Diversity and integration strategic work

Transkript

1 Communication for Development Malmö University January 30 th 2014 Diversity and integration strategic work can a participatory approach to policy lead to social change? Author: Jessica Vidberg Supervisor: Oscar Hemer

2 Thank you I would like to thank the Communication for Development program for all the knowledge they have helped me gain throughout these years. A special thanks to my degree project supervisor Oscar Hemer for his constructive criticism and help during this process. To Falu Municipality for hiring me and therefor making this paper possible! To my American best friend Nicole Baker for all the time she has put on proofreading my paper and answering complaining text messages when I was doubting everything in life. I would also like to thank my family; my older sister for all her help with the project, my brother, their spouses and my four amazing nieces for always being there and adding a wonderful twist to my life. And to my two partners-in-crime; my mother and my younger sister Julia - I could not have done this without your endless love and support; despite my frantic emotions and crazy ideas you always keep my grounded. I dedicate this paper to the one person who would have bragged about my achievement of a Master s degree the most. My late grandmother, Ingrid Norlander. I love you and miss you! 2

3 Abstract This degree project will include a document and discourse analysis on diversity and integration strategic work in the Falun municipality. Three steering documents will be evaluated regarding diversity in Falun municipality in relation to appropriate guidelines, as well as collected information from executive directors of administration regarding implementation of steering documents and of diversity and integration work, as well as evaluation material on the public health policy and other written material connected to the policies. The aim is to understand and evaluate the diversity and integration strategic work within Falun and Falu Municipality (both as geographical area/city and as the employer), understand if you can reach social change through the policies related to diversity and integration strategic work, and what role the citizen plays in that process. I aim to analyse and highlight the major findings and concluding with ideas for further research or development areas. The research question is; How are diversity and integration strategic work defined and communicated in Falun municipality through their policies and can a participatory approach to policy and policy-making lead to social change? The result show that steering documents policies - somewhat works as the platform for strategic diversity and integration work in theory, but not in practice. National and international guidelines regarding the subject has proven to be used very well in the case of Local Public Health Program, but not as well in the Integration Policy Program or in the Plan for equal rights and possibilities Collected information from executive directors of administration regarding implementation of the Integration Policy Program and implementation of diversity work, as well as evaluation material on the public health policy showed very little implementation, and very little participation from the executive directors, employees and the citizens, which raises questions regarding availability of the programs. In order for policy making to be successful executive directors, employees and citizens need to be participating in the policy-making process, as well as the implementation and evaluation. If not; policymaking is only by politicians, for politicians and therefor it will not reflect on the developing society as a whole. 3

4 Table of content Background 5 Relevance 5 Relationship between diversity and integrationen 7 Falun the municipality and the employer 7 Communicator for diversity 8 Diversity, equality and public health 8 Plain talk 9 Method discussions 10 Aim and purpose 10 Research question 10 Discourse analysis, document analysis and policy discourse 11 The theoretical framework 13 Participatory communication and social change 13 Citizenship and public policy 15 Acknowledgements and limitations 18 Result 18 Integration Policy Program and 2013 follow-up of Integration Policy Program 20 Local Public Health Programmet 21 Report on the current situation 2011 ( Nulägesrapport 2011 ) of local Public Health Program 23 Plan for equal rights and possibilities Analysis 25 Policy-making in relation to diversity, equality and public health 25 Bringing policy-making with participatory communication and social change together 28 Participatory communication and social change 30 Access and availability 33 Policy process reciever or participant? 34 Public policy and citizenship 35 Conclusion 37 References 39 Attachment 1 45 Attachment 2 68 Attachment 3 78 Attachment

5 Background One may wonder what the correlation between communication for development and diversity and integration strategic work are. For me as a municipal officer it becomes evident in my everyday work. But in this section I will try to give you as a reader an understanding of the correlation I believe exist. I will attempt to give the reader some background to where Falun position themselves as a municipality and as an employer in the issues regarding policy, policy-making as well as diversity and integration strategic work. My research question within this research has been: How are diversity and integration strategic work defined and communicated in Falun municipality through their policies and can a participatory approach to policy and policy-making lead to social change? Relevance Diversity and integration are highly relevant topics as Sweden is preparing for the election year of The political platform for integration, equality and anti-discrimination is what decides how the municipalities plan their strategic work. Communication for development becomes relevant within the areas of communication, society, change and development. Communication as it is how we manage change, society as it is where the change takes place, change as the world is transforming in to a more globally interrelated unit, and development working as the umbrella for communication, society and change. As all steering documents contain goals to sustain and develop certain areas, communication for development and a discursive approach put the policy making on the map for developing the municipality. Recent happenings in Europe regarding war, immigration and political standpoints have lead to a lot of attention in international, national and local press. And the attention has highlighted the importance of these issues and that we should not assume that it does not affect my country, my community or me. Sweden is a part of the European Union, and Falun as a municipality signed the European declaration for equality between women and men on a local and regional level Council of European Municipalities and Regions; CEMR (CEMR, 2013) in 2009, which should regulate their policy-making, strategic work and work as a tool for the municipalities in their equality work. However, the question about how to ensure that the declaration is followed regarding equal citizen 5

6 service was brought up in the city council meeting in April 2013 (Kommunstyrelsen, 2013), where it was decided that the board of equal treatment would come up with an action plan. This is almost four years after the declaration was signed, which raises question regarding earlier interventions, and how useful the policies are in practice. Falun is also part of the network Healthy Cities (Healthy Cities, 2013; Falun, 2013f) where municipalities work together to ensure the health of the citizens. For me public health and diversity and integration strategic work are connected, and Falun works with these issues in an interrelated way, which will be discussed further on in this paper. Sweden is the only European country that has added the gender transgressing identity or expression as a new discrimination ground in (European Commission, 2009). Both Falun s membership in Healthy Cities and Sweden s ground breaking approach to discrimination grounds positions Sweden, and Falun specifically, in an interesting light as it shows that there is an interest in these types of issues on a national and local level. The Falun municipality has increased its profile regarding democracy, diversity and integration this year as they have made a direct act on the European Union's declaration to make the year of 2013 the year for citizen participation. In September 2013, Falun hosted Democracy Week where a democracy passport was produced. The passport presented information about active citizenship, as well as what rights and responsibilities you have as a citizen. In addition to this, there was a democracy market where political parties, businesses, and different administrative areas within the municipal board were participating in order to inform and inspire citizens to be active. There were lectures and workshops with nationally and internationally known politicians, as well as representatives from Falun s twin town in Poland. (Falun, 2013d). Falun were rewarded for their democracy work at the international Democracy Conference in Malaysia in December (Falun, 2014) which I believe makes this research even more relevant to present. They are rewarded for their democracy work but do their policies and strategic work reflect this democracy aim? There are three major steering documents policies - that are concerned with issues related to diversity and integration in the Falun municipality. The broadest one being Lokalt Folkhälsoprogram (Falu kommun, 2007b) (called Local Public Health Program in this research paper) which covers all aspects of public health and covers the connection between individual, society and health as it was produced in The second program is Plan för lika rättigheter och möjligheter (Falu kommun, 2012a) (called Plan for equal rights and possibilities ) which is a direct reply to the signing of the CEMR (2013) declaration and revolves 6

7 around the relationship between the employer and employees. The third program is Integrationspolitiska programmet (called Integration policy program) (Falu kommun, 2006) which has its focus solely on integration aspects and was produced in Falun municipality operations are run through political decisions and through execution within the municipal body. The documents can be called program, plan, action plan, policy, guidelines, instructions among other labels. Guiding definitions of these concepts is currently being formed in connection to the investigation regarding municipal steering documents and policies (Falun, 2013b) so a lot of work is being done to create better policies and better logistics around the policy-making process. As always within a municipality, change is a time consuming process, so even though work is being done within this area I believe that the policies and the policy-making process we have today is here to stay for awhile. And as the change is occurring, evaluation of the existing organisation is extremely relevant in order to make sure the change is actually better than the existing format. Relationship between diversity and integration There is a complex relationship between the two concepts of diversity and integration, some may regard them as one, and some may regard them as two completely separate concept and issues. Diversity is sometimes regarded as the umbrella-concept under which integration falls, and sometimes integration is thought of as the umbrella under which diversity occur. Integration is in Falun municipality referred to as a mutual process within a community that believe in the importance of an understanding relationship between all citizens on equal terms (Falu kommun, 2006). Diversity is on the other hand referred to as people s differences. Some may refer to the concept of integration to only relate to immigrants, but integration occur within almost everything technical integration, mechanical integration, integration of IT-systems; integration is the process when two different actors need to learn how to cohabitate on the same area. It is about giving, taking and sharing mutually agreeing to coexist. Diversity is also a concept some may think only applies to ethnical differences, but it is rather all differences such as age, gender, disabilities, language, but also cultural differences and our experiences and how we are as a person. Although this is a complex relationship, one that we could discuss for a whole thesis, that might remind us more of What came first? The hen or the egg? These are the understandings used in this thesis; integration is the process that enables diversity to exist and occur. Falun the municipality and the employer In this research I refer to Falun, Falu Municipality and Falun municipality. Falun is simply the city itself, Falu Municipality is the employer and Falun municipality is the municipality as the 7

8 geographical area including both the municipal organisation but the citizens as well. These different ways of referring might be confusing, but I hope that I can at least make the reader see the difference between the municipality as a geographical area- including its citizens and as an employer. Communicator for diversity Within the lines of this research I believe it is important to position myself as well, not just position Sweden and Falun. I have a great interest in diversity and integration strategic work, but it is also what I do for a living. Since May of 2013 I work for Falu Municipality as a communicator for diversity. The aim and purpose of my work is to increase the knowledge and understanding regarding diversity and integration issues among the municipal organisation but also among the citizens. I cover both the municipal organisation as well as the citizens with my work. This may of course affect this research, the limitations and challenges will be discussed further on in this paper. Diversity, equality and public health Integration and diversity can be strictly ideological questions. But within Falu Municipality the two areas are often discussed as key stones in the municipal aim that every citizen should have equal opportunities. Therefor public health and equality are often discussed in relation to and with diversity and integration. In this section I will highlight some important definitions and concepts to place the diversity and integration issues within my research aim and question. The Swedish government uses Westin (2004) as a source on diversity and integration issues. Westin claims that diversity is strictly related to integration politics. The UNHCR (2011) refers to diversity as different values, attitudes, cultural perspectives, beliefs, ethnic background, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, health, social status, skill and other specific personal characteristics. While the age and gender dimensions are present for everyone, other characteristics vary from person to person. These differences must be recognized, understood and valued by UNHCR in each specific context and operation in order to ensure protection for all people. In this paper I will refer to diversity as issues regarding equality, integration and anti-discrimination with the seven discrimination areas of Europe and Sweden as guideline: age, gender, sexual orientation, racial or ethnic orientation, assumed or associated discrimination, disability and religion and/or other belief system, gender transgressing identity or expression. When discussing diversity it is important to take equality in to consideration. Equality can stand alone, but can also fall under the diversity category (UNHCR, 2011). The common thoughts for 8

9 managers in the work place, according to Keil, Amershi, Holmes, Jablonski, Lüthi, Matoba, Plett & von Unruh (2007), has usually been to assume that workplace diversity is about increasing gender, national or ethnical representation. With the new Constitutional Amendments in 1974 and 1975 in the United States of America, the US government put companies under pressure to hire more minorities and women and give them more opportunity to move up the company hierarchies. Diversity experts then noticed that issues regarding diversity and equality often remained isolated and in the Human Resource (HR) department and could not move out into the whole company and its environment. Studies by the European Commission (2003: 3), The Costs and Benefits of Diversity has shown that, the most significant advantages companies with active diversity policies themselves ascribe to diversity are: strengthening cultural values within the organization, enhancing corporate reputation, helping to attract and retain highly talented people, improving motivation and efficiency of existing staff, improving innovation and creativity amongst employees, thus the most significant advantages from diversity is when it is moving beyond the HR department. Diversity and integration can be regarded as public health issues, and as mentioned earlier within my position, the three concepts are often discussed in relation to each other. Integration and a diverse community must fall under The Public Health Group (Folkhälsogruppen, 1991) definition of public health. According to The Public Health Group there are no exact definitions of public health or public health work, but rather a few closely related definitions. The Public Health Group explains the distinction between health and public health as health is a resource for the individual, while public health is a goal for the community. As well as physical or mental health, an integrated community must be a goal for the community, as health also is concerned with social well being. Health is defined by WHO (2003) as:... a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. These understandings of health and public health will be discussed in relation to the definitions in the steering documents used for this research. Plain talk Since 2009 there has been a plain talk paragraph in the Swedish language law (Riksdagen, 2013). Recently the newspaper Dagens Nyheter (Lagerwall, 2013) posted an article regarding an authority that did not meet the legal requirements regarding the text to be understandable to the common citizen. This happening is most likely not uncommon; rather it is likely that most authorities have 9

10 steering documents, applications and transcripts that are inaccessible for the common citizen. This will be discussed further in this project in relation to the citizen and what role the citizen play in the policies and the policy-making process. Method discussion Aim and purpose The aim of this research is to understand and evaluate the diversity and integration strategic work within Falun municipality and Falu Municipality (both as geographical area/city and as the employer). I want to know if you can reach social change through the policies related to diversity and integration strategic work, and what role the citizen plays in that. With strategic work I mean the work that derives from the policies analyzed in this research, but the strategic work is also how the policies are created and communicated to the municipal organisation as well as to the citizens. As a municipal officer I strongly feel that my work rest upon the policies to a great extent and it is through the policies and the policy making I somehow have to define and communicate my work. The understanding of the strategic work and the relation to policy and policy-making will be helpful for me as a communicator for diversity in my further work with the municipal organisation and the citizens. To understand, and in some sense evaluate, the diversity and integration strategic work better I will be looking at the three steering documents presented earlier in this paper, but also all relevant material that is connected to the steering documents and their policies, such as intervention plas, evaluation material for example. I believe that by evaluating the steering documents, and the policies they are constructed from, I will get an understanding of what diversity and integration strategic work should look like as according to the policies they rest upon. The steering documents, the material from the executive directors and the evaluation material available on the public health program will be analyzed through a document analysis and framed by a discourse analysis, putting it within the theory of policy discourse. Research question My research question is: How are diversity and integration strategic work defined and communicated in Falun municipality through their policies and can a participatory approach to policy and policy-making lead to social change? 10

11 The concepts of diversity, integration, equality and public health s relation to diversity and integration, citizen participation, policy-making/discourse within the documents and interview replies will be investigated. Questions taken in to consideration when analysing the material are; How are the key areas defined? Do they mirror underlying definitions? Have documents been revised and updated continuously? In what form does the evaluation and follow-up take place? What are the guidelines to make sure diversity and integration strategic work is implemented? What guidelines are there to make sure diversity and integration strategic work is communicated to the public and to the municipal organisation itself? What role do the citizens play in the policy making process? Are diversity and integration strategic work, documents and information public, understandable and available? Are the municipal organisations and corporations available to all citizens? These guiding questions will hopefully help me understand how the policy is organised within the documents and how the strategic work derives from it. Discourse analysis, document analysis and policy discourse Discourse analysis is the method used for this research as according to The Handbook of Discourse Analysis by Schiffrin, Tannen & Hamilton (ed. 2008). The social structure in a municipality can create a gap between politicians and their decisions, and the common citizen. The steering documents have to be legally binding, thus creating a gap between the actual content of the document and what the citizen is presented with. As a lawyer you might be perfectly clear about the content, but as an unemployed refugee, or a stay at home mother of three, there might be a barrier. If the gap exist - looking at diversity and integration strategic work as a discourse can give us a better understanding of the structure of the gap and how to overcome it. (ibid.) Nederveen Pieterse (2010) claims that discourse analysis can add reflexivity. According to Rapley (2007:2) discourse analysis is more concerned with how the language is used in a certain context in a document and that the documents produce specific realities; therefor the realities that are 11

12 produced have effects (ibid.). This research will show what those effects are, through the combination of discourse analysis and a document analysis (Bowen, 2009) as I am collecting my data through a document analysis and framing the data through I discursive approach. I will look at the definitions and accessibility of the text in the documents, but maybe the context will be more important than the static information? Apthorpe and Gasper (1996) argue that policy discourse within the fields of national and international development can screen out certain aspects, frame the issues to revolve around some matters and by that, exclude others that might be just as important. They claim that this way of constructing the world in a distinctive way might require some reviewing, however, I believe that this approach will help me understand the diversity and integration strategic work better. Policy discourse can be seen as a potential means of democratization, democracy might be enhanced through policy discourse. Torgesson (2003) claims that with the idea of a network society there is a shift from government to governance. National states do no longer have the power to make all their decisions on their own. Economical globalization and the development of the European Union (and other collaborations between nation states) has lead to a change in politics over all. This, however, raises questions. Will the privileged domain of policy discourse just sway over the larger society or can complex patterns of interaction extend the policy beyond its official power? The network society has a capacity to focus on interchanges between the administrative sphere (where policy discourse have its greatest concerns) and the public sphere of society. This notion of change from government to governance as well as the interaction and interchanges between the two spheres, put in relation to the claims regarding participatory communication (Servaes, Jacobson & White, 1996), is highly relevant for this research and will be discussed further in the chapter of theoretical framework. Apthorpe (1986) believes that more focus should be on policy discourse and that policy is the practice of policy, and practice is the policy of practice. Apthorpe further claims that objections regarding policies usually are not taken in to such great consideration, and it is not just constricted to national plans, but rather just as often local documents. The documents analysed in this research will be reviewed with the distinction between policy-making and policy itself. Document analysis is an important step in evaluating a program or policy (Caulley, 1983) and is the easiest and most time and cost efficient way to evaluate the purpose of a program without collecting new data. Document analysis is most effective in the beginning of a policy making process, but as revision 12

13 work on policy-making and its processes is being done within the Municipality of Falun (Falun, 2013b) the timing for this research is actually close to perfect. Through looking at the documents behind the policy-making and the policy purpose and aim can be understood and therefor I have chosen to collect my data through the method of document analysis (Bowen, 2009). The theoretical framework The theoretical framework will be within citizen participation/participatory communication and social change. Steering documents is a collective term for all plans, programs, aims, policies and by-laws that the municipal council has voted through which are all connected to the organizations budget (Falun, 2013). I use steering documents and policy interchangeably in this research, as the steering documents are the physical construction of the policies. Participatory communication and social change When you consider questions regarding citizens and availability it is important to incorporate participatory communication. Not all countries are participative democracies, but Sweden is, or claims to be. Traditionally one may think of participatory development communication as referring to the use of mass media in order to involve and mobilize people in social issues, often in development countries. In this research I refer to participatory communication along the lines of the Rockefeller process where communication for social change is referred to as the process of public and private dialogue through which people themselves define who they are, what they need and how to get what they need (see Tufte & Mefalopulos, 2009:2).I claim that this applies to all development work, even in a Swedish municipality. Edelman (2001) highlights the importance of the sender and receiver in communication and in order to be able to participate, you need to take that relationship between the sender and receiver in to consideration. The communication between the administrative sphere and the public sphere is dependent on each other and on a common ground of understanding. According to Atkinson & Marlier (2010) it is important that participatory approaches are adopted for the construction of indicators. There must be intuitive validity and produced results that seem reasonable to the citizens. An important dimension of social exclusion is concerned with citizens not being heard, feeling powerless and not represented. It would not be good if the adoption of social indicators of 13

14 poverty and social exclusion were to add more to the sense of powerlessness or not being heard. All in all - a social inclusion policy, such as the policies analysed in this research, can build on the experience in other fields. But, not to forget, experience with participatory approaches in the past has also highlighted how difficult it is to alter the balance of power between administrative and public sphere (Torgesson, 2003). Apthorpe (1986) further claims that objections regarding policies usually are not taken in to such great consideration, and it is not just constricted to national plans, but rather just as often local documents. Apthorpe means that the structure of policy documents, no matter who produced them, always follow the same type of structure. All in all, there might not be anything wrong with this structure, but the structure itself needs to be recognized as an important part of the development policy, especially if we seek to understand and in some cases change them. Regarding politics and discursive actions, language plays an important role. Language is used to legitimize the codes, rules and roles. In many cases, that means that political language is filled with vagueness that creates a gap between fact and value. The actual statement of policy has been claimed to be a defence mechanism, question-begging and filled with vagueness (George Orwell, see Apthorpe 1986). Practice of policy-making states the presence of policy (the goods, the priorities ) as the policymaking reference the things that should be done, as well as could and will be done. But, the entity of policy as stated is sometimes also seen as the same thing as an achievement. The policy and the achievement that arrive from it are often seen as one. There is a difference between policymaking and the policy itself. (Apthorpe, 1986). Research shows that it takes time to get people to actually participate (Servaes, Jacobson & White, 1996). As Sweden develops to a more diverse country there might be groups of people that are not participating as they could and are allowed to. The mutual process can be referred to the importance of listening and- trust. Servaes & Malikahao (2005) claim that trust and listening might help reduce the social distance between communicators and receivers and aid in creating a more fair exchange of ideas, knowledge and experiences. They put emphasis on the joint partnership of listening to one another; it has to involve the governments and the citizens. Criticism regarding the traditional dependency approach led to a new viewpoint on development and social change where the changes in a society takes place from a bottom-up perspective, where the bottom is the selfdevelopment of the local community. All societies are dependent in one way or another, but no development is exclusively determined by external factors. The relationship between global, national and local needs to be understood both separately and in relation to each other, and these 14