Carmen Stadelhofer, ZAWiW, Ulm University

For older adults in Europe, intercultural perception is often influenced by experiences from their childhood and youth (war, flight, banishment, forced labour, separation of families). Those who are willing to (self)-reflect, can, when asked about their experiences, distinguish between negative, ambivalent and positive experiences and events (support in situations of need, unexpected friendliness, discovery of “communities of fate”).

Furthermore, the times of war often resulted in extraordinary individual as well as collective experiences; for example, many Germans, who had lived in harmony with people of other nationalities and cultures in the former east German regions, were banned from their homes and were then, coming to West-Germany, treated as “aliens” (the Russian-Germans have later found themselves in similar situation); not seldom did this trigger a personal crisis of national and cultural identity that sensitized some of them for the migration experiences of others, for example the so called “guest workers” of the 60ies or the immigrants today.

When asked for the main reasons for the positive attitude towards foreigners and the creation of a politically united Europe, most of the older German adults name support and friendly encounters with foreigners in difficult times of their lives (flight, forced labour, resettling).

Adapting this attitude is not a matter of course for them, since they had to overcome the stereotypical enemy images and replace it with more positive ones (e.g. Franco-German antagonism turning into friendship).

Even younger German seniors experienced this forced distance created through stereotypes concerning foreigners. They still recall a “Europe of boundaries and barriers” that entailed endless routes, long and uncomfortable border controls, language barriers that were almost impossible to bridge, an invisible “iron curtain” that divided Europe into West and East with the few media channels showing ideologically coloured pictures of politics, culture and people.

However, they also remember the first holidays to foreign countries, most of them to Austria, Italy or France, the first “guest workers” from Italy, Turkey or Yugoslavia, who brought pizza, garlic and different ways of eating that are now a normal component of “German” cuisine just as “Döner – booths” on almost every street corner.

Today’s youth seemingly does not know anymore, what a difficult political and societal process it was, first in the West and then in the whole of Europe, to remove the borders between the countries of Europe (Schengen Agreement, Fall of the Berlin Wall) and which impact for example the 68-movement, the peace movement opposing nuclear rearmament or Pershing had in the Western countries and how these factors changed the worldview and united people of similar attitudes irrespective of their nationalities. For the youth today, due to global technical innovation such as the Internet, cheap flights or other technical innovations, everything is now “cool and possible”. They are facing different problems, such as job market competition or climate change. In this context, the issue of a national / a foreigner or interculturality is not a fundamental problem anymore for Europeans in a European country, but rather a problem of belonging to certain economically, educationally or socially disadvantaged social groups that are susceptible to nationalist and xenophobic ideas. This could grow into a crucial problem, if those with intercultural competences and feelings of responsibility for society do not intervene.

Europe is growing to be a political union and all European countries are – due to free decisions or economic reasons – more and more inhabited by people with a foreign background. Intercultural competences are therefore becoming core qualifications necessary for building a “European house” based on human rights and democracy, and for a peaceful solution of intercultural conflicts. Strengthening intercultural competences is therefore one of the key tasks for education of both the young and the old.

To bring together older adults from the same generation with different national, cultural and personal life courses to exchange, perhaps even share, and to record their experiences (“European memories”) und to give them the opportunity to work in joint learning projects is a great chance for both the participants as well as educational institutions and society at large.

Especially in the context of the south-east-enlargement of the EU and the growing nationalist tendencies in all countries, such cooperative projects can lead to a boundary- and culture-bridging understanding, to more tolerance and more joy in the joined work.

Older people have a model function, in their positive as well as in their negative actions. Their life stories and ability to reflect can convey to younger people an image of the overcoming of economic as well as cultural frontier-experiences. Conversations with them may support their identity quest in our increasingly globalised, intercultural world. Needed are therefore many small “intercultural” projects on-site, where intercultural life takes place every day.

Reference: Project “Stories of a Possible Europe”, www.possible-europe.eu; www.europe-erleben.net

Photo: Carmen Stadelhofer with a group of senior students of the project  Open Doors to Europe – ODE