(Note: This blog post is a co-created reflection from VOICIFY’s first “Rethinking EU Youth Integration & Political Power” Co-Creation Lab. The insights, quotes, and structural critiques presented below were generated collectively by the participants during our live session.)
Written by: Yagmur Erdogmus
Session contributions and insights by: Victoria Salazar & participants
The metaphor of feeling like a “ping-pong ball” was perhaps the most resonating and embodied feeling that summed up this first session. In the very first session of Co-Creating Knowledge on “Rethinking EU youth integration and political power”, we were seven people, with different backgrounds, stories, interests and locations, and we asked/discussed questions that seemed quite simple, but were layered with so many burdens for us: How should inclusion look like/feel like for us with migration background when it comes to decision-making? Do we actually have (political) power over the decisions made over our livelihoods? How is inclusion politicized or showcased and with what consequences on our livelihoods?
It turns out that we are not alone in these feelings of the (im)possibility of simplicity. For example, one of us mentioned their frustration with not having the power to vote in elections, despite living in the European country they are in, “paying taxes” and speaking the language for over 5 years. Despite contributing economically and culturally to the places we live, to what extent does that contribution make us equals? What does it mean to contribute and to be equally seen/treated? “If you do not understand my German, maybe it is your problem, and not mine!”
You can do advocacy, of course, to overcome this (im)possibility, but dehumanizing and criminalizing narratives always center the white European subjects, and “lived experiences” are always focused on without actually giving the chair for people who actually have those “lived experiences” that they keep preaching on.
Indeed, in a society, everyone should be “equally” contributing so that everyone should be “equally” enjoying the goods and services that they contributed to build and sustain the society. Ideally. But it seems like some of us carry additional systemic and epistemic burdens, in addition to being a part of the society and engaging with the basic responsibilities and principles of co-existence and collective life it requires.
What are the possibilities for making these additional burdens visible, challenging, and reworkable? With these sessions, we want to open the space, not to resolve these questions, but to expand the existing meanings, spaces and connections we have to be able to talk and gain authority and agency over the narrative that frames these burdens as “normal” or common sense for us (young people with a migration background). We want to talk about being thrown like a “ping-pong ball” from one bureaucratic place to another, without getting any clear guidance or answer, and for that matter, on what future awaits us. Will our documentation change our realities in the next months/years, when the next political party (e.g., far-right?) in our country starts ruling and decides to change the laws that govern our livelihoods? How can we fight the precarity of being a “ping-pong ball” which does not necessarily have a destination? And most importantly, how is our destination(lessness) or voice* mediated by the dominant institutions, discourses, narratives, how can we uplift our voice* to assert these needs and concerns in our own terms?
*Can the Subaltern Speak? by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak https://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Can-the-subaltern-speak-by-Gayatri-Spivak.pdf
*Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this blog post are entirely those of the co-authors and contributing participants. They do not necessarily reflect the official policies, positions, or views of VOICIFY or its affiliated member organizations. VOICIFY provides the Co-Creation Labs as a platform for youth with lived migration experiences to safely share their insights and shape narratives.
