A few things have been sitting on my mind. I tried to start a language tuition business a few years ago, but there was “too much red tape.” I hear others give the same excuse, even those who work for the Universities. They don’t even have to find a place to hold classes, or find accountants, create new bank accounts, or do a lot of the things that you need to do to start a business, and they still run into busy-work tasks.
Now I read that the International Organisation for Migration organises language and integration classes in Cluj. I heard briefly about it before, but didn’t know how to find them. I still recommend a few of the language schools I mentioned before if you can afford them, or taking your university’s course, or any offered by your employer, as that will be tailored to your needs and easier to grow from. But I did hear good things about the IOM.
Their office is:
Cluj-Napoca
Address: IOM office in Cluj, Str. Avram Iancu 13-15, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/mBFxcmk15JppLjU16
Phone: +40 747 025 310 (Romanian, Ukrainian, Russian, English, and other languages available upon request)
Email: ibarbu@iom.int, gmuresan@iom.int
Hours: Monday to Friday: 09:00 – 17:00 (Excluding public holidays)
https://romania.iom.int/migrant-resource-centres
In any case, I was about to write a piece praising Cluj’s mayor. He’s a real everyman. He’s always there to lend a helping hand, giving rucksacks to school children, picking up a shovel at a construction site, being an example in almost every newspaper that I pick up. It’s hard to find anything wrong with Emil Boc, and I have seen those who have tried.
So, I was sad to see read something in Zuia de Cluj claiming that Boc said that immigrants from outside the EU are becoming a problem in Cluj. He said that they don’t learn the language, and said something about learning the customs as well.
Flanders in Belgium has a mandatory integration program. I know many people, including myself, who have taken it. You can take it in Arabic, a variety of Asian languages, English, or Romanian. And you learn how to behave in Belgium, and you can also qualify for finance toward job training and toward taking classes in Dutch. (It’s really fun too. We visited the parliament, learned about the history, explored the education system and a library, learned how to find jobs and language classes, and much more.)
Dutch and Romanian are meant to be level one for native English speakers. That means that they can be learned quickly, not that they are necessarily easy. But there is the illusion that you don’t have to speak most European languages any more, that you can get by with English (and it isn’t always an English that is easy to understand.)
It is difficult to learn Romanian not because it is a terribly difficult language. It is difficult for the very reason some employers want to bring in people from outside the EU. If you are working ten hour days, or longer, just to send money home, you are going to be too exhausted for intensive language classes. It’s simply a matter of being human.
Why should you learn then? As a refugee I once met in another land told me, if you understand others, they can’t harm you. Learning the local language means you can understand others, and help them, and escape exploitation, rather than being dependent on a few. It opens doors to so many wonderful things about a culture and about the people within it.
If your job involved some Romanian, you might pick it up. A middle eastern man was very popular with the Welsh media when he signed up for Welsh lessons. His coworkers spoke Welsh, and he wanted to pick it up. He didn’t need Welsh to keep his job, no one pushed him toward it. Anyone who was pro-immigrant pointed to examples like him. Even to other Welsh learners and Welsh teachers, he was a bit of a hero. However, to cynics, they ask, where is everyone else? Why aren’t they taking the lessons?
Now, students can enroll in a preparation year, where they can devote almost full time to learning Romanian. Then they practice it by doing their course in Romanian. Nearby countries, Poland, Germany, Sweden, and Hungary, to name a few, have similar systems to help foreign students who wish to take courses in the national language.
Romania has a special problem that Spain and Portugal might not. Over 150 million Brazilians speak Portuguese with an accent, but it’s understandable. Angolans aren’t all catholic, but many of them are. Both groups have met many Portuguese before they came to Portugal, and may even have Portuguese relatives. Most of Latin America has a similar relationship with Spain. Romania has Moldova and minorities in other parts of former Great Romania, but that doesn’t have near the population of Portugal’s or Spain’s former possessions. Most of Romania’s immigrants do not come knowing any form of Romanian.
Still, there are Portuguese who complain that these immigrants are not assimilating. And not everyone in Spain is happy with their government’s immigration policy either.
Learning the language makes it easier to assimilate, if you choose to do so.
Another thing that might make it difficult to assimilate is job separation. In Britain, I worked at a call centre with mostly Brits. We had one Irish too. And occasionally someone from somewhere else. Most of the customers were British. It was difficult not to feel British, after a year.
There was a yoghurt factory that only seemed to hire from Eastern Europe. Their employees did not integrate as easily. They didn’t face British customers or British coworkers. Some integrated more easily when they left that job for customer facing work in restaurants.
But, the question here is, do immigrants in Cluj integrate? An article from Făclia, entitled ‘Munitorii non-EU “cartoful dulce-fierbinte” din comunitatea clujean㔑 doesn’t answer that. It does tell us, however, where the registered foreigners come from.
There is a caveat. The first few months I was in Cluj, I wasn’t registered. As EU citizens, we can stay in another country for up the three months without registering. (I tried to get registered right away, but all the trips involved meant it took the entire time to get my red tape sorted.) And there are probably non-EU citizens here that are not registered. Like tourists, for instance. But also people who are still waiting in line for their documentation.
Immigrants are separated into EU, EEA and Switzerland on one side, and ‘third countries’ on the other.
The title and the photos of the article, however, tell us more than the actual long winded interviews. We see two men on bicycles, from behind, one with a Bolt Food, and another a Glovo pack, waiting to cross a zebra crossing. I can’t tell by the photo if they are Romanians, Frenchmen, or from a “third country” but if you look closely, you can see one of the riders’ knuckles. That one has a lighter hand than mine. Maybe he’s Ukrainian, or American, or from Northern Italy, who knows. The other, we have no idea what his ethnicity is. He is wearing gloves. Both have nice helmuts, and appear to be obeying the traffic laws. (I would personally wear stronger shoes on a motorcycle, but I can find those same clothes in my wardrobe and so can most locals).
The other photo, toward the end of the article, is also of a delivery worker from behind. It might show more skin, from the back of the head, and a tiny bit of the hand. Again, I would guess Northern or central Europe, maybe Ukrainian or Romanian ethnicity.
We are meant to assume they are foreign workers from their backpacks, nothing else. Bolt Food, Glovo, Tazz.
Now, here is our stereotype of foreign workers. Food delivery. Let’s look at the numbers. 21,000 in Cluj county.5700 are from Switzerland, the EU, and EEA, and over 14,000 from third countries. I’m sorry, but even if every household in Cluj got delivery three times a day for every meal (and they don’t) that would not be enough work to keep anywhere near that many people busy. (And if they did, it would put waiters, home cooks, and housewives out of business.)
My household has gotten food delivery a few times in the past six years, but most of the time, I cook myself. When I visit others, they normally don’t get delivery either. Delivery is usually during a party of some sort. Realistically, even 1000 food delivery workers would struggle to find work in an area of an estimated 400,000.
So, what are these immigrants working? Some in pharmacueticals, some in supermarkets, some in the IT sector, many in factories, a lot in other parts of Horeca that have nothing to do with delivery, some teach at university, some clean homes or buildings or streets or parks, a few even play professional sports like basketball, soccer or rugby. One even sold me a palanets. Perhaps someone at Făclia who chose that image doesn’t get out much.
Most of the immigrants I have met have at least attempted to learn Romanian, and are at least an A2 level. Those who haven’t don’t know where to begin. But if I greet someone who has been here for more than three months with “bună ziua,” I usually get a “bună ziua” back.