The complexities of a migrant campaigner

“Eighty per cent of the people I know in Basel are foreigners,” says Alima Diouf. “I want our cries to be heard. I want people to understand what the reality is for us migrants: more and more are coming to the country in ignorance. And many who are already here have no chance of moving forward.” Why? “The system only creates problems and causes conflict among us,” she says.

Diouf is the most dazzling figure in Basel’s politics. She has been committed to helping migrants for years and this autumn is running for the Basel cantonal parliament – for the Swiss People’s Party (svp), which blames migrants for almost all of the country’s problems. She is full of energy and almost always on the go. Before we speak on a hot afternoon, she quickly closes up her small restaurant on the edge of a crossroads in Kleinbasel and clears the last tables and chairs from the pavement. A few years ago, she set it up in an empty kiosk and today she serves lunch every day there for people from the neighbourhood. Dressed in her traditional orange floor-length dress and headscarf, she hurries across the square to the car to change the parking ticket. “Otherwise, I have to keep an eye out for the traffic police,” she says apologetically as she breaks into a run again.

Diouf came to Basel from Senegal in 1994 at the age of 21 as the wife of a Swiss man. The marriage soon fell apart but Diouf stayed in the city. She learnt German and tried to keep herself afloat with jobs in hospitals and retirement homes. She raised two sons alone who are now adults. She completed several training courses in Switzerland, including one as a nursing assistant and a second as a specialist in finance and accounting. This helped her to get better jobs, even though she remained dependent on social welfare for a long time. “Anyone can make it,” is one of Diouf’s many mottos. Despite this, she also stresses how difficult it is for migrants to get ahead in the Swiss working world. She networked, got to know people and soon appeared in a documentary film to tell her story.

Shortly afterwards, she began advocating for migrants – casually, at first. Everyone in the community quickly realised that she knew her way around and had a few tricks for getting by in a foreign country. She believes that many migrants often receive bad advice from official bodies, so she founded her own association in 2014, Migrants Help Migrants (mhm). She encourages clients to learn German. She informs them that in Switzerland you should never hit on women, even if they show some skin. She explains traffic rules and etiquette. She urges them to look for work quickly and helps them to deal with authorities and fill out the necessary forms.

As a hobby, she is building her own little restaurant for the mhm association, where she employs people who are stuck on welfare. Here, in the Qiosk, as Diouf’s snack bar is called, everyone is welcome. No one needs to order anything and everyone pays just what they can.

That might sound like a perfect template for a career in left-leaning politics but Diouf doesn’t think much of the socially minded parties that usually set the tone in Basel. Instead of genuinely addressing the concerns of migrants, she says, money is often distributed to self- proclaimed experts who are usually close to the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (SP). She thinks that problems are being ignored, the situation is glossed over and, most explosively, migrants are being intentionally played off against each other.

When asked what she means by this, she points to two boys walking past, most likely Swiss by their appearance. “These two have to pay for every tram ticket themselves,” she says – just like all those who have been temporarily admitted, some of whom have lived and worked here for years. Only people from Ukraine have received a free pass. “Nobody [in our community] understands why that is,” says Diouf, shaking her head. “No wonder there are conflicts [between migrants]. And that’s just one example.”

There are many such tensions in the district where Diouf’s Qiosk and the offices of her association, mhm, are located. A few hundred metres away is the Dreirosenanlage, a Kleinbasel hot spot that has become notorious even beyond the city limits. The district has fallen into disrepute as a result of open drug dealing, shoplifting and other crimes, including brutal robberies and fights. For a long time, the problems were played down until representatives of schools, various social institutions, the police and others began to speak more frankly about the unrest at meetings. The conditions around the Dreirosenanlage were described in merciless detail: children and women avoided the place out of fear, even though there were schools and recreational facilities there. It wasn’t uncommon for the police to receive several calls a day about goings-on in the area.

Diouf experiences aspects of this unrest on most days. There are thefts, assaults and often a tense atmosphere. Migrants also suffer from psychological and reputational damage, not to mention the fact that they are usually the victims of the crimes that are becoming more frequent in the neighbourhood.

Diouf hears complaints about harassment and racist outbursts by police officers almost every day. Instead of protesting against racial profiling, Diouf organises meetings between migrants and the police to foster mutual understanding. Conflicts arise from the clash of world views and values that our culture gives us, she says. Asylum seekers are able to describe the injustices that they experience to uniformed officers, who are in turn given the chance to talk about their everyday lives that are full of stress and hostility. They explain how to behave in conflicts and Diouf helps to spread such tips. “Police officers help us more than radical leftists,” she proclaimed a few years ago in the Basler Zeitung – a typical Diouf sentence.

She also likes to address her clients in plain language. For example, she has two pieces of advice for Nigerians who turn up in Basel. First, she says, “Don’t go to Dreirosenanlage, Kaserne and Claraplatz. There, you will be checked or arrested as a drug dealer, even if you aren’t one.” Second, “Get out of Switzerland and go to Italy or France. Anyone who comes from Nigeria or Senegal will never be granted the right to stay here as a refugee, no matter what anyone tells you. You are wasting your time here.”

Diouf says that a fear of speaking the truth is one of the main problems in Switzerland. The city of Basel, with its penchant for multicultural romanticism, is deceiving not only itself but also those who come here. For many, welfare is at first glance a symbol of prosperity, a promise. In reality, most want to work. Doing nothing makes people unwell and state welfare takes away their dignity. “Stay as far away from it as possible,” Diouf tells migrants, and she likes to underline this with a vivid comparison. “In Africa, lions are proud and strong animals,” she says. “Accept welfare and you’ll become like the lions in the zoo: well fed but locked up.”

Diouf is on the front line every day, trying to explain to migrants how Switzerland “works”. Where the system causes problems, she tries to compensate for the deficits. She obtains special permits from the police for minors who have been admitted temporarily and who, even after years, are not allowed to leave Switzerland, even to visit their German neighbours. She runs free family holidays for migrants in the Basel area and organises sporting activities in the neighbourhood. She plans action weeks against racism and neighbourhood festivals in which people from different religions come together. She collects donations for needy families in the city and organises the necessary funds from foundations and companies to finance them.

In the social sector, there’s a type of person who, with a flood of ideas and initiatives, almost single-handedly gets things off the ground that would quickly become overcomplicated and fall apart in the hands of established institutions and authorities. They achieve great things but because everyone else is too slow, it’s not long before nothing can be done without them. It’s then that such people suddenly find themselves at the centre of attention, sometimes overshadowing the cause that they’re championing. Gradually, their own view and approach threaten to become the only ones. Rules and objections become annoying. Requirements from donors become unpleasant; criticism is increasingly unwelcome. The good cause slowly takes on a missionary veneer. Such signs are also noticeable in Diouf.

While she is fiercely critical of politics, the asylum system, the canton, Ukrainian arrivals, social welfare, employers and left-wing politicians, Diouf is utterly convinced of her own mission. She is annoyed that she does not simply receive money from the canton of Basel-Stadt but has to work with “unsuitable” experts from the administration for her projects. An “anti-Alima” alliance is at work, she says. In short, she believes that there’s nothing that can redeem the system – it only causes problems.

It’s unclear whether being part of the svp will work out for Diouf in the long term (and vice versa). Despite their agreement on border protection, crime and social welfare – as well as on who is responsible for the grievances – some significant contradictions remain. Diouf says that she is particularly concerned about those who have been granted temporary admission and who were born or grew up here – the category of people that the svp no longer allows into Switzerland and whose right to remain it hopes to abolish. Ironically, Diouf wants to promote understanding for migrants with the support of a party that is conducting xenophobic campaigns. She collects money for poor asylum seekers but the svp intends to cut their support. The contradictions go on. A few years ago, Diouf strongly criticised her party’s policies in a publication by the Federal Commission against Racism (ekr). As long as the old “the boat is full” and “Switzerland for the Swiss” mentality is celebrated, migrants will have little chance of being accepted into society, she wrote. “With the immigration policy shaped by the svp’s hard positions, we are reaching the limits of integration policy in the fight against racism.”

Diouf downplays such differences but she does not deny that they exist. Even though she might believe that the svp has the best policies of all of the parties, she still writes down everything negative that she hears or feels about the party and reports it to its executive. “If you want to achieve something and are not xenophobic, then you should show it,” she says. Diouf believes that the svp only needs to change a little to win over most migrants. “I’ll keep at it.” — L

This article was first published in the ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’. Translated by Monocle and edited for clarity and length.