Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Síða 10

On the morning of November 6th,
the entrance to Borgarleikhúsið
could have easily been mistaken for
a busy New york sidewalk. people
from every corner of the world had
assembled to converse in several
languages about the common bond
they share; they each call Iceland
home. The coffee was hot and the
spirit was communal as the as-
sembly was warmly welcomed to
the first Reykjavík Multicultural
Conference organized by the city’s
Mayor, Jón Gnarr.
THE FIRST MULTICULTURAL CON-
FERENCE
Attendance exceeded expectations with
over 160 city residents of foreign ori-
gin meeting for two purposes: to elect
a five-person panel to advise the city’s
Human Rights Council and to discuss
the how the city can better serve ‘new
citizens’ living in Reykjavík. This is the
first meeting of this type to take place
in Reykjavík where almost 10.000 city
residents are foreign born. The event’s
announcement was vaguely worded,
inviting foreigners to discuss Reykja-
vík’s "efforts to improve its services for
immigrants." Staged as a round table
discussion, and divided by language,
the question and answer format was
well organised and very structured.
The format left little time to voice con-
cerns about fundamental issues such
as discrimination, specific instances of
injustice, and overall bias in our com-
munity, causing some—who had been
hoping to address them—to leave at the
first break.
A CALL FOR INFORMATION
The areas of discussion were education
and pre-schools, culture and travel, ÍTR
(the Reykjavík sports and recreation
authority), social services, service of-
fices and the web division. The ques-
tions were somewhat repetitive and the
answers to each quite similar. In retro-
spect, the answers to most questions
can be interpreted as a call for informa-
tion. More information, better informa-
tion, and information in a language ac-
cessible to new citizens is badly needed.
For example, questions were asked
about what improvements should be
made in the area of the city's schools.
It was pointed out that most commu-
nication to parents from the city's el-
ementary schools is in Icelandic. This
means that children of immigrants
receive a less positive educational ex-
perience during the transition period
while their parents are learning Icelan-
dic. Meanwhile, both the University of
Iceland and the city’s play-schools have
changed their policies to make all com-
munication available in both Icelandic
and English.
In other areas, the questions were
designed to assess why participation
rates are lower with immigrants than
native Icelanders. Simply put, the infor-
mation delivery structure is lacking. It
is assumed that people know what ÍTR
is, or that all children receive a schol-
arship for recreational activities, that
most city museums are free, and even
where their local social service office is
located and what purpose it serves.
Often this information fails to
reach those who do not read daily
newspapers, do not participate in cof-
fee room talks and have no Icelandic
relatives. Many simply do not know the
what, where, how, and why of navigat-
ing life in Reykjavík despite having
lived and worked in the city for years.
As conference attendee Letitia B. John-
son, M.A. student at H.Í., remarked,
''Iceland is an assumption culture,
which is to say that, it is assumed ev-
eryone knows or knows someone who
knows.''
THE ALWAyS-CONFUSING dIREC-
TORATE OF IMMIGRATION
The most common complaint heard
during the discussion was overwhelm-
ingly against Útlendingastofnun (the
Directorate of Immigration). The Di-
rectorate of Immigration is a federal
institution, not a city service, and was
thus not on the list of discussion topics.
Therefore, the complaints made against
it would have been ignored if not for the
fact that their practices are in many cas-
es hindering use of the city’s services,
especially social services. According to
those present, the institution creates
a “culture of fear,” and its guidelines
are “subjective” and “unclear.” Due to
these factors, foreign-born residents,
especially those from outside the EU,
are afraid to seek services at risk of
complicating or voiding their work and
residency permits.
Barbara Kristvinsson, lawyer and
counsellor at the Immigrant Informa-
tion Centre—and long time champion
for immigrant rights—stated that some
services are exempt and that foreigners
should not be afraid to seek help. Bar-
bara refers anyone who has questions
about these issues to contact her of-
fice at Þjónustumiðstöð Miðborgar og
Hlíða.
However, the rules about which so-
cial services are OK to use, and which
services are off limits, are not stated
clearly either at the social services offic-
es, or at utl.is [the Directorate of Immi-
gration’s website]. Documentation is
required to be included in your annual
application for renewal from your local
social service office which states that
you have not received assistance. This
is confusing and many do not wish to
complicate the already difficult process
of reapplication for work and residency
permits.
THE MULTICULTURAL COMMITTEE
IS ALREAdy AT WORK
One of the assembly’s main purposes
was to appoint a Multicultural Com-
mittee that will assist and advise Reyk-
javík’s Human Rights Council regard-
ing immigrant affairs. After tallying
the votes, it was announced that the
new committee would be composed of
Akeem-Cujo Oppong (Ghana), Shuhui
Wang (China), Toshiki Toma (Japan),
Juan Camilo Román Estrada (Colum-
bia), Angelique Kelley (United States),
Raúl Sáenz (Mexico) and Katelin Marit
Parsons (Canada).
These people are already at work.
According to the city’s website, the
newly elected panel had its first meet-
ing on the 23rd of November. Human
Rights Officer Anna Kristinsdóttir met
with the committee to discuss the fu-
ture goals and to present the committee
with their first tasks. While the tran-
scriptions recorded at the multicultural
conference are still in the process of
translation, "extracting and condensing
the data gathered,” is the Multicultural
Committee’s first project and current
challenge.
According to the newspiece on
Reykjavík.is, the committee also dis-
cussed the importance of using the
information gathered in a positive way,
and expressed desires that the Multi-
cultural Conference becomes an an-
nual event. One of the recurring topics
at the conference pertained to how the
city can better deliver information to its
new citizens. The committee is already
working on this, announcing plans to
set up a Facebook page that would me-
diate information easily, as well as act-
ing as discussion forum for the group.
The committee welcomes suggestions
and inquiries by email ( fjolmenningar-
rad@reykjavik.is).
HOME
Overall, it seems the conference was a
success. The people who attended the
meeting were mostly people who care
deeply about Iceland and have a vested
stock in creating an environment more
welcoming to its new citizens, because
this is where they live, work, love, and
raise their families. This is home.

10
“Many simply do not know the what, where, how, and
why of navigating life in Reykjavík despite having lived
and worked in the city for years.”
Article | New Icelanders in Reykjavík
B.R. NEAL
CITy OF REyKJAVÍK
We love our New Icelanders here at Grapevine HQ (in fact, a lot of our rag is
written by 'em). If you are a New Icelander and think we could serve y'all better,
you should most definitely drop us a line.
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2010
Well, it looks like we've once
again made history: last
weekend, we held elections
for representatives compris-
ing a constitutional assembly and ended
up with the lowest voter turnout ever. By
some counts, just about 37% of eligible
voters actually turned in ballots.
Why anyone is surprised by this is
a mystery to me. There has been decid-
edly low enthusiasm for the prospect for
a long time now, as the Grapevine has
reported. Foreign media showed greater
interest than domestic media (and ad-
mittedly, our own coverage could have
been much better), which was itself
pretty entertaining—all those mildly
condescending articles from US news
sources that basically amounted to "look
at how quaint those Icelanders are, let-
ting commoners—peasants, if you
will—actually write a new constitution,"
when America's constitutional assembly
was comprised mostly of tobacco farm-
ers and slave traders.
Political scientists are falling over them-
selves to explain why this election was
a failure, and aren't hesitating to blame
the media. Poor coverage was definitely
a part of this, but ultimately there were
two main factors that I believe contrib-
uted to this.
First of all, there's the system itself.
Parliamentary elections have a process
of elimination: primaries narrow down
the number of available candidates, and
districts narrow down the number of
available candidates you can vote for.
This makes it decidedly easier than wad-
ing through the platforms of some 500+
candidates in one go, and trying to nar-
row that down to 25. This probably had
a greater effect than the oft-complained-
about and inexplicable decision to assign
each candidate a four-digit number to be
entered, instead of just a list of names
and checkboxes.
In fact, this experiment has impor-
tant implications for Icelandic democ-
racy as a whole. Many pundits in the
past have expressed interest in the idea
of "one country, one district", and that
primaries themselves should fall to the
wayside. Here, we have an election that
did those things, that is probably as close
to direct democracy as Iceland can get,
and it proved to be a dismal failure. The
more cynical interpretation would be
that people were given too many choices,
and that even a country of about 310,000
people isn't ready for direct democracy.
Well, maybe not. Maybe next time,
instead of saying "anyone who can get
X number of signatures by this date will
be a candidate", the cap could have been
placed on a "top 100 candidates who re-
ceived the most number of signatures"
on top of the signature minimum. This
would have had the effect of having a
pool of candidates that the people as a
whole were the most enthusiastic about
from the very start, instead of creating
an overwhelming pool of candidates
who were, for the most part, complete
unknowns. The fact that most of the
people who won a seat are well-known
public figures underlines this point.
This leads to the second reason why
this failed. We all like the idea of direct
democracy, but in the end, it's just not
how we're brought up. We naturally
gravitate towards well-known figures,
and will choose famous people with
vague platforms over unknowns with
clear ones. Last spring's city elections
in Reykjavík are a great example of this:
the Best Party wasn't the only alternate
party running, but none of these other
parties had a famous comedian topping
the list.
None of this is to say that we
shouldn't do this again, and that direct
democracy just can't work. On the con-
trary, I believe the failure of the elec-
tions for the constitutional assembly
proves that we need to do this again, and
more often. You cannot change a po-
litical system without changing the way
people think about politics. If we want
direct democracy, we're going to have to
keep moving towards it, until the idea
is considered less a radical experiment
and more simple common sense. Maybe
then picking from 500 candidates from
all over the country, some of them ut-
terly unknown to us, will seem like the
way elections should be.
Iceland To Write New Constitution, Nobody Cares
Opinion | Paul F. Nikolov
Looking back on Reykjavík's 'Multicultural Conference'
Let’s Talk!