in feeding others, women sometimes reproduce their own subordination by catering to husbands’ or partners’ preferences. This process thus further reinforces the notion of women as natural care-giver in the family, contributing to the overtime development ‘submissive stereotype’ that Nice has stated above. Using food as an opening for conversation, she exercises ‘soft power’ of food – the power of attraction (Rockower, 2012)- and stated how women’s role does not only cover the things related to the kitchen and bedroom, but also to give voice towards a more equal society (SpisDating with Dada, observation, 13 September 2018), as she further told how she became a political refugee in Denmark as a result of her feminist activism in Thailand. On the second statement, Lorena offered the possibility of employing food as means to challenge the current political system that governs refugees. It can be analysed from her statement, in which she mentioned ‘right-wing ideologies’, that she was referring to the nativist ideological framework of how the nation and its native people are seen as threatened by migration and increased refugee waves (Siim and Meret, 2016). Thus, inviting the cooks of refugee backgrounds to interact with both Danes and other people of diverse background (as observed in SpisDating) is seen as a form of rejection of othering, a strategy that is commonly used within populism (ibid.).
Food and national identity Looking through my fieldnotes, I remember vividly what Nice, one of the informants, said to me on the evening of 13th of September 2018: “Because I cannot go back home, I try to remember all the recipes and tastes, and recreate it to remind me of the feeling of home.” Being a political refugee means that Nice’s freedom of mobility is restricted. She cannot yet go back to her motherland in Thailand and it has been 3 years since she has been granted asylum. Along with her statement, I wrote “I felt how food was a powerful signifier of homeland for her, and how eating this dish means that she is creating a home far away from home” as a part of my observation (SpisDating with Dada Krsnasevananda, observation, 13 September 2018). The practice of establishing and enforcing human relationship with food is explained by Rockower (2012, p. 236) as:
“We experience food through our senses (touch and sight, but especially taste and smell), it possesses certain visceral, intimate, and emotion qualities, and as a result we remember the food
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we eat and the sensations we felt while eating it. The senses create a strong link between place and memory, and food serves as the material representation of the experience.”
Since Nice grew up in Thailand and is used to consuming Thai food, she admitted how her taste buds have become accustomed to the taste of her homeland, as she said, “no matter where I am, I cannot eat a burger every day or spaghetti every day. I want to eat Thai food every day.” This represents how embodied she has become to the things she eats and shows how much the cuisine of her homeland projects the culture she belongs and calls home. As Ichijo and Ranta (2016, p. 24) argues, “What we do with food, therefore, how we think about it and use it, inheres in what we are, as societies and as individuals.”
Additionally, Nice’s involvement in sharing her cooking in SpisDating is not merely to create the sense of nostalgia of her homeland. She uses her cooking to project her identity and to promote the values of her homeland:
“I decided to use this chance with SpisDating to tell the world, to tell people what you haven’t eaten in my country. The restaurants in Denmark is mostly ‘tourist food’, where they are like copying and pasting the menu. The Thai food in the restaurants in Denmark therefore only represents one out of one thousand Thai food type – the homemade, the street food, they never sell in Western countries. I always try to introduce unseen food, not touristy food in Copenhagen, and try to explain what it is and where it came from, why people eat this, for example it’s health-related.” (Nice, 21 September 2018).
In creating and sharing Thai food to the people who attend SpisDating, Nice has transformed food into a projection of her national identity and promotes it to the people. As a result, raised cultural awareness through cuisine can be seen among informants such as Gabriel and Lorena, who both said that through SpisDating, they get to taste various cultural food. Gabriel also added how “it is an opportunity to find new things” and that he learned a different way of serving rice as he witnessed from the Middle Eastern style of cooking (Gabriel, 26 October 2018). Another informant with a refugee background, Shana, stated how various cultural food in SpisDating not only features and represents different nationalities, it is also a bridge that lets people to relate to each other, shown in the practice of ‘borrowing’ spices from different countries:
“It’s just like countries borrow from each other and we think we’re so different from each other – some of the ingredients and spices that I use, one of my best friends from Israel also uses – so in that way, food is also a statement saying that we’re not so different from each other. It’s a different take on it. And that’s a beautiful way to bring people together, through food.” (Shana, 1 october 2018).
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This perspective of sharing spices also extends to shared food ingredients across traditional food, for example, one of the reflections I noted from my fieldwork says:
“The Thai bread was softer than I had expected, with sweet smooth filling that, if you haven’t tasted pandan before, could be said as aromatic both to the nose and to the tongue. Nice told me that they used pandan and coconut a lot in Thai dishes – as someone who is from Indonesia, I can relate. As I enjoyed the bread, I couldn’t help myself but to compare it to an Indonesian pandan dish I grew up with. It did bring back some memories, just by tasting a food that is remotely similar to the taste I’m used to.”
Thus, food in SpisDating works to promote diversity through showcasing different cultural food as well as bridging relationship between people of different cultural backgrounds. This is because food functions to “help familiarize the foreign […] thus, through culinary experiences such audiences discover other parts of the world” (Rockower 2012, p. 235), a concept that aligns well with gastrodiplomacy.
Additionally, Nice has taught me one interesting way of looking at food as more than just consumables, as she said:
“The people who grow this food, they are poor people who cannot afford education for their children. A lot of them are forced into prostitution and marriages with foreign men to get out of poverty. That’s why there are many Thai women who are with old Danish men. They only enjoy themselves economically but not their private life – they swallow their pride to send money back home to these farmers who grow these ingredients to make Thai food.” (21 September 2018).
Although this statement is, inevitably, an oversimplified description to depict a complex issue of a nation, nevertheless, food could potentially offer a gateway, a tool to investigate a society’s political and economic state due to how embedded it is to the labour system and consumption habits within a dynamic global market (Ichijo and Ranta, 2016). This reflection led me to believe that food, particularly cultural food or traditional food, hold profuse information that is more than just a dish containing ingredients. What is consumed through the palates is nothing short than an explanation of “where one grows up, the groups they belong to, and the cultural and social spaces they inhabit.” (ibid.). This statement also explains how the case of Frikadeller war exploded nationally over something as simple as a dish. One may argue the degree of absurdity of this supposed ‘war’, yet the case caught large coverage in the media as well as academia as a representation of how food can be very much embedded into the Danish society (or any society, for that matter) that it could easily become the face of that identity itself.
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Furthermore, not only does food is a symbol of represented national identity, individuals also take part in the banal practices in creating a nation through their cooking. When finding out that the supposed Thai food that Nice cooked for us was apparently a ‘modified’ and ‘personalized’ version of the original, I asked Nice how one can consequently define ‘Thai food’ if it was open for many different personal revisions. Her answer was:
“Thai food doesn’t mean that you have to have a specific menu […] So, when I say this is Thai food means that it tastes as that – the taste has to be maintained in a certain way. For example, if I was to make Tom Yum – it only has these kinds of vegetables and nothing else, no ginger, never. The specific tastes have to be precise. But if you’d want to food a Baltic fish or whatever, it’s okay. But the broth has to be Thai.” (21 September 2018).
This means that Thai food is open for change only up to certain ways of cooking, while the main ingredients that make up for the dish cannot be changed. Often ethnic minority migrants and refugees from various background bring with them their own culture and food habits to the host country. As Seto-suh (2016, p. 71) argue, “for immigrants and refugees, eating the food of their homeland is not only a source of nutrition but of healing, nostalgia, and provides the possibility of forging an ethnic identity in an alien setting.” It is, however, comparatively more difficult to acquire the necessary ingredients to replicate cultural dishes in the host country. As a result, one regularly must make compromises to substitute ingredients to something similar, consequently recreating a slightly different version of the traditional dishes they create. By adding personalization to cultural dishes, they engage in the everyday creation of the nation while simultaneously project their national identity through food (Ichijo and Ranta, 2016).
To conclude this sub-chapter on food, I’d like to point out an observation that I have come across while studying the different aspects of food. The multitude of layers of food are in itself, fascinating. Because food is an integral part of life, there have been many works and research on food in different intersections such as politics (Rockower, 2012), gender and feminism (DeVault, 1991), and a large amount of nationalism related to food, in which I studied and borrowed the works of Ichijo and Ranta (2016), as well as Counihan and Esterik’s (2008) work on the manifold of food related topics, admirably woven into their Food and Culture: A Reader book. The multiplicity and depth of the academia on food allows one to take food to any direction one could think of. It is however, worth noting that through the analysis of data and research on academic literature, I have discovered that there is limited literature or studies that exist in the intersection of food and refugees and/or ethnic minority empowerment. Particularly, how food can be a platform for refugees and ethnic minorities to express their voice. I will discuss this gap in literature in more details in the discussion chapter. The next part I will focus on analysing the learning aspect of SpisDating, mainly reflected through storytelling. This part is directly linked with the method section previously explained after theoretical
35 framework. This is because narrative or storytelling as a method has been found to be an effective way to evoke learning in SpisDating.
Learning aspect of SpisDating Learning is dominant theme in SpisDating, as seen by the majority of interview transcripts (9 out of 9 informants – making it 100% part of data collected – have brought up that SpisDating contains elements that help them to learn about certain aspects of culture and personal development). This part of the analysis will corelates to answering the working question of: ‘what roles do food practices and storytelling in SpisDating play in providing transformative experience among attendees?’ As explained on the method section, the mechanism of narrative in which I have adapted throughout this research has been useful to guide me to deepen how I could understand my informants as interconnected and socially constructed within the given setting. This approach is closely associated to collective identity and social categories, as De Fina and Georgakopoulou (2011) had previously suggested, that identity is an emergent entity that is constantly developed through social practices and discursive communications. The individuals that were interviewed expressed certain degree of contestation within their identity positioning, which resulted in the development of previous knowledge that they brought when they attended SpisDating. Some of them had informed me that they learned a lot, while the others only some. While the degree of learning within a social context is difficult to measure, there is certainly a prevalent pattern of learning behaviour across informants. Drawing from storytelling method literatures and academia, I will explain the highlights of interview data using supportive scholarly articles as well as research related to storytelling, and its capability to induce learning in a social and cultural context. There are two major learning themes will be discussed on the following section: (1) Reflective learning and (2) connectivity of networks.
Reflective learning Reflective learning as defined by Alterio and McDrury (2003, p. 106) is “a process of internally examining and exploring an issue of concern, triggered by an experience, which creates and clarifies meaning in terms of self, and which results in a changed conceptual perspective”. The founder of SpisDating, Garba, has informed me that one of the purposes of SpisDating as a staged social context is for people to discover new things and learn from each other. This had sent me to the path of researching how or in what way do attendees learn by attending SpisDating. By having this question in mind, I soon found that participants were deeply encouraged to reflect on their current knowledge, challenge (or confirm) it, and eventually come up with a sort of self-transformation, regardless of its scale. Just as the quote I decided to put down in the beginning of this paragraph, reflective learning is indicated by a process. Just as a story with a beginning and an end, participants of SpisDating are taken on a journey towards transformation (or at least, intended to be). One
36 of the ways to encourage reflections is the story’s relativity. After all, if a story is too irrelevant or difficult to digest by common audience, they won’t be able to follow. Thus, it is essential that the stories told contain universal values that are transferrable across cultures. On his work about storytelling, Carter-Black (2013, p. 41) states, “we are simultaneously the same and different”, meaning that although the storyteller and the listener are physically different individuals, storytelling exists across cultures and is a universal experience shared by every social group. Therefore, storytelling can “transcend diverse cultural contexts, thereby providing a valuable conduit for increasing cultural knowledge and understanding from an equalitarian rather than a power differentiated position – “we” as opposed to “us” and “them.” (ibid.). And this is what I, and other informants experience in SpisDating. On my fieldnotes on SpisDating with Dada Krsnasevananda (13 September 2018) I noted down:
“Growing up in Japan, Dada has plenty of experience being treated as ‘that weird foreigner’ who stands outside the inner circle of Japanese society. His university life in Australia, his spiritual journey to India and Bangladesh, Russia, Syria, and Japan began with the question of, what is the meaning of life? And how something was pushing him to seek something larger than life […] His journey took him from “the edge of madness” towards understanding fully of what it means to have universal love” (SpisDating with Dada Krsnasevananda, observation, 13 September 2018).
Additionally, as he told his past story having to give up everything to be a monk, he admitted how it was a difficult decision. A decision he at time regretted, “I burned bridges to get to where I was, and then all I got is this?” Dada Krsnasevananda was born as a Canadian in Montreal and grew up in Japan. He then studied in Australia for his university degree. Regardless of his doings, he was never fully satisfied with his life. Quite the contrary, he felt as if there was something missing. Over the next 10 years he struggled with this feeling of emptiness and ‘madness’ as he said it, and later found that being a monk was his true calling in life.
For an individual that was born and raised in Indonesia and then later moved to Australia and now living in Denmark, I felt as, even though I am a completely different individual, I could relate to the beginning of his story, being treated as an outsider in a foreign country. I too, had struggled with the question of ‘what is the meaning of life?’, as I also have had phases that took me to ‘the edge of madness’ – these feelings are universal feelings that one normally deals with over the course of life. These struggles are nothing new, and although Dada’s journey is specifically spiritual (in this case his journey to become a monk), the story is rich with transferable values, as I further wrote on my fieldnotes:
“The topics Dada discussed is very much spiritual, however the moral backdrop of the story is universal: Depression, feeling of dilemma, anxiety, fear of the unknown, dealing with failures, story
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of love, these are the things the audience can relate to, regardless of race, religion, and culture.” (ibid.)
It is this feeling of universality in which attendees seek comfort, knowing that life experiences are there across different cultures, therefore encourages the development of self-awareness through reflections of the audience’s positioning. As Mayer (2014), citing philosopher and sociologist George Herbert Mead (1934, p. 203), “he becomes an object to himself only by taking the attitudes of other individuals toward himself within a social environment or context of experience and behavior in which both he and they are involved […] Self- awareness, therefore, requires adopting the position of another with respect to oneself.” It is through this process of reflectivity that one internally contests or confirms his/her positioning or past experiences in contemplation. This reflection and contemplation, as Carter-black (2013) suggest, promotes intercultural learning through the same pattern, in which one needs to start with the understanding of one’s own culture before being able to understand another. “Intercultural learning,” as he suggests, “is a process that occurs in complex ways through increasing levels of cultural self-knowledge as an integral part of understanding how responses to culturally different persons are manifested.” This pull and push force between self-identification and ‘the others’ creates a paradoxical relationship between an autonomic self and self as belonging to a group, as is also the case within one’s culture and one’s sense of universality. This is what Carter-black (2013) suggested previously as ‘we are both different yet the same’.
William is a 30-year-old Indonesian who had stayed in Denmark for 6 months for a short course study. It was this time that he was in Europe for the first time, and through multiple conversations both on and off the record I have learnt the duality of William’s reflections as to identifying himself as an Indonesian among Danish students at the school’s dormitory, while at the same time living among them together as one community. As he was a part of CB as a student, he may have attended 2 or more SpisDating as far as he could remember, however he claimed that the first was the most memorable. At the time the speaker was Jacob Holdt, a Danish photographer renowned for his collection of photos in his 1971-1975 American journey. When asked about why this SpisDating was memorable, William answered:
“He was talking about hitch hiking 200-thousand something miles in America. I think it’s quite fascinating, because he’s a white man and he said he only stayed in black communities, staying with gangsters and so on. I thought it was courageous, especially for him – he had multiple attacks, even rape. He always said, ‘if you think someone is a monster then it’ll be real’. So, I thought, wow… […] It
made me look the world in a different way.” (William, 8 October 2018).
Being a Chinese descendant in Indonesia, William is used to the idea of normalized segregation of races. “We mostly only hang out with the Chinese, it’s kind of like one way… I spent most of my life this way,” as William
38 explained, “the time when I started to connect with other non-Chinese descendants in Indonesia only when I was maybe 20-21 years old. When I was a kid, my mother always said like ‘don’t hang out with the Javanese (indigenous local people of the Java island, red.) because they are bad and so and so.’ I never really thought about it”. He found himself confronted by what Jacob Holdt said, a confrontation that he later processed as an eye-opener, a lesson from someone whose life story is rather extraordinary from his perspective. He said that he has learnt to “not label people as what we think they are, or what the media think they are. They are just people […] when you demonize people then they become the demons.” (William, 8 October 2018). His perspectives in life changed via the story told by an individual whom has been through different experiences.
As Alterio and McDrury (2003) explain, learning through reflection is not a linear, straight forward process such as, for example, learning how to ride a bike or learning how to master a certain recipe. It is a more abstract form of learning, in which an individual is engaged in critical thinking, dialogue, making connections and gaining insights. There is not one single pathway to engage in reflection, regardless of this, sharing stories encourages reflective process through back and forth dialogue that occurs in formalised settings. Furthermore, they argue that “it is through these dialogues that we make meaning from experience, come to understand our roles within these experiences and construct new appreciations of practice realities.” (ibid., p. 115). In the case of William’s, he has heard of an extraordinary experiential story that made him change his perceptions of the life he has always viewed before he came to Denmark. Learning through storytelling enables reflective experiential learning instead of rational based learning. It is because of this reason that storytelling can be highly effective as an argumentation device, as DeFina and Georgakopoulou (2011, p. 98) state, “there is a general agreement on the fact that the power of stories as argumentative devices comes from the fact that they provide experience-based evidence for claims, a form of evidence highly valued in everyday arguments, particularly when it is based on first-hand participation. In fact, “experiential” evidence is much more difficult to reject than rational argumentation.” This is because it puts emphasis on authenticity, thus establishing a more intimate relationship between the teller and the listener. A research on storytelling as a tool for learning was conducted by Keehn in 2015, in which she experimented using several storytelling techniques to teach intercultural understanding within a group of young students. The research found that:
“A number of participants talked about how the “real life” personal stories augmented other more fact- based forms of knowledge in the class, such as course readings. For example, a white woman said, “The panelists have made me realize how real oppression is. It is one thing reading about them in books or stories, but hearing them in person truly shows you how real it is.” Another participant
similarly explained a number of reasons why he felt stories told by panelists were so powerful.” (Keehn 2015, p. 380).
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This research finding is precisely what Gabriel, one of my informants, aligned with. As a humanity student, Gabriel possesses quite broad knowledge about society and culture. About two days after his first attendance to SpisDating, I had the opportunity to interview him. The speaker at the time was Sara Omar, a rising star author in Denmark who is originally from Kurdistan, who is known to be influential within the field of human rights and feminism. When asked about the story, Gabriel said, “yes, that’s the thing that I found interesting. Reading about it is one and hearing it first hand is another story […] She’s reflecting on her actions, and painting a different image than what you usually hear from nationalists and the news” (Gabriel, 26 October 2018).
Gabriel’s and William’s reflections suggest that they had prior knowledge of the people that are different to them. Using expressions such as ‘painting a different image’ and ‘white man staying in black communities’, they imply that there is a set of common knowledge in the society, for instance, a Kurdish is strictly portrayed as refugees in the media, and that Caucasian people usually feel threatened by African American or ‘blacks’; and that by listening to these stories from people who experience these directly, managed to teach them to not demonize those who are racially and culturally different. Hence, storytelling has the power to facilitate for positive racial socialization, as Carter-Black (2013, p. 36) state, positive racial socialization “promotes a healthy racial identity as well as an awareness of and constructive responses to racism without promoting hatred or discrimination toward members of other racial or ethnic groups.” However, there was a rare occasion where one SpisDating event invited a speaker from Trinidad and Tobago - an event that I unfortunately missed – in which the speaker was quite provocative in her storytelling. One of my informants, Jules, informed me that, that particular event was controversial due to clashes in perspectives. She expressed:
“[what] was memorable about it, from my perspective, it created a lot of dialogues but the dialogue was not peaceful. Something that is peaceful – any types of peaceful dialogue, requires constructive
conflicts – we agree to disagree and what we want is not to stay in our positionality, but to change to a common positionality. The memorable part was that she stayed in her positionality and she rejected,
forcefully, others. That is not in the spirit of SpisDating […] It did not have a negative impact on the audience, it was actually the opposite. It was good because you created ideas about how an idea that
is very different from yours. How it opens, when your ideas are being challenged aggressively and rejected that you became aware what your own authentic ideas are.” (Jules, 30 September 2018).
Jules is a project manager for CB, and she handles SpisDating practicalities to ensure smooth delivery of the event. She explained that ‘the spirit of SpisDating’ is a peaceful dialogue, therefore most of SpisDating events are generally peaceful, but not this one. Regardless of the state, she admittedly realized that it was a teachable moment through a debate that seemed to stimulate people to be engaged. Conclusively, this uncommon semi-
40 aggressive debate provoked uncomfortable, yet necessary reflections from participants to be willing to accept ideas that are not the same as theirs (Jules, 30 September 2018).
To recap the attributes of learning discussed above: storytelling universality, intercultural learning, experiential learning and positive racial socialization, these are identified strongly within the framework of knowledge development that are operated under reflective-based learning by scholars such as Mayer (2014), De Fina and
Georgakopoulou (2011), Alterio and McDrury (2003), Carter-Black (2013) and Keehn (2015). Within these fields, it has been established that reflective learning consists of multiple pathways and results, in which individuals are challenged, confronted, and engaged in both external and internal dialogue to provoke and expand their intercultural awareness. These processes are intentionally concentrated in SpisDating, thus it is not surprising that a few SpisDating attendees occasionally tear up, get upset, nod in agreement, gasp in disbelief, among other emotionally-associated reactions that indicate reflectivity at work.
Connectivity of networks: Towards social mobilization SpisDating, being a platform that exposes one to meet with others, is a fertile ground for like-minded individuals to be informed about similar projects, activism, and social movements. Thus, it is not unusual that attendees develop networks among each other. Even though the event is held by CB, participants come from various professions, organizations, and interests, thus providing rich opportunities for idea exchange and project collaborations. Additionally, people learn existing opportunities or organizations that they can then join to support particular causes. The majority of this process is done further though the narrative in which spoken out by the speaker and processes by the audience. Mayer (2014, p. 14) suggests, “our willingness to accept the premises of a story suggests that we evaluate the truth of narrative not in terms of its precise correspondence with the real world, but in terms of its internal consistency and its conformity with our general conceptions about the way the world works.” Accepting and adapting a narrative is therefore, a process of learning to take a moral stance and within the storytelling plot, audiences are requested to reflect on multiple positioning of morals. It is within this playground that like-minded people who take similar moral stances can meet and discuss their ideas that can eventually turn into a project. An example of this came from Jules, a CB staff that manages SpisDating. Apart from SpisDating, she was previously a project manager for Exit Circle, another NGO that focuses on helping vulnerable women and children. She stated:
“[SpisDating] It’s connecting ideas, even connecting two things that’s not there before, business and recycling, for example. And having personal networks. I met up with Lorena, who is a board member, she has some sort of ideas, I used to be a part of start-up and I gave some practical tools that could fit her service, so we talked and exchanged ideas. Through SpisDating, other people can raise questions. You can sort of assess the network – the idea is to trust your network. You will get an idea
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if this person is a good network to have by looking at their behaviour in the event, you can decide if this is a viable network that I want to be connected with.” (Jules, 30 September 2018)
As Jules suggested, SpisDating as a platform can be utilized by individuals using their moral judgement of different personas – as she said – ‘you will get an idea if this person is a good network to have by looking at their behaviour’. It can also be simply put, that attendees of SpisDating come physically to this venue and treat it as a source of network to move forward with their agenda, including the guest speaker. As my humanity student informant, Gabriel, had expressed during the interview, “it’s also a way to let people know the already existing fights that people are leading, like Sara Omar (the Danish-Kurdish rising star author, red.), she’s already leading her fight actively. That was a way to advertise her cause and make a fundraiser or something like that.” (Gabriel, 26 October 2018). Thus, learning about different networks may lead to affiliation and even mobilization. To illustrate how this process happens, I now turn to Shana, one of my informants from a refugee background who had the opportunity to tell her story. It is from her, that I could see through the eyes of a storyteller in the SpisDating event.
Shana is a refugee. She arrived in Denmark when she was four years old, in which finally made it out with her mother on the third fleeing attempt. Fighting for human rights and freedom is not new for her, as she came from a family of freedom fighters in North Iraq, in Slemani Village. It was during the war that she had to flee, passing through Turkey and Iran, with Denmark being the final destination. She has been living in Denmark for 22 years, with a few years in London. She is one of SpisDating guest speakers, where she was invited to tell her story about her life being a war refugee settling in Denmark. When asked about how telling her story had impacted her, she answered:
“I think it made me grow in terms of how important it is to fight for this cause and to familiarize other people, not only myself but others that there is a human behind, and it motivates me even more to fight for this cause that is personal to me […] The openness and the warmth, what CB is about, breaking those barriers and seeing people eye-to-eye, the welcoming warm feeling from the minute you step in, you have to take your shoes off so it feels like a home – being a part of someone’s story and listening, I think those values are really important to take with you, that you and I are the same – there is no such thing as borders, that is just a made up concept.” (Shana, 1 October 2018).
Similarly, as Mayer’s (2014, p. 4) work on narrative politics suggests, engrossing narrative can make participation turn into collective action as a form of identity expression, thus it compels cooperation. When people are engrossed in shared narrative, they see themselves involved in a social drama, and “autobiography and history align. Playing our part in the collective narrative becomes and act of personal
42 meaning and an expression of our identity”. He therefore suggested three different roles of storytelling in activating collective action: compelling coordination, facilitating coordination, and providing assurance.
In a research done by Hirsch (1990) and Fantasia (1988), as analysed by the work of Drury (2015) in social movements, both studies have found that groups showed increased solidarity during collective events such as strike and demonstration. They behaved more dramatically and were more critical of the authorities, as well as more confident in engaging in the group actions overtime. This is caused by the notion of ‘group mentality’ in which individuals feel as they are a part of something bigger than themselves, leading to the idea of social drama, as it has been previously mentioned in the theory section of this thesis. Thus, people are more likely to understand narrative, as Shana has stated, ‘being a part of someone’s story’ and emitting all physical borders to merge as one. Additionally, this is also one of the reasons why SpisDating thrives in dramatic ‘real-life’ stories that are told mostly by social actors that have experienced some kind of dramatic phases in their lives.
On my interview with Lorena, when I asked her about one of her most memorable SpisDating event she has attended, she mentioned about Martin, a journalist working with Politiken, and he was the guest speaker. Martin spoke about toxic work environment within the NGO field, and being an NGO worker, Lorena could relate to his words.
“I think I could connect a lot to the things that he said. It also like, brought to me, more awareness on how important it is to take care of yourself and how important it is to speak up if you find yourself in a situation like this. Because since sometimes it is more treated as a taboo or something that you don’t actively engaged because you fear that you’re gonna get fired or fear of people going to talk about or whatever. I think that thought me a lot to in a way, gives me a bit more of confidence.” (Lorena, 18 September 2018).
Lorena spoke about Martin’s words providing her assurance that she is not alone in this matter and that it is important to speak up and not to ‘treat it as a taboo’. This assurance boosts confidence both within her personal self (self-care), the society (stress as a taboo), and those who work within the field of NGOs. This is what Drury (2015) calls (the potential of) multiorganizational movements – this is because the (potential) movements created by a topic that is regularly spoken in public by many people could turn into a social movement that occurs across different levels of organizations. In practice, social movement is not caused by one thing. Instead, it has a complex dynamic between individuals, organizations, ideologies, identities, and social categories (ibid.).
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The overarching theme within this section of network connectivity is that in SpisDating, people get to learn the existing social organizations that advocate themselves toward certain collective goals and therefore with the existence of platforms such as SpisDating, social organizations get the chance to broaden their agenda and eventually conduct social mobilization towards change. As scholars as Mayer (2014) have argued, it is thus about learning narratives and taking a moral stance towards what one may believe as a more just world, hence participants of these mobilizations can be depicted as social drama. Furthermore, as Drury (2015) state, these movements are encouraged not only by one directional relationship but also other complex forces from both organizations and individual ideologies.
The state of multiculturalism: Multi-angular perspectives Multiculturalism can be interpreted differently by one individual to another. Therefore, for the purpose of this research, I encouraged my informants to talk about multiculturalism in Denmark in the perspectives of descriptive and normative multiculturalism, as I have explained and elaborated in the theories and concepts chapter. To refresh our memory on the definitions of both multiculturalism, I once again borrow the work of Sinclair’s (2015). As she indicates previously, descriptive multiculturalism is the physical attribute of multiculturalism, in which it is visible that there is multiplicity of cultures exist in one country (Sinclair, 2015). For example, people residing in Denmark not only come from Denmark (locals), but there are also many people who came from overseas that decided to stay in Denmark. Or, there are also wives, husbands, and partners of the Danish people who are from abroad. Descriptive multiculturalism is easier to discuss than normative multiculturalism since it is not about an ideology, instead it can be based on facts through statistics and data, while normative multiculturalism is embedded with the discussion of what is supposedly right and wrong, as well as what should be done about it. It refers to the ability of the country’s authority to govern and support the rights of minority to maintain their cultural practices (ibid.). Normative multiculturalism is thus a dilemma, in which there are multitude of opinions and ideologies at play depending on the positioning of an individual. It is in this aspect, that I am interested in hearing and analysing the data I have gathered from the informants, as Parekh (2000, as cited in Horst and Gitz-Johansen 2010, p. 138) suggests, “all societies are empirically characterized by ethnic complexity and will increasingly continue to be so. The main question is how nation states – or the dominant political groups within nation-states – respond normatively to this complexity.” It is also important to note that most of the informants themselves answered the question truthfully from the beginning without my guide, thus it seems that these two concepts are already naturally interlinked and interplayed in the discussion of multicultural society in Denmark. Moreover, by using open ended questions I was able to see emerging patterns and comments that would enhance the depth of this discussion. This part of the thesis will correspond to the guiding question of ‘what is the current state of
44 multiculturalism in Denmark according to the debates in the media, literature and the informants involved in this research?’
In answering this enormous question, there are many aspects that I have discovered after processing all nine interviews that guided me to navigate between layers and themes spoken by informants. One of the major layers is the paradoxical discourse on migrants, refugees, and other entities that are considered ‘foreign’. This is somewhat vague and begs the question of what is defined as ‘foreign’? Is half-Danish considered foreign? Is someone of refugee or migrant background that is born in Denmark, speaks the language, goes to a Danish education system and has adapted the Danish culture, foreign? Is a Dane that went overseas for an extended period of time, has adapted different cultures into his/her lifestyle only to come home to Denmark again, considered foreign? These questions are a part of the broad discussion of integration in Denmark, and one that seems to be impossible to answer, shown from the endless debates about ‘Danishness’ on the media and political stage. However, once one brings the word ‘Muslim’ to the table, the discussion immediately changes to highlighting the negative stereotypes about Muslim and what impacts they bring to the Danish society. The overexposure of Muslims in all walks of life: media, social and cultural discussion, politics, economy, is overwhelming – and this is where I could borrow Jules’s perspective. Jules is a Filipino migrant that has been living in Denmark for more than 30 years. In her interview, she told me about the paradox of ‘migrant labelling’:
“People in general, associate people who are Islamic. So, if you’re a Muslim, then you’re ethnic minority. If you are poor, then you’re ethnic minority. A person who is poor, who’s Muslim, maybe unemployed, then they are ethnic minorities. That’s the idea of it. While me, for example, I am from the Philippines, I speak fluent Danish and have an MA degree, I am not ethnic at all – I am considered Danish. So, there’s a paradox in labelling people. There are multiple minorities in Denmark but there’s a subtext saying, when we say minorities, we say Muslims who don’t have money.” (Jules, 30 September 2018).
Jules then went on by illustrating how Germans living in Denmark are not considered as ‘migrants’, instead they are labelled as ‘expats’. She then continued, “they are pure definition of migrants. This is because they are white – they are expats. For example, my father is a migrant, but he’s not an expat. But somebody from Germany is an expat. You see there’s a hypocrisy in that?” (ibid.). This labelling of individuals of different cultural backgrounds adds in another layer to the discussion, which is the notion of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ migrants. Within it, double standard applies to different migrant groups as oppose to the host country or the dominant culture. This mechanism is also what Marcus brought up, when I had the chance to interview him.
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Marcus is an individual that is rather different then the rest of the informants. He is a supporter of Liberal Alliance and he considers himself as ‘blue’ (I later found out from the interview that he is advocating for the belief that Denmark needs to help the ‘right’ kind of people instead of everyone in need). He is of Caucasian Danish backgrounds, has never lived or travelled outside Europe before. He was born in Denmark and grew up in Poland for two years and then moved back to Denmark. He had lived in a small part of Denmark near Roskilde with his now-divorced parents and moved to Copenhagen. His familial background seems to me as of middle-high socio-economic class, shown from his ideologies of the rich should pay less taxes, as he believes that they get where they are by hard work. When asked about his views on migrants and refugees, he said:
“When you’re sitting in the train, they (migrants and refugees, red.) are always in groups. I understand why people don’t want to get close to them, as they are shouting and speaking this horrible language like ‘rawlrawlraaahh’ and people don’t understand them. So, it’s easy to label them as the bad guy […] If you see a black and an Arab, they are equally ‘bad’. If you see a bunch of Asians, you don’t feel threatened but if you see a bunch of Africans or Arabs you get insecure, I don’t know why. Maybe because the narrative and discourse is different.” (Marcus, 22 September 2018).
Curious, I asked him what he’d think if there was a group of Danish people, dressing up and behaving the same way of his depicted ‘Arabs and Blacks’ he mentioned earlier. He answered, that people would still be afraid:
“They are dickheads, they’re like fake Arabs – pretend Arabs. People would be scared of them too, because of the group thing. Just shouting and pushing each other. Then it’s stupid to label only the Arabs as criminals, because people surely would still be scared even when the group is Danish, behaving and dressing up the same way, but they don’t get that label as Arabs do.” (Marcus, 22 September 2018).
This double standard mechanism effectively affects ethnic minorities in Denmark and deep-rooted as a form of stereotype and negative portrayals of certain races. As Horst and Gitz-Johansen (2010) suggest, ethnic minorities and complexity are regarded as a hierarchical and binary, for example as we can see from the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mechanism. Here, the national culture or the dominant culture represents the norm and it is seen as natural to see ethnic minorities as an entity that is ‘less educated’ therefore fail to cope and adjust with the national standards of, for example, education, employment, social integration, and so on, based on cultural differences. Horst and Gitz-Johansen (2010) further suggest, this notion causes the host country to take responsibility to compensate ethnic minorities’ perceived lack of competence by trying to assess how they can align these foreigners to what is acceptable to the dominant culture, if they are to take part in the
46 host society. This is mostly accurate in the case of Denmark, as the word ‘integration’ has become widely used both in social and political contexts. The interesting observation here is that there seems to be different levels of foreigners in Denmark, and some of them are more accepted than the others. As Gabriel, the French student informant told me:
“I’d say Denmark has disparities when it comes to multiculturalism. Copenhagen is very multicultural as well as Aarhus, from the people that I know are living there. Then there’s Jutland and they are kind of multicultural, they learn German there and there’s this German-Danish culture thing but it’s kind of… It’s a different category of multiculturalism, because in that area, Denmark and Germany are close and kind of the same.” (Gabriel, 26 October 2018).
Again, here we can see the example of Germany being an outsider, however they seem to be of a closer cultural proximity (and to a certain extend also distance) to the Danish society. As Gabriel said, it is a ‘different category of multiculturalism’, containing different narratives and standard. Coming back to what Jules said about Germans being ‘expats’, there is a sense of superiority when it comes to labelling western-based migrants. This discussion, seen from media, scholarly work, as well as the interviews I conducted, often seems to be contrasted by what seems to be the opposite of the spectrum, which is migrants originated from the Islamic states. An interesting analysis done by Boe and Hervik in 2008 on the Muhammed cartoon found that, apparently, Islam was not the only ‘enemy’, as Hervik (2015, p. 71) confirms, “specific cultural figures emerged within the rigid dichotomies of Orientalist representations. For instance, non-Muslim opponents of the publications appear as ‘Traitors’ or ‘Cowards’. ‘Traitors’ – politicians and others who had let Muslims into Europe were attacked in equally strong rhetoric, and ‘cowards’ – those who did not stand up to defend ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘democracy’ when it really counted, were also under attack. A third figure emerges that of the ‘apostate’ or the ‘civilized other’, a person of Muslim background who has embraced ‘Our’ values and denounces Islam and ‘Islamism’”. This finding displays the complexity of different layers that construct ambiguity and paradoxes of labelling, imbued with ever-changing forces that constantly defines and redefines positionings of ‘we’ and the ‘others’ as relation to contexts. As there are abundant players in the game of finger-pointing, it seems that the notorious discussion of ‘Muslim versus the Western world’ is no longer relevant. Equally important is to include the existence of ‘internal enemies’ as well as advocates for multiculturalism that simply live as both insiders and outsiders in Denmark (ibid.).
Alongside the paradoxes of labelling occurs frictions and conflicts between groups, both between migrant groups and between ethnic minorities and Danish society. Conflicts between migrant groups are shown in the research findings of Mogensen’s and Matthiessen’s qualitative study in 1999 in Denmark, in which they invited 3,508 people with migrant backgrounds and 904 Danes. They wanted to find out: “is it just the Danes
47 that have problems with accepting migrants, or is it also migrants that have problems with adapting to the Danes? Is the difference between Danes on one side and migrants on the other, or is there any divisions between migrant groups themselves?” (Mogensen and Matthiessen 1999, p. 165). The interviewees were asked if there should be introduced a more restrictive access for refugees coming to Denmark, and the results were unexpected. 68% of Turkish migrants and 61% of migrants of Polish background agreed, while 55% of Danes and the same percentage of Pakistani migrants agreed. This has proven that there are also discrepancies between migrant groups themselves and not only within Danes that negative refugee scrutinizing happens. Furthermore, the research indicated that migrants felt doubtful of the Danes’ willingness to accept strangers, however most importantly the migrants were also highly sceptic as to whether all refugees are ‘real’, or ‘fake’ refugees that want to abuse the facilities given to them (ibid.). As Marcus, the pro-Liberal Alliance Danish informant expressed on the interview:
“I know we have to take care of them (refugees, red), but we also need to be careful not to let in too many people. I think there are a lot of people who want to take advantage of Denmark, that’s the common discussion politically. There are of course people who are fleeing crap like wars, bombs and everything – something we in Denmark, don’t get. It’s a privilege to be born white, to live in Denmark, in a safe society, we live in a perfect place. There’s always something to save us. It’s hard for many to imagine how tough people have it. Also, because the news shove it in our faces so much that we stop caring […] So, with refugees, we need to help, but we need to see who needs helping and who we can’t help. I know that’s tough and it’s difficult to hear.” (Marcus, 22 September 2018).
This notion of ‘fake’ refugees that want to take advantage of the welfare society is also covered in the research done by Mogensen and Mathiessen (1999), in which they featured the migrants themselves to speak about what they came to term as fup-flygtninge. In the study they showed many of the migrant groups admitted the existence of fake refugees that, after granted asylum, did not take their integration processes seriously, as one participant of Turkish background on the 1999’s study said, “Ja, der er mange fup- flygtninge. Dem, jeg kender, de siger det også selv. Lige så snart de får permanent opholdstilladelse eller asyl, så tager de på ferie dernede. Det er mine skattekroner... Det er helt i orden, at man hjælper dem fra krig og lignende, men der er også mange fup-flygtnige.” (ibid, p. 168). While the pointing fingers usually come from the Danish people to migrants and refugees, this study has opened up a different debate about the complex dynamic between migrant groups as well as Danish society and migrants, informing that there are multiple layers of grey instead of a black and white discussion. This has also been expressed by my other informants, for example Mohsin.
Mohsin is a Pakistani social worker that has worked with middle management in a government organization
48 back in Pakistan but later decided to jump into being a social worker and volunteer. When asked about his thought about multiculturalism state in Denmark, he answered:
“It depends on place to place, people sometimes feel like Danish people are racists and not so open. But this is still human nature, it always exists like this. Some places you go you will feel like the Danes accept you more. But most of the time the Danes they always sit on one side and the foreigners on the other side. I ask my friends about integration, the problem is when you’re a foreigner here, you are expected to know everything with just a click of a finger. They want you to know how to live in Denmark within one week – to be the perfect Dane in one week, all integrated. Come on, I need time! I have been brought up in a completely different society with different religion and way of life. […] They just want us to get integrated without being a part of the Danish society, with their small groups and everything. Now the government, all over the world, going back to anti-globalization with borders and everyone thinking about themselves.” (Mohsin, 25 September 2018).
What Mohsin expressed here has multiple layers: 1) he admitted that segregation and conflict of race is natural, knowing the dynamics of ‘us’ and ‘the others’ as an automatic defense mechanism when someone is confronted by strangers, 2) the pressure of being integrated is countered by the existence of ‘glass ceiling’ effect, and 3) anti-globalization is felt world-wide and not an exclusive Danish phenomenon. While I have previously discussed about the collective identity along with the notion of strangers and the anti-globalization belief such as projected by DF, the ‘glass ceiling’ effect is an emerging concept that I learned from this interview. This means that the frictions between within migrant groups and Danish people and migrants have led to the question of whether ‘being truly Danish’ is something that is possible to do for people of other origins, as Mohsin pointed out, ‘they want us to get integrated without being a part of the Danish society’. This is a paradox that emerged from several of my informants’ interviews. This paradox of globalization is, as Eriksen (2014, p. 16) explains, is a common pattern, since “globalization does make it easier for us to understand each other across cultural divides, but it also creates tensions between groups that were formerly isolated from each other, and it creates a need to demarcate uniqueness and sometimes historical rootedness. The more similar we become, the more different from each other we try to be.” Thus, frictions and conflicts are inevitable and will always be a part of globalizing world. Clash of identity as one of the things that my informants touched upon is further reflected by those who are of migrant and refugee backgrounds living in Denmark. For example, Shana that fled from war in Iraq 22 years ago.
“People keep on talking about ‘let’s keep this Danishness’, but what is Danishness? […] Am I Danish because I’ve adapted the ways and eat pork? No. But when people tell me, I’m also not trying to be, because that was never an opportunity for me.” (Shana, 1 October 2018).
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In a qualitative research done by Simonsen (2018) on 20 youth of second-generation immigrants in Denmark, it has been found that there is a lot of ambiguity of the degree of ‘Danishness’. If migrants are expected to integrate to the Danish society, an argument put forth by many right-wing political parties, it would make sense to know what the criteria is. However, it has been proven quite difficult to. This is because, despite migrants fulfilling asylum rights and stay permit in Denmark, there has been a negative stigma that migrants (non-Caucasian) carry around. As Simonsen (2018, p. 127) observes, common to 13 out of 20 second- generation immigrants in her research “often stress that they “behave like Danes” (i.e., go to parties, drink alcohol, have Danish friends). For them, the primary— often sole—reason for being insecure about declaring that they are Danes, or that they feel Danish, is the idea that despite them embracing “Danishness,” they are not always seen as Danes”, highlighting that they often feel as being seen differently with a certain gaze. The participants in Simonsen’s study expressed that they wish they had one definition of being Danish, although it is suggested that the criteria are indefinite and quite impossible to satisfy the ‘full’ definition. As a contrast, their peers of Danish ancestry “can just be Danish; they do not need to explain, justify, or even think about how they feel” (ibid, p. 128). This notion is also reflected by William, one of my informants that is from Indonesia, when I asked about his impression of Danes when he lived in Denmark for 6 months.
(S represents researcher and W represents William)
S: How is your personal experience in Denmark telling you about this? Is Denmark inclusive?
W: Well, technically when you are in the school (Krogerup Højskole, red.), everything looks okay. When you see DF, they are in power and you think, they’re crazy! There’s also another woman I can’t remember her name – I saw her in Bornholm. She said: ‘if I want to see people in their different ethnic backgrounds, I just go travel. I want to wake up, open my door and see other people who look like me.’ I wasn’t sure who she was, but she’s from the party with the green logo. This one is also a rising political party. How the political parties shifted from the left to this, it’s…
S: How do you see on the social level, when you make friends, for example, how do you experience that?
W: I think it’s a bit complicated. When I first joined the class, everyone was quite welcoming. But now when I think about it, it’s kind of like when you go to the zoo, ‘ooh, there’s an Indonesian tiger, there’s a Korean monkey.’
S: So, are you saying they are putting you in a box?
W: Yeah, it’s like there is an Indonesian. No matter what you do, you cannot be Danish. This is funny
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to see that even some of the Danes don’t blend in.
S: So, there’s this barrier that prevents you to ‘be one of them’?
W: I think you’ll never be one of them. Because, well… you don’t speak the language, you don’t share the same look.
S: If you did speak the language fluently, integrated in the culture, but you look Asian, for example…
W: No, then you’ll never be Danish. Maybe they will say it, but when you’re in Denmark, they don’t think you’re Danish.
(From an interview with William, 8 October 2018).
It has also been my unwritten observation where participants of SpisDating would introduce themselves according to where their ancestral backgrounds from, for example one participant of Korean background said, “I am Danish, I was born and raised here, and I speak fluent Danish, but I am originally from Korea”. The same way that Jules, one of my informants introduced herself “My name is Juliette Llorren. I’ve been living in Denmark more than 30 years, but I’m from the Philippines.” (Jules, 30 September 2018). The constantly shifting and transformative identity reference is highly common among hybridized individuals of different cultural backgrounds and is considered a normal practice of communication. It is also adjustable in different social situations, where individuals lean towards certain groups of societies in order to adjust their social belonging. This is also indicative that identity is not measurable by degrees. It is instead, constantly changing and adaptable, as Haugbølle (2013) suggests, “culture is being created and recreated and changing continuously, and between the sharply drawn boundaries between nations, clans, religions and cultures there are always a lot of grey zones and people that cannot be easily formulated.” This dynamic is also observed in most of my informants who have adapted into different cultures from different countries. As Shana said, “being in this country I didn’t feel 100% apart, but going back to my own country they have developed into something new, so you kind of become this, fusion, hybrid person, which I now navigate and love. I am neither or, I am in between.” (Shana, 1 October 2018).
For these individuals that relate themselves (or were born in) to multiple cultures and societies, multiculturalism is a part of their natural being. In a (prior) homogeneous society like Denmark where integration is idealized as an assimilative process, people with other cultural backgrounds are pressured into learning the ways to ‘become Danish’ therefore ethnic minorities are seen as those with special education needs (Horst and Gitz-Johansen, 2010). An interesting research done by Skjøtt-Larsen (2012) in 2004 in Aalborg involving 1,174 people around the age of 18 and 75 has found that it is among the less-privileged
51 groups that are more likely to discriminate immigrants based on their job market participation. The individuals belonging to this category take higher pride in their nationality and locality, often expressing more hostility towards immigrants and are more likely to side with DF’s view. For them, taking part more actively in the job market is positively valued as a form of settling in and contributing to the welfare society. This research provides a useful insight in the perceived way of being in the Danish society, however, a discussion about identity and culture integration is still a challenging one. As identity and cultures are not measurable, it is difficult to find a fine ground to base the rate of success in integration, while there is also social mechanism that overplay stereotypes and social stigma imposed on those who ‘do not look Danish’. These perpetual paradoxes are felt mostly among migrants, expats, refugees, mixed-race, half-Danes or others that are vaguely labelled as foreigners and outsiders (or maybe half-outsiders if they are half-Danish?). Perhaps then, the question of Danishness is something that is rather impossible to answer, as Haugbølle suggests, “jeg har ingen anelse om, hvor mange ’bare danskere’ der i virkeligheden er binationale. Det er heller ikke vigtigt. Det vigtige er, at vi kan rumme deres hybride identiteter: deres halvkasteudseende, deres sprog, deres kreoliserede skikke og deres historier.” The state of multiculturalism in Denmark as seen from the interviews with 9 individuals of different backgrounds is unarguably complex and by going deeper into the discussion it is difficult not to see that there are more than several factors at play when defining culture and identity. I have also come to realize that the informants’ reflections of the cultures they were brought up in as well as the host country’s culture rely heavily on how they see themselves and where they stand in a macro scale society that they live in. 9 out of 9 informants that I have spoken to, reflected on multiculturalism and their identity in relation to another. The underlying frictions and paradoxes between descriptive and normative multiculturalism in Denmark was naturally discussed as a part of social belonging, identity politics, as well as different personas and positionings one can have.
To provide a brief summary of scholarly works that I have indebtedly borrowed to elaborate and deepen my analysis of the state of multiculturalism in Denmark, I’d like to point out the works of scholars such as Mogensen and Mathiessen (1999) which have helped to provide mass empirical data through fieldworks previously done before 2000. Their data informs me that the discussion of foreign cultures in Denmark, along with the impacts they have brought along to the country, has been around for a while and it is far from being a new phenomenon. Their research has tapped into interesting dilemmas that challenge the dynamic of finger pointing by providing statistical proof that there are also various tensions and frictions within different migrant groups and supposed fake refugees, and that it is not always ‘Muslim versus the Danes’. The work of Eriksen (2014) has also been useful to provide macro background of the effects of globalization has in both collective and fragmented identities simultaneously. Simonsen’s (2018) recent research on second- generation migrants in Denmark has provided me with up-to-date empirical fieldwork data that goes hand
52 in hand with this research of multiculturalism in a sub-community of multi-ethnic individuals that are connected through SpisDating. Additionally, Haugbølle’s article for Politiken in 2013 has stimulated discussions of relevancy in seeing if the Danish society is as homogeneous as it may be perceived, and how cultures as an entity that is not fixed demands to be analysed as a force that is not measurable. Additionally, Hervik (2015) is another major Danish scholar whose works are predominantly influenced by multicultural approach. His work challenges the notion of Muslim being ‘the universal enemy’ and points out there are other players in the game that may also potentially be blamed when they are believed to be violating the Danish values, as demonstrated in the Muhammed cartoon crisis. Finally, Horst and Gitz-Johansen’s (2010) work on ethnic minority in Denmark has contributed towards a broadened perspective on how monocultural and multicultural positions determine a country’s approach to ethnic minority treatments and education.
Limitations of SpisDating SpisDating as a project aiming towards a more multiculturally open society has been generally examined positively by all of the informants. It is, however, a part of my interest in writing this thesis, that one should think critically in order to study the effect of micro projects, such as SpisDating, in the wider macro matters such as multiculturalism in Denmark. By stimulating interviewees to explain how their experience could be improved as well as to explicitly identify what attributes of SpisDating they think is a weakness, I was able to diagnose limitations of the project that can be developed into suggestions for improvements later in the next chapter.
One of the most often quoted limitations is that SpisDating as a space for diversity is strictly limited to physical diversity and it only attracts ‘the same people’. This has two sides of limitations: 1) SpisDating attracts the exact same attendees from one event to another, which means the turnover of new attendees is relatively low, 2) SpisDating attracts like-minded individuals with the same approach to culture, therefore leads to lack of healthy discussion containing opposing side arguments. As Gabriel, the French student informant told me after his first time attending SpisDating:
“The impression I got […] people already knew each other and they were talking in their small groups. I didn’t really meet people – I talked with one guy, he was a Spanish-Bask, the region between France and Spain […] they were all from middle-class, all of them. All from slightly left-ist background like me. Certainly, they were from different nationalities, but they were all the same in a way.” (Gabriel, 26 October 2018).
The SpisDating he attended was veritably more populated than the usual SpisDating event – around 50-60 people attended, almost doubling in size than usual. This is because Sara Omar was the speaker, and she has
53 a rising star label in Denmark as an author of her book, The Dead Washer. At first, I thought that the celebrity effect was going to attract wider multiplicity of people from various backgrounds, but Gabriel stated otherwise. His statement also aligns with several other informants, such as Nice, Mohsin, Marcus and William. As someone who has different beliefs, Marcus is especially critical:
(S represents researcher and M represents Marcus)
S: When people go to SpisDating, do you think they contribute towards something?
M: Right now, not so much. They are living in their own bubble as well. It’s the same people, every time. People can easily see it, that they just talk to the same people in the background, like in the alley saying ‘boo! Boo!’
S: What would you suggest then to improve it?
M: Be more open about it. I’ve never seen them on the news. They never get out of their safe zone. Right now, I don’t see SpisDating as contributing towards the discussion on multiculturalism. They contribute only internally, to those people who are already in the inner circle. They should make it more public and expose themselves to the media, to get exposure. I think I asked you before if they ever had any heated discussion during SpisDating, it’s because then they can progress from there, there’s diversity in the arguments. While if you talk to the same people, having similar opinions, you won’t get anywhere. It’s like saying ‘those people suck and we’re good’ just because you have a bunch of people supporting your argument all the time.
(From an interview with Marcus, 22 September 2018).
This conversation reflects the importance of opening SpisDating more publicly to invite other types of people as well as the importance of having healthy arguments. The latter is unfortunately something that does not happen often in SpisDating. As suggested by Leitao (2000), an argument between two individuals are required to bring about change. This is because “engaging in argumentative discourse requires the arguers to carry out two distinctive operations. It requires reasons to be produced in order to justify a position – the supporting process. But because argumentation always aims at getting an addressee to accept reasons and positions that relate to controversial matters, it also requires the arguers to examine their claims in the light of the opposing claims of others – which engages them in a negotiation process.” (Leitao 2000, p. 335). This negotiation process leads to a joint thinking that favours (re)construction of the participants’ opinions and perspectives, a process that cosmopolitanism highly believes in, as a concept that recommends reflexive learning to occur within arguments and conflicts (Delanty, 2011). It is however, as before mentioned, as
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SpisDating focuses on peaceful dialogue, this process is less likely to occur, as Mohsin, a Pakistani social worker that lives in Copenhagen, expressed:
(S represents researcher and M represents Mohsin)
S: Do you think SpisDating has any effect on you as an attendant?
M: I like it, it’s not a bad concept. The problem I think, is when I have different perspectives and questions that challenge the speakers.
S: Isn’t that the point though, to have different opinions and have an open dialogue?
M: But still, it is human nature to want to feel accepted.
S: Do you feel pressured not to ask questions?
M: Kind of. Like the last SpisDating when I wanted to ask. How she was trying to work with scrap clothes from Indian Sari. I didn’t get the info where she got the clothes from and what she did with them – does she pay anything to collect that materials? I don’t think so. It looks like she gets it for free. What she has been doing, she gets it for free and she makes money off it. See, if you are clever enough to be registered as a charity organization then you don’t get to pay any taxes. I’m not sure if she employs the same Asian workers and pay them low income to make these because it’s expensive labour in Denmark. So, she’s doing everything there and brings them to Europe where she can sell them high price […] she didn’t specify if she uses fair wage and everything. I got the feeling that she wasn’t so straight forward with this and she didn’t like me asking so straight forwardly. I had to ask, because I know she has been doing this in Greece and here and there.
(From an interview with Mohsin, 25 September 2018).
The invisible pressure to conform and not asking provocative questions sometimes felt as a repercussion of peaceful dialogue that is a brand of CB, as a result it may discourage people to ask challenging questions to avoid being seen as ‘anti-peace’. As according to my fieldwork in which I attended three different SpisDating that is on the record (produced through fieldnotes) and around 3-4 others that were off the record, I did not encounter any questions from the audience that led to a heated debate, argument, or discussions. The matter of non-argument-based talks accompanied by the same patterns of attendees led me to question the degree of accessibility of SpisDating to the public and the broader Danish society as a whole. Thus, I elaborated it further by inserting open ended questions to this direction on most of the interviews held. Again, here I refer to Marcus as being the harshest critic of SpisDating and its effect on multiculturalism in Denmark:
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“They never get out of their safe zone. Right now, I don’t see SpisDating as contributing towards the discussion on multiculturalism. They contribute only internally, to those people who are already in the inner circle. They should make it more public and expose themselves to the media, to get exposure. I think I asked you before if they ever had any heated discussion during SpisDating, it’s because then they can progress from there, there’s diversity in the arguments. While if you talk to the same people, having similar opinions, you won’t get anywhere. It’s like saying ‘those people suck and we’re good’ just because you have a bunch of people supporting your argument all the time.” (Marcus, 22 September 2018).
This riveting observation made me re-evaluate the positioning of CB as well as other NGOs in general who work with refugees, migration, internationalization, ethnic minority and cultural education. In a 12-month qualitative ethnographic fieldwork conducted by Fechter in Jakarta in 2002 following 40 expats through in- depth interviews, participant observation as well as informal conversations, Fechter (2011, p. 34) concludes that contrary to the ‘borderless world’ view, there are both shift and persistence of boundaries where “global flows actually appear to entice the construction of new boundaries as much as the reaffirmation of old ones”. To this, she further expands how the concept of ‘bubble living’ is appealing as well as common in people living abroad (expats, as she refers to), as such “it incorporates features such as boundedness, seclusion from the outside, a certain glamor as well as an artificial atmosphere inside it.” (ibid, p. 38). Additionally, Nice, the Thai volunteer cook for SpisDating expressed a quite fascinating observation:
“That’s what I see with Thai society here – their ties are stronger than even the local Thai society in Thailand. They keep their bond much tighter, just as the Turkish in Denmark. This is because Denmark doesn’t open up their society for the others.” (Nice, 21 September 2018).
It seems that expats, migrants, refugees, and other in-betweeners, “although they may be immersed in global flows, their transnational lives are also characterized by the continuous drawing, maintaining and negotiating of boundaries, such as those of ethnicity, nationality, or gender” (Fechter 2011, p. 50) – something that SpisDating may be unintentionally facilitating for. Thus, there is a paradox in SpisDating, in which the project tries to bridge intercultural open dialogue, while at the same time enforcing group identity as well as sub- cultural boundaries that demarcate mainstream society and those belonging in sub-communities.
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Chapter 5: Discussion
The role of this chapter is to answer all the working questions as well as reflecting on the research processes to identify gaps in both literature and this research, and also to propose suggestions for improvements for the SpisDating project. It is also important to explain how the findings of this research can be applied more generally in wider contexts. In addressing these answers, I will first answer the three working questions of this research:
1. What is the current state of multiculturalism in Denmark according to the debates in the media, literature and the informants involved in this research?
2. What roles do food practices and storytelling in SpisDating play in providing transformative experience among attendees?
3. What influence does SpisDating have on multiculturalism in Denmark?
And then go on to provide suggestions for improvements as a practical form of contribution to the SpisDating project as well as how this research findings can be applied more generally in wider cultural contexts in Denmark. In explaining so, I will also point out the gaps in the literature that I managed to find and the limitations of this research.
The current state of multiculturalism in Denmark as it has been discussed throughout this thesis is based on multi-angular perspectives of the media, literature, research shown by scholarly work and previous fieldworks, and most importantly the field notes derived from my own fieldwork and informants, both the ones I had the chance to interview as well as the wider audience of SpisDating observed from the fieldwork I conducted. To define accurately of the state of multiculturalism in Denmark is a complex and inexhaustible task, as through this research I have found that it is full of paradoxes and different opposing forces at play. This way of looking at multiculturalism in Denmark is not a complete one, however I come to believe that by considering opposing sides one can paint a more comprehensive picture of how culture works in a continuous seek of homogeneity in the Danish political environment. While politics is not the only major player in the power play game, it is certainly a dominant one, as it plays an important role in both reflecting who gets the most support from society as well as the determining actor that decides who gets to live in the country. In a non-stop globalising world like today where cultures are spelled in plural, a task as keeping a cultural homogeneity is seen as impossible yet possible, seen from the rise of right-wing political parties around the globe including in Denmark, DF. As Bude and Durrschmidt (2010) state, ‘the migration paradox’ in the age of globalization, where, despite the world continues to be ‘less-bordered’, the attempts at political level to immobilize unwanted migrants are increasing.
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Therefore, Sinclair’s (2015) descriptive multiculturalism clashes with normative multiculturalism in a way that while there is continuous multiplicity of cultures exist in Denmark, the ‘norms’ that are enforced in the Danish societies fall within the political competition of “how far you will go in rhetoric and policies about immigrants” (Hervik 2015, p. 69) – a condition that is similar to the ‘race to the bottom’ of extremism. In discussing multiculturality of society, the arguments put forth is often linked to identity as both collective and individualistic, as Hervik (ibid, p. 71) puts it, “the identity narrative told as the clash of civilization was based on the question of “who we are not” (or whom we dislike), which creates an empty tautology: “We are who we are not”. The opposing nodes of similarity and difference is enhanced in a multicultural society in an amusing way as Eriksen (2014, p. 16) states, “the more similar we become, the more different from each other we try to be.” The unsettling ground of cultures breed ‘enemies’ and ‘allies’ as well as ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’. The fragmented multiple identities thus lead to sought-after group belonging as safe haven for the renegades and ‘in-betweeners’ of societies, further creating sub-cultures and sub-communities of bubbled environments fractured from the so-called mainstream society. While theories such as cosmopolitanism values – or, rather, assume- intercultural learning occurs from an interaction between individuals from diverse culture (Delanty, 2011), this is not always the case. When democratic negotiations turn into extreme finger-pointing, multiculturalism is potentially seen as a hostile entity that attacks national identity, as suggested by Horst and Gitz-Johansen (2010, p. 139): “the multicultural position implies a break with a discourse that reflects a naturalized majority position (a majority position which does not question its own normativity, but regards it as natural) […] Therefore, the multicultural position may rightly be understood as an attack on the power base of cultural hegemony”. Kvaale’s (2011) concept of nation building is particularly relevant here, where immigrants are not only required to fulfil the conditions of stay dictated by governmental rules, but also to assimilate, to become Danish. However, it is indicated by the abundance of fieldworks, scholars, anthropological research as well as the ground work of this ethnographic research that ‘Danishness’ nor identity is measurable by degrees, whether it is numerical or by definition (covered by scholars as Haugbølle, 2013 and Simonsen, 2018). Additionally, although many second-generation migrants, as Simonsen (2018) shows, participate in everyday mundane ‘Danish’ activities, still have difficulties of not being seen as Danish – something that I also heard multiple times within the interviews I conducted. This creates yet another paradox of expectation to assimilate, yet unattainable status of ‘being Danish’. As a result, the discussion of minorities and majorities become double-standardized and blurry, advancing more complexities embedded within already multi-layered jumbled topic of multiculturalism. One thing that is clear, however, is the perceived notoriety of Muslim migrants and refugees, which is mirrored in the cases of Frikadeller war and Muhammed Cartoon. Normativity is questioned and often framed as the Western against Muslims, encapsulated in identity politics and arguments about deterioration of freedom brought by
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Muslim conservatives. Meanwhile, those advocating for multiculturalism is seen as self-righteous and politically correct (Danbolt and Myong, 2018), although these advocates also include native Danes that believe in the inclusion of others.
Understanding that multiculturalism in Denmark is complex, always contested and full of paradoxes, projects such as SpisDating are mushrooming within smaller organizations that believe in social and cultural inclusion. As such, CB utilizes food and storytelling, something that is mundane and easier-to-digest to facilitate for dialogue. Thus, the role of food and storytelling in SpisDating is to bridge and acknowledge hybridism of individuals, and that identity and whatever it entails - cultures, religion, customs and beliefs, opinions, thoughts - are not clear-cut; instead they always intersect with each other as well as reflected by the surrounding individuals and how they perceive their positioning in society. In SpisDating, everyone is seen as relative, thus no one should be labelled as right or wrong, instead they are seen as equal members of society (Garba, 14 September 2018). Through the practice of gastrodiplomacy, SpisDating packs the complex task of intercultural dialogue into an enjoyable hygge that is informational and mind-provoking together with culturally-aware attendees. Furthermore, narrative is a method that has universal values, since it breaks down everything into simple and concise message of personal stories – as Mayer (2014, p. 2) puts it, humans are storytelling animals that “dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate and live by narrative” – providing an essentialism perspective toward narrative as a basic human mechanism to life. Additionally, as seen on SpisDating, narrative is used to provide an enticing package of plot, characters and meaning. Within it, people make “the unfamiliar familiar, the chaotic orderly, and the incomprehensible meaningful” (ibid., p. 16). Food in itself contains stories of cultures, in which what we eat is directly linked to the place and traditions in which we were brought up in. Thus, as Ichijo and Ranta (2016) suggest, sharing food is a representation of group ritual and exchange of definitions, a way to understand cultures and the people. The notion of hybridity, moreover, is reflected from the existence of fusion food as a matter of mixed identity in which people practice as a part of their daily nationalism, projecting the identity they choose to produce and consume. It is thus not surprising that the act of gastrodiplomacy gained popularity to induce soft power, granting food the important role of influence and an “act of winning hearts” (Rockower 2012, p. 235).
Explaining the influences SpisDating has on multiculturalism in Denmark is nothing less than a convoluted task. To begin with, it may be less complicated to point out the constructive benefits of SpisDating as a judgement-free platform that celebrates cultural diversity - an aspect of SpisDating that conforms wholly to cosmopolitanism and civic multiculturalism, in which identity is treated as something that is mutable and that everyone has something to learn from others (Tempelman, 1999 and Delanty, 2011). Thus, SpisDating
59 more than just entertains the idea of a social movement on the way, it supports the group creation of collective narrative, therefore encourages and spreads awareness of the existing actions done by other social and cultural movements as well as strengthening the notion of togetherness and strength in numbers – something that is covered by scholars such as Drury (2015) and Mayer (2014) as well as stated by Gabriel, Jules, Lorena, Mohsin, and other interviewees. This is because group identity gives justification of mobilized collective action by providing peer support (Mayer, 2014). But perhaps, the more critical discussion is to talk about the bubbled communities as oppose to hybrid society, and how does this dynamic work in the Danish society to (or to not) facilitate for a multicultural Denmark. A brief peek into the SpisDating event will give us a rough data of the number of attendees: most of the events round up about 15-20 different countries and cultures of where the individuals come from, including Denmark. Although it may seem multicultural on the superficial level, as some of my informants have indicated, people attending SpisDating may as well be ‘the same kind’ of people: come from different cultural backgrounds, value free speech and open dialogue and open-minded enough to attend SpisDating in the first place. Interestingly, although SpisDating values open dialogue, Mohsin, the Pakistani informant that I spoke to, indicated the pressure to conform and not ask too many challenging questions. This notion is described by Fechter (2011, p. 45) as “what is experienced as supportive and comforting by dedicated members of these groups can appear to others as claustrophobic […] it implies a bounded space, but also an intensified social climate that demands social accord and is sensitive to trespasses.” As I progressed to asking more complex questions in this nature, I got a response from Jules, one of CB’ staff, that portrays the atmosphere of SpisDating: “peace, sometimes it’s a paradox itself. It’s open, but to what degree? To what degree is it towards peace? Meaning those who are doing something exerting their agency in a difficult situation towards commonality, universality, towards connection. That’s peace, so it’s open to that point.” (Jules, 30 September 2018). Going back to what Fechter (2011) stated above, peaceful dialogue in the case of SpisDating possesses as restrictive value that is only open to certain degree. The danger of this is the ease of maintaining status quo while recreating the very barrier that CB wants to break, by facilitating for a bubbled environment instead of encouraging hybridity. If SpisDating is advocating for hybridity of identity, to what extent would they be willing to expose themselves to change? In an environment that is already divided into ideologies, it is increasingly difficult (or even close to unattainable) to create a boundless ideology that includes everyone, as what SpisDating aspires to do. After all, we always position ourselves as oppose to others (De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2011). Thus, while trying to mend the cultural gaps, SpisDating may have built more fences than they anticipated for. It seems that SpisDating’s multiculturalist spirit creates a parallel universe within the Danish society in which ‘the multiculturalists’ are detached from the ‘non-multiculturalists’, by reinforcing group membership. This is certainly a challenge, however not a new phenomenon. When discussing about cultures and belongings,
60 there has been countless of researches that suggest the normalized segregated living between beliefs and cultures, as such can be seen in the ‘ghettoism’ system that the Danish government has recently established to indicate (the perceived) “demarcated areas of settlement for certain ethnic or social groups that connotes a hermetic social world that generates its own ‘cultures’ and specific rules of behaviour.” (Fechter 2011, p. 43). This condition is comparable to the current SpisDating’s state as well as other organizations dealing with cultures and social inclusion projects, in which at times sub-cultures and sub-communities tend to detach themselves from the majority.
To assess SpisDating’s influence on multiculturalism, it is important to state that, being a young project on its current form, SpisDating imposes passive, soft power on those who are involved in it. The kind of power that is not radical yet evokes the way people think thus the way people interpret cultural differences. This is analogous to the practice of everyday form of resistance, as written by Scott (1989), in which he argues that changes in society can be achieved by everyday resistance, although at a much slower pace, at a vastly reduced risk (of violence), thus making it a more rational course of action. Within everyday form of resistance, there is safety in numbers and resistance builds its own momentum. Scott (1989, p. 13) further states, “everyday forms of resistance are a matter of nibbling, of minute advantages and opportunities which can have little effect on overall relationships of power. Acts which, taken individually may appear trivial, however, may not have trivial consequences when considered cumulatively”. This is a strategy that CB has labelled as facilitation of peaceful dialogue, in which individuals are encouraged to have dialogues with others, and by doing so stimulate self-transformation through reflections. Additionally, CB welcome partnerships with other NGOs whose aims are aligned to achieve that accumulated shared effort toward the same goal.
One of the important foundations of this research is to assess SpisDating of its functions, how it works, how it relates to multiculturalism, as well as creating suggestions for improvements as a practical contribution toward the organization. By holding qualitative interviews with the informants, I managed to find just how complex multiculturalism is, thus projecting this matter to a concrete project such as SpisDating has helped both me as a researcher as well as my informants to elaborate further on their thoughts. By doing so, we (my informants and I) have managed to identify what SpisDating is good at, what they are bad at, and how to improve these gaps. As explained earlier, 5 out of 9 informants (Mohsin, Marcus, William, Nice and Gabriel in particular) expressed that SpisDating needs to be more open towards people of different ideologies. Ideologies that challenge what CB believe in, in order to fully create a dialogue from various angles. Two suggestions that kept coming during the interviews are: 1) the usage of media exposure (both traditional media such as television and modern social media) and 2) to invite those who are depicted as the opponents
61 of multiculturalism (such as right-wing politicians). These two suggestions build on the argument that CB is lacking the parts that make an active, engaging activism in the Danish society. For that, I’d like to expand on these two suggestions as they may be able to solve the bubble effect that I have previously discussed.
Upon deeper discussions with the informants, I was slightly surprised to find that they fully understand the bubble effect that SpisDating creates. While I as a researcher was aware of this situation, I did not expect that this matter was transmitted and felt by the participants of SpisDating – this suggests that some participants are actively engaging in the creation of this bubble regardless of their awareness. One way that was suggested to expand SpisDating to a more public audience rather than internal people, is to reach and utilize the media. Two informants suggested television and newspaper, while one suggested the usage of social media. The importance of media covers the usage of outreach advantages (such as campaigning for SpisDating to attract broader audience) as well as the knowledge that media influences the way people think and behave. In their work of compilation of researches and literature on the media in relation to culture and society, Tumber and Waisbord (2017, pp. 378-379) suggest that “culture is a way of life, a belief, or value system, while media represents the platforms that transmit messages about these cultural practices and/or events”, additionally “the media, or the culture industries do not only transmit messages about culture but they do in fact directly persuade or influence the public to think and behave.” This means that perception about culture and the media are always in sync and affective of each other. Interestingly, Tumber and Waisbord (2017, p. 379) furthermore argue, “media framing – the inclusion or exclusion of issues or events – has an important influence on the public’s perception of news content. Writing on the media effects model, Gauntlett (1998) argues that the media has a direct impact on people’s behaviour and that anti-social behaviour, which often manifests in extremism and terrorism, is usually a consequence of the consumption of negative media contents.” The media’s tendency to report and puts emphasis on particular race, religion, cultural practices and ethnic minorities while excluding other dimensions can lead to stereotype building that could potentially harm reputations and image of particular group of people – this is also how Islamophobia formed (ibid.). In the work of Roeder and Simard (2013), it is suggested that NGOs should prioritize within their communications strategy or public advocacy to inform the media with actual facts. They argue, while the media and public is often focused on summaries of truth driven by fast news, it is specifically crucial for the media to be given the full story so their depiction could be less distorted. One practical suggestion would be to invite a reporter or journalist of Danish media to SpisDating, as Roeder and Simard (2013, p. 320) suggest, “the impact of the reporting becomes magnified by their own eyewitness account.” This is to ensure immersive experience and direct contact with refugees and those who advocate for multiculturalism in order to mitigate the gaps between foreign and local cultures. Here, I’d also like to emphasize the importance to also make refugee stories (from cooks) as regular activity to strengthen the first-hand, impactful stories from
62 refugees. Another suggestion from an interviewee is to use social media platforms to broadcast authentic personalities of people from multicultural and multi-ethnic background. This represents an alternative to traditional broadcasting channels, although I believe this would act as a secondary source, since social media is highly filtered with algorithms.
To invite politicians, especially right-wing politicians can be a conflictful suggestion that may spark aggressive debate. If this happens, it takes a direct opposite stance of peaceful dialogue that CB is all about. However, I’d like to argue that this suggestion may be effective to bridge a gap and burst the bubble of segregated sub- culture living, if done strategically. As argued by Radon and Pecharroman (2017), an NGO should be a funnel of citizen’s voices and aspirations that give government bodies a chance to receive feedback thus enabling them to take action – this is to prevent oppressive government system, especially for a country that upholds democracy such as Denmark. Furthermore, Radon and Pecharroman (2017) state that an NGO’s role is to act as a guardian of mutual respect and promotion of rights. This is why most often NGOs are seen as the third state, a civil society that acts as a bridge between citizens and the government. Since politicians digest the law every day, it could be fruitful to establish a diplomatic relationship with them, especially those who appear to be opposing the NGO’s agenda – this is where the healthy discussion could be held. According to Jules, one of CB staff members, as I have quoted her before, one of the most memorable SpisDating events was one that contained arguments. This is an aspect that could be healthy, as NGO has the facilitation power to do so:
“Every citizen has expectations of their society and political system, which, when not met, can lead to tensions, frustration, disappointment and to a desire for change. Civil society allows for that process to happen naturally and can mitigate, if not prevent, frustrations from boiling to dangerous and unmanageable levels […] formalized or institutionalized structures over time lose their vibrancy. But civil society, given its flexibility and ever-evolving nature, can retain this spark and thereby remain relevant.” (ibid., p. 32).
Assessment of CB network through fieldwork that I conducted has shown that the organization has several multifaceted layers of networks ranging from students, entrepreneurs, educators, environmentalists, activists, to members and professionals of the UN organizations. This should be seen as something to be taken advantage of, since a large network means there is an easier probability to expand. To be able to have a positive influence to further advocate for multiculturalism, as this research has led me to believe, one must be able to work with paradoxes – admitting that there are other forces to consider, as well as continuously working towards differences, in any kind of forms, instead of avoiding or restricting them. This applies not only to SpisDating, but also to the broader context of cultural and social activism in Denmark. This research
63 offers an analysis of how multiculturalism could be perceived, practiced, contested, strengthened and exercised within a day-to-day activities of civil society that tries to encourage multiculturalism in a society that is guided by a government that celebrates homogeneity.
I’d like to end this chapter by pointing out the gaps that I have experience throughout the research. The first concerns the literature. It is my conscious decision to indicate the gaps in literature here, as I’ve realized that it was an emerging pattern within an analysis of interview data. Thus, I only began to actively seek literature within refugee activism when I stumbled on the data of Nice. It is no secret that SpisDating is a type of activism, however an activism that includes refugees as one of their main features and voices is not often showcased in the literacy world. In my literature research on food, I’ve found an overwhelming number of how food covers many aspects of life, and the interest within the field of sociology, anthropology and political science is certainly very high. For example, the work of DeVault (1991) builds a commonly discussed foundation of food and gender roles, in which women is often tied to the role of food production, and this process has been normalized thus by doing so, women seem to confirm subordination to men by providing them with a constant act of service. Rockower (2012) on gastrodiplomacy has certainly been one of the primary scholarly work I’ve come to reference often, as he is one of the founders of this term. Moreover, gastrodiplomacy can also be closely linked to the sense of food and nationalism, as such researched by Ichijo and Ranta (2016), who claim that by taking part in the food production of traditional dishes, one contributes to the overall projection of their national identity. The various areas of food are also covered by Counihan and Esterik (2008), a compiled analytical book of many food aspects that have taken a lot of attention from other scholars, including within the fields of political economy of food and food movement and activism. Additionally, Adamoli’s (2012) work also falls into this category of food advocacy. Finally, Seto-suh’s (2016) research on how immigrants deal with substituting their indigenous ingredients when living in a host country has also provided insights on the mundane yet complex aspects of self-identity and belonging. Out of all the literature that I seek, I did not counter any literature which discusses refugees’ capability nor availability for activism or food activism. Most of refugee-related literature links refugees with Islamophobia (such as Hervik 2008 and 2015), refugees and socio-economic impacts in Denmark (Skjøtt-Larsen, 2012), refugees and education (Horst and Gitz-Johansen, 2010), and longitudinal research on refugees on migration waves and impacts in the Danish society (Mogensen and Matthiessen, 1999). There has been restricted amount of literature found within the intersection of food, refugees and activism. Analysing the themes of literature within refugees, they are often depicted as victims and/or perpetrators, vulnerable and/or violent, thus having a negative impact on socio-economic-cultural aspects in the host society. This black and white picture may restrict refugees from having a ‘normal’ life as an active part of society or to take part in activism (such as SpisDating). As I encounter a socio-cultural project as SpisDating, which exists in the intersection of food,
64 culture, refugees and activism, I was then encouraged to seek knowledge from various perspectives that could support my arguments within this underexplored intersectionality.
Chapter 6: Conclusion
The topic of multiculturalism in Denmark has always been highly debated, discussed, and contested. In an increasingly globalized country that seems to have a growing itch for controlled migration within its legal system, the existence of multiple cultures in Denmark is sometimes perceived as something that could and should be governed by strict rules. Although it has been a while since the very first discussion was sparked in 1970s, matters regarding migrants and refugees are still much of a hot topic covered by the media, scholarly journals, public debates, governmental organizations, NGOs, and other bodies and entities concerning themselves with integration and the Danish society. While multiculturalism is a colossal topic that covers wide range of areas, in this research I have discussed, investigated and analysed multiculturalism in the context of SpisDating, a project conducted by CB as a form of a sub-community that claims to facilitate for diversity and open dialogue, in relation to a broader context of Danish society. It has been argued that multiculturalism has two broader dimensions, which are descriptive and normative, as I have quoted the work of Sinclair’s (2015) extensively, in which the conflict starts to happen when these two axes are in friction against each other. The growing demands of globalization to include more and more people from different backgrounds (often not in-sync with each other) to co-exist with one another leads to higher state of descriptive multiculturalism, while the government bodies try to regulate and apply border control to limit the amount of people that get to live in the country leads to a restrictive normative multiculturalism. The friction has created many NGOs in Denmark that believe in equality and social inclusion to create projects in the hopes to breach the gap between cultures, to teach and to learn from each other while breaking the gigantic issue to smaller, more digestible discussions between people with various background, in a much less tense situation. SpisDating as a project that utilizes food and storytelling to invite its audience to engage takes after the beliefs of civic multiculturalism (Tempelman, 1999) and cosmopolitanism (Delanty, 2011), the ideologies that CB claim to be their DNA: diversity, and there is always something to learn from others. The project operates under the belief that learning is the key to personal and cultural development within individuals, to establish and strengthen respect for others, particularly the unfamiliar others. Moreover, it could also be seen that gastrodiplomacy (Rockower, 2012) along with everyday nationalism (Ichijo and Ranta, 2016) are two theories that come to life in SpisDating, as the organization harnesses the power of food to create soft power and to influence others by showcasing different traditional food from different cultures, to display the beauty within diversity. SpisDating shows how nationalism is not the opposite of multiculturalism, instead they can co-exist in a peaceful environment. Through different perspectives and
65 lenses of the 9 informants that I interviewed, I saw SpisDating from diversified positionings that allowed me to analyse the project through the eyes of attendees, founder, staff, activists, social workers, students, nationalists, multiculturalists, refugees, artist, migrants, expats and most importantly, individuals that take part actively in the defining and redefining of cultures in Denmark. By participating as an attendee myself and being connected to SpisDating and the overall organization has allowed me to dive deep into the both the culture of the organization as well as the cultures that exist in the environments surrounding it. This is particularly relevant when migration on the political level seems to be portrayed as an issue, and the problems captured and sensationalized by the media is connected to the discussion of why people should eat frikadeller to be a part of the Danish society. Additionally, Danish’s freedom of speech is put in direct opposition to the Muslim’s respect for Muhammed, as seen on the Muhamed cartoon case (Kingsley, 2012). The common finger pointing game is often framed in the context of Danes versus Muslims, while at the same time research has found that migrants of Polish and Turkish backgrounds in Denmark took the Danish side on refugee restrictions, as Mogensen and Mathiessen in 1999 has shown. The notion of fup-flygtninge was brought up as the stigmatization of refugees deepened, portraying them as perpetrators of socio-economic- cultural issues of Denmark, while multiculturalists are seen as too ‘politically correct’ that constantly shout to help refugees in the name of righteousness (Vertelyte and Hervik, 2018). Within this discussion, identity is seen as something that is measurable and the degree of ‘Danishness’ is seen as it could be metrically defined. This furthers the paradox of living in globalized but isolated Denmark, where at times cultures are put into black and white without the acknowledgement of any grey zones, while in practice culture, identity, sense of belonging and citizenships are entangled in many paradoxes that one needs to constantly navigate individually as well as a part of larger society and sub-cultures in Denmark.
The existence of sub-community and sub-culture that SpisDating is facilitating for seeks for the creation of a haven for those who are of multicultural background, in which the environment is supported by open intercultural dialogue through food. As we have seen in this research and analysis of data, food as a medium in SpisDating facilitates for dialogue and activism, which aligns to the basic principles of gastrodiplomacy. Whether this was on the agenda from the beginning or not, SpisDating seems to have put this theory in practice as one of the strategies to spark conversations. The idea of blending activism through the employment of refugee cooks with cuisine is seen as a unique feature that SpisDating has, and one of the things that challenge the stereotype of refugee isolation. Through this activity, refugees are connected and given choices to participate in the mundane and normal parts of everyday life away from the border control and asylum drama in refugee settlements. As cuisine is culturally and socially bound (Ichijo and Ranta, 2016) it also reflects highly on how each society works related to gender roles, expectations, traditions, sense of homeland, identity, economy, and so on. Here, SpisDating is seen as a facilitator that encourages traditions
66 while respecting diversity. The food practice of 'sharing of a homeland' is portrayed as a way to understand other cultures in a simple way through peaceful interaction of food sharing. Within this practice, attendees are also reminded how the many ingredients and spices used are often common and shared between cultures, thus creating a sense that 'we are not so different after all' (as expressed by Shana, 1 October 2018). Additionally, the project is infused with storytelling that is deemed as a universal way to understand each other through reflective learning (Carter-Black, 2013). This is due to the exchange processes between storyteller and listeners that transcends diverse cultural contexts, establishing the sense of unity and solidarity of shared common experiences as humans, relative and not restricted by cultural boundaries. In food and storytelling practices as seen on SpisDating, multiculturalism is contested, challenged, enriched, shaped and reshaped, exercised, and discussed between souls that consume and project cultures and identities in different ways, while living in a Danish society that often celebrates homogeneity at a governmental level. One of the concerns regarding discussions and interactions between multiculturalists in SpisDating is the emphasis on peaceful dialogue. As some scholars such as DeFina and Georgakopoulou (2011) and Leitao (2000) as well as suggested by multiple informants, arguments (not necessarily peaceful) are sometimes necessary to stimulate change to the status quo. It is also based on this argument that SpisDating is sometimes seen as a recycling process of those who exist already within the inner circle, building a portrayal of non-expansive cultural interactions and bubble living, a pattern that is common among groups of expats, migrants and refugees, as well as other ‘in-betweeners’, as a form of close-knit communities away from home, especially in those host countries whose cultures are particularly distinct from their own (Fechter, 2011). This regardless suggests that identity is very much mutable and is projected differently from one person to another, particularly due to increased individual hybridity caused by globalization. Additionally, as this research indicates, identity is often put in a cross-path– to define who we are, we need to look at who we are not
(Eriksen, 2014). This sharpens the identity of SpisDating in which the project tries to offer a solution to a perceived problem by defining who they are and who they are not. By doing so, they create a representation of ‘common enemy’, in this case most often quoted are the ‘right-wings’, Danske Folkeparti, and other nationalist political parties, although in a subtle, non-provoking way. This strategy is particularly effective to create a sense of commonality, a shared goal to battle an entity that is represented as being the opposing team through discursive processes and communication (De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2011). It is important to note however, that SpisDating does not oppose nationalism per se, as the project simultaneously supports both multiculturalism and nationalism through the showcase of cultures. As the founder of SpisDating, Garba Diallo, confirmed his belief of the co-existence of nationalism and multiculturalism: “You have to be somebody to be with others […] and seeing the beauty of the world and the diversity. Like flowers, different shapes, in different colours, like a rainbow. It's the whole idea, the world would be so boring if it's just one
67 little culture or colour or language. So, it's fine to be a nationalist, as long as you accept that the others exist and respect that)” (Garba, 14 September 2018).
To answer how multiculturalism is contested through food practices and storytelling, as seen in SpisDating project, I’d like to conclude by presenting the important findings of this research:
- SpisDating facilitates and provides space for those who believe in the co-existence of cultures within the environment that often perceives multiculturalism as a problem. By doing so, individuals who attend SpisDating are introduced to the ideals of multiculturalism, thus are encouraged to practice the basic ideologies that align with cosmopolitanism and civic multiculturalism, which suggest that everyone can learn from others through discussions and cultural interactions. - SpisDating utilizes food and storytelling to break down serious and complex matters to challenge cultural stereotypes, demonization of the unknown and monoculture society. The involvement of refugees, expats, migrants, as well as the local Danes is seen as an attempt to breach cultural gaps that exist within different cultures in Denmark in order to establish peace and eliminate racism, which is perceived as major human rights violation that prevents co-existence of cultures in Denmark. Refugees that are often involved as cooks of SpisDating tell their life stories for the purpose of bringing more awareness of their hardships. Simultaneously, by participating in the mundane practices such as cooking, refugees are welcomed to be contributors of activism for peaceful dialogue instead of being commonly seen as either victims or perpetrators of social problems. - It is vital to understand that when dealing with cultures, there are multiplicity of axes in which many paradoxes exist. These paradoxes are also seen in SpisDating. Firstly, it is increasingly difficult to understand one’s position without assessing the positionality of others, thus making arguments and debates necessary in order to create a progressive environment that includes diversity of thoughts. The same, repeated agreeable attendees are seen as at times, although strengthening the group’s identity, can be un-progressive due to the effect it’s creating: the bubbled living. Secondly, as the rate of contestation of multiculturalism lies mostly on pro-multiculturalism side on SpisDating, informants have indicated a strong suggestion to expand SpisDating’s horizon to be more proactive, to include those who oppose their ideas more, in order to truly provoke change. This could be problematic to CB’s peaceful dialogue slogan, as this may lead to potential conflicts. Lastly, SpisDating is perceived as under-represented in both public and the media, which causes it to lack efficiency. For an activism movement, as informants suggest, SpisDating lacks energy and coverage, thus redeeming this project to be somehow ‘low key’ to the development of multiculturalism
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awareness in Denmark, compared to their supposed ‘enemy’, Danske Folkeparti that is aggressively campaigning for culture superiority.
The overall macro theme of multiculturalism in itself is highly complex and dynamic, thus for a young project such as SpisDating, there will always be things to improve. One thing that is certainly safe to say is that multiculturalism and diversity is highly advocated for in SpisDating, as it is the core gene that makes up this project. While Denmark’s policies are growing more pro-assimilation rather than co-existence between cultures, it would be interesting to see how SpisDating grows overtime to cater for the needs of those longing for a sense of welcoming, seeking connections within the increasingly hybrid culture. With an election coming up in 2019 in the country, the future of cultural projects such as SpisDating, as well as broader topic of multiculturalism could potentially change drastically, affecting not only people from international backgrounds, but also the life of Danish people. For this, it is essential for the future researches to keep up with the changing dynamic landscapes of cultural projects in accordance to the political changes happening in the country, as they are highly influential of one another. The existence of sub-cultures and sub- communities should not be seen as detached and independent from the mainstream society, as it may reflect a broader political, socio-cultural and economic conditions of Denmark and its position in the global affairs.
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Appendix
Interviews have been slightly modified to omit casual conversations and vocal expressions (including laughters, mumbles, stutters, etc) that were irrelevant to the research topic.
Interview 1 Garba, 14 September 2018
S: Okay so, let's start with a little bit of information about you, where you're from, how long you've worked with NGOs then we can move forward to SpisDating.
G: My name is Garba Diallo, originally from Maurithania, West Africa, but that's a long, long story. I've been living in Danmark for 25 years and since I came here, I taught at folk high school the International People's College in Helsingor in '92. In 2008 I started Crossing Border's Global Studies at Krogerup Højskole, and I have been in the NGO itself CB, I found it in 1999. So I'm an NGO person and also the non-formal education and that my area, non-formal education is in folk highschool and NGOs. I've also been training for organizations for the ministries, the UN, all kinds of organization. So, that's what I do all the time.
S: It seems like you have a lot of experience in the NGO world. How old is the SpisDating program?
G: SpisDating started in 2017. Actually the first one was on the 16th February 2017, where we had a program at a school where students, parents, and teachers and our chefs; That time we had chefs from Syria, Thailand, Eritheria, from where else... from India, where chefs cooked with the children and parents and they ate. They cooked together, before eating each of the chefs presented the food and told their stories. One of them is Eden, you met her I think. She was there with her son who was 6 years old that time, who was born in a refugee camp in Norway and then came to Denmark I think it was when he was 6 months old with his mother. She said that she's been seeking asylum and still is now seeking asylum. And the boy now is 7 years old and he cannot go to school because they don't have asylum, for they are asylum seekers who have been rejected.
Then we have people from Syria, you know these powerful stories... And we have also a woman from Thailand who escaped there because she was against the king, the royal family so she had to escape and seek asylum. She got asylum in Denmark in 2015. So, after they.... actually people cried while eating, you know... After that, I remember it was one Saturday after the event ended the main teacher who was our contact person, Lizbeth, she wrote me that she left with the other teachers, tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces.
So I got, wow, this is really good. In all cultures we say the easiest way to the heart is through the stomach (laugh). So that's the first time we started, February 2017 and we had it in many schools. Then we had a big one with almost 100 people including Zitzi Mandela at Krogerup, first at my house in the garden and then we
74 had Krogerup at the school where we had 10 chefs from 10 different countries making food and sharing their stories. From Morocco, from Afghanistan, from India, Myanmar, Thailand, Japan, from Syria, Maurithania, yeah, all over. They were really... We had a food map, I will give you, which is very beautiful.
When we finished the event, it was the 11th of July 2017. Zinzi Mandela phoned me at night and it was early in the morning. She said she's been talking to her son who was very interested who would like to do it in South Africa, in the poor communities. Because they felt that this was really good way also straight forward, you know, to communicate and engage people through food and stories.
S: Why the name SpisDating?
G: This is from a play of Danish - because Spis in Danish means eat, so eat and date. So instead of speed and date, this is eat and date. So food and the stories, these are timeless things. Go play with the words - also I built in from an idea which I had from 2010, where I wanted to start a project called Hygge uden grænse. You know, the Danish hygge - without borders. Because hygge is very Danish, you cannot translate it. But it's like you have a cozy time with friends you know inside out, where you can just sit there and eat and drink, without saying anything. You don't talk about anything serious - you don't bring politics, you don't bring philosophy, no climate change no trump no Israel Palestine, you know so this is very much it - we say that we should, you know, open it. So it includes people from different cultures that people would start by having workshops to understand the concept and share food and stories and then they have 6 months to invite neighbours and other people to speak, to you know, have discussion with those people. And after 6 months and we meet again to see who's the 'winner' and the 'winner' would get like some bonus ticket or money to go on holiday for a week. The project was almost approved but then the government called for elections at the time and the whole thing was cancelled. So because when they call for elections everything comes from scratch again. So later on when I was talking to people in CB, so let's call it SpisDating this time. So that's where the name came from.
S: So the idea was a part of an earlier project that got scrapped?
G: Yeah and now we got small funding, 20,000 euro to do SpisDating now, from the Nordic Council.
S: You mentioned food and stories being the essence of SpisDating, what is the vision behind utilizing food and story together?
G: I think the vision is actually, because CB brings people together, that's out raison d'etre, and that the best way to bring people together is through food and the stories - this is universal human things, food, people love food (laugh) and also stories, no matter how high or whatever if you tell someone come I want to tell
75 you a story, you disarm them. So that's the reason: using story and food to promote contact, mutual understanding and dialogue and building bond accross borders. So that's the whole vision.
S: Is there Danish food so far on SpisDating?
G: What is Danish food? (laugh)
S: (laugh) Rugbrød and stuff...
G: Sometimes we have bread but Danish food, you know, there's a myth that Danish food is bigger pieces of meat and brown sauce and potatoes. But I think if you go visit a Danish grandmother then you can get it (laugh) - so that's not very much.... Also we want to use it to give voices to the voiceless. There are refugees in Denmark. Not a lot but there are some refugees and some foreigners we hear a lot about but we almost never heard from them. So this is to give their voice, to present their culture and food and tell their stories. So that's a way to empower people and help them exist as equal members of society. So to give the voice to the voiceless.
S: What's the communication strategies of SpisDating, for example why are the tables placed like that, it can easily be sitting towards the stage, or... you know, but this is designed as a dinner party. Is there a reason behind it? Or, maybe also the mechanism between the guest speaker, if you give them a topic before? Some practicalities behind the event.
G: The strategy is to make people feel like home. To feel relaxed, that is not speed - not eating in McDonald - we want people to feel relaxed, eat very good food and slowly listening to very deep story. Like last night, Dada, you know, this Buddhist monk from Canada, US, Australia, Japan, who's been all over the world, who's been a Christian previously - the whole idea is to go against this disease of 'I have no time' - I have no time to make food, I have no time to sit, to see my friends, I don't have time to relax. Just chasing one's shadow. So it's to make it cozy and to face each other. Not to face the wall or the speaker or a powerpoint. So we want people to face each other and it's like also the idea of a circle - it's equal, not somebody over and someone sitting down. So it's just to make it space for dialogue, for relaxing, for sharing and space for listening. So that's the idea.
S: And what about the guest speaker? Would you approach someone interesting or how do you decide?
G: Actually that's one of the issues maybe, because I bring almost 99% of the guest - I'm trying to push my colleagues to bring their contacts because, of course, there are so many interesting stories so I try to also keep diversity, to invite anyone that we know, that I know, whose stories worth sharing. Even though I know everyone has stories worth sharing but some have more than the others. The refugees, asylum seekers, also
76 some who had big challenges. So if you look at the list now, we have photographers, journalists, anthropologists, rabbi, imam, female imam, we have like yesterday, Ozlem who was an MP of the first female foreign MP in Denmark, Kurdish, so we try to keep the diversity. But also always fight to give those voiceless more chances. If you bring someone like Trump of course they are tweeting all the time (laugh).
S: Yes they will start building walls in the room (laugh)
G: Yes (laugh). But if you bring people who don't really talk or hear from, but we just talk about. So we want people to speak their stories and to get their voices because i mean, for me this is absolute, really deep belief to tell you a story is to exist. I always say this the French philosopher say, 'I think, therefore I am'. But in reality if you think and keep it in the head (laugh) you are nothing. But it you think and share your story then you are somebody. It is also a way of conflict resolution or prevention. We have the stories like last night of, for example, who's Muslim, who met people who sent her hate mails. You disarm them, when you hear someone's stories you understand and appreciate. But we want it as diverse as possible with special focus on the voiceless.
S: The diversity can also be seen in the participants.
G: Yes, you can see it in the participants. We have Indonesia, you (laugh), we have Peru, we have all over the world.
S: I keep count on all the ones I attended.
G: Yeah it's very, very interesting. And this random.
S: Where did you get all these participants? A lof of first timers?
G: We now also promote in the MeetUp. So many of the people last night - the Vietnamese and the woman from Peru, they came through that. Also this woman called Martinique. So it's a very nice platform we don't want a huge crowd, we want something like relaxed. Something really inviting, where people are encouraged to talk, to cry, whatever they want to do.
S: Has it ever been too many people?
G: Not yet, actually sometimes we have - because the room can take up to 70 - there was the 26th of June it was quite, maybe 60 or something. But then the way we put the tables also make it less crowded. We wanted to offer to bigger places, we had an idea of later on getting in touch with top Danish chefs from Noma when they come and cook with refugees or asylum seekers.
S: That sounds interesting!
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G: Yes it's good for them, good for everybody. But yeah we can announce come in and eat Noma's food for free! (laugh) yes for free! Because it's very expensive and you know. And many of these Noma guys are nice and if we can find a proper communication they would like it.
S: You talk a lot about diversity. Utilizing food, stories, what do you hope to achieve from SpisDating?
G: I mean, we hope to contribute to better intercultural understanding, building bridges because we live in a very interesting or strange time where we have all the possibilities to connect but at the same time we're building walls. It's totally opposite of the idea of globalization - we used to talk about global village and now many countries are going back to their small shells. Buliding walls - the EU is now Fortress EU. All everyone is talking about is, within countries now, people start to build walls between communities. So we want to break those barriers and let people meet as human beings as equal human beings so that they start with something that is common. Stories are common, food is common, so they already have common grounds to start and jump from, so that's the idea.
S: Have you experienced any conflicts because there are a lot of people together eating, discussing? Any conflicts between the participants or...
G: Not really, because when people tell their stories - it's not about being objective or anything. You somehow... People somehow respect ok there is a story - not MY story but there is a story, they aren't talking themselves not talking about others. Sometime these stories are of course tough, people get emotional and sometimes provoked. Last week we had this writer from Trinidad, she talked about racism and also a lot of patriarchy. She was born from immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York. She then ran into all kinds of problems, her parents had to actually send her back to Trinidad to get schooling. She saw all kinds of things, strange, almost got killed by police... So she somehow came to Denmark, moved here because she met a Danish man and after that she worked some years and said this is the only place she's relaxed. Because New York is too big, too much energy for her. She talked about all these structual injustices and things, some people got a bit provoked and started to ask 'ok but what do you think we should do? Should a white person be guilty?'. But then she said 'you should go and find out what you should do' (laugh). She was really, very eloquent and tough. They needed to argue with her (laugh). She just published a book about the whole thing. Decolonial Girl, or something. She has a blog decolonial girl on Mars, or something. Very powerful, so one guy was discussing all the time after that.
S: So it provokes discussion.
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G: It provoked a lot of discussion and then also just the feeling of, 'if you're white you should feel guilty'. So that's at least some of the reactions. But she was like 'it's not my problem. I tell you what I think and what I experience, my life, so you have to talk to people and try to find a way out'.
S: Being a participant yourself, because you always attend, how does it personally impact you?
G: It's very nice, inspiring. It's just that, it's wow, great. All the time, it reminds you how much we miss - we just hear little bits of perspectives in the world, we're totally ignorant. It's like discovering 5 other planets around without knowing about it. I feel very blessed and have good ideas because it's also cheap almost doesn't cost much. We have people make food here and it's easy but very powerful. I'm very happy about it. These stories are inspiring. Every story I take something. It's really inspiring.
S: So that's a learning essence.
G: Learning, learning! And how we attract people from all kinds of walks of life and from different countries and cultures. Normally you don't go to a place with Vietnamese, Peruveans discussing about something, not in Denmark. Because we have a lot of intersection here from different professions, age, gender, religions, different everything. We have a woman from Senegal, a buddhist with his orange robe things, everything! It's the beauty of the world, in the diversity. To reinforce our DNA, celebrating diversity. Because diversity is the DNA of CB.
S: Talking about diversity, because the core of element of the organization is diversity, and the intercultural communication, we're moving towards the macro of reasons why the organization and SpisDating exist. The essence is multiculturalism, right, in Denmark especially because you practice here a lot. What do you think of the current state of multiculturalism in Denmark?
G: I mean... It's both very good and at the same time very bad. At the top macro political level is very bad. Because diversity is there to work, so recently we have the elections here all the political leaders were asked 'do you think Denmark is a multicultural society?' and they said no. Because they think that this is very bad because they are afraid of mixing with other cultures, other ideas, other people, is something bad. So that means it's the underlying belief is some people are more important than the others. It's the idea of race and all the terms you hear and getting used now, 'non-western origin', when you live in an area where the majority of the people who are from 'non-western' backgrounds, they will be designated as a ghetto (laugh).
S: Yes, they actually use the term 'ghetto'.
G: Yes, ghetto, yes! And there's also a passing law, there's a law if someone commits a crime in mainstream area, while if they commit in the ghetto area, they get double - 2 years double. So there's a legal apartheid -
79 which is totally obsolete to have that in 2018. But at the same time, there are a lot of ordinary people in Denmark who are embracing multiculturally, welcoming people who are different. The fastest growing NGO here, or civil society or organization is this Friendly Neighbours - Venlige Naboer. Where the government started a barried in September 2015, when they were about 20,000 Syrian refugees coming to Denmark to the highways and things, just spontaneous organization you know, sprang up within a couple of weeks there's 150,000 members. They offered their houses, met people, went collect families on the roads and drove them, some of them even broke the law because according to the Danish law is, if you go pick a refugee and give them a lift, then you're seen as a human traffickers and you get punished (laugh). It's so strange that there's a woman, a writer, Lizbeth Zorning, she started to drive people from the highway who were very weak, with children, old people, they wanted to go to Sweden - she was charged and fined 50,000 dkk for helping these people. She was seen as a human trafficer. There was a guy who was standing on a bridge, as the refugees passing, he was spitting and throwing stones at them - he was convicted and charged, fined 5,000 dkk. 5,000, while the one helping 50,000 dkk. This is the athmosphere where we are in, where politicians are competing on who's the cruelest, who's the most racist, this is the main tragedy in Denmark. But at the grassroots level there are lot of good initiatives, welcome refugees, venligbøne, lots of people, students, food sharing shops, doing all kinds of things. We are very polarized - those who are very locked up in their minds, xenophobic, and those who are open to the world. So maybe in the coming elections, there has to be within June 2019, then it will be interesting to see. This is the situation in Denmark but also the whole western world, trying to find its feet.
S: because of one handful of politicians?
G: Yes, but also because the problem is, at least from my understanding is that crises of leadership. Because countries have no longer leaders, then of course those who are shouting who get heard and elected. This is what happened in the 1930s, that's why Hitler, Mussolini all these crazy guys were elected - democratically elected. Now you find also people like that getting elected. Many people say yes, democracy will follow them, but if the majority is going on the wrong direction, you still follow them. So that is the challenge - then also people have lost sense of history - Europe has burnt their fingers so many times during the wars and facist ideas. They just forget it. They lost this sense of history, therefore it's easy to repeat history. The third is also these conflicts, we have fingers there. Like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya for example, we started them. Go and bomb the regimes and these countries put the whole thing in fire and they expect people to stay there. They run back and they lock borders. It's dangerous.
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S: You mentioned a lot of challenges, how do you address these challenges within the organization? How do you inspire action, for example, within the participants of SpisDating. How does that translate, how does eating this food and listening to the story translate to action that would bring social change?
G: Of course this is a small drop in the big sea. But we try to be the change we want to see. We bring people, we don't discriminate. We have people all over the world here, no one ever feel discriminated because of, anything, so everyone is welcome. We try to be what we preach. We practice what we preach. Also giving voices to the voiceless. Just respecting different religion, language, gender, different whatever. So we try to do that and then also in the office we have interns, volunteers from all over the world. They all feel equally welcome and equally treated and appreciated. This is what we try to do. We don't go around and ask for charity - we want to create space where people can learn from each other, help themselves and help each other. There's also the idea of diversity is reflected in our board, advisory board, staff, and the work we do, how we do it. The food also (laugh). That's the idea, that we try to practice what we preach, because I think showing, doing, is better than talking about it.
S: Does it happen normally when you get participants from different professions, that they ask for collaborations, to grow on different projects and initiatives?
G: Actually, very little. I mean there was a guy from Pakistan, he's one of the leaders of Food Sharing. They wanted to collaborate, they provided the food ingredients, but the real Danish NGOs, there's also misperceptions that somehow they don't... it's not easy for them to go and collaborate with NGOs where, not Danish people doing something for the world, you know... So they hardly come. Maybe if we go there begging them to come and help us, that's something interesting but to come asking isn't easy. Because many Danish NGOs don't even collaborate. They don't because very much.... competition, or what, I've seen number of international NGOs, but not Danish NGOs merging. The biggest action they merge with ActionAid International and EVS was not one of the biggest, but one of the most active education NGOs, they merged with Oxfam. But they didn't merge with other Danish NGOs, so that's I'm reading this better now but for Danish NGOs and join us to collaborate is very difficult, it's not easy. So it's... It's like Danish NGOs are competing to get the public money, and at the same time also like, when you come here it's not... Danes who are dominant, you know. We have out leaders come from everywhere, from Uganda and whatever, from the US... And then on the fact that we use English, that makes it a little bit heavy for Danish NGOs and people to be involved in CB. Because it's easier for Danish people, you know, just to talk in Danish with other Danes. And you've been to Højskole (laugh), you've seen that people are very nice it's just that it's an effort to break... to come out, to hygge. You start to think...
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S: It's a bit confusing because the paradox is that they are welcoming refugees, but at the same time they also have their own communities that they...
G: Yes, it's a tribe. I'd say it's a tribe. If you're not a part of the tribe it's a huge effort.
S: I sometimes feel that too.
G: Yes, it's like that.
S: SpisDating can easily, for me, as a participant, be a way to meet people from different cultures simply because outside SpisDating, I don't have that. So it's kind of like... A place for home.
G: Yes, but in Denmark there's this paradox. People are very open and very nice, but there is something that is not meeting. Like people collect their friends, final friends, at high school, and then those who miss that they go to højskole to collect and then now 'I have enough friends, that is it, these are the friends I hygge with, travel with, go drinking with'. So it sure is not growing here. The issue is a little bit different. It's very difficult to feel hygge. It's also many cultures never get enough friends - in many cultures someone talks to minute and come to my home, they invite you or you invite them. Here, no. I have fantastic colleagues that I know 10 years and never seen inside their houses, because we are very good colleagues but then when they are out to work they want to separate work from, you know, the private things. So they invite their friends from high school. So this is one of the paradox of Denmark. Open like all the windows, you can see everything through the windows but you cannot touch (laugh).
S: I came accross a theory of this called gastrodiplomacy. I just feel like it's something that you do here. Basically it's combining food and diplomacy. And by diplomacy it doesn't mean only at the political level, but also organizational level. Essentially it means that action where the country promotes traditional food so that they can bring more awareness, cultural awareness, and tourism industry and all. I just feel like as soon as I read that theory, I felt like this is what SpisDating is about. Instead of having one nationality, you function as a diverse group, where you don't just promote one dish but multiple dishes to promote the core identity of the organization, which is diversity. So it fits very well with that concept. I just want to know your perspective on this.
G: I know about this gastronomy, diplomacy, public diplomacy, all these, but I never thought about in connection to SpisDating. So it's like you do something without even thinking about it. But for me, the real thought is, the idea is that we live in a globalized world, so we should give voice to all the cultures and all the people, because that is, at the end is good for everyone. This is a chance, in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, there are a lot of people from all over the world that can benefit from, you know... So also this is
82 healthy, that just benefits you from the food of globalization, which is there hanging in front of us - instead of going back to nationalistic, or tribal shells, why not benefit from it. I mean, it's so beautiful, this woman came all the way from Thailand, I didn't know there was a Thai shop where she got all the ingredients from and she made it here, just very nice, cheap and healthy.
S: I was talking to her, I quoted her on this very beautiful statement that she said :'because I cannot go back home, I memorize all the recipes, I memorize all the flavours and then I recreate this and share it with the people.' I just felt like it was a very beautiful statement because food is actually projection of your identity, where you grow up and the flavours that you used to...
G: And the love you put in, when you make the food, yeah.
S: Exactly. And she's sharing it with the group, so that's like opening her home to other people. I also identify somehow, there's this sense of nationalism at the same time being inclusive. So, I felt as it's possible to be nationalistic but at the same time multiculturalistic.
G: Of course, like you have to be somebody to be with others. So you have to be, you cannot set the way you're being, an Indonesian, or being an African. You've been to my house, you see I've brought Africa inside (laugh).
S: (laugh) it's the same like our apartment, the things my boyfriend has in our apartment is just from everywhere (laugh)
G: Yes so it's, I think this is also the way of sharing. Seeing the beauty of the world and the diversity. Like flowers, different shapes, in different colours, like a rainbow. It's the whole idea, the world would be so boring if it's just one little culture or colour or language. So the diversity is actually what keeps the world in the balance. So it's fine to be a nationalist, as long as you accept that the others exist and respect that.
S: Yeah, I mean I still love Indonesia but it doesn't mean that I hate other countries.
G: Yes, this is an addition. It's like adding, it's like there's no limit. You never get enough love or friends or things so it should be like that. So that's the idea.
S: I think that's it for the interview, thank you for talking to me.
G: Yes, you are welcome. It's been nice talking to you.
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Interview 2 Lorena, 18 September 2018
S: The first bit is actually a self-introduction, just for the record. A little bit about yourself, what you do, your background maybe, your education...
L: Yeah. I guess my connection to CB, right? I can start through that.
S: Yeah, sure, it’s up to you, you can also start from your career background, what you did before you came here.
L: Yeah actually the connection to CB is quite direct because I am actually in Denmark because of CB. Before I came here, I was studying anthropology in Germany, and the University of Hamburg did a collaboration with CB, so we got somehow an invitation and then this is how I came to Denmark. The first time it was just a ten- day seminar, which was about Israel-Palestine conflict. Because in my studies I was also doing a minor in political science and Middle-Eastern studies, so I applied and decided to join. So this was the first connection… and this was so powerful experience because, imagine to be under the same roof where 10 Israelis, 10 Palestinian and I was in the German groups… For 10 days I could see the process, you know, people sitting on different tables and then slowly the Palestinians and Israelis were missing bit here and there, and that was really a powerful experience. And some of the facilitators from this workshop were teachers at the Højskole. I also became friends with two of them, and then also with Garba, it was the first encounter. And then I learned more about what is this højskole idea. I was a bit sad because I thought it was mostly for the Scandinavians and normally for younger people that just graduated or just… don’t know what to do with their lives. So I was like, uh… you know… But then, 6 months later or something Garba called me or sent me an email, ‘Lorena we are starting the first Global Studies group at the Krogerup Højskole, you should join’. I have finished the first 3 years of the university and I needed a break, so perfect timing and to make the story short, I joined and then I came here and then that’s a long story… There were a lot of things that happened and I ended up staying. I got a scholarship after the 5 months at the højskole so I then moved to being a master’s student, then after that I travelled a bit because of anthropology, I also focused on the Middle East, so then Denmark became sort of like my point f return ever since. But I lived a lot in the Middle East and for half a year I was in Ecuador. I mainly been focusing on yeah, human rights and the combination of it with arts, is actually my drive and I really like that. So I have been working with youth, refugees, Palestinian refugees, also in Germany and here with the Trampoline House. I became a part of Trampoline House since about the start, like since they… Actually I met them a bit before they got the money for having the house. So I have been also a volunteer there on and off, the same with CB. They do a lot of projects also
84 internationally right, there’s always this course and people can join. So I join a lot of those. I went to… I don’t remember everything but I went to Italy, I went to Georgia, like different countries around Europe. And then later on it became a part of the board, since 2015. Somehow I never left CB ever since. So now currently I am doing, for the last 5 years, I work for this NGO called IRCT, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims. There I was also doing a bit of communications and campaigning and activism, combining the cultural side of things, I would say. That finished about a year ago, and ever since I have been trying to go deeper to this intersection of arts and human rights. Ever since, I have been trying to get back to that. So I have been doing educational guide programs for refugees with CAMP. I have been supporting the Syrian Documentary Festival that was launched last week. I am also working at Krogerup Højskole, yaaay. It’s one of those things, I told my self I would never be a teacher – there you go. Really, I would never never… But sometimes life has its ways. So now I started just a couple of months ago. Yeah, that’s it. Somehow I am working back to it, this project with CAMP, I’m also learning a lot of courses on the go. I studied master’s on international relations and development, I focused on Syrian artists in Lebanon. I did my fieldwork in Lebanon and did a case study in an art residency where Syrians could go and do their art for a month or two, live there, and anyhow I focused on resilience and resistance of how art can facilitate for this processes. That was 2005, and yeah when I finished I was still in this other organization and was a bit difficult so I couldn’t thoroughly explore that part, it was put back into the closet. For the last year I have been trying to take it out again and try to focus more also learn a bit. I have completely left it at the back and haven’t touched it for years.
S: What do you teach in the Højskole?
L: Social entrepreneurship, but trying to focus on… It’s a course I created with a friend, I mean this course was there but now me and Henny, the same person I was mentioning before, from Norway, we are also doing a lot of projects together. Like the Syrian doc day it was me and her. We have these projects going on, CAMP, the same thing, so we somehow partnered up and decided to do this thing together. Now we sort of try to spice up this social entrepreneurship. We are giving it a focus on creative section of entrepreneurship and the social and the impact on how you can use creativity and art in business. We are still on the go, and to be honest it is also an experiment. But the school is so nice, you know, they just pretty much trust us and… It’s like we’re our own bosses so it’s yeah… So that’s our first time (laugh) and we’re hoping that it would go well.
S: From the sound of it you’re doing pretty good (laugh)
L: yeah most of our students are from Global Studies from Garba, most of them are Japanese and I am also starting to learn the culture, sometimes I know that it is a bit like, more reserved, and more… you know, sometimes I do get a bit nervous into like, I hope I am not doing something that is insulting or, that we are…
85 not trying out something that they’re not accustomed, or not right with, and, yeah… Actually, as a matter of fact I am meeting with a friend who is a teacher of the school, but he has been in Japan for so many times so he’s like, ‘Lorena I can be your consultant for… (laugh)’. I am meeting him on Sunday to talk about this, you know, to ask him how it’s going so far and if there’s a no-go, or, we don’t know. But it seems that it’s going fine and everyone is so friendly and we’re enjoying it. Hope the rest will enjoy it too (laugh).
S: One of the reasons why I’m talking to you today is to find out what’s actually happening in SpisDating and what are your motivations to come back. Because you keep on coming back to SpisDating, right? So, we would start with when and how you stumbled upon SpisDating, and your motivation to attend, for the first time.
L: To be completely honest, I don’t remember exactly when was the very first time, but it was probably around when it first started? I guess the first time I went was at the same time with one of the board meetings where Garba is like ‘yeah you should join’ and in general I am of course following, what’s going on, whenever there’s an event with CB. I remember I couldn’t attend the first time, but then when I attended I thought it was like, really powerful experience to have the space where there was, not that many people I would say, and also it’s kind of like a known place, quite cozy. I don’t remember who was the first one, but I think it was… Jules, who works at the… I think it was her who was doing when I went there the first SpisDating. I just remember that she said something that was really touching and I think like, I remember after the first SpisDating, like, wow… This is by far one of the favourite Crossing Border’s activities that they’ve done. It felt very… you feel very close, when you have this space, not that many people, and somebody comes there and opens up so much… it felt like it was mask off, and telling about their lives and… wow… Suddenly you get this connection, I felt really connected and in general, I think the crowd that normally goes to CB events or there, are also very nice, you know. These nice people and super interesting so also getting to know who’s there, it’s also really powerful. So I think on the overall, I would summarize by saying, connection. I think the connection that is created in this space and how much it can connect to the people there and how open people are, you know, not… I think it’s not like judgemental space. It’s very open and friendly, and welcoming. I think that makes it very strong. I love it. It really became one of the favourite things that I like. I am super sad sometimes when I cannot do it. Especially recently we started with Højskole and our class is on Thursday and it’s on the same day, so sometimes I cannot make it when I am too tired or I have to do something else. Yeah, my motivation is mainly these things, and also the of course the social part of it being together and it’s a nice event, you also learn many things. I think it’s completely different than the university, you know. There you actually learn things about life that I think one should learn, should be a part of than a normal curriculum in any school or university. How you relate to others, be tolerant to other people’s issues.
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I think they are tackling a lot of these things, even in relationship or what is it to… I remember one who she also talked about this, journalist, who had an article in Politiken about how NGOs can be very also, how can I say it… toxic. You know, because there’s a lot of issues lately about… OXFAM and people who have been either raped or people that are like, under a lot of stress and this like, so paradoxical. How stress affects a lot within spaces where people are trying to do something for the well-being of others, but then gets intoxicated by a lot of other things, including stress. He was talking a lot about how important it is, on your individual also, as a person but spiritual well-being too, you know. So you’re talking about all of these things that you don’t talk about this at a school, or at university or at your job, when you’re a part of this… It’s just something that just, yeah… You know, more like a taboo. I think this SpisDating sometimes opens up to these sensitive themes that I think are really important to talk about. So I love it (laugh).
S: Yes, you seem to remember a lot of the guest speakers.
L: Yeah I also support to curate, like Khalid Albaih, I brought Khalid. I guess the journalist as well, I didn’t get a direct contact but saw the article and told Garba about it and he contacted him and he was happy to come. Sometimes also like especially now, the board or Garba is very active at, he just recently sent a list of the speakers that are going to be, I don’t know, there’s a lot now for the next month or two. I haven’t checked the list thoroughly, but he said ‘please check and write yourself down if you want, or if you know someone please tell me’, so he’s trying to activate at least the whole members, also I presume staff, to… so we can continue. It’s nice, I think people like it. Or I have the impression that people like it as well.
S: Can you remember one or two most memorable things that you learned from SpisDating, or it can be maybe, the food tasted really good.
L: Ah yeah! That too.
S: Or the storytelling, the person’s really nice, or stuff like that.
L: Actually, one time there was, this like Korean riceballs with the seaweed. Oh my God I was like, I need another one. I really liked it because I really remember (laugh). The food is normally really nice, but that day was probably a highlight. Let me think… I think his name was Martin, the journalist. Because I have personally experienced, how it is to work at a toxic NGO. So I think I could connect a lot to the things that he said. It also like, brought to me, more awareness on how important it is to take care of yourself and how important it is to speak up if you find yourself in a situation like this. Because since sometimes it is more treated as a taboo or something that you don’t actively engaged because you fear that you’re gonna get fired or fear of people going to talk about or whatever. I think that thought me a lot to in a way, gives me a bit more of confidence. Also after the experience that I have, toxic experience that I have in an NGO I worked, I already grew some
87 of antennas to this sort of situations, then also through this talk, I analyse it deeper to grow antennas on how to handle if this was happened another time, or when you find yourself in a similar situation. I think in a way it strengthened the process I was going through. I was going through a process of being almost burned out and super stressed with my last job, and that was sort of coming out of it. So, I think that touched me a lot because of that.
I’m trying to remember the one from Jules, because there was something… I think she focused on tolerance and compassion, also having compassion with yourself. She also touched, maybe I remember these things because I’ve been personally through that process of like, looking into words and taking care of yourself. I think also in connection like how, which is also something that I looked into myself lately, that you’re working in the field of human rights it can be very paradoxical when you find yourself in this toxic situation. You should start with yourself, how can one go out there and changing the world without changing yourself first or looking at yourself. Where you are, your family, your closest connections or network. I think in some of these talks, they mentioned all of this. Starting from yourself, inwards, from around you first before doing that. I think it’s in a way bit connected, it is also because I have been more aware of these things lately.
S: It is highly interpretative as well, because for example even the same guest speaker can have an impact on you that is different than me.
L: Yeah, totally. They also talk about other things. It’s very universal. I also know this speaker, Eric, but I think he spoke not in SpisDating but an event on entrepreneurship. He is opening CB in Malmø now. Khalid Albaih of course, his story is quite crazy. His life is just so interesting, there’s so many layers to what he’s doing. It cool to see how he’s just really like, spokesperson for many. Many issues and many things. I think he is doing important work on highlighting injustices around the world. I think his talk was really inspirational and in a way also very hopeful, because you see how he’s doing something. It’s a bit of showing, every body can do something. He’s doing so many different things and little projects because he has the combination of arts and human rights. He has had these cartoons that became viral in the Arabs Spring, so it’s like real life example of what art can do. What creativity and do. The impact it can have in politics. He gave a lot of space and support others that want the space. I think those are the ones I remember the most.
S: One of the elements that I want to look at is food in SpisDating, I mean it contains in the name itself. How do you find the food so far, not the taste but more like, do you learn anything from the food that they serve. For example, if you haven’t tasted it before, from cultural perspective because food is culturally bound.
L: Yeah, I think it has been really great as well because there are food from many different places also friends that I know through Trampoline House and CAMP so you don’t only get to taste different food and different
88 culture. It’s a bit more than that actually, because the cooks have their own stories as well. They present the food and a bit of their backgrounds as well – why are they doing this, why are they in Denmark and most of the time highlighting an issue they are facing at the moment. I know for example Eden from Eritrea and from Thailand, Nice. From Syria, and one day if there’s no background story of the cook then it’s more like cultural I would say you know, that one time when they served Korean. Then you feel like ‘are these for me or something completely different?’ and I loved it. There’s been a couple of times where they partnered up with this organization called Foodsharing Copenhagen. I think that’s really great. Mohsin he also presents the initiative, also get to chit chat about it even though there was not necessarily a speech about it. I know that has brought initiatives with Foodsharing, where people contribute individually outside of CB, so I think that’s nice that it’s spreading a little bit and more people get conscious about the concept and taking care of the environment. I definitely think these are two important concepts to bring together, it’s almost like, all the things that are happening have further impacts. It is also fun. Some things are very hard to talk about, so it’s also fun to come together and to eat together. I know the people at the office that attend SpisDating, so it’s know to connect again whenever I get to see them. Normally I am there for the board meeting so it’s not very often to see the morning people who work there to hang out a little bit with other people in CB other than the board. I think the EVS have been very constant. It’s nice to see new faces but also nice to see all these known faces also.
S: What is the ratio between new attendees and repeated attendees?
L: Good question, I am not sure. But I would think that Garba or somebody working there would know. Because they make a list of people who sign up for the event and afterwards, the idea is to attract members. I don’t know how many members they have been able to… That would actually be interesting to find out. I also could not attend the last board meeting, so I am a bit outdated. But I think it would be interesting to know how many people are actually new, signed up. I think maybe they just pay, but I am not sure.
S: Yeah, it is important to reflect is the project is actually doing something.
L: Yes, it is one of the ideas of the organization itself. The idea behind it to gain more people into CB and more members because there is a membership issue.
S: What do you mean by that?
L: They have been putting efforts for a while, ‘how do we get members’, I think one of the things in SpisDating is like, okay, lets use this idea and try to attract new members. I think that’s how they came with the idea of, if they’re new… I don’t remember the rules but if you’re new and you’re not a member then you pay certain amount and if you’re a member then you can come anytime, or something like this. I think the idea also to
89 try bring stories, trying to bring it further. Like somebody writing, I haven’t checked, but it would be interesting to ask someone at the office. I think there’s a problem with the communications, because it’s good to have someone that can focus on that can maybe write an article about it. I don’t think there’s a story everytime but not that I have seen. But it was definitely on the table at the start, to try to make stories about this so you can also reach out besides what’s happening on that day.
S: So, they want to expand on SpisDating project?
L: Yeah but the idea is also to bring more media attention so more people will know and more will join, but I don’t know if it’s going. I know they do a lot of facebook promotions but I don’t think there’s like an article about it. Let’s say Khalid was there and people know about him and he has done something relatively big, maybe we can write a story about this, and maybe someone wants to publish it or want to talk about SpisDating, but I think the challenge at the office is very often the funding. There’s not much money to pay for steady, so it’s mainly operating on voluntary basis so it changes a lot.
S: I think it becomes problematic when there’s no one full time to do it.
L: Exactly, and that’s a general problem.
S: One of the problems I can see is that they have no designated communications person or team. The organization has been here for a long time and it’s slightly surprising that not a lot of people know about it.
L: Yes, everyone is like what? No idea. It’s difficult without a steady funding, that’s the issue since I joined the board. I think slowly I have an impression that it’s going well that SpisDating happens almost every week, so it’s getting stronger. So, I think once it’s been set so everything will also slowly become better or more successful. I think it’s going that way, just very slow. I think in general NGO fundings is difficult at the moment because of the whole global politics. It happened also with the NGO where I was. I don’t think there’s much money now going into human rights project so I think it’s like a bigger issue than just what the office is facing – I think it’s a structural issue. The board is trying so we will touch upon that again. There’s actually great people on the advisory board but they don’t meet super often. I know we’re changing banks, that’s the latest and there’s a lot of effort in thinking how to tackle this problem.
S: I’m trying to frame this to a bigger picture on multiculturalism in Denmark, so I first of all, would like to ask you about your opinion on the state of multiculturalism in Denmark. CB brand is to open a dialogue, to provide space free of judgement as you mentioned before. So, the core of the organization is diversity. I just wanted to know, you as an attendant that keeps coming to SpisDating, and you know the project so well and
90 a part of the board, so you’d know the insights of the board. How does SpisDating play out with the multiculturalism topic?
L: I think in general that I have an impression there’s always new people, so definitely supporting to make Denmark or at least Copenhagen a little bit more diverse, or at least providing the space where you’re not judged, so you can share your stories. But, at the same time I think in general in Denmark is not necessarily that multicultural, I would say. Yeah, I don’t know how much SpisDating has an impact, but at least it’s having some impact on the participants to feel welcomed and get the feeling that you belong somewhere. In that sense, I definitely think that there is some sort of impact – personal individual impact – I don’t know the percentage it has on Denmark or Copenhagen. I am also a part of Trampoline House, also the same thing. There’s a lot of people I know and I see these similar faces and among them also new faces. I think something is definitely happening. I don’t know how my life and these people’s would be if these places were not there. I think it would be quite different. I am here because of CB in itself, while with Trampoline House I feel a bit similar, because I could connect with the issue with migrants and how we are treated in another country. I think it’s definitely important and supportive to have these places, but I think there should be a lot more of that. I don’t think even Copenhagen is… I still think it’s quite little, and in general if I think people from different cultures are respected? I don’t think so… I think it’s a minority and of course there’s a lot of nice people but most people you meet them there or in Trampoline House or in these spaces. But outside of that, I feel it everyday, people are just rude sometimes. It can also be the culture, there’s racism… So there should be a lot more of it.
S: There’s just something that – it’s not a problem, but it’s kind of like, because you said the NGOs and projects that include a lot of diverse people give them some sort of home away from home, that feeling of connection because these particular places are, everything is good inside and that, you said, outside is completely opposite. Would that mean that these people would get dependant on projects and the protections of NGOs? Then they’d create their own bubble, because they’re living in a society that is kind of detached from the majority. So, would that be…?
L: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think I can really say, I don’t know how the life of others outside of these spaces. For me I think I make a lot of friends there that I meet them personally right, so that would be breaking that bubble that you’re doing things outside of these places. But I also don’t know how many people are doing this. It can also well be that it’s mostly there and that you’re not doing something that challenges the structure. I think in that sense activities outside these places are important, to try to bring them out or bring people that normally wouldn’t go to these things. To open up different kinds of people, maybe one day we could invite right wing politicians for example. I think that would be the next step for SpisDating. At least it
91 has the potential to do that. When I compare it to Trampoline House, in the sense of creating a space where it’s open and friendly and welcoming to pretty much anyone, they are more active politically, I think they are more… hardcore activists. I think they go stronger out there, like ‘this is enough, we cannot say these things’, I think they are more… organizing behind a lot of protests. They create panel debates with politicians, not everytime they say yes but there’s been efforts and it has happened that they came and… at some point they start to get money from the government itself, even though it’s kinda from the enemy. So, I think I would say, I am thinking a lot about what you’re asking. I definitely see the potential but maybe needs to be taken a step further in order for it not to become this bubble, and at the same time right now I wouldn’t call it final stage, it’s still relatively new. I think we are on that stage of ‘what is this, we’re getting started’ it’s evolving for sure, so I guess it would be more like asking the board for example, what do you think what should be the next thing that should happen, because this isn’t enough to really tackle the issue of, people feeling isolated in Denmark and Danes don’t want to be your friends. Trampoline House is a good example to look at, in how you can take these events further and make a bit of further impact.
S: How does SpisDating project translate or challenge the bigger issue of what is happening in Denmark? Sure, you hear these stories and all that, and it has an impact on you personally. But what about as a collective organization, how does it transmit into bigger action that can provoke social change?
L: I will say that there’s still be more changes in the future, but being part of these sort of events and to feel that you belong and connect to similar issues with others, that gives one a lot of confidence. You don’t feel alone, also the encounter is powerful that the individuals that come, at least from what I experienced, you become aware of more things and you become more confident about speaking up. Things that shouldn’t be… the injustices that happen to your friends, your family, so maybe it’s still on individual level or little by little, but at least having this position of storytelling, coming there, or even the person who makes the food, that is exactly what the government doesn’t want her to do. They want her to be in the camp, without any money, very far away isolated, it’s just a matter of fact that she’s there and she might only be one person I think that’s challenging the structures and what’s happening in Denmark that is going towards more extreme right wing ideologies. Maybe it’s not in the future scale, but I have seen it in many people where you break the structure in that moment, you’re not doing what they want you to do. I think that’s already challenging and it could be done a lot of that, we need to think about how to do it. There is definitely some impact and it can grow. It should grow.
S: I think with that you’ve answered partly my final question, which is, if you’re an attendant of SpisDating, what do you think you contribute to society in Denmark. So you are saying that by attending, one can challenge the structure that tries to suppress the existence of refugees?
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L: Maybe being present is already important. It is an important project to be part of, not just SpisDating but applicable to many things. Presence makes a difference, it’s the action of being there and trying to speak up for the same issues and take it out, that’s one thing. Contributing with including interesting voices that you can learn from this person, to support to create this space, to make this network to make SpisDating more impactful. In general when you’re there and having conversations, there’s always the most interesting conversations, the network and friendships can bring things outside of the place. I think people are contributing without being aware, because I have the impression that people are so friendly there. They can do something, they want to support somehow. There’s a lot of potential for partnership, workwise. I even was talking to someone there. You can create connections for partnering, living, job searching – it becomes sort of support group. Like a little family, where you can share things you normally don’t know in a foreign country because you don’t have as many connections as a Dane would. CB in general has a great network for that, if you don’t know anything you just ask Garba and he would point the direction for you. I think SpisDating is a piece of that, the DNA of CB that has that friendly network that you can reach out without being too nervous about it.
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Interview 3 Nice, 21 September 2018
S: I’d like you to introduce yourself first, your name and your background, your professions, and so on.
N: Okay, my name is Yechiela , I’m 35 years old, a mother of a 9 year-old child. Currently I am a political refugee living in Denmark. I’ve been here 3 years already. My previous career was a fixer, or a journalist assistant, where I worked with foreign journalists all over the world. In Denmark, I started my job as a cleaning lady. I have another job as a therapist now, I am taking a Danish therapist education because I want to be a professional therapist, so I can combine Thai and Western therapy.
I love cooking, and I love massage too. I think these culturally came with me from Thailand. I’m writing a book, and I hope it’ll become the best seller.
S: That’s great. Are you writing it in English? What is it about?
N: It’s about my life being a single mum, trying to teach my daughter about the world through travelling. My website is yechiela.simplesite.com.
S: I will have a look at it. Thank you for the introduction. We will now be talking about SpisDating. How and when did you first encounter SpisDating?
N: First of all, I got to know Garba through a national political event in Bornholm called Folkemøde. At the time I was representing an organization called Sister’s Cuisine which is for asylum women who cook together. I was giving a speech and Garba came with his students and handed me a name card. He said that I was welcome to come to his school to come to cook together with them. I was surprised to see a man of African descent to own a school, who is also a teacher of a lot of students from rich countries, such as Japan – this is something I don’t see in Thailand and Denmark – so I was quite impressed from the beginning. I got in touch with him afterwards and was introduced this SpisDating project.
S: What was your motivation to cook for them?
N: It’s actually because I’d like to maintain my feeling at home in Thailand. Secondly, I found out that the cooking culture in Denmark is really different than in Thailand. I think I am not a typical Thai identity, from the way I express myself – but the food, I cannot change it. No matter where I am, I cannot eat a burger everyday or spaghetti everyday. I want to eat Thai food everyday. So, I decided to use this chance with SpisDating to tell the world, to tell people what you haven’t eaten in my country. The restaurants in Denmark is mostly ‘tourist food’, where they are like copying and pasting the menu. The Thai food in the restaurants
94 in Denmark therefore only represents one out of one thousand Thai food type – the homemade, the street food, they never sell in Western countries. I always try to introduce unseen food, not touristy food in Copenhagen, and try to explain what it is and where it came from, why people eat this, for example it’s health-related. Like the other time when you ate the noodles, right (one time they served Thai food in SpisDating, where I attended, red.) – that’s actually a combination of all the best noodle shops in my city – I put that in one. That’s why a lot of people came to me and asked me ‘hey, I’ve never seen this food anywhere!’
S: Do you usually cook like this in Thailand, where you combine ingredients?
N: No, I only go out and buy takeaway food because it’s so much easier. In Thailand, you spend 20 kroner and you get 3 different nice food, but in Denmark you only get a bag of rice. That’s why I really enjoy spending money in Thailand, because I actually had a high income back then. I earned about the same today, about 1,000 kr a day, because back then I worked for foreign medias. To me, to buy food in Thailand, I can choose if I want street food or I want to go to a 5 star restaurant – that is something I missed here. Food here is really limited.
S: I can relate to that (laugh). I also came from a country with similar food prices, where we have many alternatives and you can choose whatever food you’d like to consume. I agree with you that food represents the feeling of home. We were brought up in that kind of culture. So, what does food mean to you?
N: First of all it represents the way of life – if you see how people harvest, food really is bound within the context of geography. Not the same type of plants and vegetables can be grown here. Secondly, how the food is cooked. Here people use oven frequently for bread, in Thailand we boil a lot. The way we put spices is the third thing. Thailand is a hot country so people consume food that cools us down, while people here eat things that heat them up. However it’s funny how in Thailand, even though it’s hot, people love spicy food which makes them even hotter. So I usually like consuming hot food in the winter days in Denmark, it makes me warm. Finally, Thai women like to be slim – the spicy food actually burns a lot of calories.
S: (laugh) really, I didn’t know that!
N: Yes it’s true! It represents how Thai women really enjoys eating spicy food when they’re trying to lose weight. Another thing is that the people who grow this food, they are poor people who cannot afford education for their children. A lot of them are forced into prostitution and marriages with foreign men to get out of poverty. That’s why there are many Thai women who are with old Danish men. They only enjoy themselves economically but not their private life – they swallow their pride to send money back home to these farmers who grow these ingredients to make Thai food.
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S: Do you think that by buying these ingredients mean that you’re supporting their development?
N: (smiled) Yes.
S: How many times did you attend SpisDating so far?
N: I didn’t attend that much because when it started I got a full time job, so that’s a pity. But I’ve cooked for them for 6-7 times. I always make Thai food for them.
S: I am curious about how you cook them, because you said usually in Thailand it is not done this way, but in Denmark you combine this and that. How would you then define Thai food? How do you recognize this as Thai food?
N: For me, Thai food doesn’t mean that you have to have a specific menu. Nothing in Thailand is actually original. For example, coconut milk – it came from India, chili came from Mexico. So, when I say this is Thai food means that it tastes as that – the taste has to be maintained in a certain way. For example, if I was to make Tom Yum – it only has these kinds of vegetables and nothing else, no ginger, never. The specific tastes have to be precise. But if you’d want to food a Baltic fish or whatever, it’s okay. But the broth has to be Thai. Take the noodles I made earlier for SpisDating, for example. In Thailand we have many famous noodle shops which have different ingredients and style of tastes: the tofu, the crispy things, right. So, each shop has their own version of being a ‘best-seller’, so I picked the best things they’ve featured on their dishes and put them together in one dish.
S: So you experiment a little bit?
N: Yes, you have to!
S: Did you meet any challenges in terms of the ingredients, since you had to make them in Denmark?
N: Actually, I never feel limited at all here, I get everything here. But maybe for an Indonesian such as you, it’s harder to get ingredients because not many Indonesians live here. It’s mainly because the fight to get out of Thailand due to politics and poverty is high. Partly because, during Vietnam war, the GI soldiers made a headquater in Thailand and they developed a habit of ‘renting’ Thai wives temporarily. That culture started and continued to be this idea of, if you’re married to a white man then their lives are better. So it’s saying, ‘if we cannot get a foreign husband here, we need to get overseas’.
S: It does have something to do with colonialism.
N: very much, very much. That’s why many people ask me why I don’t get married to a white man. I can give them a simple answer: It’s because Americans used to colonize us during the war…
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S: I remember when I was talking to you at the previous SpisDating, you told me a quote that I thought was very beautiful: Because you cannot go back home, you memorize all the recipes and the tastes so you can re- create it yourself here. It’s kind of like you’re sharing your home with these people, and you can actually see that you actually care to create this dish. Why do you think it’s interesting for you to participate and cook for SpisDating?
N: I like the idea that Garba really believes in globalization, and CB are made up of people who are really open and liberal. And so, I think I should learn more about how to open up my mind to others. I want to also hear and tell stories from real people whose countries I’ve never visited, how they tell and I tell stories through the food. I know the other cooks, Eden, Manal, we are all from the Sister’s Cuisine and we all have passed the asylum system. It’s a part of Trampoline House as well, where I used to go a lot before I got a job. But since I had my own job now, I want to build my life now. I keep in touch with friends, though.
S: Did you learn anything on SpisDating on the times when you attended?
N: yes, I did! People want to break the ice, break stereotypes. People judge people according to what people tell us. Through SpisDating, I learned that we need to learn from those people who tell their own stories, don’t listen to what others say because many times there are racism, hatred, and that blocks people’s minds. I feel like through SpisDating, it’s a small step that is one on one, even before crossing a border. When we talk about CB, you physically cross borders from one land to another, but before that happens we need to ask if we’ve opened our minds to adjust to the people from another country. It’s about opening mindset. In SpisDating, it’s about taking small steps. Open our minds through food first, that’s what I learned.
S: I’m trying to link SpisDating to a bigger topic of multiculturalism in Denmark. What do you think is the current state of multiculturalism in Denmark?
N: It’s not easy. Honestly, Denmark is actually a developed, civilized country. A lot of people would like to migrate here, but it’s not multiculturalist as, for example, the US or New Zealand or… It’s not easy here. You only find multiculturalism among the expat groups. Even that, they want to be from the same country – I don’t know if you’ve experienced the same thing? I talk about social thing in general, where people here are not like people in the US. People are more open to talk to each other, same with New Zealand. In Denmark, Danes only want to be with Danes. Even when we’re husbands and wives, they feel like they live alone, they have to be in a group of their Danish families. The foreign husbands or wives, they don’t feel like they are a part of the society. For the foreigners, since we know we don’t belong with these groups so we feel the need to be ‘our own society’ in Denmark. That’s what I see with Thai society here – their ties are stronger than
97 even the local Thai society in Thailand. They keep their bond much tighter, just as the Turkish in Denmark. This is because Denmark doesn’t open up their society for the others.
S: What about on political level?
N: That is through the immigration policies, it’s obvious that they don’t want foreigners to be a part of their society. They only want the labours. They prefer economic migrants to help them but not to be equal level. It tells everything already, through the migration policies: you will not be fully accepted.
S: Connecting to SpisDating, how do you think SpisDating can help the issue of multiculturalism, or if you think it has any effect at all on this matter?
N: It would be effective if SpisDating would be open to the right-winged people. Most of the time I see the same group and people attending, this doesn’t help. The thing is, we have to go to those who dislike foreigners and say, ‘welcome, this is our food, would you care to join us?’ to provoke them. Like, what I have been doing is I don’t try to be with those people who like me or have the same attitude like me. I always try to approach people who have different opinions from me, different religious attitude, whatever it is to show them this is me. Talk to me. Don’t talk about me. I want to talk to you. I use this policy.
S: How do you think food can open this dialogue?
N: Ah, this is very simple. Everyone loves food, right? Everywhere we travel, we try its food. Even if I don’t like certain culture, for instance Indian men… they like to squeeze you, your breast or whatever, but I still love butter chicken (laugh), I still love naan bread. So, food is food. If we send the right people as ambassadors alongside food, this helps. But no matter what, when you’re hungry and being offered food, you’d still eat it anyway, right? (laugh)
S: (laugh) sure. So you’d say that food is a conversation starter, it doesn’t have to be difficult, it doesn’t have to be complicated. We can just start from the discussion over food and you start working from there?
N: Exactly.
S: What do you think you contribute while cooking at SpisDating?
N: I think I contribute the dignity of Thais, especially the women. I try to open up about the issues they face, through food. A lot of people don’t now why we are more prone to prostitutions that other countries – all the submission stereotype and stuff. So, through food I tell people why and how these stereotypes developed. Through food, I can also challenge these stereotypes and broaden the knowledge in the Danish society. For example, I do massage as a form of fighting for Thai women dignity. I know that it is notorious
98 and many Thai women are exploited in these parlours. I do take this massage education as a form of learning, as others globally do, such as in massage education in Berlin. So, don’t see only one side of these Thai massage parlour, look at the other side too. This is the same reason why I cook Thai dishes here, to tell the real stories of Thai women.
S: I have no more questions. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
Interview 4 Marcus, 22 September 2018
M: My name is Marcus, I’m 21. I’m from Denmark. Right now, I work full time for a curtain company, before I was a film student, a mechanic, a carpenter – so I had nothing to do with this thing (laugh).
S: That’s what makes it interesting. We’ll talk about the SpisDating we attended last Thursday. First, I’d like to ask you about the atmosphere. What did you think about it? You went in, and then you saw these bunch of people, how did you feel?
M: When I walked in the first time, I thought it was like… empty. I thought there would be more people. In the end more people came though. I felt like people sat in their groups with those who they knew… I don’t know who knows who, but yeah. There was the music, the food. There were a lot of different people, different nationalities – I guess that’s the point as well.
S: Did you feel comfortable?
M: Yeah it was nice, it was okay… It wasn’t too bad. I was joking earlier when I said it was uncomfortable. People didn’t talk to me, so that was good (laugh). Not that I didn’t want to talk to them.
S: What did you expect when I invited you?
M: Thought it was gonna be in a big hall where a lot of people sit, where people sitting facing the front. I didn’t know it was going to be in a place such as an apartment like this.
S: You expected somehow of a conference setting?
M: Yeah. But it’s not that big so it makes sense to put it like it.
S: They do limit the number of attendants, to make it more personal.
M: Yeah I just pictured it as a big thing. But it is CB, so I thought it wouldn’t be that big anyway.
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S: What do you mean?
M: Well they are not that popular, on a, you know, a day-to-day basis. I also had the same experience when we were in that højskole (Marcus and I attended the same Danish højskole, where CB has an education program, red.) – when people ask me what’s CB? I was always like… there’s a lot of non-Danes who meet up and talk… What do they talk about? They didn’t understand, I didn’t understand.
S: When I invited you to SpisDating, I didn’t tell you much about it.
M: No, you just said it was this culture thing. I didn’t expect much of it, didn’t expect what happened. I thought it was a bunch of people telling their…. Travels. ‘When I was in Brazil, in the Amazon, I fished for piranhas, then I went to Taiwan and gambled and whatever. And then they would explain the different cultures they visited’ - I didn’t expect it to be a Danish woman who was going to talk.
S: Why is that?
M: because I thought there was gonna be different cultures, different food, so different people as well. The food was okay, I guess. I’m pretty sure I’ve tasted Syrian food before, maybe I had a Syrian friend once… I can’t remember, at least someone from there. They’re all the same (laugh) – no that was a joke (laugh). I think he was Irani or Iraqi. I pictured Syrian food as similar as those. It wasn’t crazy special, it was ‘just’ rice, normal food, beef or lamb whatever.
S: Did you learn anything from the food? For example, oh I knew this was Syrian food because you’ve had it before.
M: I think it was a typical ‘everyday’ Syrian food, and when they told me then I made the connection. If they didn’t say where it was from I guess I’d guess that it was somewhere from the Middle-East. I wasn’t sure what was in that salsa thing. The bread was very Middle-Eastern, I wouldn’t have connected it specifically towards Syrian food, though. They make kinda the same food. I think it also applies with East Europeans for example, also with Asian food – I don’t think there’s a big difference with Chinese food, Japanese food – is that racist? I don’t know (laugh)
S: What about the people that you interacted with? How did you feel among these different people?
M: Well I wasn’t really interested to begin with, and even with after the event I felt indifferent, it was just because you invited me. I think SpisDating is not something that I would attend again, I don’t know if it was because I find the speaker boring. I know she experienced a lot, but it wasn’t interesting.
S: What’s interesting for you, then?
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M: Stories – I know she told her stories but, for example, about that monk thing (this was a part of the story on the event, red.) – I would have loved to hear more about that, but she skipped right off. Instead of the career journey, I’d have loved to hear more about the personal journey. I told you before, at one point I felt it was kind of like a commercial.
S: I remember you said ‘people are ‘so left’ here’ – what did you mean?
M: That they are socialists. I heard the speaker’s conversation over dinner, I could hear it from her talk and it was very socialist. First off when they were seating and eating and I sat next to them, they’re talking about the Danish taxes and how it should be spent. They wanted the rich to pay more and that the nurses have it crap. They were angry at the ‘big fish’.
S: And that, to you, is a socialist perspective?
M: It is, it may not be a bad thing though. It’s a different perspective than me, I guess. Because I don’t think the rich needs to pay as much as they have to, because they work hard to have what they have. I know we need to support the weak and bla bla, we’re all human and we need to help each other but it’s insane amount right now. For example, my dad, he’s not crazy rich of course but he is well-off. He pays about 70% of tax.
S: And the government implements these taxes?
M: Yes, it is through voting process. The current government wants to lower the tax, but the socialists and democrats want to stay like this or even raise it. The ‘red’ side, the ‘evil’ side (laugh). But that’s politics.
S: When you overheard the ladies talking in SpisDating, who one of them happened to be the speaker, do you extend that ‘redness’ to the rest of the audience?
M: I mean her speech reflected some, because she was talking about the weak and all, even invited some of those Iraqi people to her home, she wanted to help, which in a way is a socialist thing to do.
S: So you say socialist is into helping people and everything, would you say that the liberal or blue is…?
M: Against helping? No. The Danish system is built to help people already. If you take the American system, it’s divided into very right or very left. In Danish society, it is already very much left, so even the right side is still very much left – except from some parties such as DF maybe (laugh). I think it’s good to help, but there are too many people that we are helping – some of them don’t need the help that much.
S: Can you give me an example of these people?
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M: There was a guy, Donald Rugbrød, who was very lazy and very openly did not want to help anything, he just lived off the welfare, he even talked about it on the media and everything. He said, ‘he could just live off the welfare, so why would he do anything?’. I think there’s not many people like that but there are some. So, when you pay to support them, if you gave a bit less than you can force them to do something.
S: How does that extend to refugees, for example?
M: I don’t think you should (laugh)… I know we have to take care of them, but we also need to be careful not to let in too many people. I think there are a lot of people who want to take advantage of Denmark, that’s the common discussion politically. There are of course people who are fleeing crap like wars, bombs and everything – something we in Denmark, don’t get. It’s a privilege to be born white, to live in Denmark, in a safe society, we live in a perfect place. There’s always something to save us. It’s hard for many to imagine how tough people have it. Also because the news shove it in our faces so much that we stop caring. Like just this morning I saw a shooting in America and my reaction was like oh here we go again, another one, whatever, I didn’t even read it. It’s just become a normal thing. The war in Syria, I don’t think people really care anymore, it affects us only because the refugees are coming but people don’t really see why they have to come. I think that’s kinda like, the ‘red’ side of me, although I am usually ‘blue’ (laugh).
S: Well it is difficult to just identify yourself with labels, because there are layers of yourself that is not categorizable. Like Charline, the speaker of SpisDating, at one point she said she couldn’t take it anymore and that she had to stop helping because she needed to get back to her life. So the question whether she’s red or blue it’s difficult to answer,
M: Yeah, for example like with your life and all the crap you’re going through, it’s the stuff we don’t really hear about (Marcus is referring to my integration attempts to the Danish society as well as the requirements I need to fulfil to get my residence permit in Denmark). So, with refugees, we need to help, but we need to see who needs helping and who we can’t help. I know that’s tough and it’s difficult to hear, so that’s why they tend to put everyone in the same box and just say no to everyone. But what I don’t understand is like, when they can see people who is taking an education here in Denmark, been working here, they still think these people don’t want to contribute or help the Danish society. They just chuck everyone in the same box of ‘immigration’.
S: What about the stories that you heard in SpisDating – I know that you said it’s boring and doesn’t align with what you’re interested in, but did you learn anything at all? You can say no, of course.
M: I think I’ve learnt that people who think about the environment too much can be as bad as those who don’t think about it at all. I respect some of the universal human values, for example when she told how she
102 had the commitment and drive to do what she wanted done. She was very strong, she has done a lot. She wanted to help everyone. I grew up in a very ‘right, blue’ family, my dad is very very blue, conservative liberal. My mum is also blue, but she is also very helpful. But she thinks like me, how we need to prioritize who we can help, we can get the money somewhere else. My dad is kind of opposite. They are very different people. My dad has always been living in one place, here and maybe Poland. My mum since she was 16 she never lives in one place for more than 5 years, before she moves in another place, Poland, France, Brazil, Naples, a lot of places. I’ve been mostly in Denmark, but mostly travelling around in Denmark.
S: Do you think that affects how you see different cultures? The limited experience.
M: I think Krogerup højskole helped a lot, because I talked to you guys, the international students, you guys are more interesting than just ordinary Danes, because you are from different cultures while I already know the Danish cultures. That wasn’t the first time I was exposed to an international setting. I lived in Poland before where I attended an international school as a child. I think it was way more interesting than just Danish school or Polish school. It made me feel more comfortable to interact with people of different backgrounds. It was easier to find stuff to talk about.
S: Talking about multiplicity of cultures in your life time, how do you think it is here?
M: Multiculturalism? Like everywhere else, I think it’s becoming more and more multicultural, because we’re all so connected, people can move to better places, like you guys (laugh).
S: What about the comparison between today and when you were a child?
M: When I was 2 years old I lived in a small Danish village next to Roskilde, there were all Danes and everyone knew each other. Then I moved to Poland and I cried so much because of the change of environment. All of the sudden I was like, ‘wtf, this guy’s black’, and I saw many people from different countries without speaking a single word of English. A Danish girl who had been living there for a year helped me, because I was able to speak English and Danish with her. But then when I moved back, the only multicultural thing that kinda hit me was from the Arabs and how ‘bad’ they were, being criminals and all. I remember I didn’t get it at first, because I had a friend from Iraq. I didn’t understand why they were being depicted as criminals, but I remember experiencing it, being scared of someone who’s different. When you’re sitting in the train, they are always in groups. I understand why people don’t want to get close to them, as they are shouting and speaking this horrible language like ‘rawlrawlraaahh’ and people don’t understand them. So it’s easy to label them as the bad guy. I think especially after 9/11, it went insane. Most people are frightened of big groups.
S: What if they were alone, would they still be scared of him/her?
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M: It’s a bit scary.
S: If it was a group of Danes, dressing the same way as the Arabs?
M: Then they are dickheads, they’re like fake Arabs – pretend Arabs. People would be scared of them too, because of the group thing. Just shouting and pushing each other. Then it’s stupid to label only the Arabs as criminals, because people surely would still be scared even when the group is Danish, behaving and dressing up the same way, but they don’t get that label as Arabs do. And while you’re within the group you don’t see yourself as shouting, you’re just having fun with your friends, it’s all innocent stuff – I have been there too. They don’t notice, when you’re a part of the group you feel safe, it’s all fun, you feel protected.
S: Do you think Arabs are the symbol of immigrants? Is the discourse about multiculturalism in Denmark revolving around the cultures of Arabs and Danes only or does it extend to other cultures too?
M: I think when people say foreigners, they mostly think about Arabs, because there are many Arab influence such as all the kebabs and the taxi drivers (laugh), you know. That guy who brought us the pizza is Arab as well.
S: What about the existence of other cultures in Denmark?
M: I think the African cultures go under it as well. I’m not saying they are the same as Arabs but most people see them as the same.
S: What do you mean by the same?
M: That they are both trouble. If you see a black and an Arab, they are equally ‘bad’. If you see a bunch of Asians, you don’t feel threatened but if you see a bunch of Africans or Arabs you get insecure, I don’t know why. Maybe because the narrative and discourse is different. When you see Asians you mostly think they are tourists, taking pictures and all. Asians don’t get clustered together as much as the Africans and Arabs. I think you guys are just spread out more.
S: What about the matter of integration in Denmark? A lot of representatives of DF for example, their main argument why they don’t want to take anymore Muslim immigrants is because of the low success rate of integration among Muslim migrants, or at least that’s what they argue. What do you think of the narrative surrounding the conflicts between the Danish culture and other cultures?
M: I think the problem is that, people are scared that we are changing too much. We’ve adapted a lot to cater for them. The discussion of banning pork in kindergarten and everywhere, everything has to be this and that, I get how people be like, what, no! I’m a Dane, I need my pig (laugh). My kid needs to eat bacon cause
104 he’s a Dane. So that’s why I don’t get why SpisDating has no pork. Some people don’t want to integrate and those are the people we hear about. We don’t hear enough about people like you, ‘Sienny, she just finished her master’s in Denmark.’ You hear about the ghettos.
S: So, you’re saying there’s this lop-sided story, the media only talks about one side and not enough of the other?
M: Yes, because it’s more interesting to talk about bad news and not success stories. ‘Oh look people don’t want to learn Danish, people do bad things because they are immigrants’. While people like you, who’re trying to integrate, we don’t hear much about. I don’t know about numbers and statistics, but I know a lot of foreigners who want to contribute and be a part of the Danish society, but they are just invisible. That’s why SpisDating should explode, maybe Garba should go to Godmorgen Danmark or something. They should go out and tell about this. I don’t think there’s shit done right now, to be honest. SpisDating is very passive right now. I didn’t know it existed before, and not a lot of people do. They should market it better, sell it better. I think it’s good that they limit it to 20 people, but people should know its existence.
S: How can popularity transform into action and social change?
M: They could represent those who actually want to integrate and contribute to Denmark, the other side of the story. They could open up and talk about multiculturalism. In Danish schools they don’t talk about this, it’s not included in the curriculum. I’m talking about elementary school, the only ‘multiculturalism’ they get is only Muslim.
S: When people go to SpisDating, do you think they contribute towards something?
M: Right now, not so much. They are living in their own bubble as well. It’s the same people, every time. People can easily see it, that they just talk to the same people in the background, like in the alley saying ‘boo! Boo!’
S: What would you suggest then to improve it?
M: Be more open about it. I’ve never seen them on the news. They never get out of their safe zone. Right now, I don’t see SpisDating as contributing towards the discussion on multiculturalism. They contribute only internally, to those people who are already in the inner circle. They should make it more public and expose themselves to the media, to get exposure. I think I asked you before if they ever had any heated discussion during SpisDating, it’s because then they can progress from there, there’s diversity in the arguments. While if you talk to the same people, having similar opinions, you won’t get anywhere. It’s like saying ‘those people suck and we’re good’ just because you have a bunch of people supporting your argument all the time.
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S: Do you think the existence of NGOs can be a form of living in a bubble?
M: Yes, I think it can also be a ground for making extremism, because they find their bubble – so they don’t need to get acceptance outside. But the people going there to begin with is already open-minded, but there’s that danger of things getting out of hand of the snowball effect of carrying ideologies. It’s like people just sitting in a bar and just talking, then another guy comes and agree with you, then suddenly the whole bar agrees with one person. They’d pour out and explode and suddenly there’s a rebellion and the whole government is down (laugh).
S: (laugh)
Interview 5 Mohsin, 25 September 2018
S: You can start with your name, career background or path, a little bit of your profile.
M: I am from Pakistan, I lived all my life there, my school, my college, university and I was lucky to get a job within 3 months of completion of my master’s degree. It was a really good job for the government in a middle management in citizen registration, however didn’t stay too long – 5 years – due to a corrupt society. In fact, I was kicked out. I was implementing the rule… Then I went to Korea but figured it was not for me. Then I moved to Norway, studied for one year there, advanced marketing. I then moved here with my uncle, he has lived in Denmark for 15 years.
My main experience is from the government career I did, as well as charity work. My uncle and I we have an organization called John Foundation registered as a charity foundation in New York where we work with the elderly to provide free food. We also work providing eye care for old age where we work with Australia. We had previous projects dealing with nutrition and in Norway I was a part of Save the Children. What I do in Denmark right now, I am not doing any paid job – but I work with Foodsharing Copenhagen. I came across the organization from a friend who was a part of the founding group of the organization but after then she quit due to some management drama. I went there first to observe, back then they had limited number of volunteers. Actually, went there to get the free food, was not so interested in the sustainability concept, didn’t have any knowledge. But then now I am volunteering with them and it has been one year. The organization has grown bigger and bigger and I sort of like working with them. The chairman, Simon, is very cool. Normally when I talk to the other leaders for change recommendations they would be like, ‘no, we are fine’, but when I wrote to Simon he agrees but always tells me to do it myself and see if it works. We have a
106 lot of volunteers now so we are very busy. I am thinking maybe we should register to get a VR so we could have our own van instead of utilizing volunteers’, and we could also start paying the volunteers to be staff members, it would be better in the long run.
S: How did you encounter CB and SpisDating?
M: I was free most of the time and I was scrolling through Facebook and CB came out through a friend’s sign up events and all that. It was not directly connected on CB, but the event I saw was inside the same building, because they have a co-working space there. I attended the event that was a book presentation by a friend of mine, a Sri Lankan girl. In the room where they had the event I saw Crossing Border’s brochures and magazines so I found out about it there. I found SpisDating event by CB on one of the brochures. In the following December, Foodsharing had struck a deal with Irma and we received a lot, lot of food. That time it was holiday break and a lot of volunteers had taken a time off, so we needed someone to take the massive amount of food quickly because we ran out of people who could take care of the food. I then wrote to CB as well as other organizations, then offered them free food. This doesn’t happen anymore though, because we encountered a problem with CB. The concept is that we should not take admissions or money for the food, however SpisDating takes admission fees. Garba posted SpisDating invitation on Foodsharing Copenhagen along with the fees so Foodsharing then stopped the food supply. Since then I have been trying to contact Garba or anyone who is involved with the project to figure something out, because I can help them to get food supply for the event, but I got no feedback. I kind of think of it as a lack of interest.
S: When did you attend the first SpisDating, can you remember?
M: hmm, I don’t remember exactly… Maybe a few months ago. The thing is it’s on Thursday and Foodsharing is the busiest on that day. I was invited to represent Foodsharing once, and it was one of the busiest SpisDating I’ve seen. The speaker was about a woman who’s trying to invent new ways to plant with seeds.
S: Why did you attend it? What was the motivation?
M: I saw the CB magazine and I had a global kinda feeling, so I got interested. With the monthly magazine I see only the same people who write the articles though, some journalists from different countries. It would have been better if it includes more diversity with the writers.
S: You’ve been to multiple SpisDating, right?
M: I’m usually late, because Thursdays are the busiest for me.
S: What is the motivation for you to keep coming back?
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M: I really like Garba and SpisDating. And it’s not only SpisDating, I have ideas that can help them with different projects, even maybe finding some students for CB’ global studies program from Pakistan, because it is a cool experience. My motivation to keep on attending is to expand my network as well as getting connected more with CB, to know what they have been doing and networking with the SpisDating attendants.
S: What about the storytelling – do you learn anything from SpisDating?
M: The problem is I’m usually late most of the time because of my work at Foodsharing. But that one time when I represented Foodsharing I definitely learned how to present and get me the courage to go and talk to many people. I am actually a shy person to stand and talk to in front of people sitting down – so that’s a good experience for me to do that.
S: Have you had any memorable events in SpisDating?
M: I like this one speaker, Khalid, a cartoonist. I remember thinking how he came from a good family background and thought it was probably easy for those people to get success in life. He exists on the internet where everyone is on, modifies some pictures and add some funny stuff. I felt like he wasn’t particularly that creative, but he was intelligent. He knows what to take from the internet and do something with it, he is clever, he has the mind and he uses it. That’s the thing I like about him, he knows what he wants, he learns about the bad things happening and uses it. I like his videos with the refugees with different clips and joining them together.
S: Do you think SpisDating has any effect on you as an attendant?
M: I like it, it’s not a bad concept. The problem I think, is when I have different perspectives and questions that challenge the speakers.
S: Isn’t that the point though, to have different opinions and have an open dialogue?
M: But still, it is human nature to want to feel accepted.
S: Do you feel pressured not to ask questions?
M: Kind of. Like the last SpisDating when I wanted to ask. How she was trying to work with scrap clothes from Indian Sari. I didn’t get the info where she got the clothes from and what she did with them – does she pay anything to collect that materials? I don’t think so. It looks like she gets it for free. What she has been doing, she gets it for free and she makes money off it. See, if you are clever enough to be registered as a charity organization then you don’t get to pay any taxes. I’m not sure if she employs the same Asian workers and
108 pay them low income to make these because it’s expensive labour in Denmark. So, she’s doing everything there and brings them to Europe where she can sell them high price.
S: I think what she mentioned on the speech was she took the materials that were dumped and no one uses it anyway and would probably end up polluting the environment, and processes it into something else. These materials didn’t have any price tag in it because it is initially rubbish. I don’t know if she said something about who she hired to do this, but she claimed to have worked with the local workers.
M: That’s the thing, she didn’t specify if she uses fair wage and everything. I got the feeling that she wasn’t so straight forward with this and she didn’t like me asking so straight forwardly. I had to ask, because I know she has been doing this in Greece and here and there.
S: Have you ever felt this way about other SpisDatings?
M: I usually try to keep calm and not asking provocative questions. Like Khalid for example I almost said that he was not so creative, but he only uses his mind and his networks – he knows how to do it. He’s more clever than I am and he has figured it out how to do it.
S: Do you think it’s because there’s this mutual respect within the event that pressures people not to argue with each other?
M: Yeah that, and also because I guess life’s quality deteriorates. It’s 21st century and there are less people who want to accept that they are wrong, they are just there to help and if you’re being a good person then you’re that good person. It’s like they know everything in life. It’s not just SpisDating, it’s everywhere. There was someone who said to me, ‘you should stop Foodsharing’ when I was presenting the organization. He asked me a question along the line of ‘you’re helping to the supermarket to not pay the government taxes and the cleaning service’. This is because when they dispose food they will need to hire someone to sort the rubbish out of the boxes, cardboards, and plastic packages. It costs them 100 kr per kg of food products. So this guy told me that Foodsharing is saving them a whole lot of money by collecting food and keeping them for those needing the food. So this guy, being Danish, he was saying it’s okay to throw away the food or at least get the supermarkets to pay us to take their food away. The problem for us is that we have 200 families in Sydhavn and 250 in Nørrebro that depends on this. Yes sure you’re saving money for these supermarkets but we also use it to feed almost 500 people. These people mostly depend their food supply on Foodsharing and they probably have no jobs or jobs of low wage where they just pay their rent and have no money to buy constant food supply. Then Foodsharing is a good place for them to get food, so we’re helping the Danish government to feed these people. If we stop then these families won’t be able to get food. So I said to the guy, ‘sure maybe you’re right, maybe we can arrange something with the supermarket’.
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But most people when you ask deeper questions they usually get trivial. I am from Pakistan, we’ve been to these shitty things. For example in the matter of climate change, I often wonder why they utilize the wind and not hydro power because I think it’s cheaper than the wind. So I got up once on a climate change talk and asked the professor from the university among these important people from the government, the experts. I asked how much of land losses used in the process of building wind energy and suggested hydro, but he said ‘sorry we don’t know’ – no body answers these tricky questions, it’s Denmark. It’s good for business, just accept it and be happy. There’s no question in a welfare country, no body cares of what the government does.
S: As you brought up the topic of Denmark, I’d like to ask you what do you think the current state of multiculturalism in Denmark?
M: It depends on place to place, people sometimes feel like Danish people are racists and not so open. But this is still human nature, it always exists like this. Some places you go you will feel like the Danes accept you more. But most of the time the Danes they always sit on one side and the foreigners on the other side. I ask my friends about integration, the problem is when you’re a foreigner here, you are expected to know everything with just a click of a finger. They want you to know how to live in Denmark within one week – to be the perfect Dane in one week, all integrated. Come on, I need time! I have been brought up in a completely different society with different religion and way of life. I tell my friends, you have the responsibility to give us space and time to do it while communicating with us, teach and learn from each other. But no, they just want us to get integrated without being a part of the Danish society, with their small groups and everything. Now the government, all over the world, going back to anti-globalization with borders and everyone thinking about themselves. When I ask people what do you think is going to happen to the world, their answers are positive – but I believe otherwise, there’s going to be more war, more conflicts, it’s crazy. The easiest way to manipulate is through religion and nationality. It is the new weapon for the government. It’s easy for a government to get votes using nationality, religion, to save your country from something.
It’s not just Trump, it’s also happening here. Next year is election time and there are many weird campaigns happening. I saw when I was in the city, the current minister’s nude picture as a campaign by the youth social democrat party. I’ve heard that the government wants to even ban hijab. 80% of the young people if they are not studying political studies, they won’t even care about politics here. They don’t watch news regularly.
It is difficult to integrate here, that’s why people go to Sweden. It’s hard to understand Danish culture, eating habits, dating cultures, everything.
S: How do you think SpisDating fits into this thing of fighting for multiculturalism?
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M: I think it’s working, I’ve seen many people from different background but… What I’ve been seeing is it’s always the same people. I’m missing something that is more open, more public, more Danish, students from other universities for example. It’s only been people from the board, Garba, interns and volunteers, they are already there and a part of it. It’s lacking… it’s only for internal part of the organization. Why don’t they do collaboration with other organizations? So they can open it more. The problem is the attendants mostly the same people.
S: Do you think you’re contributing towards this discussion of multiculturalism in Denmark, by attending SpisDating?
M: I hope so. I work a lot with NGOs because I believe that in life you always learn something from someone. I believe that I was born with flaws and imperfect so there’s always something to learn. What do I give? I think the only thing I carry in myself is good energy and good vibes. I kind of talk about SpisDating outside, telling my friends about it. The thing is, they take admission and my network is largely from Foodsharing where we share and make food for free. I don’t think SpisDating is being presented enough on the media. Why don’t they approach the media, even the free ones to get featured? I have this impression that they don’t have enough resources. The interns there are probably not as motivated because of limited resources. It’s not only CB I think, it’s even with Foodsharing. Volunteers mostly want the sponsor or the name of the organization on their resume, so they just do it for the sake of the name, they’re doing the bare minimum work. I’d suggest to increase the motivation the workload. Maybe lack of communication within the organization. When you come to SpisDating, you see all the staff and interns and volunteers all positive and open, but I get this feeling that when they come to the office it’s completely changed, maybe not talking or helping that much. I don’t know, I don’t feel the same energy level from everyone. Maybe I’m wrong, I’m not sure – it’s kind of a feeling I get.
Interview 6 Jules, 30 September 2018
J: My name is Juliette Llorren. I’ve been living in Denmark more than 30 years, but I’m from the Philippines. I’m working for CB as a Project Coordinator. At the time when I did SpisDating I was working for Exit Circle as a project coordinator, where I had projects with vulnerable children and women.
S: If you had to explain to someone who knows nothing about SpisDating, how would you explain it?
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J: SpisDating is a part of CB DNA, which is to educate young people, youth, about global issues. It’s about interculturality and creating dialogue. It’s a story telling event that happens monthly where we invite different personalities, diverse profiles to speak their stories. It’s from their cultural positionality.
S: Is it monthly or weekly?
J: It depends, it happens minimum once a month. Depends on who we’re going to invite. Next month we’re inviting Ross Jackson, the founder of GAIA Trust. If you go to CB website you can see his profile. He is an author that has a lot of ideas of neo-liberal policies that have destroyed local communities. There’s also another one coming up, also an author, Sarah Omar. She will be talking about social entrepreneur and how it impacts her life and the local community she’s in. There’s commonality in these people – they are talking about universal values such as compassion, poverty, violence, but in their local contexts as well as encouraging people to act locally. They talk about global issues but acting locally.
S: SpisDating also involves food, how does food play out in this event?
J: We always start with food. Practical thing usually at 5 it’s dinner time, this is after work, after people finish their day and when they have time to contemplate, conversate over dinner, to have people in a more relaxed state. Usually, what do you do after you have dinner? You talk. There’s this also intercultural aspect: usually the cooks come from different cultures and positionalities. Usually, we invite them who can be refugees, people who have been political refugees, human rights violations, so they have a specific positionality where they cook the food and why they even do it. The cooks are volunteers, it’s their way to contribute to sort of their own cause. They want a dialogue, a platform, where they can contribute. So that’s from the cooks point of view, that’s how I see it. Also, food is universal. Everybody is hungry around 5 (laugh). So there’s connecting things, universality, it’s about intimate connection.
S: I think we can move to the next question: How and when did you start managing SpisDating and what are your tasks?
J: SpisDating started around November 2017, and why I started managing it, it’s something that Garba could answer – I don’t really know why I started (laugh). I’ve been with board members talking about how SpisDating fit in to the CB agenda. It’s again, about authentic storytelling. There was a need of this, within the organizational structure – that’s how it probably started. My side is the more practical side. It could be helping the cook, it could be setting up the tables, haven’t facilitated yet, but I was the second speaker of SpisDating where I talked about compassion – that you need compassion at work especially when you are an NGO worker.
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S: Do you learn anything by getting involved in SpisDating?
J: What do you think of involvement?
S: Well, you have also been a guest speaker at SpisDating as well as the practical side – Do you learn anything by telling your story, or, for example, do you learn anything from the cooks, the cooking process, does it teach you anything?
J: I think as a guest speaker, I needed to condense the core of my work. My story was about my work and how it is an extension of my core values, for example. So, at this event I sort of had to re-think what my core values and what is it that I want to convey to the audience. That is, in this instance, compassion. I’ve learned during the speaking event, is that people… There is this, I mention again, universality, a core value which is shared among the people who are already there, and they give their perspectives – different perspectives of the values I have and how they practice these values in their own work. Some of the audiences are students, board members, project coordinators and NGO leaders. In the practical side, SpisDating required, the celebrity effect I’d say. For example, I am an unknown person – I think 20 people showed up and the majority of them are CB members. Not many outside people came because I am an unknown name – not like Sarah Omar and Rick Jackson. So, that’s what I learned, that there’s… not just the authenticity but also the name, the celebrity factor that makes people come.
S: This is actually quite closely connected to the next question, what are the communication strategies of SpisDating that is currently being implemented? You mentioned something about celebrity factor – is this something that is consciously made in the agenda?
J: Right now the comm strategies have vastly been… 2 fold. One, the use of our network to find better speakers. I am the second speaker and I am an ordinary NGO worker, I used to work in the office next to CB.
As we progress, Ross Jackson is probably the 50th speaker or something. That name is not taken out of the blue – very likely a board member knows him – it’s higher up. Someone knows this person. It’s networking and it depends on your network. Those who are in the network itself like CB, the majority of people working here some are students in their bachelor, so it’s not very likely that they have or know people who have prominent known name in Denmark. If you’ve only been here a year, you probably won’t know anyone especially if they speak Danish, you probably won’t have access to the language. So it’s people who have access to other people. It’s higher up. Would be people like Garba’s calibre of networks, so those people would have more access to prominent people. So that’s one, and that’s quite difficult. How can you keep on doing that, you need some prominent people who are highly connected to keep on doing SpisDating.
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Another comm strategy is online, started on Facebook. Because it requires money to ‘boost’ your post, you need money for that. You can’t just put it online and hope for the best, that’s not a really good strategy. So we found out that well, we need boosting and we needed to find out the profiles of our members – who are millennials of age group and people who are in Garba’s age group. The members following online are actually friends of CB staff, in that young age group, and members who are friends with Garba – older men and younger women. The majority of CB staff members are younger women. The people who seem to be in those types of networks. We have people in between 30 and 40 men, that may be missing out on SpisDating, because it’s not a network that we have accessed. When we boosted it then it became better, and it branched out to this app called MeetUp. It’s a couch surfing-like app for events. So, other expats then draw on their expat networks, so it poofed a little bit. We have people who are interested in climate change for example, then they draw from their own community networks. So actually the SpisDating success depends on the personal networks of staff. It also means both success and limitations of the staff.
What can be improved? Well if we have more staff members who were highly connected, they can do it. What could also be improved is also the follow up of the people who spoke, maybe they can speak again. We have new speakers now not guest appearing speakers.
S: Any memorable SpisDating events you participated in?
J: Yes, usually SpisDating has this universal feeling of comfort, intimacy, connection, dialogue for peace and that is peaceful dialogs. It maybe something I disagree with, different takes of doing this, but it’s peaceful conversations. The last one we had was, her speech was about decolonizing women. For example, I am from the Philippines and we were colonized by the Spanish for 400 years and then by the US. So it has a long history of colonizing ideas and detachment from the so-called original identity. She was from Trinidad (the speaker) and it was interesting, I could see that universality. But was memorable about it, from my perspective, it created a lot of dialogues but the dialogue was not peaceful. Something that is peaceful – any types of peaceful dialogue, requires constructive conflicts – we agree to disagree and what we want is not to stay in our positionality, but to change to a common positionality. The memorable part was that she stayed in her positionality and she rejected, forcefully, others. That is not in the spirit of SpisDating.
S: Would you say that it was provocative?
J: It was a provocative talk, it provoked a lot of ideas from people. The good thing about it was they had people became aware, it’s not just this hygge. Sometimes hygge is complacency. It was not complacent talk, nor should it be aggressive.
S: Were there any conflicts or arguments during the event?
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J: Yes, there were, during and after. Because I think, her speech in itself would be okay if it wasn’t in conflict with the spirit of SpisDating, you know? It’s very similar to peaceful luncheon and the person that comes in wants to party in metal. It’s not the same comparison but the people who come in, although give an interesting talk, it was not in the consensus of SpisDating.
S: Would you say that it gave a positive impact or a negative impact?
J: On one hand, the person that was invited should create a debate, it’s a requirement that the debate needs to be constructive. That is something we didn’t anticipate, because its something we took for given. It did not have a negative impact on the audience, it was actually the opposite. It was good because you created ideas about how an idea that is very different from yours. How it opens, when your ideas are being challenged aggressively and rejected that you became aware what your own authentic ideas are. It’s like someone when they tell you, you’re a liar. I’m not saying that it was what she said, but if someone challenges who your core values are, they gave you a label that you don’t agree with. Even though that feeling is uncomfortable, that feeling also creates a reflection in you, ‘hell no, I’m not a liar. I am this, this, this. I am telling the truth because I am this, this, this.’ So it’s not a comfortable feeling, at the same time it’s a necessary feeling.
S: Have you ever experienced it in any other SpisDating events?
J: No… Although their ideas are interesting, and you may disagree with them, no others did it aggressively, forcefully. It’s more like we agree to disagree, nobody outwardly rejects anyone, except for this one. To be honest it’s because of common respect. There are those who respect people and those who don’t give a shit.
S: Before we move forward, I just want to ask you about the participants in SpisDating. Some of the people that I interviewed before that attended SpisDating they mention something about, there are a lot of internal people that are aware of this event already and that there are not that many new comers. After a while, they get this feeling like it’s more of an internal staff party instead of an open public event. Do you have any opinions on that?
J: I think that’s partly true and partly untrue. Yes, the majority of people who come to this event is already members of CB, but that’s by default. When you invite, the invitation goes out to those people who are already we have a connection with. So of course, those you invite are the ones that will show up. That’s the default of invitation. An open invitation is through online things, but online stuff isn’t boosted enough, so it’s not in connection with that many people. The idea is to share it with people who are outside CB, so it corelates with the ideas that came before. CB is to create a dialogue for peace, not just dialogue for freedom of speech (laugh).
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S: Would you say that it only invites the same types of people instead of, for example, right wing people they wouldn’t be interested in this event?
J: Yes. Yes. This goes to, how is the invitation going out. If it’s online, then there’s a filter bubble. It goes to a certain liberal filter bubble. So, even if you wanted to have a connection with somebody who’s right wing – my personal network, for example, I rarely have someone who’s so right wing, nazi kind of people. I would completely reject this person, with their fascist ideas, nazi ideas, I don’t have that nationalistic ideas. If they go through my online network, I just block them. So, it’s not just because the people there only want certain ideas, it’s by default. It’s a digital barrier that you’re facing, liberal ideas filter.
S: But if the conversation is just going around the same kind of type of people, would you then say that it doesn’t develop?
J: I would say, yes. It’s not developing in terms of, vertically, meaning it does not have – we would never invite somebody who has fascist ideas, never. It’s more likely that we invite people who have liberal ideas. So by nature we have a confirmation bias. This digital filter is one thing, confirmation bias is another and also the SpisDating, again, it’s dialogue for peace. It’s not a dialogue for freedom of speech – we’re not going to give a platform for somebody who’s like, ‘yeah I’ve been a Nazi for 10 years and I am thinking about how good Nazis are’, no. Interesting, authentic story, but we’re not going to invite you. So, peace, sometimes it’s a paradox itself. It’s open, but to what degree? To what degree is it, is it towards peace, meaning those who are doing something exerting their agency in a difficult situation towards commonality, universality, towards connection. That’s peace, so it’s open to that point. If you want to talk about Nazi, extreme socialist ideas about revolution, let’s topple the government, then no. That’s not open – that’s not the dialogue we want to have. We are also selective about the dialogues we want to have. It needs to be pleasant.
S: I think we can move to the broader topic of multiculturalism. What do you think of the state of multiculturalism in Denmark?
J: it’s a paradoxical thing. Here’s an example in general: If you are a politician from an ethnic minority. There’s this expectation that you are not right wing. You are not a nationalist. You must be liberal and you must champion ethnic minority rights. Just because you’re from ethnic minority. It’s not because, your name is Peter, and however Peter thinks. It’s very constructed through that. If ethnic minority is constructed such as this in Denmark - there’s actually a PhD study about this – people in general, associate people who are Islamic. So if you’re a Muslim, then you’re ethnic minority. If you are poor, then you’re ethnic minority. A person who is poor, who’s Muslim, maybe unemployed, then they are ethnic minorities. That’s the idea of it. While me, for example, I am from the Philippines, I speak fluent Danish and have an MA degree, I am not
116 ethnic at all – I am considered Danish. So there’s a paradox in labelling people. There are multiple minorities in Denmark but there’s a subtext saying, when we say minorities, we say Muslims who don’t have money. That’s bad because you don’t see different types of challenges people face as ethnic minorities. You’re from Indonesia? They have probably some difficulties here, particularly women, who are domestically abused, under financial violence, meaning that their husbands are indebted in bank loans and so on, because they don’t understand Danish and they co-sign things that shouldn’t be co-signed, for example. Those types of issues just go under the radar, because they are not ethnic minority, we shouldn’t be focusing on them. There’s too much focus on Muslim groups – too much. Even the Muslims say, hey, enough. We’re not as poor as you think, as uneducated and unintegrated as you think. But there’s this very strong portrayal that they are, and it’s very hard to get out of.
S: Do you think it’s also because you don’t hear enough of success stories about integration from foreigners? We only hear a one side story of how they fail to integrate and how they are criminals?
J: Yes, and no. You can say on one hand, it’s sensationalized. Things which are bad are more sensationalized than the goods. There’s no news talking about people going and taking education (laugh). Like, oh great this guy has this, super. But this guy who robs the bank is interesting. So of course, there’s sensationalizing bad stories – this promotes the idea that ‘they are all bad’, and also people who do well, for example, myself, been living here for a long time. They know that if they speak up too much, there’s this… like I mentioned the example before, ‘then you must champion ethnic minority rights’ no, I’m a lawyer in taxes I’d like to champion tax reductions (laugh). What I mean is that, they don’t want to be in that label, so they don’t speak up much, otherwise they will automatically get into that label. So I don’t want to do that because I want to do the things I want. Yeah, so the stigma, people don’t want to be put in a box, so they don’t want to say this officially. And those who do speak out, they get death threats, honestly, they get harassed, physically, emotionally, and their network gets harassed. Would that be worth it to say that ‘Hi, my name is Sienny and I am doing really well’ then you get death threats? Is that a price you’re willing to pay? What if your mother gets death threats? That’s what people face. So people who do it, are the dedicated people, but up to a point where the price gets too high. So it’s not just because there are not enough, I don’t believe there’s just poor integration – it’s also because there’s social mechanism that prevents people from actually highlighting the good role models.
A part of multiculturalism, I don’t know if you’re aware… What’s the biggest migrant group in Denmark? Some people told me it’s Syrians, Turkish, Polish – that’s not true. The highest one is, of course, totally obvious, the Germans. Germany is the highest migrant group historically and physically in Denmark. But nobody says Germany, why? They are pure definition of migrants. This is because they are white – they are
117 expats. For example, my father is a migrant, but he’s not an expat. But somebody from Germany is an expat. You see there’s a hypocrisy in that? German migrants have higher probability to go to Denmark, get free schooling – I am a Danish citizen btw, so I am Danish – take a seat off from a Danish student, go back to Germany, or stay in Denmark and take a job from a Danish person, right? They are actually the group who are doing it the most. So the idea that ‘they are here to take our jobs and schools’, they are the Germans! (scoff). It’s not very likely that a refugee can take my job, or my place in the university, which is very costly in Denmark.
I’m just saying this to answer that, there’s a thing that people obviously miss out – a common sense. Germany is our neighbouring country, why is it a common sense that they are the biggest migrant group? Why shouldn’t it make sense? But people almost completely never answer Germany. Even all the way from Indonesia, the Philippines, will go all the way here and take their jobs and university spots and whatever it is, from the Danish people. And somebody who is just next door, you know, there’s something wrong in that construction of thinking, yeah?
S: Connecting back to SpisDating, how can it contribute to this matter?
J: What is really interesting about SpisDating is that, there’s this peaceful – it’s not that it is pleasant. The precondition for anything of communication needs to be pleasant. A well-received communication requires pleasant conditions. That’s why there’s food in it. Connecting this multicultural thing, we invite people with different perspectives in life, to come and talk about it, but in a way where people want to convey the message in a way that validates, legitimises, understands, the other side of things. It’s like me with this interview, if I was being aggressive to you then you will not be receiving what I want to say well. So it’s for me to understand your positionality, your cultural whatever background, what it is you want in order for me to convey my message as fully fledged as possible. If I mix it with, ‘well I think you’re xyz and that’s what I think about you’, well it’s not very likely that you have the ideas that I have. It will not impregnate your brain – you will have barriers towards those ideas, you know. So just to have this SpisDating is to have this openness, willingness, to accept ideas that are different from yours. The speaker needs to have this positionality.
S: How does this idea of being open and willing translates into action? Because the identity of CB is diversity and inclusion, how does this event inspire action for social change?
J: Those who come there, take a perspective of an NGO leader, she’s in for green economy, a start-up person, entrepreneur, and she talks about her entrepreneurial ways to combine green ideas in business. She talks about how she does it in her way. For example, I would find it interesting, if we create merchandise to be
118 sold off in CB, it needs to have this type of thing, to be green. The idea of selling things, it’s exchanging ideas, practical things that people do can inspire other people’s work. So that’s from an NGO leader, they can implement something in different fields. For students, we have a staff member called Agne, she has heard about this thing from another organization and then discusses it in the meeting as a possibility to implement it in this organization, so it’s more impregnating each other with ideas. It even could also be just as self- reflection.
S: Would you say that SpisDating is a fertile ground for building collaborations?
J: Yes. It’s connecting ideas, even connecting two things that’s not there before, business and recycling, for example. And having personal networks. I met up with Lorena, who is a board member, she has some sort of ideas, I used to be a part of start up and I gave some practical tools that could fit her service, so we talked and exchanged ideas. Through SpisDating, other people can raise questions. You can sort of assess the network – the idea is to trust your network. You will get an idea if this person is a good network to have by looking at their behaviour in the event, you can decide if this is a viable network that I want to be connected with. This gives, for example if I met you on SpisDating and you said things I didn’t like, well for sure I wouldn’t be interviewed by you.
S: Do you have any ideas on taking the conversations that usually happens in SpisDating, outside the event?
J: How to connect with people who’s outside your confirmation biases? That is extremely difficult. It is emotionally and practically difficult. I’d say I am a connecter type of person – I connect with people who are very different from me. But connecting with people, when we talk about true diversity, having people with conflicting ideas, honestly that is to a point where it’s really hard to do. I try to do that by subscribing to politicians I hate. I subscribe to parties that I don’t like, I do that because its interesting to see what they say, at the cost of getting racist posts and I’d allow it. Would you allow racist posts for academic reasons? How can you truly invite somebody who is the opposite of you? If SpisDating is through online platforms, where it has a built-in filter bubble, how is it really possible to have completely different opinions if we, ourselves are not willing to have people we hate in our bubble?
So, is it vertical diversity? Very, very different from you, or what type of diversity would you like to have? So far what I see in CB is more horizontal diversity: people who work with men, women, the handicapped, etc, which is okay, because it’s peaceful. If you want to have free speech, then it’s vertical diversity. So, it depends how you define diversity, when you say diversity.
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Interview 7 Shana, 1 October 2018
S: We can start by your introduction, your name, where you’re from, your career background…
Sh: Yes, my name Shana, I am the creative coordinator at CBS entrepreneur incubator, called CSC, so my main role is like a project manager and creative head of communication’s person, it’s kind of like an octopus position (giggle). Next to my work, I work for Women’s Refugee Route whose goal is to advocate for women refugees, so train refugee women and the people who are around them. What I do there is advocacy and communication and funds. I am a refugee myself, I arrived in Denmark when I was 4, which was our third fleeing attempt. I came from a family of freedom fighters in the North area of Iraq, in a village called Slemani. We had to flee because of the war and after fleeing to Turkey and Iran we made it to Denmark. I have been living between here and London, but Copenhagen is my home now – home away from home. I’ve stayed in Denmark about 22 years, with few years in London.
S: How did you get connected to CB the first time?
Sh: I was at the Folk meeting in Bornholm, a political meeting where people get to ask questions to politicians in Denmark. I was introduced by my colleague Nina to CB. I was invited to SpisDating, I thought it was a wonderful initiative, I saw potential – it was a great event, I was inspired by it. I was asked to speak at the summer party the following week, so it was kind of through there. I invited a couple of my friends and they loved it.
S: What was your motivation to speak?
Sh: I was really hesitant to speak in general, actually. As I told my colleague Nina who pressured me to do that – I am the good story… Well not a good story but a lucky story of being a refugee, a success story of what could happen if the right framework is there, the laws and regulations. I am not saying it has not been hard, but it has been, in terms of, what these women that I work with, have such gruesome terrible stories of fleeing – I felt, what do I have to say? I came when I was 4 and I haven’t seen that struggle, why would I be standing on stage? I think Nina said, but it’s also important to tell the good story for other people to open up, and this what can come out of, openness.
S: Did they give you an outline before the presentation, or did you freestyle it, how was it?
Sh: Uhm… No, not at all. It was open and abstract, I kind of freestyled my story – even cringed pictures of my childhood (laugh), so then you get a face of a refugee, an immigrant, and you get the story behind – I try to do it in a story-telling way which is personal so people can understand that.
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S: Did you learn anything from this experience? What did you get from this experience? Was it your first time speaking in public?
Sh: I think in terms of speaking about something personal, yes. Doing presentation is one thing and I do it on everyday basis with our projects, but to stand on the stage and talk about something so personal, that was the first time and I remember being so nervous talking to my boyfriend and my friends, they say ‘you can’t say anything wrong, it’s only you who knows your story’ but the pressure of not presenting it right or not doing it properly and then failing the people that I am there for, it was important for me not to fuck it up.
S: How did telling your story in SpisDating impact you?
Sh: It made me really touched and happy. I think it made me grow in terms of how important it is to fight for this cause and to familiarize other people, not only my self but others that there is a human behind, and it motivates me even more to fight for this cause that is personal to me.
S: You mentioned before that you attended one of the SpisDating events as an attendant before you spoke. So you got this audience perspective, right? Is that different from just listening and then talking in front?
Sh: I think it’s good to have a view beforehand of the actual event. So for me, it was very nice to come as an audience and not having a purpose per se because I didn’t know that I was going to speak at that point. But listening to a story without having that objective and learning someone else’s history and then seeing how much value it gives to the audience, because I was a receiver. So that was more important than giving for me.
S: What were the values that you took from the SpisDating that you attended?
Sh: The openness and the warmth, what CB is about, breaking those barriers and seeing people eye-to-eye, the welcoming warm feeling from the minute you step in, you have to take your shoes off so it feels like a home – being a part of someone’s story and listening, I think those values are really important to take with you, that you and I are the same – there is no such thing as borders, that is just a made up concept. So that was really nice.
S: I’d like to relate this to a broader topic of multiculturalism in Denmark. I mean, seeing that you were born in a country of war and then fled and moved to several countries where the culture may not be the same as yours… How do you think is the current state of multiculturalism in Denmark, as you experience it?
Sh: it’s gotten worse, I think. Without being too nostalgic, you always have a way to say ‘well back in my days’, but when we arrived, it was of course difficult in terms of racism, but we were treated as humans and we believed there was a future for us, where I think the people coming here now, if I was to come with the
121 same background as I did, I wouldn’t be seen as the same human, wouldn’t be treated with the same equal opportunity and rights. You see people with asylum centres for half a life time, you see children being born until they’re 10 and not moving up or down, just in the state of limbo. We’ve gotten worse and it’s really saddening.
S: Why do you think that is?
Sh: I think there are a lot of factors that play into it. Politics, communication, fear in the society that has been built on helping each other, which is the very social state and everything that I’ve got, I have been very privileged, and I owe this country so much. I think it’s just gotten the other way. Of course, there’s a limit to the country’s capabilities how much we are able to help but I think as a country like Denmark, you have the responsibility, you have to help these people in one way or another. You also see the ghettos, they want to pull them in like, one area. That’s not going to bring any integration, you’re just going to prevent them to any opportunities. You’re just going to put them all in one apartment building and live in isolation. They are making it more difficult for themselves with these refugees.
S: Being born in another country, do you think it affects your identity now that you’re settled in another completely different country? How do you feel with your sense of identity and belonging?
Sh: It’s been a question since I was… It’s something that we’ve faced earlier than most people might. You fled from war and was privileged for being brought up by a mother that, when racism did occur or I was bullied, that I was not less than them and that we have to fight more because we’re not the victims. So being in this country I didn’t feel 100% apart, but going back to my own country they have developed into something new, so you kind of become this, fusion, hybrid person, which I now navigate and love. I am neither or, I am in between. I think some people can get lost and go backwards, they may get more traditional and not integrated because they can’t find their self-identities in the current culture they live in, so they go backwards, but the country they came from are also moving forward so they’re kind of stuck in between. I rest in my little identity limbo.
S: You’re not alone in this and like you said it is very much hybridized and the paradox is that the right-wing people somehow have this idea of how people should behave when they are Danes, what it means to be Danish. It is impossible to set a line whether you’re a Danish person or you’re not. Culture has become so hybridized in itself.
Sh: Exactly. People keep on talking about ‘let’s keep this Danishness’, but what is Danishness? Cultures and impressions and art – they are not one thing. Am I Danish because I’ve adapted the ways and eat pork? No. But when people tell me, I’m also not trying to be, because that was never an opportunity for me.
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S: It’s funny how you brought up eating pork (laugh), that’s the mainstream way of saying… Danish people. We do consume food from different cultures. Do you think that connects these multiple identities together, when we consume the food that we’re not used to?
Sh: Definitely! I think it’s a brilliant concept that you have this, Turkish, Ethiopian, nothing brings people together more than food and being able to talk about that. It’s just like countries borrow from each other and we think we’re so different from each other – some of the ingredients and spices that I use, one of my best friends from Israel also uses – so in that way, food is also a statement saying that we’re not so different from each other. It’s a different take on it. And that’s a beautiful way to bring people together, through food.
S: How does telling your story in a personal angle contribute to the discussion of multiculturalism?
Sh: I think it’s important to tell your story and now I realized, although I don’t think I have much to say that, to press the importance of giving people the right framework instead of talking to politicians that ‘you’re doing a shit job’, this is what could come out of it if you allow it to. Sharing this story also means, that fear factor that vote for DF, which is super racist, familiarize them – I even have some friends ‘but you’re okay, but just the rest of them!’ – I was like, but I am ‘them’, so just to get these stories out, it’s creating bonds and make people less scared. Put it on the agenda to press the politics to deal better with it than the current way.
S: Is that why you also advocate yourself for Women Refugee Route? Is it because you’re also operating on this belief that they should not be demonized, they should be included and provided a safe way to integrate to society?
Sh: Yeah. First and foremost is to advocate for them who can’t, secondly to teach them to self-advocate. Because we teach these women to use computers, to have that strength in them that okay once I step out of this asylum I can do better, if I move I have this skill to create something for myself. It’s important because, me and my mum we fled alone to create the best framework for women that are the most vulnerable in crisis situation. That’s why it’s important for me.
S: The people from DF they keep on hammering integration and assimilation. They argue that people from Middle-Eastern and Muslim countries somehow ‘integrate less’ or ‘cannot be integrated’ compared to people from different countries. Do you think it’s possible to fully integrate or fully assimilate in Denmark? To become ‘one of them’ or ‘Danish’?
Sh: I think you never become one of them, it should just be scratched off the agenda because there’s always going to be, for those people at least, ‘us’ and ‘them’, so this view is creating difficulty, but it’s not impossible
123 to integrate at all – I don’t believe that it’s more difficult, of course some cultures are more traditional and they may have harder time to settle in in terms of religion, putting their children to Danish school system, uhm… But I don’t think the current system works in demonizing them by putting them in clusters where they all can live together. It’s only going to create more crimes. What they did with us when we came, we put them in the most Danish city, isolated, at school I was the only non-Dane, so that really helped me to integrate because there was no one else for me to cling to. Although I felt like it would have been nice to have someone, but there was no option – so gathering all of them together and putting them in one hole… spread them out all over the country and make them a part of society instead of constantly reminding them of what they are not and what they’re never gonna be. Then of course they will be ‘no, then I don’t want to join this society if you’re not gonna see me eye-to-eye as a human being’
S: Do you think in terms of living in a bubble, that you referred to just now, for migrants or refugees, to somehow just hang out with international people instead of trying to integrate – these organizations actually facilitate that, giving them a platform of intercultural interaction?
Sh: I see your point, but I also saw a lot of Danes attend from no where, because they thought it was an interesting event, so that was very nice. I get you, in terms of, partly guilty because all of my friends are international or part Danish like half-half. Because of course you want to be people you can relate to. But that’s no, I don’t think it’s an issue per se. At CB they do a lot of inviting everyone, it’s not just a platform for immigrants, it’s for everyone.
S: How do you think SpisDating can contribute or inspire action that leads to social change?
Sh: I think maybe, inviting more politicians. I know that’s probably difficult to get them on board. But to get these decision makers on the table, invite some of, may be difficult but, those who are in the other end, fanatics or… Have a seat, have dinner together, let’s see if we can meet half way in our differences. It might be extreme, some of them may not like that approach, but that’s the way to get closer to your vision is – it’s not only having, as you said, the international people and immigrants but also the other end, the opposing crowd that are against this, to meet each other.
S: It is difficult and debates can easily spark during the event, but if it’s a healthy debate, why not? It can be progressive as well.
Sh: Yeah, I think it’s not necessarily a debate but if something like, the guy from Rwanda that simply told his story, it was not about him being right or wrong, if was his sharing his journey and that was the one people went to see. I agree it could be a heated debate when you put opponents to each other.
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S: Do you think story telling is a peaceful way of facilitating, bridging this kind of difficult discussions?
Sh: Definitely. I think it’s the creative way to do it. Within the charity work there are NGOs that have this dark messages and pictures of war, people are dying – those are all important but as people we get bombarded with all this information, you might turn the other cheek to these stories. While I live closer to the lake and they make all these murals, refugees, and then a speech bubble and their stories. They are very personal and that way of putting it was so beautiful and… it’s human. They are personal, and you could relate to them although you could not. They were talking about their childhood home, that doll that they never got to bring with them… So putting a face on the human, I think that’s the best way forward. It’s like a friendly reach out.
S: In the beginning of the interview you mentioned you saw a lot of potential in SpisDating, how would you propose for that to reach the highest potential? Do you have any recommendation?
Sh: If I look at it in an event purposes, it would be great for those who couldn’t attend, maybe live stream it, save the videos so people can go back to the archives and find these talks. It’s always good to use SEO – because this is my work so I am looking at it in a very social media boosted, promoted, user rights and phrasing words, pictures, imageries, so you can get the events in the… on social media. In turns of getting the right people there, I think the best to do it is, once you get these new guests get their contacts and invite them to the next event, or asking, hey would you like to talk to the next event? Because what happened was that I came with an army of new people, it was very noisy but it was a crowd (giggle) and I think that’s the best forward, just keep inviting other people.
S: They have some challenges to new people, they have repeated guests but they have a problem with inviting new people. It then poses the challenges of they are inviting the same people only, so it’s like they are not getting other perspectives because it’s one sided.
Sh: Yeah I feel you, I think another way to do it is to invite key speaker – it’s what we do on our events, we invite key speakers on a big subject, so it attracts a crowd people can relate to. I think also doing face-to-face marketing, like ‘hey we’re having this dinner, would you like to attend, it’s tomorrow’, I’d probably need new information before going further, but yeah I’d like to help. I think you can get a long way with social media, because people post everything there and so you get… You can also do a story telling there, maybe do an Instagram take over of a specific person and you can follow them and have these stories, to get a crowd to follow you. Most people just go on there and especially the stories instead of posts, because people have these story telling quotes and people can read on somewhere. Just to have an appearance on social media and online presence.
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S: I don’t have any further questions. Thank you for your time and for talking to me.
Sh: Of course, this is not going to be posted anywhere right, it’s only for your research?
S: No it’s only for internal research.
Sh: Okay, well, I’m so glad I could help. Let me know if you have any more questions.
Interview 8 William, 8 October 2018
S: Can you start with an introduction, your name, age, educational background, profession, etc.
W: My name is William Leman, I’m 30 now. I have a bachelor’s in computer science. I’m a shop keeper in a sporting goods shop.
S: How did you know about CB?
W: I know it from my friend, Sienny. I knew nothing before.
S: So it was your first experience with CB, right? Before that you haven’t heard of them?
W: Nope.
S: …And you know SpisDating from them?
W: Yes, from CB.
S: What was your first impression of, both the organization and SpisDating?
W: When I joined SpisDating… it’s a multicultural organization that has different people from different places. It’s a nice and cozy place. I didn’t join SpisDating that much, but I did join twice.
S: Can you tell me your personal experience about SpisDating?
W: The one that I still remember, where Jacob Holt was the speaker. He was talking about hitch hiking 200- thousand something miles in America. I think it’s quite fascinating, because he’s a white man and he said he only stayed in black communities, staying with gangsters and so on. I thought it was courageous, especially for him – he had multiple attacks, even rape. He always said, ‘if you think someone is a monster then it’ll be real’. So, I thought, wow… At the end, his son and daughter, they both did the same thing he did. One of them is in Africa and the other I think in South America. Maybe it was the only SpisDating that I’ve been…
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But it think it was very… It made me look the world in a different way. After that, I made a few travels to Iran, not a particularly safe place with all the bombings , but it wasn’t that bad, so…
S: Is that because you heard what Jacob Holt said? About demonizing people?
W: Yeah, I think I try to… not label people as what we think they are, or what the media think they are. They are just people.
S: Is that what you learned from SpisDating?
W: Yes! I only attended one, and the other…
S: What was your motivation to attend?
W: I think it was just random. I’d only been in Denmark that time for 1 or 2 weeks and Garba mentioned there was a SpisDating with Jacob Holt, I didn’t even know him and there was one female friend saying that she wanted to go, so I said sure, why not.
S: I wanted to ask you about you assisting in cooking in one of SpisDating events. What was the motivation on that?
W: I think it was for the same reason, because the friend that wanted to cook that day, we became friends before and I think it was also because a matter of being the same age, so I just wanted to help her.
S: So Garba asked her to cook and you wanted to help?
W: Yep!
S: What did you get from helping her? Did you learn anything from the experience?
W: Yeah! I learned how to make Korean food (laugh), and I think after catering for a big amount of people, I appreciate the fact that being a cook isn’t easy, especially because at that time we were making rice balls – I made some of them bigger and the others smaller (laugh), so I think seeing people eating them and no complaints it was like okay, haha. If anything at all they could complain to the cook, not to me, I was just helping her (laugh).
S: Do you think the element of food in SpisDating is important? Serving food from different countries?
W: Yes. I think food and beverages – they are the way to connect to people without even talking. You can speak different languages but if you want to introduce something, the best way is through food. Everyone needs to eat. Like, I saw Indomie in one of the Asian shops (Indomie is a brand of Indonesian instant noodles, red) – no one knew it, only my African friend, she was the only one that knew, and apparently it is very famous
127 in Africa. After I introduced Indomie to my friends in Denmark – we played some games and I brought Indomie as presents for those who win the game – they didn’t even know it existed, so here you go, Indonesian food. I think I wanted to buy something to make an Indonesian food, like nasi goreng and I did make it, and I saw Indomie so I bought it.
S: Do you think Indomie represents Indonesian food and culture?
W: It’s a though question… It may not be, but it’s an Indonesian trademark, I guess. From the poor people and rich people, they eat Indomie. It’s not a fancy steak or nasi bungkus (a type of rice with assorted vegetables and diced meat, typically sold quite cheap)
S: So, you think food has the power to do that, to merge people and make this hierarchy blur? Does it apply to any types of food?
W: Not any types of food – I think when you visit some countries there are some food items that are consumed by lower or higher ranked people, but you can find some food that everyone eats regardless of ranks.
S: Do you think that happens in SpisDating, when the hierarchy blurs and people eat together despite their social or economic background they are in? Do you see it in SpisDating?
W: I think so. I cannot say for the others, but I experienced it myself. When I ate there I tried to start a conversation with strangers – some of them were famous journalists – but it was nice for a conversation starter.
S: Do you think there’s any impacts of SpisDating after attending it? Maybe you learned something or you get inspired, what were the impacts for you?
W: Yeah, like I said Jacob Holt inspired me to travel and to have no fear… Well maybe not to not have fear but how to deal with fear and not put labels on people. Another one is to appreciate the cooks.
S: How does it play out in your life currently?
W: Actually, after being in Denmark for 6 months, before I didn’t cook so much but now I tried to at least once a week cook for myself, not something fancy, but I did it myself. I think it’s good because I can then make it however I want to – I cook more now.
S: How was the cooking process at SpisDating? Did they decide the menu beforehand, did you have any say on the process?
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W: No I was just the help, and I am a good soldier, I didn’t ask any question (laugh).
S: Do you think the Korean food you made with her before represented the exact food you’ll find in Korea?
W: Yes I think it’s an authentic Korean dish, although I think rice balls are a thing in East Asian culture, like in Japan and Korea. I think there’s slight difference between them. In Korea they have round ones and in Japan they shape it into a triangle instead of a ball.
S: You mentioned something about rice being a staple food in South East Asia, do you think the dynamic of food in SpisDating has any effect on stereotype?
W: Well, I cannot say stereotyping through food. Some of my Danish friends like to eat rice and some don’t, for example. However, most Asians do eat rice, but this is not a negative stereotype. This is from my point of view, because when I see food I eat it, I’m a simple man (laugh). I think food is innocent, it’s the people that give it labels.
S: What I’m trying to analyse is how SpisDating utilizes food in not an ‘innocent’ way to attract people to attend SpisDating. And they are not serving Danish food I guess it’s simply because they are in Denmark and people can easily get Danish food there, but something like Korean rice balls is difficult to find in Denmark, unless you make them yourselves. It is my hypothesis that it is not innocent, it is actually made for an agenda, one of main attractions in SpisDating beside the guest speaker talking. They utilize cultural food to attract people to SpisDating.
W: I still believe the food in itself is innocent, even the ones who make it – such as my friend and me, we didn’t have any agenda – but for the ones who asked, then yes. But that’s a different thing – we were just asked if we wanted to cook. I cannot say… it might be, but you never know for sure unless you ask them. I think it’s still a hypothesis.
S: Sure, I just wanted to make sure I cover different angles that’s related to SpisDating, and that’s also why I interview different people that are related to CB, or those who are not. I’d like to move to the bigger topic of multiculturalism in Denmark. As you know, CB advocate themselves to be diversity-inclusive organization. I’m trying to assess how SpisDating has any effect on multiculturalism: whether it’s breaking, supporting, how it affects it in anyway. Can you begin by telling me, according to your experience, the state of multiculturalism in Denmark?
W: Multiculturalism for me is kind of biased. How do you define multiculturalism? Having a bunch of different colours in a group doesn’t mean it’s multicultural. I mean, if you have a group and you’re not only single coloured, then you say ‘oh we are multi coloured, multicultural group’ – no I don’t think so.
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S: What is your definition of multiculturalism?
W: Honestly, I never thought of it before. I live in Indonesia…
S: Indonesia as a country has already a lot of cultures…
W: Yes but we mostly only hang out with the Chinese, it’s kind of like one way… I spent most of my life this way. The time when I started to connect with other non-Chinese descendants in Indonesia only when I was maybe 20-21 years old. When I was a kid, my mother always said like ‘don’t hang out with the Javanese because they are bad and so and so.’ I never really thought about it. It’s hard for me to describe, but I think multiculturalism means to be inclusive and to be open to any races.
S: How is your personal experience in Denmark telling you about this? Is Denmark inclusive?
W: Well, technically when you are in the school (Krogerup Højskole, red), everything looks okay. When you see DF, they are in power and you think, they’re crazy! There’s also another woman I can’t remember her name – I saw her in Bornholm. She said: ‘if I want to see people in their different ethnic backgrounds, I just go travel. I want to wake up, open my door and see other people who look like me.’ I wasn’t sure who she was, but she’s from the party with the green logo. This one is also a rising political party. How the political parties shifted from the left to this, it’s…
S: How do you see on the social level, when you make friends, for example, how do you experience that?
W: I think it’s a bit complicated. When I first joined the class, everyone was quite welcoming. But now when I think about it, it’s kind of like when you go to the zoo, ‘ooh, there’s an Indonesian tiger, there’s a Korean monkey.’
S: So are you saying they are putting you in a box?
W: Yeah it’s like there is an Indonesian. No matter what you do, you cannot be Danish. This is funny to see that even some of the Danes don’t blend in.
S: So there’s this barrier that prevents you to ‘be one of them’?
W: I think you’ll never be one of them. Because, well… you don’t speak the language, you don’t share the same look.
S: If you did say the language fluently, integrated in the culture, but you look Asian, for example…
W: No, then you’ll never be Danish. Maybe they will say it, but when you’re in Denmark, they don’t think you’re Danish.
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S: Did you experience this kind of feeling when you communicated with them?
W: It wasn’t like that, but I am the type of person that goes to talk to people when they don’t start the conversation. With the Japanese for example, I am not stereotyping all Japanese being quiet, but in my class there were 6 Japanese students that were very quiet. So when they don’t attend (social gathering, red), people ask me where they are. But they are only asking for the sake of it, not that they are actually going to look for them. It’s just like… sweet talk. They are not really concerned about it. I don’t think after 6 months, I got many Danish friends. Maybe just one.
S: Is it because they are difficult to…
W: Break into? Yes.
S: Breaking into sounds very violent (laugh), but… to connect.
W: (laugh) yes, to connect, to bond with. I think it is. I also think because the jokes are different. Jokes are one of the things I think can make people easier to join the conversation – but their jokes are different, even from the European standard. My British friend and my American friend, they are funny – but the Danes? They are… weird. I don’t get it. One of them was a bit provocative. One after party, he streamed something like ‘pussy and dick’ and I just didn’t get it… If you say that in Indonesian or English, no one is going to think you’re funny. But they were like a bunch of guys, they were laughing. Someone even drew the Nazi’s symbol, and he thought it was funny. I don’t think it was funny at all – maybe I didn’t understand the context, but I don’t think that’s funny.
S: Do you think they had the intention to do it?
W: I think they unconsciously did it. They don’t think that’s provocative. They didn’t think ‘what if I was the Japanese’, for example. They were never on the other side. Denmark is a rich country, and even the poorest people are still ‘rich’ in standard. If you have that kind of privilege and you live your whole life in that safety net, then you wouldn’t think… I think Denmark is good for traveling, but maybe for living… they have a different way…
S: Do you think it’s because they are homogeneous and not exposed too much to different cultures?
W: Maybe, that’s why I said, the political parties and the government have something to do with that. The first time I travelled to Europe was to Denmark and Berlin. It’s like I saw two different countries. At first I thought Europe was just a bunch of whites, but it’s not. In Denmark, it’s quite rare to see blacks, and I am saying this because it’s just easy to say black, but in Berlin you don’t only see blacks, you see Asians, everything. Not in Copenhagen, not that much.
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S: Have you experienced any racism?
W: I don’t think it’s racism. I think it’s the… how do you call it? We made a joke, me and a friend of mine at school. We had 126 students with only 20 guys and 100 females, then I said ‘oh I like my odds’. Another person, she is an African American Danish, she didn’t look like the typical white Dane, and she was like, ‘no, no, no, I don’t think you do. She did not say that to the whites – my Brit friend – she only said it to me. I think it’s because I am Asian. Asians are not so famous among Europeans.
S: Why do you think so?
W: I don’t know… small dicks? (laugh) dickscrimination? I think that’s the simplest thing to say. I think in the US they are more exposed to a lot more Asians, but here they only have… I don’t know… The funny thing is that she only said it to me and not my other friend, even though we made the same jokes. She looked at me.
S: Do you think it’s somehow there’s this unconscious type kind of racism going on in Denmark?
W: One of my friends said that it’s not racism but it’s more ignorance. Cannot say it’s racist, because you hate someone with different colours than you, but this is just them not relating. I think personally people should be fine with jokes, as long as they are just jokes, not something that’s meant to offend you. But many people don’t find certain jokes funny and this is where it gets tricky.
S: So your cultural experience in Denmark, anything that surprises you?
W: Yeah. The first thing is when we take a bath (at the folk highschool, red). Everyone just goes butt naked to the shower, they have the clothes hanger outside the shower so you have to strip outside. The second one is in winter time, they do winter bathing in the nudes, but in summer time they wear bikinis. It seems wrong – you need to put more clothes in winter and not the other way around (laugh). Those are the most memorable things.
S: Did you interact with Danes with different cultural backgrounds. You mentioned about a girl with American Danish background…
W: Yeah she’s British Danish. There’s also one Chinese Danish, and one African Danish. The African Danish always spoke Danish, the British and Chinese Danish joined us the international students more than the Danes. I don’t know why, maybe because they don’t live in Denmark. She lives in the UK and the Chinese one lives in Hong Kong – they do speak perfect Danish though. I think we also have someone from French- speaking country, with Danish parents. She also hung out with us more than the Danes.
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S: Do you think there’s some sense of belonging within the mix background? Let’s just say us, people with immigrant backgrounds that settled in Indonesia. You mentioned something about your mother back then expected you to only play with the other Chinese kids. How do you see yourself now? How does it affect your sense of belonging, your identity as a person? Do you relate yourself as being Chinese or being Indonesian?
W: I present myself as an Indonesian. I may look Chinese but I don’t speak Chinese at all. It’s stupid for the older generation to say that they are Chinese, because they are not. If you look at the story of the Chinese revolution, the ones that ran away they were branded as traitors, among the hardships they ran. It’s like being an outcasts. All the mixed races gathered together in school, it might be because of this. Maybe the Brit, when he’s there he doesn’t feel 100% British because he is not ‘real British’, if you can’t relate then you gonna make a new group.
S: How do you think SpisDating fits into this matter? How do you define SpisDating?
W: I think SpisDating is where you can see people from different racial backgrounds. In Denmark we don’t see that many people from different ethnic groups. The setting was actually more kind of a lecture, with food. Not food with lecture. You still sit on the table and have someone talking in front, like a U-shaped table. I liked the topic at the time, so I was invested more on the speaker.
S: How do you think SpisDating contribute to the matter of multiculturalism in Denmark?
W: As a space I think the basic principle of it is to provide room for ‘the outcasts’- this sounds bad but if you cannot get accepted outside then here you may find people to help you. Some people have more experience and stay in Denmark longer, it empowers people and encourages people.
S: Do you think there’s a danger of living in this bubble?
W: Yes. I think it’s the same with everything in life, you have a safe zone and people are afraid of conflicts. I think conflicts is good because it makes you change.
S: Do you see conflicts happening in CB and SpisDating?
W: Not in SpisDating. But in one of Garba’s classes, he invited someone who worked with the government called Alex. He asked me ‘imagine if you were a judge and you went to South America and there was a tribe that killed babies in the name of tradition. If they don’t kill babies then the crops will die and so on… What would you do?’ I then said, well if it was up to me, I couldn’t judge – I am an outsider, who am I to judge? But some of my class mates had very strong opinions about it, they were mad. They said it’s a murder and you cannot justify murders. Yeah, it’s murder for you, but it’s different for them. This class was very interesting because there were a lot of frictions in it. Some of them who never spoke, spoke.
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With the matter of living in a bubble, I believe there are people who think, ‘hey this is a nice place to say, everything is nice here’, I think it’s probably the same with the Danes. They just want Denmark to remain the same. But it’s a bit unfair to blame it to the conservatives. Imagine if you live in Jutland in a farm somewhere where your neighbours are all white. Then there are 4-5 black people or Middle Eastern or Asians, then they would wonder, ‘oh who are they?’ It’s not because they are racist but because they were not exposed to other cultures. I think people with different ethnic groups they don’t go to Jutland, they go to Copenhagen. So, its unfair to the Danes if we say they are racist. They don’t want to be racist but they just don’t see that much. I met a Danish family through couch surfing, they’ve lived in Poland before and several others, they were like nomads. I got invited, so I don’t think they were racists.
S: Sure, but racism does exist in different levels. For example, exoticism could also be argued to be a part of racism.
W: Yeah but that wasn’t what I got. It was more like an exchange of experience. It was in Helsingør and I wanted to stay for free and I found couch surfing.
S: How do you think SpisDating can affect social change towards multiculturalism? Or do you think it can?
W: I think at this point it lacked conflict.
S: What would you suggest?
W: More provocative topics? You have to understand that when you come to CB, as long as you don’t mean to attack others then it would be fine. Sometimes people get provoked by things they shouldn’t and they cannot learn that way. If you want to learn you have to be open to every aspect. It has the potential to provoke change in people.
S: What about political changes?
W: I think if CB was to be a movement, then I think they are still a long way. It’s hard, but doable. I am not sure how many organizations work or look like CB. I think it can provoke change, but it needs more activism and more energy. You do a lot of theories but they need to mobilize people. At school (Krogerup Højskole, red) they had some students who did activism things, they had posters and banners – I think this is a good time. Like a demonstration.
S: So you think they are more of the passive side?
W: I think they do a lot of talks, such as SpisDating and all. Somehow they need more… Someone that wants to get their hands dirty. Go to the streets and do these things.
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S: Well, one of the core values of CB is peace. Do you think this is what causes them to move towards this kind of activities because demonstration could turn into something violent?
W: I think you can change the act – you just want to make something invisible to visible. It doesn’t have to involve shouting and screaming. It just needs more creative way of thinking. How can we make people understand, they need to raise awareness. I think SpisDating right now is more internal than public. The people who attended it, mostly not that many. You will see the same faces. It’s not reaching up to… You should see it as, why Danes aren’t interested in coming. There are some of them, but they are the same faces. Not like someone from DF, for example. It means that they are reaching the wrong people.
S: How did you think you contribute, when you attended SpisDating? Or did you think you contribute?
W: I think I contributed to the extent that I helped them with the cooking. When I went back to school I shared my experience listening to Jacob Holt, because he’s also quite famous. I repeated that statement a lot that I got from him, ‘when you demonize people then they become the demons’. I am not sure to what extent my message goes through those I spoke to, some people think sure it’s cool, but that’s it.
Interview 9 Gabriel, 26 October 2018
S: Let’s start with an introduction of yourself: your name, what you do, how long you’ve lived here, and things like that.
G: Okay, so my name is Gabriel Botton, I am French and I have been living here on and off for 5 years. I am a student at RUC, in international humanities in English, not in Danish because I don’t really speak Danish.
S: How did you hear about the organization the first time?
G: I was feeling depressed at the time and I just had a big period of depression – I thought I had to get myself together and I decided to go to the Danish højskole. I wanted to do it in English because my Danish is really not up to par. I found out by chance that there was a place called CB at Krogerup Højskole. I did browsing online, but I learned about this through my parents’ connections, from my mum who worked at the university at the time. We then went to visit Louisiana museum and at the same time went to have a look at CB which had some presentation about the program. I was already in Denmark then.
S: Didn’t you study before RUC?
G: Yes I did one year of university level and another year, both times in Biology and figured it was not for me.
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S: Did you hear SpisDating only recently?
G: Yeah I think half a year ago, from you. I knew when I learned what it was, that it was a part of CB.
S: But you haven’t attended before?
G: No, I wasn’t even sure what it was before…
S: That leads me to the next question, after attending it, what do you think SpisDating is about?
G: It’s both socialization and awareness program that helps people to be more aware about some issues, in this case it’s about human rights but linked to culture. I mean, in my head it’s rather clear that human rights and cultures are linked together. That’s the impression I got.
S: How did you find it?
G: I got a good impression of it overall. It was very hyggeligt. The place is really nice, the people, and the food – a part of coriander (laugh). Other than that, I thought what the presenter had to say was rather interesting. I disagreed on some parts, but then aren’t we always… But other parts I found interesting. I already knew what she had to say, so nothing really new about it.
S: How come?
G: I love culture and history in general. I learned about the Kurdish situation – more about politics and administrations – and about the repression of women. I know that the language group of Kurds and Turkic people often have familial societies where the elders in the family… they can decide for you. That was not surprising for me.
S: You mentioned the food was nice. Do you think, as the event is called SpisDating, the food in this event plays a particular role?
G: Not necessarily, but I’d say it’s essential. It’s an opportunity to find new things, which you go there initially for, right. I didn’t know about certain things, the rice for example, I didn’t know this way of making it and I thought it was really nice. It’s also about making people aware of both the situation and about learning something. Having a good atmosphere is very important in this, and food is the way to go. If there’s food, people tend to get cozier together.
S: What about the people, some people get intimidated when there’s a lot of people from different background.
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G: The impression I got, possibly because there were a lot of people, but people already knew each other and they were talking in their small groups. I didn’t really meet people – I talked with one guy, he was a Spanish- Bask, the region between France and Spain. Basically, we just got to talking because Andrew said ‘hey this person speaks French’.
S: How did you know that people already knew each other?
G: It was a new environment for me and I usually get rather attentive. I just looked around and see the same people talking in their respective languages, usually English but some people also spoke Danish among themselves. And to be honest they also looked very Danish – how do I describe ‘looking very Danish’? – hmm, I don’t know, like, long blondish hair, about the same age, quite an amount of make up but that’s not necessarily Danish (laugh). They had the same vibe about them, and that’s the thing with Danes they usually group up with people that have the same vibe.
S: Do you think this only happens among Danish people?
G: Not necessarily in Danish people only, but it’s especially strong within the Danish culture – like they form clans. I actually read something about it before and I thought it was interesting, when they said it was very clanic and have your circle of friends.
S: Does it happen in your culture?
G: I wouldn’t know, because I am French and I describe myself as French, but mainly because I have French ancestry, my parents are French and I have friends in France, but the people close to my age they are usually not French, and the few friends that I have, there are already multicultural people. I wouldn’t say I have French background.
S: And also because you have lived in several countries before, right?
G: Yes, exactly.
S: How did you find the story? I know that you said it was not surprising for you, but a lot of what was said was her reflection of her life story.
G: Yes, and that’s the thing that I found interesting. Reading about it is one and hearing it first hand is another story, so although I thought she was a little too confident, bordering arrogant, but she also seemed like… A good person that’s trying to make good. She’s reflecting on her actions, and painting a different image than what you usually hear from nationalists and the news, which I never listen to because I think it’s bullshit.
S: You mentioned something about you disagreeing on some thoughts of hers?
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G: The people who oppress her, I thought when I heard her, that she guessed she knew exactly how they were, I thought there were more complexities to it than what she depicted. But this is already a judgement. She was deeply emotionally involved, which is caused by what she’s been through of course, but she is still a little bit too opinionated about who she is opposing. Maybe what she said was entirely true, but she didn’t meet the bulk of the people she’s opposing, and she didn’t understand the bulk of people she’s opposing. I am not saying that it’s reprehensible – you cannot find out everything, that’s why you need other people to have different opinions. I remember another thing, it was, for some reason I thought post-structuralism at that time. Because she didn’t fully understand, for me the outside opinion of the culture that she was depicting was post-structuralist analysis. It’s basically the lense that I use to see her discourse.
S: Very much RUC of you (laugh).
G: Exactly, very much a humanity student in general (laugh).
S: Did you learn anything from the event, taking consideration of different things such as the structure of the event, the people, or even the strategies that have been put in place?
G: Maybe their way of showcasing the event, making the event, I thought it was very constructive way of doing things. Although it relies only on one speaker – there was some debate or questions, but I don’t know… Garba was not talking much and he already agreed before she started talking. If you want to learn more then you need more than one perspective.
S: SpisDating is usually not conducted in this talk-show manner, it is usually one speaker up there telling their story, it’s not to be like a panel debate – of course people can ask – from what I have heard before, there were one or two, not arguments but people asking strong questions. Did you see that yesterday?
G: No, it was basically one-sided. Even the questions that were asked were pretty much in line with what she was thinking. But from what you described, the talk, it sounds more constructive because one thing I could possibly think negatively, not bad, but I feel like they could do better in involving the audience because this way you tend to be more critical on your personal opinions. The usual SpisDating that you described seems better. It’s of course got this limitation because they have to do it with less people when you do a round the table discussion.
S: They claimed that usually they keep it about 20 people to make it more private atmosphere where people can ask questions. But I think yesterday I assumed that it was because she is a famous person, an author, that’s why a lot of people showed up.
Moving on to multiculturalism part, what is the state of multiculturalism in Denmark from your point of view?
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G: I’d say Denmark has disparities when it comes to multiculturalism. Copenhagen is very multicultural as well as Aarhus, from the people that I know are living there. Then there’s Jutland and they are kind of multicultural, they learn German there and there’s this German-Danish culture thing but it’s kind of… It’s a different category of multiculturalism, because in that area, Denmark and Germany are close and kind of the same, from my opinion.
S: What kind of multiculturalism that you’re talking about? A physical multiculturalism?
G: Everything, like… For me, multiculturalism are both the people meeting a lot of people from different backgrounds as well as social, cultural events. You can have a country with people from all over the world but as long as they are doing cultural events only for the majority culture, it’s not going to be multicultural.
S: What about politically?
G: Politically… Well, it’s Denmark, right? Honestly, it seems like politics in Copenhagen is rather different that politics in other places, because Denmark is multicultural but the majority of the population lives in areas where they don’t see foreigners, so I think politically Denmark is quite right-wing. I think the right wing’s political system leeches off the bad rep of foreigners, immigrants in particular, that they see are inherently dangerous.
S: Is that why you said you don’t watch the media?
G: That’s one of the reasons, I feel like the media is just dumb. TV is dumb. Even news are, most of the time, it feels like they don’t show interesting things. Some are just plain… ‘oh this news is gonna work so well so lets just feed them that’ and most of the time it’s the same thing.
But about multiculturalism in Denmark, there’s a lot of diasporas. Both national diasporas and religious diasporas. There is a big French community in Copenhagen with strong French events few times a year. I don’t usually attend because its not my cup of tea, but it exists. There’s a big population of French in Denmark, and with French-Danish or French-anything else, a lot of them.
S: Correctly if I am wrong, but what I am hearing from you is: socially and culturally Denmark caters for different cultures, seen from events, but then there’s another layer which is a political layer that doesn’t cater for these people.
G: Yes and no. As long as they are ‘Danish’ the government caters for them. But there’s also a lot of inequality between the neighbourhoods – that’s what they try to make it.
S: Are you talking about the ghettoism?
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G: Kind of, but I don’t know much anything about it, I just heard I think it was in Roskilde – they had different rules for different neighbourhoods, financial and legal, that’s one of the laws they want to pass. Usually people from the same diasporas usually stay in the same neighbourhoods, because they know these people are closer to them. Another thing is, my life is multicultural, but I am a middle-class person. I think it’s more complicated for lower class – I don’t like saying that – to be more multicultural. There’s less diversity simply because there’s less opportunities. I was thinking of the Arabic speaking communities which live in Nørrebro most of the time.
S: Are you saying that, because they are immigrants therefore their opportunities are limited?
G: I am not saying because they are immigrants, or because of their limited financial means, but the people in Nørrebro, they are more limited than middle class people – in terms of cultural diversity they are more limited.
S: Why do you think that is? Is it because they don’t have the resources to move?
G: That, and possibly their own cultures that are restraining them. Like, because they have very strong cultural belonging. I don’t have a strong cultural belonging, maybe that’s why it’s easier for me to mingle with… an Indonesian for example, you. But then again, you’re a middle-class educated Indonesian person that’s lived abroad, so… We’re more of the same people. You’re probably much closer to me than a French person from some kind of ghettos in France.
S: You’re arguing basically, there’s a connection between multiculturalism and social-economic background.
G: Oh yeah, definitely. I don’t know why it is like it is, but both in my observation and a few articles I’ve read for my projects, that was the case. It was a strong factor between these.
S: So, the less money you have, the less multicultural you are?
G: Statistically. My previous project was about multiculturalism in Denmark and I read an article probably from the US that covers it. I think it’s more about lacking opportunities and having more immediate goals. I have no problem with money, for example, so I’m looking to find something that interests me, which would probably be different if I had less money, right?
S: Connecting this to SpisDating, do you think it has any impact on multiculturalism in Denmark?
G: Yes and no. As I have said before, I observed that the people who were there, they were all from middle- class, all of them. All from slightly left-ist background like me. Certainly, they were from different nationalities, but they were all the same in a way. So basically the social miljø, environment, that it concerns
140 get more diverse, you get people from different parts of the world – you may even meet new ideas, but it’s more class-restricted I’d say. That’s what I thought from a lot of my observation of culture in general – it seems more or less the same with SpisDating, because they mostly come from middle-class background.
S: Does it posit as a limitation?
G: It is, but then again you could argue that the middle class is usually the ‘thinking class’, they are the ones that are usually producing articles and stuff like that, they are the ones that usually spread the knowledge. But it’s still limiting factor that its only from the middle-class.
S: Do you think the attendants of SpisDating could potentially be inspired to turn this into more of a social action?
G: Not in SpisDating itself, but possibly in the people that go there. Garba is already someone who goes into action in his own way. I mean, putting together people that have thoughts that they may not necessarily know, so that they learn more, talk more…
S: Providing the space?
G: Exactly, providing the space is already a move forward. If you didn’t have any place to talk face-to-face, talking online is not necessarily the same, then probably there would be less moving, less action. It’s also a way to let people know the already existing fights that people are leading, like Sara Omar, she’s already leading her fight actively. That was a way to advertise her cause and make a fundraiser or something like that. I’d say yes, actually, after reflecting, yes. It’s a way of, just not a direct way.
S: Do you think there’s a danger of this space turning into a bubble for certain people? You mentioned that you saw the ‘same’ people attended.
G: To an extent, yes. It’s mainly a closed area, a field, but as long as you’re willing to extend a hand and ask, they are open. I think it can turn into a bubble, especially if they are only meeting up in this place and only listening to the same people, they have to have more diversity if they want to not be closed in a bubble.
S: What about, from what we saw yesterday, the fact that there was no conflict or arguments?
G: Arguing always contributes, I hate those heated arguments because its uncomfortable, but providing different points of views is necessary to keep an open mind, and that’s what they’re there for, right. They want to keep an open mind to make things better.
S: Do you think that’s the contribution from the attendees? Or do you think they contribute at all?
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G: I am not sure, to be honest. Because I mean, unless they are already a bit driven to changing things, such as social active people, I don’t think it’s going to change much. It didn’t, and probably won’t change for me – but then again I am a selfish person – other than that, there’s one interest, it lets people meet relatively new things. So, it’s got an informative value. The problem is it needs to reach a lot of people, different people, if you want to not stay in a bubble. As long as the people that go there interact with people outside of these meetings. If they meet with people with different opinions they will reflect, so as long as there’s this social environment where they have differences, it’s okay. If they only lived in the same place with the same people, listening to the same thing, going to a place where they meet people who think the same as them, then its not gonna change much.
It can go either way. If they are socially active, taking actions to make things better, they won’t have that problem. They are going to meet directly with people who have different viewpoints and they’re going to learn first-hand from different people through experience.
I’d say SpisDating is about informative value.
Fieldnotes 1 SpisDating 20 September 2018
Guest Speaker: Charline Skovgaard
Cuisine: Syrian
There is something different in today’s SpisDating, as I brought one of my interviewees, Marcus Krebs for the first time to SpisDating. As the event proceeded it became clear to me that on this session is my opportunity to focus on Marcus as one of the major elements of my fieldwork today. His experiences, his expressions and his comments are recoded in this fieldnotes.
Marcus doesn’t usually come to gatherings, nor that he cares to – as he as made clear to me earlier. He is usually not interested in attending seminars and talks, but as I have invited him, here he is. As we walked in, we were greeted by Garba, the founder of the organization. “I didn’t expect to see him here” Marcus said. I then explained how this event is operated by CB (CB). Marcus knows Garba, as he has studied at the school where Garba teaches.
“I don’t feel so comfortable here, I feel like people judge me.” Marcus proceeded to tell me. He felt this way as if he had walked into the enemy’s headquarter: Marcus is pro Liberal Alliance, and he considered it to be
142 the opposite of the ‘red’ as he calls them. It was intriguing how he felt intimidated, while no one in the room said anything to him – it’s his unconscious that is putting him on the edge. Not sure how he labelled the rest of the group as ‘red’, but it would be worth looking into on his interview session. As he was browsing through the pamphlets and brochures in the room, he saw one with an Asian, Indian, and Ghanaian students on the cover of the magazine-like brochure that CB has produced. “How multicultural. I don’t see a European though. Discrimination can also happen the other way around, you know.” He commented, before further enjoying the music, something that he made him “feel like I’m in Morocco”. The food presentation did not cover much because the cooks had to leave early before the event started, but they briefly explained that they were serving ‘typical Syrian food’ today, consists of flat bread, different types of dippings (hummus and sour cream), rice with minced beef as well as its vegetarian alternative, and green beans and squashed tomatoes. I just realized how I have never tasted Syrian food other than in SpisDating (it was not my first time having Syrian food in SpisDating), it made me wonder if it really was ‘typical Syrian food’ – what is typical? A question I can’t really answer, as I need to sample Syrian food from other places too before making a judgement. Marcus seemed to enjoy himself at this point, even having a second portion of the beef rice even though he was “still full from lunch”.
As I looked around, I see many familiar faces, as always in SpisDating – they seem to have many repeated attendees, with up to five of them had involved in some volunteer work in CB either through internships or European Volunteering Service (EVS). I started wondering if SpisDating has become more of an internal dinner party than a source of ‘open dialogue’ as CB’s tagline suggests. After all, discussing things over with those from the inner circle is not really having an ‘open dialogue’ with those exist outside the circle. I felt the urge to pursue this question further.
After dinner, as usual everyone introduced themselves and I counted the nationalities – it was 17 nationalities today, and there were around 20 attendees, the usual average size of SpisDating. The talk today was about being a Social Entrepreneur, with the guest speaker Charline Skovgaard, a Danish mother of 3, aged 49 that has done many social business projects. “I feel very much home in India, I’m from everywhere” quoting Charline, after she introduced herself. Her background is mainly in the fashion industry, however from the early age she was already involved with small projects that involved her with production of arts and costumes. From her early fashion education, she was challenged by many, due to the unproductive industry. Charline, being a strong-willed person, continued to march forward and reached her first success when she became a host on the first fashion program on TV 2, where she worked with Naomi Campbell.
The nudges that kept on bothering her despite her success is how ‘harsh’ the fashion industry can be, both for environment and the professionals that work with it, including the models. After an incident that resulted
143 in a model she employed being sent to the hospital, she decided to quit the fashion industry and took a trip to the Himalayas, where she met the monks residing locally. I couldn’t help myself to think that this is where her life story made a turn to the other direction, as it usually involves a narrative of ‘path of enlightenment’ that encourages someone to be a ‘better person’. Charline proceeded to explain how the monks told her that her path couldn’t be clearer – she had to keep on walking straight, and she would find a way. Charline, puzzled and doubtful, decided to take the advice with a grain of salt and moved on with her now-unemployed life. She came back to Denmark, unconsciously finding herself looking at this little empty store in Islandsbrygge, a place where she then rented to open fashion and beauty environmentally-conscious products. Her journey led her to a project in Greece, where the reality of refugee crisis then hit her hard, forcing her to feel like she had to contribute to help these people. Urging donations from her connection in the form of textile and clothing items, she managed to collect 200 tons of donation that was then sent to Lesbos. For the next approximately 5 months from that point, she went back and forth between Lesbos and Denmark, trying to set camps and help refugees. A period in which she put herself in the intersection between legality and illegality of laws in Greece, as setting camps was something that she did without establishing permission from the local government. “You don’t say no to me!” As Charline said, further proving her strong- will. This was proven further with her act of welcoming 7 Iraqi men into her home because they were deserted in Copenhagen main station after being denied access to Germany, an act that was supposedly punishable by law under the act of civil disobedience.
The following decades she advocated herself to fighting for workers rights in the fashion industry, such as places where cost of production is low (in China, Bangladesh, India, and so on), stating how “nobody should die for fashion”. Additionally, she focuses on environment friendly fashion and beauty products, as well as recycling, upcycling, and anything that has to do with bringing people and the environment to better conditions.
I don’t personally know much about the fashion industry and upcycling processes, however this story has many transferable universal values towards human rights, as Charline passionately showed us the picture of the collapse of fashion manufacturer in Bangladesh, with it burying many low paid workers. She urged the audience to make the conscious change, no matter how small, “it just starts with one person”, as she said. Whether it is to be more inclusive for refugees, to be more caring about the environment, she highlights how “there are a lot of excess things in this world, we can share it.” When asked the heated question of ‘why don’t you take this matter to the politicians, to make sure there’s a plan in place?’, she answered how “people would follow” if we make a lot of noises and urge the government to take action. “There are a lot of
144 people who like to give back”, as she put it, clearly indicating that she is one of the activists that adopt bottom up, grassroot approach.
One of the things that was remarkable for me was how, in the process of her doing good, the demonization process of ‘the others’ occurred. Statements such as “the top 5 richest people in the world can shut the globe down if they want to”, or the movement of taking a picture of McDonald’s plastic packaging and adding the #isthisyours, even the recommendation from one of the audience, suggesting to dump the packaging in front of McDonald’s store to prove a point, made me reflect on the notion of ‘the common enemy’ and the formation of ‘a target’ that needs to be fought. Is this the only source of motivation for change and action? The aggression that comes from the demonization can be seen in many NGOs, such as Green Peace, enforces the idea of two opposing axes in play: the good and the evil – urgently asking society to take sides. My reflections came to admitting the existence of 50 shades of grey that exist between black and white, however the discussion of multiculturalism as well as environment, climate change, globalization, religion, traditions, and identity – is often portrayed as black and white, without focusing on the multiplicity of layers between them.
Some reflections: I have no doubts that NGOs and everything involving their agenda (from charity to donations and inclusivity) do good, but would it be a slippery slope for those seeking approval and justification, to provide them with a safe bubble free of judgement and diminishing the needs to interact with people who exist outside the bubble?
Fieldnotes 2 SpisDating 13 september 2018
Guest sepaker: Dada Krsnasevananda
Cuisine: Thai
They served Thai today. As soon as I got in the conference room, I could smell it. Especially the coriander – I know this because I don’t really like coriander.
The room was not as full as usual, there were slightly more than 20 people sitting around the tables. I counted the nationality, there were 17 different nationalities attended in this SpisDating event, mostly from the EU countries, as well as the US and Asian countries.
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There was a bit of a little surprise today, as apparently, we had an extra initial storyteller. It was held in the beginning, not too long, just as an introduction. The guest was Özlem Cekic, a former Danish politician. As I did not expect this, I came a little late. When I got there, she was already speaking so I quickly pulled my notes.
“… Because when you share food, you share common interests between people.”
As she was saying this, she explained how she usually visits her guests in their homes, establishing the feeling of trust between them. She proceeded to mention some memories of her childhood, brought up in an environment where she used to dislike foreigners to a self-transformation that then became her eye-opening view of racism.
“To prevent hate you have to talk to as many people as possible”, she said as then proceeded to explain how dialogue and open debate are key to the avoidance of demonization of strangers.
“I have a challenge for all of you. Ask yourself this question: Who do you demonize? Then I want you to make contact with the person you’ve demonized.” As she said this, the silence from the audience felt as a reflection. A hard question that invited a response, not out loud, but an inner reflection of the self. I could not help but also seek who it is that I have demonized in my life, and how making contact with that person would not only bring an end to the hatred I’ve felt, but also a form of making peace with myself, trying to understand why I feel this way towards them. It is, however, by no means that this is an easy thing to do.
Özlem said how extreme opinions come from not knowing well enough about the other person. Therefore, “communication is the most important part of democracy, but also the hardest thing to do.” As she finished her speech, many of the audience nodded in agreement and gave applause.
Her short but powerful speech has left the audience feeling provoked yet inspired. It left us wondering about the ‘what-if’s, the different ways to reduce hate in society.
The Dinner
The event then proceeded with, as usual, an introduction of the food served today. As I have smelled it, it was surely enough, Thai food. The cook of the day is named Nice, a Thai lady who believes strongly about feminism, and how women’s role does not only cover the things related to the kitchen and bedroom, but also to give voice towards a more equal society. She is a political refugee here in Denmark, due to her activism back in Thailand.
“The food I cooked is as nice as my name.” As she proceeded with a humour, to shift the mood of the audience towards a more tantalizing flavours of the food we were about to enjoy. She explained that she
146 cooked rice noodles today among with tofu, coriander, mushroom, sprouts, fried dumplings and vegetable- base soup. She also served garlic oil and green spicy dipping that was supposedly derived from fish, however she made it vegan-friendly to accommodate for the guest speaker, Dada. She demonstrated how to serve and eat this Thai dish, the way Thai people do it. To add in sweetness, Nice also served Thai sweet bread that could be enjoyed before or after the main dish. The bread was filled with coconut and pandan puree, as it was traditional Thai sweet snack that used the two ingredients that are common in Thai cuisine.
This made me wonder if this Thai food is a modified version of the traditional recipe, as some traditional ingredients may not be available in Denmark. Would then this still be representative of Thai cuisine?
We talked while we ate dinner, as I asked how long Nice had prepared the dish for us and how she got all the ingredients. She admitted to having modified some of the ingredients in the food, as she wanted to use ‘the best’ possible Thai ingredients available in Copenhagen. This may mean that one Thai supermarket has specialty in their tofu, or their noodles, therefore she thought of how best utilize these ingredients to represent a Thai noodle dish.
“Because I cannot go back home, I try to remember all the recipes and tastes, and recreate it to remind me of the feeling of home.” As she explained how she made this dish, according to her memory of how it was made in Thailand. I felt how food was a powerful signifier of homeland for her, and how eating this dish means that she is creating a home far away from home. This was when I immediately asked her if she was willing to be interviewed for the purpose of the research. I was curious to get a deeper understanding of her relationship with food, and how she uses it to cook the dish at SpisDating. How does she project her identity to the way she cooked this dish, and shared ‘her home’ to the audience, and how does it impact the audience sense of identity?
The noodle soup tasted great, it had the sourness as one expects from Thai food (by no means overgeneralization, however all the Thai food I have encountered so far provided me with some level of sourness, as well as crushed peanuts and garlic), and many of the other audience agreed. One even said “this is probably the best Thai food I have ever tasted, even better than the ones I ate in Thailand itself!”. One audience asked if Nice had ever experienced ‘good’ Thai food in Copenhagen. She politely said no, and that’s one of the main reasons why she made Thai food herself instead of buying them. I guess the authenticity of traditional food is best performed homemade?
The Thai bread was softer than I had expected, with sweet smooth filling that, if you haven’t tasted pandan before, could be said as aromatic both to the nose and to the tongue. Nice told me that they used pandan and coconut a lot in Thai dishes – as someone who is from Indonesia, I can relate. As I enjoyed the bread, I
147 couldn’t help myself but to compare it to an Indonesian pandan dish I grew up with. It did bring back some memories, just by tasting a food that is remotely similar to the taste I’m used to.
The Storytelling
Dada began with his early life story of a child who was born in Montreal, however not knowing much about the country. He did, though, remember vividly the feeling of personal bliss and happiness as a child, while playing out in the field, as he looked up to the sun through a big tree. The sun rays shining from the leaves, sensed the glimmer to his face. Dada is very much a descriptive storyteller, who set the mood for the audience to dream, to imagine, to be in his memory with him, to see what he saw.
Growing up in Japan, Dada has plenty of experience being treated as ‘that weird foreigner’ who stands outside the inner circle of Japanese society. His university life in Australia, his spiritual journey to India and Bangladesh, Russia, Syria, and Japan began with the question of, what is the meaning of life? And how something was pushing him to seek something larger than life, where societies are divided by borders.
Dada’s interpretative nature means that he used a lot of metaphors and symbols to fuel his romantic side of life, in which he admitted played some part of his decision of becoming a monk. His journey took him from “the edge of madness” towards understanding fully of what it means to have universal love, love for humanity instead of love towards a certain woman. As he told his story of being engaged to be married, he said to her “I feel like I am going somewhere where you can’t come” – he didn’t know he wanted to be a monk then, but something within him kept on urging him to find that calling in life, something he could feel connected to, within the divided societies.
“I felt like I was standing on a long pier, with society behind me and a big dark ocean in front of me, just standing there waiting for a ship to come.” – He knew then that he was waiting for his spiritual guru to guide him. His journey led him to become a monk regardless of the social pressure from family, friends, and girlfriend that tried to convince him not to do it. As soon as his first training brought him to India, he was culture shocked. Never in his life had he experienced poverty before. He was ill due to lack of hygiene, mentally challenged due to his physical condition, and exhausted from wanting to make everything work. “I burned bridges to get to where I was, and then all I got is this?” – he was desperate to finally find what he was looking for, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Until one time he let go as he felt he couldn’t do it anymore, and then that moment of hope came. “I was cocooned in this sphere where I knew then, that I was going to be taken care of.” The moment of enlightment, where he knew that all he had to do was to dive to the unknown instead of desperately trying to make it work.
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Dada’s choice of wording seemed to have taken the audience on an immersive journey full of vivid atmosphere. The audience was captivated, frequently nodded in agreement as well as smiled on the corner of their lips, exchanging the look of ‘I know how that feels, I have been there too’.
“Fear comes from the unknown. The more you try to experience different things, the less your fear will be.”, as Dada suggested to do a leap of faith. To do something that you have never done before, do something stupid, and you will learn something. A cry was seen from an audience, who asked Dada a question of how he could cope with the feeling of unattachment of the society he lived in before. “If a daughter is jumping from the top of the staircase towards her dad, he will try his best to catch her. But if you don’t jump, there won’t be any hands to catch you.”, as Dada answered.
As a part of his teachings, dada has been working with yoga and meditation for all the active years he has been a monk. Why yoga? He said that yoga values universality of being human. Throughout his journey in different countries, meeting different kinds of people, yoga enabled him to share the value of welcoming.
The topics Dada discussed is very much spiritual, however the moral backdrop of the story is universal: Depression, feeling of dilemma, anxiety, fear of the unknown, dealing with failures, story of love, these are the things the audience can relate to, regardless of race, religion, and culture. The universal value of being human, and not seeing someone depends on race, paired with storytelling from personal experience to build connection among people from different background aligns with CB’s value of humanities and open dialogue.
Fieldnotes 3 SpisDating 25 October 2018
Guest Speaker: Sara Omar
Cuisine: Middle Eastern – Syrian, Lebanese
The chairs were staged differently today. As soon as I saw a mountain of shoes just left from the entrance I immediately know why – there were far more attendants today than the other SpisDating dinners. Every SpisDating event, or whenever someone visits the Ubuntu House, a place where CB office is located as well as the place where they hold SpisDating, people are expected to take off their shoes.
As I and my friend Gabriel, who I invited today to join me, struggled to find where we could keep our shoes so they would easily be found later on, my eyes went straight to the mountain of jackets piling up. It’s the end of October and the weather outside is getting colder, so we had to do what we normally do in Denmark:
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Shed our second skin (layers of jackets or sweaters along with thick scarves, gloves or any hats, beanies, you name it) as soon as we get indoor.
The food was outside in the main hall today, as the meeting hall was filled up from front to back with chairs, no table was seen. I calculated around 50-60 people attended today – a big number for SpisDating, as they usually have about 20 people. Roaming around this many people has proven to be slightly difficult, especially when you have half of the room filled with 2 big tables covered with food. We decided to greet some friendly faces and talked a little, catching up. This is Gabriel’s first time attending SpisDating. Although he was Garba’s student, he did not really keep in touch with the organization, so this meeting was the first in a long while. Many new faces were seen in the room – many known ones, too. A little bit after we arrived, the cooks began to present the food that we would be having today.
“First of all welcome to CB SpisDating. Second of all, we have Middle Eastern food today for you”. I found the first sentence to be a little bit out of place – they usually don’t mention the exact event name, normally they would just say ‘welcome’, but then counting the number of new faces today, I saw the need for a more formal greeting. The cooks apparently came from Denmark, the US, Lebanon, the UK, and Syria, so it seems that they were really preparing for a big crowd today. The presentation of the food was featured with a very brief, potentially subjective historical background of the dish, studded with some humor. Different types of dips: tzatziki, baba ganush, humus along with a flat bread, salad with a name that did not ring any bell, and roasted chicken with rice, beans, cashews and carrot were presented. It’s 5:30 in the evening and although it was quite early for dinner, I could not help myself getting intrigued by the looks of golden brown, glazed roasted chicken.
“I really like these rugs!” Gabriel said, while enjoying our dinner. “They are colourful and cozy, I enjoy stepping on them with bare feet” seems like my guest is enjoying his surroundings. I saw Gabriel talking to someone who is not familiar to me, when I excused myself to leave my dirty-now-empty plate in the kitchen.
The speech was about to commence, so the audience were requested to go inside the meeting hall. The room quickly got filled up, so we had to sit at the far back of the room, the furthest point from the speaker. The talk was designed differently today – it was more like a talk show than a speech. Garba was the host as usual, where he started by welcoming everyone and giving a short introduction about Sara Omar. I did not know who she was, but as soon as I heard the introduction, I found out that she is kind of a big deal: a successful author voicing women’s and children’s rights, representing the oppressed, with many copies of her book, Dead Washer, widely sold in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, soon to be published in France. No wonder many people showed up today, I thought to myself, getting reminded of what Jule’s said about ‘the celebrity effect’.
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As Sara was asked to introduce herself, she began with her story trying to get her book published in Kurdistan, where she had difficulties doing so due to her being a woman. She even once tried to change her name on one of the revealing articles she wrote into a man’s name to see if the reaction she got would be the same. Her identity as a male writer did not invite any complaints or critiques as her female counterpart did. “Equality for women need to be spoken up everywhere, not only in Kurdish or Middle Eastern societies. No matter in which language, I needed to speak up”, she said, followed by nods and hums from the audience. “The first border I crossed was my own. I realized I needed to open myself and asked, why? What can I do? At the end it’s not about me, it’s about all the women that are oppressed,” Sara reflected, her words often contained metaphors and the feeling of universality of one’s reflection about the world – as she later said, “everything starts with a thought”. With several people among the audience having read her book, I took a mental note on the audience’s different backgrounds. Most of them are journalists, political activists, political scientists, and I saw one familiar face who is a WHO retiree. This enrichment of professionals happens strictly on special SpisDatings with special guest speakers such as today.
This book was Sara’s “own revolution and evolution”, as she said it. Throughout the writing process, it taught her how to not only reflect, challenge, debate, but also appreciate, tolerate, and love her culture, religion, and the people she had the opportunity to meet in her life. “Evil is universal,” Sara said. It does not discriminate, as anyone can be criminals, anyone is capable of doing bad things, not only the Muslims, the Middle-Easterns, or the Africans, or whoever the world or media has put the blame on. “Do not make them the enemies, do not demonize them, instead make them understand. Extremists exist everywhere, not just the right-wing people. They become like this because they don’t know better and they don’t want to know better.” For this, she implied it is more progressive to befriend the enemies while at the same time know where you stand. “I am a child of war, I am not angry anymore – I used to be, I am not a victim anymore – I used to be”, Sara’s words seemed to breathe individual’s reflections to life. I was slightly startled as I reflected from her words: everyone has been a victim of some sort of a negative experience at one point or another, and the shift of label from a 'victim' to a 'survivor' could be one of the most significant behavioural change in individuals to redefine their identity.
“Today I am me, and I am strong enough.” Sara continued. As someone that has struggled with lack of motivation and confidence before, I could not help but grow respect for Sara. Her words almost feel like a burning scream for rally - an urging cry to take action. Even though I have not read her book at this point, I could sense many universal, transferable values from her words that speak out confidence, internal strength, compassion, self-development and acceptance.
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Even she managed to convince one sceptic guest to think twice – she sees this as her duty. Tears could be seen in one audience that shared her reflections of overcoming boundaries, borders that are invisible but set by herself to prevent her from doing things she was capable of doing. The transferable, universality of Sara’s story seemed to impact at least most of the audience today if not all. “This is not only political, this is for any kinds of relationship that you have: with your mother, your sister, your spouse… The strength is within you, you just need to believe in it.” She ended her talk followed by standing ovation from the audience.
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