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1. From the
activity of cultural mediation to the professional profile
of a Cultural Mediator
Historically speaking,
cultural mediation started “from the bottom”; spontaneously and
without any sort of controls, long before we considered a professional
figure able to perform these complex functions (Cultural Mediator).
At the beginning of the nineties, certain important initiatives
were started in our Country and a great deal of experience was
gained in cultural mediation, organised by the various regional,
provincial and council authorities, associations and volunteer
organisations. Important results have also been reached in the
field of professional training. Thanks to the commitment of the
associations and financing by local authorities, numerous cultural
mediators can now be found in schools, provincial employment
offices, police stations, legal offices, prisons and health organisations.
A definition given to cultural mediation, born from working practice
and commonly accepted is:
“When difficult situations of comprehension are foreseen
in a communications process between people from different cultures,
Cultural Mediation allows dispelling any misunderstandings and
doubts between the applicant and the others involved, defining
for both parties a system of codes, language and cultural values
to be adopted to overcome the distances and potential conflicts”.
Generally speaking,
cultural mediation is applied on three levels:
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Linguistic/communication
(bilateral interpretation, prevention and management of relational
gaps and obstacles, preventing prejudices, etc.).
-
Orientation/information
(translating the information that is needed to help an immigrant
approach a public service, making it accessible and, at the
same time, informing the operators of the specific nature and
cultural differences of the user);
-
Psychosocial
and social-cultural (role of social change, stimulation
to organise the service and enrich it).
The Cultural Mediator
has the primary function of making communications easier between
people belonging to different anthropological cultures. As the Mediator
is also an immigrant, he or she can speak the language of the host
country well, and works to improve comprehension between the various
players, translating the explicit and implicit features of the
different communications methods and preventing potentially conflictual
situations.
For years now, Cultural Mediators
have been working in various fields (health, schools, justice,
territory) and have the following features in common:
- They belong to a different culture to
the country they are living in;
- They have good knowledge of their own
anthropological culture and that of the host country;
- They have experienced and elaborated
migration, both individually and as a family, until they have
managed to regularise their own personal position;
- They have excellent relational abilities;
- They have medium-high level education
(diploma or degree).
The majority of the operators
have attended professional training courses, normally after a certain
period working in that field.
The Project organised by H.E.L.P. that the Professional Training
Course is part of, aims at satisfying a dual need:
- Pinpoint the professional figure
of the Cultural Mediator, the most important functions
and features; this is already underway and is formulated by
filling in a questionnaire prepared by Italia Lavoro;
- Pinpoint the basic training
path, i.e. the minimum package to deal with the complicated
operational functions that each Cultural Mediator comes across
every day.
As there are no formal tools, certain
fundamental criteria have been defined to help select the applications.
These criteria correspond to the set of basic features that the
CM should have, i.e. the fundamental requisites
to begin professional work as a Cultural Mediator.
In the same way, the training activity has been defined aimed at
identifying the need for information and ability required to begin
work as a CM and after examining different experiences at national
level and interviewing tens of operators, the following training
areas have been defined:
- Basic elements of cultural anthropology
(culture, negotiating conflicts, stereotypes and prejudices,
etc.)
- Advanced elements of interpersonal
communications;
- Basic notions about international European
and Italian legislation, concentrating on
the current immigration legislation in force; knowledge about
the services that are available for the person
and the citizenship rights that are guaranteed by current legislation
and international treaties;
- Notions of the history of the migration
phenomenon (the various types of migration projects,
expectations, integration, etc.).
- Knowledge of the social-cultural
area, i.e. organisation and regulations for the sector
(labour laws; Leg. Decree 626/94; social security; etc.)
Along with the theoretic
work, special training stages have also been organised (working
with the public or private organisations that work within the immigration
field or relative services).
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2. The training
objectives |
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The adult training courses
aim at defining the training objectives based on the potential
of the persons involved, considering the objective and subjective
limits (time, work, family commitments, etc.).
The identification of the training path will lead to assess the
results not so much concerning abstract “efficiency and effectiveness”
criteria, rather criteria of “overcoming and strengthening” that
are closer to the problems involved with the cultural differences.
Cultural difference involves three aspects that have a considerable
effect on the training process:
- The objective root of cultural difference
(anthropological-linguistic area of the land of origin, origins
motivation, personal circumstances);
- Subjective interpretation of cultural
difference (the reaction of the person to his or her limits
and experience, which changes from person to person and presents
different conditions);
- Objective interpretation of the context
(action/reaction of the local society, institutions, etc.)
in terms of prejudice, barriers, obstacles with respect to traditional
anthropological parameters: age, sex, skin colour, religious
vocation, etc.
The “specific weight” of
the three factors varies from person to person. The leading objective
for training is therefore to overcome the limits
that define the immigrant’s original conditions. The “pure” training
objective, which regards the specific contents (knowledge, ability,
competence, etc.), becomes a tool of the primary objective: for
example, learning how to use Word software by Arab speaking persons
becomes the start along a path to overcome certain limits (objective
and subjective), independently from the amount of information the
student manages to store in his or her memory.
Further to this due methodological
introduction, the case analysis that has been carried out by the
team of teachers on the three aspects has led to 7 parameters, which
form likewise training objectives.
In fact, the 7 parameters
are other “steps” along the path to overcome the limitations that
the person had at the beginning.
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3.
Parameters / objectives |
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An immigrant’s daily life
is formed of endless battles to be fought to obtain those results,
which, for the others, are taken for granted. It is important
to understand this fact, and this is why the training programme
has to consider the departure condition, which is physical and
tangible, before considering the intellectual and mental condition.
- Socialise and communicate with
“other” cultures
The initial isolation, which is often
reinforced by experience within the original family and ethnic
group, leads to fragmentary sociality, which for the immigrant
makes the daily confrontation with strangers difficult to deal
with.
- Reinforce self-confidence
When observing their differences, many
immigrants gradually lose self-confidence; the training institutions,
which were established around “normal” and “average” concepts,
further confirm this attitude, because they place the accent
on the lack of ability rather than on the effective potential.
Participation in the course has meant that all the students
had to gamble on their own individual capacities.
- Constant application to learning
The training course of 400 hours (268 hours theory/field practice
and 132 hours stage) is intense and daily, both during the
theory lessons and the practice and training (telephone interviews,
lecture notes, study material on magnetic and optic medium,
check tests, etc.). The ability to reconfirm every day the
undertaking given at the beginning of the course, overcoming
the unavoidable discouragement generated by the amount of notions
and information that has to be learned, was a very important
assessment factor.
-
Ability for teamwork
Sociality and relational ability of each single person was
also tested by forming work groups, each one assigned specific
objectives. This meant that the students had to learn to
take steps (for themselves and the others), interiorising
and learning how to manage the mediation rules in the interests
of all.
-
Respect timetables
and assigned objectives
Specific tasks were assigned and spread
over a certain period, giving the majority of students the
chance of acquiring good levels of integrative ability, which
were rather weak at the beginning of the course.
-
Acquire working
autonomy
The next step (which not all the students reach at the same
time) involves testing autonomy (the ability to make choices
and decisions that are coherent with the assigned objectives).
Autonomy is an important factor for introduction to work,
as very rarely the Cultural Mediators are integrated in work
groups or inter-disciplinary teams.
-
Understand one’s
individual function within the service flow
It is of vital importance for a Cultural
Mediator to have an exact definition of his or her position
within the relative system. There are risks of incorrect interpretation,
which bring everything down to mere linguistic translations,
or which tend to transfer the difficulties that belong to the
organisations onto the Cultural Mediator. This job, which is
also carried out by negotiating with all those that are part
of the daily panorama, has the aim of:
- Reducing excessive expectations
and redefining undue concern, with respect to the various
levels of difficulty of the single positions (school, health,
prisons, etc.);
- Test the effective ability to relate
and negotiate
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4. From the individual
path to the individual assessment chart |
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The training course has been formalised in individual charts that
are broken down by:
- The first column gives the training
objectives;
- The second column (entrance assessment)
gives the level of the students in the initial phases of the
training, as summarised by the course coordinators;
- The third column (final assessment)
gives marks to show the final result.
The assessment scale has
three levels: 1 = low, 2 = average, 3 = high. At the bottom of columns
2 and 3 the averages are summarised (sum of the single marks divided
by 7 parameters), to get an overall assessment in terms of departure
level and incremental level.
Below is a typical chart,
with general parameters given, to show the calculation method and
the information and assessment features that have been adopted.
| Parameters/objectives |
Entrance
assessment |
Final
assessment |
| Socialise and communicate with “other”
cultures |
2 |
3 |
| Reinforce self-confidence |
1 |
2 |
| Constant application to learning |
2 |
3 |
| Capacity for teamwork |
1 |
3 |
| Respect timetables and assigned objectives |
1 |
3 |
| Acquire working autonomy |
2 |
2 |
| Understand the individual function
in the service flow |
1 |
2 |
Average: |
1.42 |
2.57 |
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5. List of Professional
Figures |
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Project Manager: Paolo Caracciolo
Course coordinator: Elisabetta Selvazzo
Tutors: Bendis Gjonej and Katerina Cepiku
Teachers: Al Saadi Latif, Angelini Claudio, Becchetti Enzo Alfredo,
Belic Zana, Berbeglia Paola, Cecchini Fernando, El Ayoubi Mostafa,
Farfan Maria Marta, Garavini Susanna, Geraci Salvatore, Ghirelli
Massimo, Giustiniani Anna, Gjonej Andi, Gjonej Bendis, Guariniello
Luigi, Kichelmacher Marzia, Kirkova Bistra, Melchionda Ugo, Montefusco
Cristina, Ramos de Sena Monteiro Maria Cecilia, Romanelli Antonella,
Scali Melania, Selvazzo Elisabetta, Trillò Maria Edoarda, Valeri Maria
Rosaria.
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