 Welcome, everybody. So, what I think is going to be one of the most topical and important discussions taking place here at the Davos World Economic Forum, the post-multicultural era. We increasingly hear that multiculturalism and assimilation policies have failed. And that kind of begs the question, where do we go from here, especially at a time of increasing tension and also rapidly changing demographics? Minorities are facing increasing hostility on many fronts, not least among some sectors of kind of the populist groups around the world. But there's also heightened tension due to concerns over the refugee crisis and also fear over terrorism. So, these are all issues we're going to broach. But what we'd like to do is look at what a new social contract would look like. A social contract which would establish trust, but also social cohesion. And I hope we're going to try, within the realms of possible, to leave political correctness aside and really look at some of the practicalities linked to this issue. I'm going to introduce you to our panelists. We've got fantastic panelists with us. I'm going to begin with Alexander De Kru, who is the Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium. And Alexander De Kru advocates the use of migrant data to better understand migrant flows and therefore help in the process of integration. So, I think that's going to be a very interesting aspect in this discussion. Welcome Alexander. Thank you. We also have Lonnie Bunch. Now, Lonnie Bunch is the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian. So, as such, just brings an enormous wealth of knowledge about the African American experience passed right up to the present day. Brendan Cox. Brendan Cox is an international activist and campaigner. He co-founded the Migration and Refugee Hub to help better understand the causes of hate crime and how to combat those. A little word you may all be aware that Brendan Cox's wife was murdered some months ago in an appalling act of hate by an extremist as she was campaigning in the Brexit campaigning up ahead of the referendum. So, we're really delighted to have Brendan with us to share his thoughts. So, as I was saying, we want this to be a forward-thinking discussion. We have Elif Shafak with us, who is going to be absolutely fantastic. Elif Shafak is an award-winning novelist. Throughout her works, there's this question of integration but also identity and how our identities are formed and how they're manipulated. Also, Elif is an active campaigner for minority and women's rights. So, we've got an absolutely fantastic panel. So, we're going to begin now by looking at the question of multiculturalism today, and I'd like each of you with your own experiences tell us a little bit about how you see that. Alexander the crew, how do you see multiculturalism in Belgium today? Well, I think by definition Belgium is a very multicultural country because we always would say it's Europe and small. Different languages, complex political system and so on. And obviously, significant migration in the past and still today. And if you look at it candidly, I do not think that migration was really the problem. The problem has been integration. And we haven't been very successful on integration. And looking back, you could even wonder if it was really a policy that has been used. Yes, there is integration courses and there's some kind of small exam you have to do. But that's not how people integrate. It's not because you know the language or the basics of the language that then after that integration will just happen. Integration works in a different way. This is about having a job and being part of a community and having some common values of the community where you end up. And then you will learn the language and then all the other things will come. And that I think in Europe today is the main discussion is what are our values? You would say Europe is a liberal society, liberal way of life based on the values of enlightenment. How much are you willing to put that on a discussion table, some of those values? And how do you actually make integration work? How do you make social cohesion work? And that's I think in the current debate about how to deal with migration flows and so on. I don't see that debate. That debate about integration of social cohesion. I haven't seen it. And that I think is the key one. Alicia, if we're going to build upon what Alexander the crew has said, if that debate hasn't happened and if we're also going to be talking about the post multicultural era, are we talking about building upon something that's already been created? Or when you look at multiculturalism now, are you saying we have to think afresh? Do we need to rethink this idea right from scratch? I think what worries me is how flimsy our memories tend to be, the collective memory. We have discarded the concept of multiculturalism very easily, very quickly without paying attention to the fact that it took decades to get there and many people had to struggle to achieve that kind of diversity. I come from a country that has lost its cosmopolitan heritage. I come from Turkey, a country that has almost never appreciated its diversity. And I think by losing that cosmopolitan heritage, we have lost a lot. And I'm worried that now in Europe, we see similar patterns repeating itself. Today, what we're witnessing is not only questioning diversity or cosmopolitanism or people like me who see themselves as world citizens, global souls, but also I think we are questioning the very concept of democracy. And this is something we need to highlight because democracy is far more fragile than we think it is. And we need to work on it. It's not something we can take for granted. We tend to believe that history always moves forward, but not necessarily. Sometimes it goes backwards. Sometimes it drills circles, zig-zags, pendulums. And we might make the mistakes that our ancestors, grandparents have made. So we can't take things for granted. And I am particularly concerned for Europe. I don't know if you've seen it. Recently, there was a peer research conducted across 10 different European countries. And the findings were quite interesting. In five countries, especially Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and France as well, the attitude towards diversity. When people were asked, do you think diversity made your country a worse place, a significant number of people said, yes, diversity harms my country. And the third of Europeans have a negative attitude towards the concept of diversity. So we have to take this very seriously. In this continent, in this old continent, the history of populism, nationalism, xenophobia, unfortunately goes back in history. And we need to work hard to make sure the same mistakes are not repeated again. Well, Brendan, then I'm going to come to you because you're very active in Europe as well. Is this something you're seeing too? And how do you see the European situation at the moment when it comes to multiculturalism? Does it reflect what Elif is commenting on? I think it's important to think about what we mean when we talk about multiculturalism because I'm not sure there are any countries, any societies that aren't multicultural, both now, but also if you look back at history. If I look back at the UK, you know, not just in terms of the recent inflows of migration you've had, you've always had very different cultures living in the same country. You have the Catholic culture and the Protestant culture. You had the Welsh, the Scottish, then all the Irish, the English cultures. You have the Yorkshire cultures. You have the Cornish cultures. You've had the different class cultures. So I think it's very hard to posit or to think of an idea which is really multicultural. I'm not sure that those states exist and I'm not sure if they did. People would want to live in them. I worked a lot in the past on the former Yugoslavia and in the 90s there was an attempt to create a multicultural society led by extremists in Bosnia carving up that country into what they thought were more sort of culturally pure blocks. I'm not sure anybody wants to go there. The question I think is more about if multiculturalism has some spectrum to it, where at one end it means multiculturalism but separation, where the cultures exist in the same in the same state but don't coexist and at the other end is a much more sort of aggressive assimilationist policy that you might have in France for example. I think that the interesting thing is one of the sort of successful examples of where you've managed to have confident multiculturalism but also a strong uniting culture that draws those people together and I think one of the problems that Liberals have walked into in the past has been talking about difference and talking and celebrating difference but not also celebrating what binds us together what we have in common and I think it's about how we do both of those things at the same time which is the challenge. That is a brilliant introduction to my next question for Lonnie Bunch because as director of the museum you have an enormous responsibility in that respect to display and show the African American story but not to the exclusion of others. How do you do that and how do you see the multicultural story today in the States because it's very unusual because I was thinking what Alif said you know history goes in zigzags but can also really surprise us because under President Barack Obama according to some polls race relations got worse and now we wonder what the situation is going to be like under Donald Trump. Well I think the the challenge for us in the United States is to realize that race and ethnicity has always shaped our national identity we just don't admit that and so part of the goal of any museum especially the museum I built is to take the African American experience and use it as a lens to what it means to better understand what it means to be an American. So in a way the challenge is to say that it is not the need to simply integrate it's the need to understand that race has shaped who we are as Americans and will always shape it and I guess the challenge is to figure out what does that mean going forward what does it mean that in many ways the African American experience the ethnic experience in America has really allowed the American dream to be made real in some ways that the notions of freedom and liberty as defined by the founding fathers really were made manifest in the best ways they can by the minority communities so the challenge now is to say in this new world in this world of Trump what does race mean and how do we basically build on the gains that we've taken and not just open the door that allows people to hate again and to share their concerns about race in negative ways because some people ask whether this fear of the other is human nature and we've asked our social media audience to send in questions for this panel debate and I'd like to bring in one voice and this is Andrew Potts who asks is multiculturalism just a nice idea but an idea that can't survive human nature and I don't know if any one of you guys would like to answer that I think it all depends on identity politics because we grow up and we're being told that we have to reduce ourselves to one single identity and there have been many people throughout history that resisted this like in America for instance Audre Lorde in 1970s 60s African American women's movement it was amazing they would say yes I'm black I'm a woman I'm a lesbian I'm a poet I'm this that and many things that you might not see when you look at me I'm all of these things James Baldwin he did that these people were always emphasizing multiplicity plurality and I think one thing that populisms have in common is that they don't like plurality they don't like complexity they want to reduce us to a single tribe and this is what we're seeing the the revival of tribalism why not why can't we have multiple belongings why can't I be Istanbulite and the Londoner at the same time I have elements from me from the Middle East in me from the Middle East but from the Mediterranean from the Balkans I'm a European by choice the values that I share and the global souls concentric circles I don't have to be reduced to one single identity I think this is the main thing that we need to resist if I can have multiple belongings if someone else can have multiple belongings there's a bigger chance that they can overlap and what and we can talk about a common ground but if everything is defined on mutually exclusive identities there has there will be hostility and clash it's inevitable I totally agree with that I think that our it's too easy to reduce our identity to what we look like the color of skin we have the name we have my identity might be defined by a number of things maybe it's the football club that I like maybe it's the place where I grew up maybe it's the music I like I mean the definition of identity is much more complex than the way it's being used politically up to now and and what you see today it is it's politics of identity and using using identity and politics combined with fear is actually a very toxic combination and it's a combination that always leads to labeling people you look like this so you are and this identity means that you are that and obviously that politics is always about we are good and the other ones are bad that combination of identity politics and fear is a very dangerous combination and you see it being used all the time it's an easy it's a very easy way of gaining public traction but with nope never a positive outcome learning yes isn't the challenge in some ways to help the public embrace ambiguity I mean in some ways what we've really done is we've reduced things down to this simple answer you're either this or you're that and I would argue that the challenge in the stage for the 21st century is really to help people recognize that there aren't simple answers to complex questions that this ambiguity these shades of gray are crucial to our understanding of who we are going forward. Brendan how do you bring that out into the public domain because I know that as director of more in common you want to make people aware of the the things we do have in common as Elif was saying so but how how do you communicate that because you're also facing a hostile press much of the time what in some sectors in Great Britain at least. I mean I think to come back to the the root of that question as well about about human nature so it is definitely true that there is a human instinct to be wary of difference it's how we judged each other if you look look back to the sort of state of nature but there was also in the human condition the ability to empathize with others so these different bits of human nature always in play and I think what's happened in the last period is that people's feelings of insecurity whether that's physical insecurity because of perceptions of Islamist terrorism whether it's economic insecurity following the financial crash whether it's cultural insecurity with migration that has activated that the concern and the fear of difference and what we need to spend more time doing is is getting into stories of individuals that's how people empathize and again I think the problem and the mistake that we too often make is we react to people's fears and concerns with facts and what we need to do is we need to connect with people emotionally with their feelings it's that which which I think will change people's minds and engage people around this yeah it's something that I fully fully agree in general I believe liberals progressives democrats when you're whatever you call it's a very mixed group of people but we haven't done a very good job in terms of connecting with emotions and I think we need to talk about emotions more anger anxiety particularly anxiety it is very understandable to have anxieties about the future of our children whether they will find the same job opportunities it is also understandable to have anxieties about refugees immigrants you know that so much is happening it's a liquid world what is not okay is to be guided by fear so I fully agree we need to bring more emotional intelligence into the table and if I may I think we need to talk about culture as well so often we focus on economy and the facts but what about perceptions in a country like Poland they don't have a big issue with diversity for instance it's an over 90 percent of Poland is white Catholic but immigration was their number one issue in their national elections why is that you know so perceptions emotions feelings these are things that political theory underestimates but we should definitely focus on them and what about as an author do you feel a responsibility as an author to communicate that through your novels absolutely from I mean the art of storytelling very much revolves around empathy it's just the ability to be someone else even if for a few hours for a few days while you're reading a book thinking rethinking the same story sometimes this could be a historical period from the eyes of another individual that's why you can bring the voices of minorities sexual minorities cultural minorities to the center those who have been marginalized you can bring them to the center in a work of fiction I really think this is a there are lots of depressing factors coming from Turkey I've witnessed these things but it is an amazing time for culture people in the world of culture and I do believe that we need to speak up louder we need that empathy that art very much depends on well Lonnie in that case then what about in terms of a museum what can a museum do to help heal these social fractures in some ways I would argue that museums and culture have been undervalued in terms of helping us to deal with the political challenges and the economic challenges museums are considered one of the few places where different kinds of people have trust and faith in museums so I would argue that part of the goal of a place like at the Smithsonian is to recognize that often we're talking to people who believe the way we believe but in a museum we can bring together people of different points of view help them wrestle with these questions whether it's through the exhibitions through the programs through the education through the online work and that ultimately I would argue that museums play a role in providing a glue in helping people to come together and that in essence we haven't taken full as advantage and I've argued that museums need to recognize that on one hand they're a value when they do the traditional things collect things help people remember but the most important thing is to say how do museums help people today how do you give them tools to understand their lives to live their lives and that's why for me if museums can help people understand the kind of complexity nuance and ambiguity I think that's a major contribution but then on the practical front Alexander you're faced with a particularly complex situation on how to engage with identity politics promulgated by populace now in the past it was advocated a kind of a policy of non-engagement would you conclude that hasn't worked given the current situation and what should politicians do to move on with this issue I think obviously politicians need to listen to the public and need to understand the public if people vote based on anxiety you could think that that's a mistake but the anxiety is there so the biggest mistake you could make is to just ignore it or say no that anxiety is not legitimate legitimate there's no reason for that no and that has happened too much throughout Europe over the last the last decade so if there is an anxiety we need to understand it and you need to give an answer to that to that anxiety very often when when you have racist reactions the racist reactions have an underlying element and the underlying element is a fear but the fear is not always towards the person to whom it is being projected the fear might be about the fear of losing a job or the fear of lack of social cohesion in a community so there's always an underlying thing I can understand that today part of the public looks at progress and says you know if this is progress terrorist attacks in Europe migration flows which are hard to manage higher job insecurity because of technology I can understand that a part of the public says if this is progress you can keep your progress that's not what I want we need to have given answer to to that and the answer is not to say let's stop globalization I mean globalization is there it's a fact so the question is how do you make people stronger in such an environment I believe that people who are stronger have a more open mind how do you make people stronger though well now we're just one element we are in this fourth industrial revolution every industrial revolution has actually created more jobs than it has destroyed sometimes people say well this time it's different I don't believe so I I'm not sure it is that different but every industrial revolution has always had an educational transformation as a side component the second industrial revolution has pushed everyone into primary schools to be able to have basic skills third industrial revolution pushed people into higher education because that's what we needed the question is fourth industrial revolution what's the education component to that and I think a big part of that is is continuous education today continuous education is something for the elites something for a very small group the question is how do you make this something for everyone and that I think can reduce anxiety and and probably opens up the discussion to a lot of other topics I'd like to bring in another question from our social media because it will build upon what you're saying and it'll be for Lonnie Bunch because Raft Sagdis as we're trying to understand how this process works asks are there any studies that suggest how long it takes before conflict between a new culture and an existing one will last I think that the reality is that studies suggest that some of that is tied to how quickly the new culture survives economically all right so it's tied to whether new migrants basically feel that they're having a piece of the American dream per se but I think what we've learned in the states is that that tension lasts for generations and that there's not an easy answer to that and that ultimately what we see is that tension is really something we have to wrestle with and see it not as something that's temporary but as a long part of what is shaping national identity is that do you see the same thing in Europe Brendan absolutely I mean I think to your point on the the economic engagement it's absolutely key if you look at if you look at the UK for example those communities that have been successfully integrated into the economy have tended to integrate very well into societies and communities is why for example London is very diverse but very successfully diverse very high levels of support for diversity if you go to some of the northern towns my wife's constituency for example that tended to be industries which were clustered around particular industries which then declined those people were then left outside the economy and they ended up clustering and becoming less integrated as a result of that so that's absolutely a key part of it I think to the other point is that alongside museums I do think that that wider role and think about institutions that promote contact between different people because what all of the data shows is that when you meet somebody and when you have a human interaction with somebody over time that changes your perception of the group and the problem that we have is that the where the anger and frustration and intolerance is greatest is in those areas where you have the lowest number of migrants the lowest levels of diversity so we need to think about institutions we need to think about media we need to think about cultural ways how do you engage media how are you going to engage media into this in a very positive way and so that we don't create these ecosystems that we've been talking about where your own views are reflected yeah well I think it's I think it's partly about us getting much better at telling stories I think we do have as I was saying I think we have a tendency to meet people's feelings with facts the thing that brought this home for me was my wife would often wake up in the morning and say that she hadn't slept all night because the kids had been up and I'd respond very helpfully no you did sleep I saw you were asleep at 4 a.m. and should be very annoyed because I was responding to a very emotional sense of frustration and being annoyed that she hadn't had much sleep with a factual response and I think we on this side need to get much better at telling the stories so rather than talking about the percentage of GDP that migrants contribute to talk about the refugees in Manchester from Syria who rebuilt the flood defences because they felt such thanks and such responsibility into the community that they've been integrated in I think until we get better at telling those stories I think the the media response will be much more muted but the other side of the coin and well I don't know who would like to talk about this is is the question of freedom of speech how far can you go in what you say because you say yes some Alexander the crew said some you know parts of the population feels they've been shut out how far can you go in what you say and expressing people's fears and concerns I think we definitely need to defend freedom of speech but at the same time be careful about hate speech and these are very different things in a in a mature democracy you defend you protect the individual against the excessive power of the state in countries like Turkey wobbly democracies or illiberal democracies it is the other way around it's a topsy-turvy world do you protect the state from the individual you protect the state from the words of the minority so it's always the state that has priority the way I see it the state can be criticized full freedom of speech but if we're talking about a minority that is already disempowered an individual hate speech particularly the kind of hate speech that incites violence we have to be careful about so we can have a more nuanced debate I am very critical of this attempt to create safe zones in universities you know blocking speakers I don't like that at all we we need to hear different different voices what makes a democracy work is precisely that multiplicity of voices every nation state has its own official history official way of looking metanarrative but what makes the distinction between a democracy and non-democracy democracy is that in the former you have multiplicity of interpretations that are not censored suppressed so coming from a country like Turkey where I see more than 140 journalists being jailed Turkey now became the world's number one jailer for journalists it's it's difficult for intellectuals writers words are heavy we know the power of words so I'm completely pro freedom of speech but I also think we need to pay more attention to hate speech and its implications if I may add just one thing about immigrants immigrant populations it's very interesting to look at Turkish immigrants in Germany in the UK in the Netherlands because they're so completely different and one reason why they're different of course is because they come from different both class backgrounds but also some come from villages some come from the cities certainly that's a factor but the way the host country the new country receives the immigrants also makes a big difference it's a it's a two-way road yeah the way I see it unless women are integrated unless women girls are educated and are allowed to go outside those closed communities the same communities will be more nationalistic more religious more enclosed gender is a very important factor there that might not be visible at the first glance so yeah in practical terms then in Belgium will you have to protect these women in society is that something that you have to set out in very concrete terms or is it not necessarily done at state level but more community level okay I'll come to that maybe just to add on what was being said look if we say people who come to a certain community you have to respect our norms and values you have to somehow integrate in our way of life I think you can only ask that from another side we are extremely harsh on discrimination I mean it's impossible to say you have to be one of us but if you're looking for a job well then you're not one of us I mean this has been happening too much and I'm not saying that it's everyone but it happens and there I think Western communities and governments I think need to be much much more punchy on that discrimination is something which is unacceptable and discrimination in the job market in getting a house and and so on I think we should be much more stricter on that it's impossible to say you have to be one of us and then tolerate the discrimination that is still what do you do in situations when you've got countries as Elif mentioned like Poland and Hungary where this has really taken grip of society I think this is a domain where the European Union is not strong enough I mean the European Union is about the economy and it's about security but in my point of view it's also about values and and I think we should have more debate on that and engage more with with member states on that on that topic I think on the national level I have no problem to intervene and I would actually have no problem when you see that this is something that is frequent to use methods like mystery shopping and so on like what like mystery shopping like for someone sending for a job application and just recording if discrimination is taking place and pointing it out and I wasn't in favor of that five years ago but if I see sometimes what is happening I think this is really a crucial really a crucial element I mean how can you I think most people who migrate actually want to be part of society but if you get a slap in the face all the time then I would understand the certain certain reaction to that rejection but isn't it also crucial in places to actually force the state to deal with these issues because in the United States you know the notion is that somehow you know these rights have been protected but they were only protected because people lost their lives because people demanded change because basically in the United States the african-american the minority community said that we expect you to live up to your stated ideals and we will protest we will resist we will push and force and so for me I think you can't understand and expect nations to change without getting people coming together and putting political force against them. Brendan Cox do you find in Great Britain now that the general mood is open to this type of discourse that you can change things we are a turning point in Great Britain given obviously the decision to leave the European Union and why that came about which was largely in some respects an anti-immigrant feeling I think that in in most European countries less so Eastern Europe but in most Western European countries you have about a quarter of the population who are very relaxed and very supportive of diversity in multiculturalism you have about a quarter of the population who are very hostile to it and then you have about 50 percent of people who are in the middle and depending on the framing will be either more supportive or more negative I think there's two problems that we have the first is that that's 25 percent who are liberal and progressive have been much more poorly organized and much less vocal than the than the other extreme and so the populist rights have dominated the space and they've also been much better at connecting emotionally with that 50 percent so I think that those two challenges one is to activate those existing liberal groups those people with those liberal attitudes but secondly to do that in a way that connects with the 50 percent because at the moment nobody is speaking to those people other than the far right and if that continues their space and society will grow and the liberal space will continue to shrink that's kind of your role isn't it to try and speak to that 50 percent is the 50 percent receptive I don't just see it as my role at all I think we all have that responsibility and I think that in in the work that we've done there was a huge receptivity to a framing around rights and responsibilities around the the the sort of duality that we've been talking about so people accept difference if there is also a sense of sameness so we have to be talking much more about what binds us together what makes us British what makes us French what makes us German and part of that goes back to the founding of those countries and in almost all of those countries there is a sense about difference about diversity about engagement whether it's in the US and it's a nation of immigrants right from the beginning whether it's France and the ideas of the revolution whether it's in the UK and its history of being outward looking so there's those national founding ideals that we can tap back into and I think we also need to get much better at talking about and owning patriotism I think we've we felt uncomfortable about it what that's meant is that we've left that to the extreme to the far right to dominate and they define patriotism in an exclusive way but it's very easy and very powerful to define patriotism in a much more inclusive way it's extremely good point yeah um I want to change it tax likely and I want to bring Elif in here on the question of refugees now Turkey is an extremely diverse society it's what you were talking about but it's also had to come to terms with the massive arrival of lots of a large refugee population how does a country adapt to such an enormous arrival of people it's like 2.5 million people if I'm correct how does the society adapt and how at political level can a government help that society adapt to this arrival of people who are often traumatized and who may not be necessarily staying for very long absolutely I mean the refugee crisis obviously is so so important we had the financial crisis and then and then the refugee crisis and it affected so much all across Europe with all the knock-on effects but what's happening and it has been going on for so many years is the worst humanitarian crisis we have seen ever since the second world war it's a massive on a massive scale and because it's an international problem it can only be solved internationally if there's a cooperation collaboration among different nations and if we can act all of us together as world citizens but this is not what's happening we have on the one hand the very rich Gulf states that are acting as if they have nothing to do with this and on the other hand Europe's approach towards the refugee crisis unfortunately when I say Europe of course I don't want to generalize but mostly the bureaucracy in Brussels I don't think they saw it early enough and they they they developed a good strategy I never understood why they haven't supported more sexual minorities coming from the Middle East women coming from the Middle East because of the journeys that many immigrants had to take those of them I'm talking about those who were able to reach the European shores because they were so dangerous most of the immigrants that could make those journeys were young men between a certain age bracket so when you look at countries like Sweden it affects the gender ratio it has its own implications the whole thing became a big mess which of course worked directly into the hands of populists and nationalists and and and racists what worries me is overall the approach has been to outsource the problem particularly to three countries Jordan Lebanon and Turkey in Turkey we have around three million refugees and they're not only in refugee camps actually the overwhelming majority of them are scattered all over the country and of course there are cultural clashes there are economic problems life is very difficult one thing we don't talk about is child brides the number of child brides increase in a very dramatic way there are men marrying Syrian women as their second wives third wives even though polygamy is illegal and these are things that never make the headlines when we read the newspapers well Alexander I think we're looking at these kind of rapidly changing situations now you advocate and and this will be my last question before we come to audience questions but you you advocate the use of data to better understand those migrant flows so how could you respond using that data to what Elif is saying well I look we live in a time with an abundance of data and it's almost for me it's one of the biggest contradictions is that we have an abundance of data and it seems that in the public debate facts don't matter at all and and this is this I find very strange if you want to better understand who is coming to a certain country if you think that social inclusion social cohesion is important you need to understand who's coming there mean this is not just a person with a name and a certain skin color every person is different has his own background before the catastrophe happened and has had his own journey if you want to think do things well you have to have an approach which is tailor-made and that means that you need to better understand who the person is that is that is coming and in the Syrian case mean Syria is a middle income country with a good education system with people who actually have a lot of skills in a variety of domains well then you cannot as a country say okay we'll just put all of them in the same refugee camp and then the next six months we're just going to treat everyone exactly the same the same way the second element for example is to better understand remittances remittances are the financial flows back to home to home families these remittances are very important and are the results of very often gigantic social pressure that exists maybe not so much for the Syrian crisis but migration out of western Africa for example it is almost become something that someone in the family has to do and the whole family is putting money together for that one person what does yeah what does that do to that person well that person is under a gigantic pressure first of all to whatever it takes try to get into Europe with all the dramatic things that we have seen and has a gigantic pressure to tell to their home families that everything is great that they are having a job that financially things are going well and and so on that puts people very often a very vulnerable situation and you have to better understand that situation to be able to give an answer to to that okay well we're going to take questions from the audience first of all I'd like to say thank you to our Euro news viewers for having joined us on TV feel free to switch to online to uranews.com because the discussion will continue there so thank you very much for having been with us so does anybody here in the audience have any questions for our panelists and if you do please could you say who you are where you're from and who your question is for and if possible keep your question as concise as possible. Hi good morning thank you for your comments everybody my name is Denise Bradley Tyson and my question is for Lonnie just in terms of the election that we just went through and you know with President Obama we thought that we had we're living in a post-racial you know post-feminist society in terms of Hillary Clinton being a candidate for president and the Trump candidate he having seemed to unleash a whole lot of racism underlying racism that I think a lot of us didn't even know still existed in the country what role given the change that's happening in Washington how do you envision the museum changing or having to adapt to you know this whole new group of people who are going to be descending upon the capital nation's capital soon. One of the great hopes of the Smithsonian is that everybody does come because we can educate people I mean I think there is this great opportunity as new people come to Washington to both help them understand the myths that they're wrestling with and to help them understand the changes that have occurred in the country I think that I feel that with this election it's even more important to have national museums wrestle with difficult issues because in some ways there is a great need to bring people together and the museums are one of the places to do that I think the other thing to answer your question is I think we think about how we are bringing people who don't normally talk to each other together but we're not really trying to change the museum we think the notions of the scholarship that undergirds it the the issues of national identity that that museums wrestle with those are there have served us from a variety of administrations what we hope is that each new administration comes with a curiosity and that we can as a cultural institution help to stimulate that curiosity and point it in interesting important directions thank you does anybody else have any questions lady and then I'll just look at you thank you my name is Mary Carol Harrison from the United States and this is primarily for Mr Cox I've really admired how the Canadians have gone about receiving the refugees how they have individual families individual groups sponsor them which I think would be a beautiful way to create the commonality and celebrate the difference as well can you comment on how we can use that example in other places where the the flow is I know much greater so I'd say two things I think it works on two levels so I think one it actually works in terms of integration terms and it's often both families but then communities that sponsor the refugees that come to Canada and so there's a ready network set up in those countries in those communities which enable that integration to work much more effectively and secondly I think it changes the perception of this from being how it's often perceived in some countries as refugees migrants being dumped on communities to actually there being a desire and a demand so it's really changed perceptions we recently went to Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada and spoke to a whole series of very rural communities who had sponsored refugees and the interesting thing and one of the things that I think we should talk about much more is the impact that that had on the the person that was welcoming them this was revelatory for a lot of people in terms of the impact it had on their lives there were people who felt who hadn't had grandchildren who suddenly felt that they had their own grandchildren as people who felt that they had a new part of their family so I think one of the things that we can get better at is not just talking about the person that is coming but the person that is doing that that welcoming we recently did a piece of work with Airbnb in the US where they went out to their host communities and asked in the US around Thanksgiving and asked if they would host a new American family for Thanksgiving and the response was absolutely amazing it was about that frame of Americanism it was through a national institution of Thanksgiving it was about you as much as it was about them and I think there's a real power to that sense of that movement of welcomeers and it's something that we're definitely going to work on a lot more in the in the future as well yeah I think ordinary people really want to have the tools actually to be able to reach out and help but often feel stumped and and don't know how to do so there's something I've seen amongst and there is a growing movement around this so there's a whole series of countries actually a few months ago just at the end of last year in Canada there was a new initiative called the global refugee sponsorship I can't remember what it's called initiative which is exactly around this and I think it's about five or six countries who are already doing this there's a whole series of other countries that are looking at it as well okay um a question from this lady maybe the question could be for Elif or Alexander it might be our last question okay I don't know who can answer my question but uh in fact I just want to put a slightly different dimension I come from Asia from Korea I'm in Asians here so which I was recently in the seminar in Beijing talking about new globalization there's two clear trends we're talking about one is now globalization used to be westernization from Asian point of view because it was very west dominated and led but now because of geoeconomical and geopolitical really sent a shifting to Asia therefore now new trend of globalization is easternization it doesn't mean east will dominate just it's balancing it off another kind of dimension I want to bring in is also the youth culture in Asia or the consumerism really led by not by the established media but many young young girls and boys only like 19 or 20 years old they become the key open leader group each of these bloggers or influencers they have like a 10 to 30 million followers not only in Asia around world beyond any racial you know cultural barriers so I just want to see who can really answer this this new kind of multicultural young and old and also new easternization trend anybody can answer yeah I mean I you know coming from the turkey I can so so so relate to what you said and I do worry a lot about these gaps you know both of course economic gaps economic inequality but at the same time cultural gaps even the same concepts don't mean the same thing as you move from one country to another such as globalization you know the meanings the descriptions can change enormously and and somehow we are unable to make that jump and understand how the discussion is taking place in other countries so there are some cognitive gaps that we we need to bridge as well overall I believe politics in in the usual classical sense as in left versus right that is gone something else has come and so one major duality that we need to pay attention is this friction between the countryside and cities this happened in all major european elections the cities tend to be more liberal more cosmopolitan and the countryside different another big distinction is of course gender sorry age between youth and older generation what can make us a little bit more optimistic is the fact that overall when you look at the young people everywhere tend to be more pro-eu more pro-globalization so there is a big difference there in terms of age but then of course comes the east west divide and that's something we need to understand and we need to communicate across cultures what I'm worried about and I hear this both in Turkey and across the Middle East especially after the Arab Spring more and more people are saying wait a minute maybe democracy is not suitable for us maybe it's a western concept it works for them we need to develop our own model look at Singapore Singapore works so well what we need is a group of technocrats working with bureaucrats under a strong leader this is the best model how do we renew people's faith in democracy it's going to be a major challenge for those of us who communicate across cultures but on democracy that is that is true but if you look at at recent surveys on this for example in Africa actually the the perspective of democracy is much more positive with african population and with europe today the african population is really aspiring for democracy and and really believes in the well-doings of democracy whereas I think here in europe and the western world we're actually touting on that so so that aspiration for democracy definitely is still I still talk about Shanghai 5 you know Turkey we used to want to join the EU now we want to join Shanghai 5 with Russia Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan you know China so complete shift and I'm worried that the more it only plays into the hands of isolations when that communication is broken they say to the young people you see they don't want us we don't want them anyhow let's move in the opposite direction this goes to show kind of the level of complexity of this debate it works at so many different levels we're going to have to close off now but what I would ask each of you now is to give us a closing thought but something concrete and practical that our audience here can go away with when it comes to this discussion I'm going to have to ask you to make those comments briefly Lonnie Bunch well I think that for me it's of recognition that we have an ability to change by protest by resistance by communication so I always believe not to be naive but to be hopeful and to believe in a positive way that change has happened I come from a community that didn't have anything to do with framing the ideals of America and yet that community believed in those ideals and has made those ideals concrete so for me it's about demanding a country to live up to its stated ideals but to also use resistance and protest to help the country get there I think I like to follow Gramsci's motto he used to talk about the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will and we have reason to be very pessimistic we need to take populist demagogues very seriously it was a mistake not to take them seriously earlier on and we have we don't have the luxury of being apolitical anymore you know and this also applies to artists so that pessimism should should be there we should be concerned but at the same time there should be optimism of the will and and the desire to go beyond our echo chambers connect with people communicate understand their emotions we need to bring emotional intelligence into into the picture and just remember that in life we always learn from people who are different from us you know sameness does not bring safety and someone who thinks and lives exactly like me it has it's just an echo of my voice so diversity is precious and I think it's time to to defend it absolutely Alexander the crew I I think you need people who really bring out a message which is sometimes not an easy message to to stand for in the in in the public debate and and if you just look at Angela Marco six years ago she said multi-culty is shattered she said the multicultural in society it didn't work then six years later she says we're shuffling us so minds can shift and that's a good thing and I think in these kind of debates sometimes you have to just stand for what you really what you really believe in despite the fact that maybe on the short term is not always the the most popular message Brendan Cox three things firstly let's communicate with people emotionally not just factually secondly let's find opportunities to come together with other groups and and to celebrate what holds is in common and thirdly let's talk much more about similarities and not just differences well thank you all I'd like you all to join me in thanking our panelists Lonnie Bunch, Elisabeth, Alexander the crew and Brendan Cox