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APPENDIX 12 - CITIZENSHIP AND CAPACITY BUILDING
Informal Presentation Notes, by Dr Steven D. Emery, Research Associate, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh EH6 6SA
Introduction
First of all, thanks for inviting me here to this meeting, and it looks interesting what you are looking at and trying to achieve.
I have not brought any presentation materials with me - I thought this would work a lot better without any formal presentation as such, so I'm trying to keep it as informal as possible. I hope that you will see this presentation as the basis for a discussion.
I'll follow through the notes I have here; please interrupt me if there is anything that isn't quite clear. I will make these notes available to Lynne for the group and you are welcome to keep copies - but please just bear in mind they are just that, notes!
I am not going to go into any complicated details of my research; I think that would defeat the purpose of the discussion! Having stated what I'm NOT going to do, I'll now get on with explaining what I WILL do.
Structure of the presentation
Firstly, define citizenship ( clarify sign). That is quite an important point - I understand that you are looking at how d/Deaf people can become 'active citizens'; but citizenship is itself a concept that is not always clearly defined and I'll start off by doing so.
Secondly, what empirical research do I draw on for the basis of my conclusions into citizenship? I will just state briefly that when I did my research, who were the people I asked for their experiences on citizenship? That won't be heavy, just brief.
Thirdly, what were they key issues that Deaf people believed were the vital components to ensure their status as full citizens? It's important to note at this point that the research findings themselves were very broad, but that it was important to highlight and identify the key factors that Deaf people in the research discussed most.
Finally, I will make a few comments on points arising from the presentation.
1. Defining citizenship
In defining citizenship I usually ask people to try to imagine they receive a package, like a parcel or a present that has the components of citizenship within it. The first thing to state is that everyone has one as an individual. That is really important - our society encourages us all to consider ourselves individuals first and foremost, even though we may value our collective communities.
Within this package you have 'rights' and 'responsibilities'.
There are quite strict rights are things like free speech, the right to vote, right to form political groups, right to a fair trial, etc.
Strict responsibilities are things like if you are called up for military service you have to go; jury service (sic!); must obey the law; must pay taxes.
There are 'lighter' rights and responsibilities though:
Like the right to work, the right to health service care, rights as a consumer;
Responsible to take care of the community and environment; responsibility to work and be tolerant; responsibility to cast your vote, etc.
That, in a nutshell, is what citizenship means in the UK.
BUT it can be very narrow. In my research I found it useful to draw on a view of citizenship which helps people to understand what affects and impacts their status as citizens in society - it considers citizenship in terms of 5 "R's". We have covered two - the other three would be: Residency; Recognition; and Resources.
Why?
Residency: it does make us aware that citizenship can be exclusive as well as inclusive, it can include as well as exclude people; for our purposes with the focus on Deaf citizens, clearly, one of the defining arguments about the requirement of specific kinds of rights (to language for example) is that Deaf people are lifelong residents of the UK.
Recognition: This part of citizenship is in recognition of the fact that we are not isolated individuals in society; we have identities, roles, and belong to communities, faiths, organisations, and so on; all of which will define our sense of how we feel as citizens.
Resources: is vital. The quality of the package is dependent on the resources that society makes available; money, and people. How and where does our society spend its money? If it's spending £1bn on a trident missile programme, it's making money available in an area that might mean less spent elsewhere. The same is true in Deaf communities; if thousands of £'s are being generated in medical advances but only a little on sign language interpreters, for example, that will affect the kind of package the D/deaf individual receives.
2. Research Participants
I am basing the findings I present here from six focus groups, that were held across the UK; they involved people discussing citizenship issues. In addition, these issues were discussed with a group of research consultants, who met 3 times in all to discuss my findings. The results are therefore based on empirical research.
3. Research findings
Citizenship covers a huge ground - as I've tried to imply. It was important to identify key issues for the purposes of the research and four key areas were identified:
Education
Jury Service
Sign Language Interpreters
Involvement in the Political Process
Education
The discussion on education took up most people's time so I'm going to focus on that more than other issues; for the focus groups, the key areas of discussion:
- the type of education deaf children receive (Deaf schools tended to be patronising but great for developing identity and culture, but mainstream schools were more effective in encouraging the deaf child to think and act for themselves, although they left serious identity problems);
- education was for preparation of the deaf child for adulthood;
- role models were important for deaf children;
- language acquisition (begins as soon as the child is diagnosed as deaf);
The research consultants felt that the problem was that:
- deaf adults did not have any real control or say in the running of deaf education - that was their key issue;
- parents did not have informed choice (and questions where raised whether choice was a good thing);
- empowerment via citizenship fell apart because the weakest link in education was the language issue - i.e. if you were not able to develop your first/ preferred language, you were at a disadvantage in developing the empowerment to be an independent citizen.
There was recognition that it was education that was the issue here, not deaf education.
Jury Service
There were strong feelings about this issue when it came to discussing legal or civil citizenship issues. The amazing thing (for me) was the numbers of Deaf people in the groups who had actually received letters asking them to attend jury service; in some cases, participants had been asked twice!
If Deaf citizens are unable to take up their duties as citizens on a jury service, it said a lot about how they were perceived as citizens by the legal system.
Interpreters
There was a lot of reflection and discussion on the issue of Interpreters when it came to discussing practically everything! It was an interesting and fascinating discussion - it was not just about the provision of interpreters, but also
(a) their quality;
(b) they should not have to be used if the Deaf person did not want to use them;
(c) a lot of belief that their provision is a 'right'.
In other words, go back to the 'package' I mentioned earlier - when a citizen is Deaf, in that package, a right should be to have the services of an Interpreter.
The Political Process
I gave people a list of political things that they may or may not have been involved with as a basis for starting a discussion on political citizenship - but all groups wanted to discuss the voting process and the role of politicians.
Some people did reflect on how they became political, but it was mostly with people believing they lacked information to make choices how to vote, but more importantly, they gave evidence that politicians did not understand the Deaf community or its priorities.
That hindered their ability to engage in the political process.
4. Discussion
The key question, from my point of view, is not "what excludes Deaf citizens from full citizenship?", but "what is it that enables effective citizenship?".
Ask what it is that enables a Deaf person to enjoy equal citizenship - that is where your groups starts and that is a good place to start.
Deaf people do have citizenship - they receive a package of rights and responsibilities like everyone else; but it's 'thin and weak', rather than 'thick and strong', in comparison with the hearing population.
During my research, there were virtually no communication barriers, and everyone had points of view, and there were examples of where people did participate in mainstream society.
In my research I separated the discussion to highlight that you would find views and experiences, beliefs and thoughts that you would not identify as being 'Deaf'.
For example, one person believed the Italian justice system was better than the UK justice system.
Others thought the police were not all bad people, but ordinary people just like us - others thought they were clever and can 'suss' you out.
People had views on solicitors being 'money grabbers'.
There was an argument that people should take up their opportunity to vote; others were not bothered.
Some had engaged with politicians on local issues.
There is a large section of the research devoted to responsibilities - and there were lots of examples of where Deaf citizens helped out in the community at large: like raising fire alarms, helping people who had been injured, and little things like that.
Above all, more than any other topic, everybody had something to say about the subject of immigration and asylum seekers; and they were passionate in their beliefs!
So … where do people get these ideas, these feelings, these beliefs, these desires to participate from? They are not 'Deaf beliefs' - in those short spaces of time, you had a sense of a full-flowing, free-flowing citizenship.
As a researcher, researching citizenship in the community, going out and setting up groups, citizenship was 'thick and strong', not 'weak and thin'.
It can make people think that there are no problems, so you do need to take care - the key point is that a focus on those positive aspects, what elements need to be present for inclusion, not what elements make it exclusion.
Summary
Just to conclude: I have suggested: first define citizenship; what does it mean? Second, I explained who the people were who had been interviews and then thirdly, I outlined some of the findings from the research. Finally, I suggested in a focus on identifying what assists and enables Deaf citizens to act as citizens, rather than on what excludes.
I'll end with a quote from a participant - this is what we DON'T want!
"If you have information, you are aware of your entitlements, but you can't do anything about it, then it can be frustrating for Deaf people…so Deaf people might know what they want, know what they can get, but not know how to go about getting it … so I had what information I needed, I began to learn of my entitlements as I grew up … I certainly didn't know my rights when I was 18! I had to learn, it took me to my 30's before I fully understood what my rights were, and not until I got to 40 did I feel confident to do anything about it."
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