Abstract
What is possible if Dayton became a city that intentionally welcomed immigrants? This question was the starting point for a community conversation about the wellbeing of and outreach toward immigrants in a midsize city in southwest Ohio – the City of Dayton. This paper examines the processes employed to support the emergence of an immigrant-welcoming initiative now called ‘Welcome Dayton’. Early conversations resulted in a formal plan, written by the community and endorsed by city commissioners, which realigned and crystallised local priorities, sparking a wide spectrum of efforts aimed at becoming a welcoming city. Using qualitative methods, primarily participant observation, we identified practices of creating spaces where both long-time residents and recent immigrants come together in a way that recognises and reveals the value of each participant’s perspectives and ideas. Herein we examine the practices of creating and sustaining Welcome Dayton, paying particular attention to the role of recognition in generating ‘resourcefulness’ in the community.
Introduction
What is possible if Dayton became a city that intentionally welcomed immigrants? This question was the starting point for community conversations about the wellbeing of and outreach toward immigrants in a midsize US city in southwest Ohio – the City of Dayton. This local intervention happened in 2011 in the context of an ineffective national policy (Hollifield et al., 2014) and at a time when the climate in the USA was largely unfavourable towards immigrants. Unauthorised immigrants, global terrorism, economic downturn and political/media tactics all contributed to ‘anxiety and fear’ in the populace that has informed the US immigration system (Ewing, 2012). Still, the fragmentation of the US immigration policy which happens at multiple levels – national, state and local – has created openings for localities to create, redirect and implement immigration policies and practices on the ground (Wells, 2004). Indeed, it is at the local level that people – both immigrants and the receiving community – encounter and engage with systems as they go about their daily activities. The integration of immigrants is largely considered to be under the auspices of each locality. Local responses, then, to immigrants vary from identifying as sanctuary cities (Wells, 2004) to passing anti-immigrant ordinances (Varsanyi, 2011). Recent geographical research on US immigration has shifted towards understanding the local, for example, examining local–national policy linkages (Ellis, 2006; Ellis and Almgren, 2009), the gamut of city policies in the USA (Varsanyi, 2008, 2011; Walker and Leitner, 2011), welcoming spaces in faith communities (Ehrkamp and Nagel, 2014), and the range of voices advocating for immigrants (Leitner and Strunk, 2014).
Our work extends this research through examining one local initiative – Welcome Dayton – that is part of a growing movement of immigrant-friendly initiatives (Kerr et al., 2014). What we observed in Dayton is a community-led local intervention that created a climate that encouraged and supported the integration of immigrants. Our focus: the initial community conversations critical to the success of the early Welcome Dayton initiative. The Welcome Dayton Program Coordinator reflects on its success: ‘From the start, it involved the community, through the community dialogues and conversations. By being able to come and speak and have their concerns and doubts, and also their hopes and ambitions for this type of thinking [voiced], I think that’s really important’ (Sidlow, 2013). Here, we identify and interrogate the processes that were foundational to the initial conversations that led to the Welcome Dayton Plan (City of Dayton, 2011). This work is important, as Welcome Dayton has influenced others, spilling into neighbouring communities (Cooper, 2014) and garnering national attention (Altman, 2014; Burroughs, 2013; Peters and Nicas, 2013), but this influence is limited until we can effectively explain the key processes that underpin the initiative. Indeed, while other US cities have launched welcoming programmes (see WelcomingAmerica.org for examples), the compelling observation made in Dayton is the central role of ‘process’ to arrive at a community-directed effort. The resulting plan is a working document, rather than a static end point. When other cities have asked Dayton how they might duplicate such a programme, leadership has responded with information about the process of creating community conversations around immigration. As such, that unique process is the focus of this paper.
Although the patterns of integration into a new community are often described as testaments to the resilience of that community, we found that the concept of resourcefulness is a more accurate illustration of the initial process for creating Welcome Dayton as well as the resulting changes in the community. A term suggested by MacKinnon and Derickson (2012), resourcefulness refers to the inherent potential of communities to reflect on and change local circumstances and opportunities. Resourcefulness is not something that is immediately measurable, but offers a way to observe Welcome Dayton as an unfolding of and continuous aspiring towards the latent potential of a community. Indeed, not all initiatives linked to Welcome Dayton invoke resourcefulness. There is no single narrative. Still, as an inclusive, bottom-up process that acknowledges both the injustices inflicted on immigrants as well as the inherent potential within the immigrant community and the receiving community, we find that Welcome Dayton can be more deeply understood through the concept of resourcefulness.
We observed that when instances of resourcefulness have emerged through Welcome Dayton, there is an underlying presence of what we call intentional recognition. Here, we define intentional recognition as individuals collaborating to create an environment that encourages, amplifies and sustains community resourcefulness. The practice of intentional recognition regards each individual as an equal and valuable part of the community, respects the autonomous agency of each individual, and finally, considers each individual and community to have unique possibility to contribute to the creation of a new future. Set upon this foundation, intentional recognition is reflective in that participants listen to and seek understanding of an equal and valuable other and active through the pursuit of changes that serve the wellbeing of the whole community. In this way, intentional recognition is an act of becoming community through the formations of meaningful relationships based on respect, equality and possibility. In this paper, when we discuss ‘community’ we build on the meaning from Gibson-Graham in their work on creating community economies, which are ‘spaces or networks in which relations of interdependence are democratically negotiated by participating individuals and organizations’ (Gibson-Graham, 2008). In this sense, community is all who share the common space of the City of Dayton and participate in the social, political and economic space of the city and surroundings. Herein, we offer the concept of intentional recognition as a critical dimension for surfacing, amplifying and sustaining community resourcefulness.
This conceptual paper emerges from work (2013–2015) centred on Welcome Dayton in which the authors worked closely as practitioners and academics to form a ‘hybrid research collective’ (Callon et al., 2002). This work is based on observation and participation in community activities related to Welcome Dayton as well as personal correspondence and interviews. Here, we suggest and develop how the concept of intentional recognition more fully captures the specific meaning of recognition integral to the resourcefulness observed in Welcome Dayton. Following a little background about Welcome Dayton, we orient our work in a literature review of resourcefulness, recognition and practice. Finally, we introduce qualities of intentional recognition that were observed in the initial conversations that led to Welcome Dayton as well as subsequent initiatives.
Welcoming immigrants in Dayton
Located in southwest Ohio, Dayton is the sixth largest city in Ohio. Like nearby rustbelt cities, Dayton’s population peaked in 1960 with 262,322 people. This was followed by a long period of decline which has stabilised in the past four years to the current population of 141,776 – a change attributed to its growing immigrant population. This shift in course compares favourably with what is happening in other Ohio cities (see Table 1). Dayton is part of both a growing movement of immigrants establishing homes in new gateway cities and also part of a nationwide trend seen in the larger Welcoming America movement (Kerr et al., 2014). Why are cities, such as Dayton, attractive to immigrants? One explanation offered is the lower cost of living, which is attractive to immigrants, some of whom initially settled in larger and wealthier US cities. This is evidenced in one example, often cited as a local immigrant success story, that of the Ahiska Turkish community. These refugees, originally from Russia, were part of a larger group resettling across the USA in 2004–2007. Whereas only six families from the Ahiska Turkish community lived in Dayton in 2006, this small number has grown to 400 families by 2012 because of a secondary migration to Dayton from other US cities (Burroughs, 2012). The Ahiska Turks in Dayton have established a cohesive community in the Old North Dayton neighbourhood, renovating vacant or abandoned housing (Page, 2012) and starting small businesses (Clark, 2015). Representing a small, but growing, foreign-born population, this community among others has helped to stabilise Dayton’s population. Dayton’s foreign-born residents represent more than 20 languages and come from across the world, including 40% born in Asia (top countries are China, Uzbekistan and Iraq); 32% born in Latin America, with the majority born in Mexico; 14% born in Africa, with most born in Eastern and Central Africa; and 13% born in Europe (US Census, 2015).
Change in foreign and native born populations in selected Ohio cities.
Dayton, as a receiving community, has supported the integration of immigrants. Many local organisations advocate for and serve immigrants, including the following major organisations: Dayton’s primary resettlement agency, Catholic Social Services’ Miami Valley Refugee Resettlement programme; a network of free ESOL programmes located in non-profit organisations, churches and schools; the Ethnic and Cultural Diversity Caucus of Dayton, which held a series of community-wide conferences centred on immigration (2008, 2009, 2011); the American Friends Service Committee, which has worked on refugee housing issues among other major challenges; and a housing shelter for asylum seekers (Housel et al., 2012). The work of individuals and organisations has undoubtedly created the support and momentum that moved conversations about local immigrant issues to action. For example, the Diversity Caucus pushed the city commissioners to pass a resolution to accept the Matricula Consular as a valid form of identification for Mexican and Guatemalan nationals that can be used when applying for bank accounts, enrolling in school or proving identity during a traffic stop among other uses ( Dayton Business Journal, 2005). More broadly, the work of Dayton’s Human Relations Council charged with ensuring equal access for all who live and work in Dayton and the Mediation Center which provides conflict-management services ‘through education and empowerment of citizens to create their own solutions’ (Dayton Mediation Center, 2016) sets the stage for how citizens can come together to address concerns, including the challenges faced by immigrants settling in the local community. The emergence of Welcome Dayton, then, is not unexpected, though this was not a certainty. It is an extension and amplification of what people had already been doing – inviting and welcoming immigrants to the Dayton community.
As a plan and an unfolding practice in the community, Welcome Dayton was and continues to be reflective of the narratives circulated about immigrants. Rather than hinge upon a reductive story of ‘immigrants’, Welcome Dayton in practice sought the voice of individuals in the community, both long-time Dayton residents who worked closely with newly arriving immigrants, as well as voices within the diverse immigrant groups in Dayton. While the national conversation about immigration hinges often on discussions about who is here legally, who is documented or undocumented, the local conversation in Dayton focused primarily on outreach to all immigrants regardless of immigration status. Rather than wait for agreement about federal laws regarding immigration, Dayton chose to act according to local needs and circumstances. This stance was shared before a congressional hearing in July 2015 by the Chief of Police, Richard Biehl, who argued that in order to do his job of ensuring public safety in Dayton, he could not expend resources carrying out federal immigration policy. In his words:
If families view law-enforcement as a threat, and are fearful of dropping their kids off at school or walking around their neighborhood, no one benefits. Fearful communities are not cooperative communities. If we have any group of residents who don’t trust us or are afraid to talk to us, that compromises our ability to ensure Public Safety. (Biehl, 2015)
Thus, in the formation of Welcome Dayton, no distinction was made among different immigrant groups, such as educated or not, refugee or voluntary migrant, documented or undocumented.
Welcome Dayton commenced through a series of four community dialogues from February through April 2011 facilitated by the Executive Director of the Human Relations Council (HRC), Tom Wahlrab. That this effort came out of the HRC is significant in that the idea of Welcome Dayton is rooted in a sense of social justice and is oriented towards community engagement.
Following four initial conversations involving 113 people (fairly equally divided by gender, nearly 20% foreign born, and all English speakers), a cohort of 50 community members volunteered to self-organise and write a formal plan within 90 days. It is important to note that the meetings were held in English. Most of the foreign-born attendees had lived in the USA at least five years and were advocates for those who had more recently settled in Dayton. The volunteers self-selected into four task forces to draft plans in specific areas. In this way, attention was given to a broad landscape of existing social, economic and political services. The initial Welcome Dayton plan was the culmination of the efforts of volunteers who met over a period of three months. This process used during the meetings centred on a dialogue. The focus was not on existing immigration law, but instead on whether and how to be intentionally ‘friendly’ to new neighbours. The intention of the dialogue and resulting plan was to provide a general framework that outlined a sense of what types of initiatives might be possible to reach out to immigrants – both those already living in Dayton and prospective newcomers. Furthermore, the plan opened the lines of communication for people who wanted to work on projects oriented towards welcoming immigrants. Welcome Dayton emerged through the community’s capacity to engage in a ‘deliberative dialogue’ that shifted the agenda from debates on immigration policy to an immersive conversation about welcoming and integrating immigrants.
When the Welcome Dayton initiative began, the climate in the USA surrounding issues of immigration was fractured. Border states such as Arizona and New Mexico declared states of emergency in 2005 to combat ‘growing violence’, setting a tone of distrust, and even disdain, for newly arriving undocumented immigrants (Jones, 2012), while scattered localities were embarking on welcoming efforts to improve the climate for all immigrants (see Singer, 2010, for example). This dichotomy reflects varying attitudes in the USA in regards to who is welcome (refugees, educated immigrants or undocumented persons), ongoing economic woes, and a divisive political environment. The act of initiating Welcome Dayton, then, was counter to both the public dialogue in Ohio at the time as well as anti-immigrant bills introduced in other states (Smith, 2010). Indeed, there were individuals and groups in Dayton who voiced concern about the focus on immigrants, pointing out other misrecognised, ignored and chronically marginalised groups in the local area. For example, although several leaders in the Black community supported and advocated for Welcome Dayton, some of the dissenting voices included members in the Black community. The current coordinator for Welcome Dayton directly engaged with that concern: ‘It’s important to hear from people in the receiving community, for instance, who feel like they were never fully received themselves and feel marginalized. The idea is for us to be an inclusive community for everyone, not just immigrants, so it’s important to hear from them’ (Rollins, 2014: A10). Since Welcome Dayton is an ongoing process and not a decree, there is a continuous effort to value the concerns of community members that do not agree. Still, instead of focusing on individuals who fully disagree with the overall direction, Welcome Dayton supporters are more likely to engage with the ‘people in the middle who have understandable fears and doubts and are very much worth listening to and sharing with. If you work to understand them, you can slowly build them into the work that’s being done’ (Rollins, 2014: A10). It appears that at least some dissent and conflict is anticipated and accepted.
Against a backdrop of a growing immigrant population who are increasingly living in midsize cities and a need to boost local economies (Bornstein, 2014), it makes sense that states and localities see potential benefits from addressing immigration in their community. The emerging welcoming initiative across the USA centres on a few core pillars, including integration and welcome. As we see it, Welcome Dayton demonstrates a third and necessary pillar, that of community resourcefulness. This pillar further evolves our national conversation on immigration to include recognition of the contributions of both immigrants as well as those American-born citizens who build community with newcomers.
Resourcefulness, recognition and practice
Much of what we know about the experience of immigration has been framed as stories of resilience. Indeed, immigrants in the USA are expected to integrate into existing systems and structures. For refugees, there is an implicit agreement that refugees rapidly work towards economic self-sufficiency upon arrival to the USA. Healthcare and housing benefits, for example, are retired after three to six months, regardless of the refugees’ personal circumstances and conditions. Adapting to existing policies, laws, institutions and practices is key to the resettlement process. While we agree that there is a value to the hard work, ingenuity and perseverance that it takes to thrive in a new country, by conceptualising immigrants’ integration as resilience, policy makers sometimes maintain unhelpful or even harmful policies. In this sense, resilience becomes a tacit acceptance of the status quo. For example, if an immigrant is to thrive in dire conditions, they are upheld as a triumphant accomplishment. On the other hand, those who do not or cannot succeed may be derided for personal flaws and shortcomings.
In response to popular attention to resilience thinking (for review see Adgar, 2000; Cote, 2012), MacKinnon and Derickson (2012) propose the concept of resourcefulness, as a means to not only consider a community’s ability to survive under duress, but also to recognise and develop the community’s capacity for creating change to aspects of the political and economic systems that produce injustices in the community:
The normative vision that underpins resourcefulness is one in which communities have the capacity to engage in genuinely deliberative democratic dialogue to develop contestable alternative agendas and work in ways that meaningfully challenge existing power relations. (MacKinnon and Derickson, 2012)
While resilience directs attention onto the limited approach of resource distribution, resourcefulness opens possibilities of changing the status quo with the skills and tools to address issues of unequal power gradients. Indeed, if left unaddressed, the powerful voices politically, socially and economically become the reigning normative perspective, adopted and assumed to represent the entire community (Young, 1990). In this sense, power has the inertia, if left uninterrupted and unexamined, to appear as a democratic representation of all perspectives. Resourcefulness, then, is an ongoing, community-based, dialogic, dynamic and active process that can capacitate vulnerable populations, such as immigrants and refugees, to become active citizens who can work toward socially just policies in the place of current systems that tend to disadvantage the marginalised.
We find MacKinnon and Derickson’s resourcefulness a useful shift in perspective away from acquiescence of current reality and toward critical, creative and engaged participation in societal transformation. While resourcefulness reorients our thinking to imagine and create new futures for collective wellbeing, a key concept in the model – recognition – is particularly helpful in understanding the values and processes that underlie Welcome Dayton.
The concept of recognition (alongside ‘misrecognition’) is the central work of many theorists. MacKinnon and Derickson lean on the ‘politics of identity’ in referencing the work of Charles Taylor (1994) and Iris Young (1990) to describe the recognition understood and practiced in their research on resourcefulness.
Young and Taylor share certain sensibilities that value the common experience and identity of marginalised groups and the need for those groups to have explicit representation to rectify their status. Citing Taylor (1994) and Young (1990), MacKinnon and Derickson discuss recognition as a ‘requisite condition of justice’, as it:
promotes a sense of confidence, self-worth and self- and community affirmation that can be drawn upon to fuel the mobilization of existing resources and argue for and pursue new resources … Additionally, recognition confers group status upon the community in question on the basis of common attributes and a shared understanding that the community is itself a subject of rights and a receiving body for state resources. (MacKinnon and Derickson, 2012: 265)
Basing their definition in part on the work of Young, recognition involves formalised means through which marginalised groups attain active and equal voices in community decision-making. Although we acknowledge that this type of recognition has been fruitful in the pursuit of rights (e.g. coalitions whereby rights have been gained for groups supporting civil rights, feminism and gay rights), in exploring Welcome Dayton we have observed a different kind of recognition that is supported and encouraged at the micro-level and used to create new possibilities in the community. What we observed more closely aligns with the recognition proffered by Fraser (2000).
Fraser (2000) argues that the identity model suggested by Young and others, reifies group identity as it tends to mask intra-group differences as well as valorise groups without addressing systemic inequality and subordination. In other words, this recognition pushes a group to become recognised, categorised, summarily defined and reified in a way that is both static and reductive without any real transformation of the status quo. Further, Fraser notes that in recognising marginalised groups, such as women, minorities and LGBTQ, the focus has been on the act of noticing the rights of these groups and not on the question of the redistribution of resources or realignment of power that would create equitable and just futures for individuals among marginalised groups. In other words, and similarly problematic to the current emphasis on resilience, recognition that includes only a superficial recognition of marginalised groups, perhaps a societal praise of the group’s virtues or collective horror at the group’s history of oppression, is misrecognition. Simply noticing the existence of the group and accepting the differences of the group as compared with the powerful and normative voice in a society undermines both the tremendous differences of perspective within a group while also passively accepting the status quo. Power, embedded in institutions and codified through laws, policies and practices, is not altered through such misrecognition, which does little in shifting the legitimacy and visibility of subordinated groups within the social, political and economic spheres that govern the entire community.
The kind of recognition that would be tied to actual change is most clearly articulated in Fraser’s recognition (2000), which offers ‘a range of possibilities’ to redress inequities and misdistribution of resources in society. According to Fraser, recognition is about awareness of personal histories and connecting with the past, while also critically examining current structures that inhibit equitable participation by marginalised individuals. Recognition that considers that each person has rights and responsibilities to participate in shaping society not only shifts access to resources but develops interaction and synergy across vast differences within a community. For sustainable and meaningful equality to occur, recognition must include, according to Fraser, the recognition of each individual as an equal and valuable member of society – individuals, not representatives of groups.
While Fraser’s work closely aligns with the quality of recognition we have observed in Welcome Dayton, the literature in transformative mediation further provides a concrete practice for the process of generating recognition. Transformative mediation is a model of mediation that sees conflicts as a ‘crisis of deterioration in human interaction’ (Bush and Folger, 2010a: 16). This relational, rather than individualistic, understanding (Della Noce, 2001) shifts how one thinks about conflict. Defined relationally, conflict is less about satisfying self (or even group) rights or interests than about the interaction between and among people. Following Bush and Folger, Della Noce asserts that conflict ‘provides an opportunity for interactional transformation and individual moral growth in both strength of self (empowerment) and concern for other (recognition)’ (Della Noce, 1999: 279). Recognition, then, is critical to restoring constructive dialogue among people and not just for the moment, but in their future interactions.
In practice, skilled mediators support interactions as they occur moment-by-moment. Mediators adopt a micro-focus that supports recognition and empowerment achieved by profound listening, staying in the moment, reflection, summary and regular checking in with the parties by the mediator (Bush and Folger, 2010b: 38). According to Della Noce, transformative mediation has the possibility of ‘an enrichment of the quality of interaction and the personal/interpersonal awareness of the individuals involved, evidenced by new understandings, shared meanings, appreciation of difference, deliberation, and ultimately, considered decisions about how to act’ (Della Noce, 1999: 277). This interpersonal awareness is central to how recognition is understood in the practice of transformative mediation. The underlying values and techniques used in transformative mediation were in play during the initial planning of Welcome Dayton. More particularly, we observed a focus on process (echoing MacKinnon and Derickson, 2012) supported through the design of space, considered questions and structure of facilitation.
In summary, while the work of Young and others rightfully calls upon recognition as a way for all groups to achieve equal rights, Nancy Fraser proposes a recognition that considers each person of equal status in actively forming community, economy, politics and society. Practitioners and scholars of transformative mediation further offer field-based and engaged methods for achieving recognition in the community. These two streams of literature move us towards an understanding of recognition that occurs from the bottom up, through person-to-person interactions that occur in everyday life. We see that a quality of recognition, which we call intentional recognition, is pivotal in moving a community beyond acceptance of the status quo and toward a new future that promotes community wellbeing. Intentional recognition becomes the anchor for unpredictable, yet expansive, resourcefulness of an empowered community. We will now explore this idea in further sections within the specific context of Welcome Dayton.
Intentional recognition
In the work of welcoming immigrants to Dayton, Ohio, we observed instances of resourcefulness throughout the community and the presence of recognition. This recognition is not one based on a politics of identity, but is instead seen in the interstices between individuals as they engage in conversation. Here we outline the qualities of a particular form of recognition we call intentional recognition that helped create the environments conducive to community resourcefulness. Indeed, the concept of resourcefulness, buoyed, amplified and sustained by intentional recognition, has helped us understand the nature of community resourcefulness within the context of Welcome Dayton as a dynamic, evolving and unpredictable phenomenon. We refer to intentional recognition as a practice because it manifests as an ongoing improvisation between reflection and action on both the individual and community levels. The practice of intentional recognition is evidenced in three core qualities: (1) each individual is an autonomous agent, (2) each individual has value and is connected through a shared humanity; (3) each member of the community (and the community itself) has latent possibility.
Autonomous agency
First, intentional recognition is awareness that each individual is an autonomous agent who thinks, creates, innovates and acts with regard to their particular experiences, knowledge and values. With each citizen recognised as a full partner with autonomous agency, all perspectives are included and valid, regardless of normative power lines. In the words of Nancy Fraser: ‘… what requires recognition is not group-specific identity but the status of individual group members as full partners in social interaction’ (Fraser, 2000: 113). From the inception of Welcome Dayton, individuals and groups were encouraged to identify their unique contributions and include their contributions under the canopy of the community-wide welcoming effort. In other words, conveners emphasised that if you are doing the work of welcoming immigrants in Dayton, then you are doing the work of Welcome Dayton.
In these initial conversations, becoming ‘full partners’ through orienting individuals to their own agency was evident in the invitation, the design of the conversation space, the support of the facilitator who structured the conversation and the guiding questions. First, the initial dialogues included an open invitation from Dayton’s HRC to individuals, not organisations, and requested that people invite others who might be interested in the efforts. There was no exclusivity or control embedded in the invitation, but rather a commitment to trust that those receiving the invitation could and should be free to invite others they believe would add value to the conversation.
Second, the design of the meeting space and the structure of the conversation were created to ensure all participants have the chance to speak. Small tables were scattered about with no front or back to the meeting space. Devoid of central speakers, expert panels or even nametags with titles and affiliations, small group discussions were structured to obtain the perspective of each participant, allowing each voice a turn to express ideas.
Third, the facilitator was trained in transformative mediation and used these approaches to support small-group conversations. In the context of transformative mediation, the mediator is ‘encouraging and supporting – but never forcing – each parties’ freely chosen efforts to achieve new understandings of the other’s perspective’ (Bush and Folger, 2010b: 31). What we observed in Welcome Dayton were the twin efforts to orient people to their own agency and support the agency of the participant over the facilitator. Both the process and space were designed to build a new understanding of both self and other. In this way, the process aimed to build trust among participants in themselves, in each other and in the process.
Finally, the questions that guided the conversations focused on possibility, ownership, commitment and opportunities for dissent (Block, 2008: see p. 98 for more detail). Further, the facilitator-guided process encouraged and supported the concerns of immigrants (public education, the police department, health care and social services, to name a few). There was not the insistence that one person lead the conversations nor the need for unanimous agreement; rather the room and conversations were designed to respect individual perspectives without hierarchy. Small groups then shared with the larger group. In the early meetings, conversations were started using four personal and abstract questions, supporting the participants’ freedom to understand the question individually and to personalise how it is answered.
What have you noticed immigrants have contributed to your neighbourhood or community lately?
What do you think is possible for our community if we were intentionally friendly to immigrants?
What are your doubts about proceeding with being intentionally friendly?
Will you commit to writing a plan in 90 days?
Designed to encourage reflection, discussion and interaction, these questions were intended to open dialogue with those who opted in to participate in the conversations. Such questions do not insist on a right answer, but rather ‘privilege the interaction’ (Della Noce, 1999). There is an awareness that personalised responses will emerge from the agency of engaged and free individuals. Here, there is not a need for consensus. Rather, as Della Noce (2001) notes, there is a moment-to-moment arrival at shared meaning, wherein participants can shift ideas, reflect on new information, consider the perspective of others and arrive at a new understanding.
The initial sessions and smaller-themed group work that followed were self-selected and self-organised. Each participant in the Welcome Dayton conversations opted in through their own motivation, not by orders of their superiors at their place of employment. Those who volunteered to participate in developing a community plan joined a group that matched their particular interests: business and economic development; government and justice; social services; health services; and community, culture, arts and education. These groups were given only a general form with broad questions to consider as well as a timeframe of 90 days to complete their plan. Beyond that, all groups organised the work on their own terms, resolving schedules, commitments, meaning and tasks as they saw fit. This integrity between the process and the drafting of the plan aimed to create a trust from participants that their agency was valued.
This trust is evidenced in initiatives that flowed out of the initial conversations and city commission’s approval of the plan. As the shape and scope of Welcome Dayton has continued to shift, many individuals feel the license to pursue acts of welcome through their unique imagination and expertise. One example is found in the work of a social worker (an immigrant herself) focusing on how she could incorporate welcome of immigrants into her profession.
I was reading the paper about the Welcome Dayton and thought this is what I want to do … I want to make people feel welcoming especially the immigrant, so I looked and see who will I call. I called the city of Dayton … I said I wanted to part of your team and … [they] called me back immediately … and said they would love to be a part of my team. … That was wonderful as I could work with the City of Dayton, Welcome Dayton and also the refugees. (Social Worker, 2014, interview with authors)
This social worker felt validated in her work to carry out the Welcome Dayton plan in the specific context of her work with Bhutanese refugees. She was aware that her work was part of a larger plan and felt validated that the city response was automatically to welcome her as an autonomous agent carrying out welcoming work according to her particular expertise and perspective. In turn, she created a community outreach programme for Bhutanese refugees which included a unique design for approaching and inviting the people into conversation. We will explore the range of initiatives when we discuss ‘possibilities’ that flowed from Welcome Dayton.
Shared humanity
A second component is that intentional recognition includes building sustainable and meaningful relationships, based on what we have in common: a shared humanity. This does not mean there is an insistence for sameness. Rather, intentional recognition affirms the commonness we share with each other while respecting and learning from difference.
Through their field work and rooted in the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy, Gibson-Graham (2008) proposes that community is not about individuals characterised by ‘sameness’, but rather active community is about recognising a shared humanity with all community members. In other words, individuals across the community need not have a sameness of ideas, skills, perspectives, experiences and even values to be community. Gibson-Graham illustrates how community can be conceived through ‘being-in-common’, acknowledging the truth of this interdependence and inter-determination. As Jean-Luc Nancy philosophises, we always already have something in common since we all came into the world:
… we come together (in)to the world. It is not that there is a simultaneous arrival of several distinct units (as when we go to see a film ‘together’) but that there is no coming (in)to the world that is not radically common; it is even the ‘common’ itself. To come into the world is to be-in-common. (Quoted by Gibson-Graham, 2008: 81)
Being-in-common accepts difference while acknowledging what is common, thereby maintaining the bonds that create and sustain community. A practice of recognition rooted in ‘being-in-common’ opens up possibilities, accepting that diverse individuals are in community with each other, without needing to be, think, act and feel the same as others and without having to prove their worth. When it comes to immigrants and refugees, seeing those newly arriving as neighbours in a community is not just seeing the individual, but also recognising and respecting the personal histories, the immigration stories and even the transnational connections that each person has. Recognising and valuing these distinct pasts while also recognising the truth of sharing a common space in a new community underlies the quality of recognition that we observed. Herein, we return to the caution of Fraser to avoid reifying the new immigrant and refugee communities, and allowing for a being-in-common without insisting on sameness at the group level. In addition, members of the community are valued for being, not for their potential economic contribution. While the media largely has emphasised the economic potential of welcoming immigrants, we observed an ethics of recognition in Welcome Dayton that is welcoming without conditions and recognition of the inherent possibilities of everyone.
The practice and process of Welcome Dayton kept the recognition of shared humanity at the forefront of the process and the conversation by acknowledging that each person who walks into the room matters just as much as any other. During the initial conversations, all participants were welcomed regardless of title or ‘status’. All participants were invited to participate in the initial conversations as well as the working groups that drafted the founding proposal. The conversations, documents and initiatives surrounding Welcome Dayton have always included economics, for example, as one component of welcoming communities, but have always reached out to all refugee and immigrant populations regardless of their perceived potential for economic contributions. That is to say, the ethics of Welcome Dayton appears to be rooted in a recognition that all persons are members of the community because we are all here, regardless of political, economic or other status.
Shared humanity is further evidenced in the particular themes selected as the key focus areas for the plan. These areas – Community, Culture, Arts and Education; Business and Economic Development; Social and Health Services; and Government and Justice System – were the foundation of the proposal the community drafted and presented to City Council. If shared humanity were not a cornerstone of the initial conversation and resulting plan, there would be no need to consider ways to build community with immigrants or include methods for supporting immigrant groups facing great economic struggle.
One participant in the initial conversations, who is also an immigrant in Dayton from Iraq, reflected on her experience of feeling recognised and connected in this way: ‘But to come and sit and feel like your heart is shared with so many others and when you share a commonality, it just shakes you to the core. It was beautiful … It felt like I was seeing myself in others and I just felt connected with everybody there’ (participant, 2014, interview with authors). This participant described the way she was welcomed and encouraged to contribute, feeling recognised while also recognising her connection to others.
Present and future possibility
Finally, a third core component of intentional recognition is the orientation toward possibility, without preordained and fixed outcomes. While the initial plan passed by the city commission included programmes and goals, much of the resourcefulness born through Welcome Dayton was not actually planned. The plan created a starting point, but the underlying appreciation was that when citizens of the community are connecting with each other, authentically recognised as full partners with a given agency, then the possibilities of what those citizens will do is both unpredictable and vast. In this sense, Welcome Dayton was designed for the unknown manifestations the work of ‘welcome’ would take on in the community. This is echoed in statements made by city officials, including the mayor at the time, Gary Leitzell who said: ‘I would like to see Dayton become the most immigrant-friendly city in the US. Is that achievable? It’s up to the people’ (Sidlow, 2013).
In the initial meetings that led to Welcome Dayton, this orientation towards possibility was observed in three ways. First, during the initial meetings questions were asked that require imagination (Block, 2008), such as ‘What would it look like if we intentionally welcomed immigrants?’. People were being asked to both reflect on current circumstances, while also beginning the process of creatively co-designing a new future. These questions oriented people toward their own agency and at the same time are forward-looking – orienting participants toward possibility. Second, in contrast to public meetings where most often only selected participants can speak, priority was given to providing a space where every participant had an opportunity to engage in conversation. Brown et al. (2005) attest:
… conversation is not something trivial that we engage in among many other activities. Conversation is the core process by which we humans think and coordinate our actions together … Conversation is our human way of creating and sustaining – or transforming – the realities in which we live. (Brown et al., 2005: 19)
In the initial Welcome Dayton meetings there was an effort to create spaces for conversations that cultivated what was possible, as envisioned by the community, for the collective wellbeing of the community. By bringing people together and postponing the ‘how’, being welcoming and helping people connect with each other and resonate with the possibilities, designing the room in a way that assured no power structure, we gain commitment, ownership and possibilities.
Finally, these connections among individuals happened in small-group conversations, stemming from the work of Peter Block (2008), in which each participant was encouraged to express ideas. Conversations in large public meetings limit the possibility for full and active participation of all individuals present. In this case, a concerted effort has been made in the initial meetings (and some subsequent initiatives) to support and work in small groups – the unit where transformation can occur.
The small group is the bridge between our own individual existence and the larger community. In the small group discussion we discover that our own concerns are more universal than we imagined. This discovery that we are not alone, that others can at least understand what is on our mind, if not agree with us, is what creates the feeling of belonging. When this occurs in the same place and time, in the presence of a larger community, the collective possibility begins to take form and have legs. (Block, 2008: 95)
Possibilities, then, can emerge through creating a space where individuals can mutually support each other by listening to and encouraging one another, exploring questions and concerns that matter, and connecting in a way where new insights emerge that can be acted upon. Further, the small groups can connect back to the larger group – networking and sharing insights that can lead to the emergence of creative possibilities. One participant shared it this way:
When Welcome Dayton was just rooting, I was fortunate to be in an organization that was … in that energy. Our goal was to get music out in the world … It was about community building. So [Welcome Dayton] felt like that connector, that impetus that brought it all together … There is so much more happening. There is interconnectedness. The broad energy in the community feels possible because of the Welcome Dayton structure. (Participant, 2014, interview with authors)
In sum, intentional recognition is set upon the values of seeing others as common, but not the same, each equipped with a unique agency and possibility. This requires participants to mutually learn from each other and to continuously reflect on the process, the self and the other. This is done in part through conversation. For example, in order for each individual to be recognised as an equal in the community, a reflective practice of listening and understanding is required. The focus is on ‘privileging interaction’ (Della Noce, 1999) during initial conversations and insisting that each person, regardless of status or title, be given a chance to speak. The design is that all others listen and when necessary, update their understanding of the self, the other and the community. This practice does not mean arriving at a fixed end point. Reflection is an ongoing practice that appreciates the change in ourselves and others over time and space. Further, reflection through listening and building understanding with diverse others can move the community toward considering the whole society from a new vantage point, the perspective of each other.
It is one thing, as we examined above, to recognise others as dynamic, capable and unique persons with a commonness of being. It is a further step to think critically and creatively as a community on how to examine existing structures and policies in ways that recognise each individual is of equal status. In this way, intentional recognition is pliable and open, enabling communities to collectively examine and alter the systems and structures that impact a community. In the many occurrences of resourcefulness related to welcoming that were observed in Welcome Dayton, we also observed intentional recognition in the foreground.
Dayton’s resourcefulness
The resourcefulness defined by MacKinnon and Derickson is a process that is not precisely quantifiable or predictable but its potential can be realised through purposeful attention. This kind of resourcefulness more clearly calls for an ‘intentional recognition’ that creates the quality of interpersonal connections that orient people towards their own agency and future possibilities. The process that began in the early meetings energised projects already churning as well as provided a spark for new ideas and initiatives (see Table 2) creating new spaces of welcoming and opening the possibility of creating, sustaining or transforming the realities in which we live.
Sample of initiatives that began within 18 months following the development of Welcome Dayton Plan.
Source: Compiled by early organising committee.
In many examples of resourcefulness emerging from Welcome Dayton we observed intentional recognition. For one, the arts in Dayton had long been aware of and celebratory of the local immigrant communities, including longstanding events such as World A’Fair and the many festivals celebrating Dayton’s international heritage. Art and Culture was one of the core themes included in the initial planning sessions of Welcome Dayton. Yet the founding document and ongoing process did not claim to anticipate all that might emerge from the arts community. Following the commencement of the initial plan, for example, artists around the community chose to create works that embodied the new welcoming effort. None of these efforts was requested or predicted by the city or writers of the Welcome Dayton document. On the contrary, each effort emerged through the efforts of citizens who felt recognised by Welcome Dayton, included as a capable, free and equal agent with unique possibilities. For example, the director of the Dayton’s CityFolk (a multicultural arts organisation) chose to highlight various immigrant groups in the community and tie the organisation’s programming directly to Welcome Dayton. From there, CityFolk began to reach out to immigrant groups in the community in new ways, asking international artists and musicians to share their work with school children and community events. A Burundian drumming group was asked to share their art in a local school and perform on the main stage of the CityFolk Festival. Meanwhile, local recording artists created two music videos as part of Playing for Change that showcased the music talent of immigrants within Dayton. Finally, a local artist launched an annual ‘Dia De Los Muertos’ parade to celebrate and include many cultures in Dayton. These initiatives (and others) emerged from individuals extending and expanding the welcoming and were, in fact, part of being neighbourly and inclusive and were, therefore, Welcome Dayton.
Discussion
In Welcome Dayton, we observed resourcefulness as a product of intentional recognition. There were also several notable unintended developments as the people of Dayton continued to grapple with immigration issues within an ever-changing national and international discourse on immigration policy and refugee crises. Here we discuss some of these unintended outcomes, particularly the attention from media, the pushback from politicians from outside the City of Dayton, the recognition from national groups and the Federal government, as well as the scope of ‘welcome’ which in rhetoric and some policy advanced outreach to other marginalised groups.
National media has spotlighted Welcome Dayton on a number of occasions, but often the angle has focused exclusively on the economic upside of welcoming immigrants. Viewpoints expressed in the media, including the New York Times article ‘Ailing midwestern cities extend a welcoming hand to immigrants’ (Preston, 2013) and the Time Magazine article ‘One Ohio city’s growth strategy? Immigrants’ (Altman, 2014), emphasise the reason behind the welcoming policy was to buoy the economy. The article titles alone point exclusively to the economic advantages of welcome. And while economics is certainly a factor, we observed this as one dimension among many. For example, the current programme coordinator of Welcome Dayton stated that welcoming immigrants is ‘just the right thing to do to make sure that anyone new to the city is integrated into the community’ (Rollins, 2014). We observed that, in fact, intentional recognition of immigrants, regardless of the potential economic upside of an individual or group, was at the core of the community’s efforts. If it were purely economics, the city could have focused only to those immigrants with the most education or ability to invest and start businesses. Rather, the effort included outreach to groups of immigrants struggling economically, such as refugees who had never received formal education. Many of the efforts to provide translation, tutoring, English as a Second Language, and arts and culture events were inclusive of all immigrants, regardless of economic potential. Few of these efforts were predictable and the value of most cannot be measured exclusively in monetary terms. Resourcefulness expands thinking beyond what is immediately quantifiable and can move our thinking and doing toward what change can be generated by and for the community to meet its own needs and challenges.
Beyond these national media stories, there was also a great deal of unexpected attention, on a national and international scale, when Welcome Dayton became city policy. At the time, welcoming policy was against the grain and, in this way, Dayton contributed to a shift in the national conversation about receiving immigrants and refugees. Welcome Dayton was part of sparking a tide across the country of municipalities wanting to become a more welcoming community (McDaniel, 2016). The Associated Press picked up Welcome Dayton and the story was then copied in papers across the world. Dayton received calls from people in China, South Africa and Mexico, as well as from government and non-profit representatives from across the country, including New Hampshire, Tucson and Oklahoma City. After the passage of Welcome Dayton, the national organisation, Welcoming America, decided to shift its focus from advocacy in non-profit groups to city governments.
Locally and elsewhere, there was vocal opposition to Welcome Dayton, including from immigrant and refugee advocates. One immigrant leader in Dayton who had arrived in the USA as a refugee from the Congo 20 years before Welcome Dayton became city policy, remained a staunch critic of Dayton’s methods for resettling refugees. Dismayed that some refugees from war-torn countries were being resettled in subpar housing and neighbourhoods, this individual often criticised Dayton’s welcoming efforts in the media and community meetings, citing such sentiments as ‘People are suffering … The refugees feel [US/Dayton resettlement] picks them up and drops them in the trash’ (Bennish and Stewart, 2015). This is in stark contrast to the experience of other immigrants. For example, one individual came to the USA as a refugee and moved to Dayton for a post-degree internship intending to leave after fulfilling his commitment. His stay here coincided with the beginning of the Welcome Dayton initiative and he got involved and subsequently discovered a welcoming he had never before experienced. Multiple professional opportunities followed and he has made Dayton his home. Others have not had the same kind of success. Another immigrant who seemed to have many of the qualities for success and even participated in the development of the Welcome Dayton initiative eventually moved back to the country of his birth. He continues to maintain local connections, though, and is developing ways for exchanging services between his home and Dayton. There is no single experience. Local leadership has continuously tried to address the concerns and recognise that achieving the kind of welcome outlined in the initial plan will be a difficult and long-term process.
In addition to local critics, Welcome Dayton has faced critics from some neighbouring municipalities and state representatives, most notably Mike Turner, a former Dayton mayor now serving in the US House of Representatives. Turner’s public opposition surfaced twice through public letters of opposition, once during the influx of Central American youth refugees and again at the onset of the US conversation on Syrian refugees. Reacting to Mayor Nan Whaley’s offer for Dayton to be one of the US cities willing to welcome these refugees, Turner stated that Nan Whaley, ‘does not have the authority to make such an offer for the city of Dayton’ (Turner, 2014). Turner publically feuded with Whaley after the mayor signed a letter with 18 other US mayors to urge President Obama to resettle more Syrian refugees. In a public letter to Whaley, Turner urged the mayor to retract her letter, saying ‘while Dayton is a welcoming city, in the wake of these deadly attacks (in Paris) and the tragic loss of lives, I urge you to prioritize the safety and security of our community and rescind your invitation to the Obama Administration to send Syrian refugees for relocation in Dayton, OH’ (Turner, 2015). What began as a local community conversation about immigration placed Dayton and its leadership in the heart of what became one of many contentious political conversations surrounding immigration in the last few years.
Meanwhile, others in a national arena lauded Dayton as an outstanding example of transformative change. For example, Tom Wahlrab, the facilitator of the initial conversations leading to Welcome Dayton, was recognised by the White House as a ‘Champion of Change’ (September 2014). City Commissioner and chair of Welcome Dayton committee, Matthew Joseph, was invited to the White House for a national panel discussion on immigration reform (July 2014). The Welcoming Economies conference was hosted in Dayton (June 2015). Mayor Nan Whaley was invited to the White House during the US Conference of Mayors annual meeting (January 2016), where welcoming cities were recognised for their contributions to the President’s Building Welcoming Communities Campaign. In these ways, Dayton contributed to a national dialogue on immigration which turned attention specifically to the role cities can play in welcoming immigrants.
Turning back to the concept of intentional recognition and resourcefulness we consider a few critical features. For one, recognition and resourcefulness have no fixed end point or predetermined method. Indeed, these are processes that take time and develop in the real world amidst a clashing of dynamic and unpredictable social problems, ideologies and policy. In addition, much like open-source code has been to the development of technology and availability of information, so to processes of recognition may be best open-source, such that anyone in the community can contribute to a common policy of welcome. In this way, we see an abundant supply of human resources that emerged when individuals are invited to participate. When individuals and communities intentionally recognise each other and their shared potential, there are unknown combinations of talents, perspectives, skills and ideas. These resources are not often initially obvious or even visible, but rather surface through the collaboration among people who have a shared care and commitment to the community.
Further, we observed that when people are doing what they truly care about, the energy and ingenuity to conceptualise or sustain a vision are also abundant. This is critical to what underlies an effort such as Welcome Dayton. While Welcome Dayton has a full-time Program Coordinator in city government and a board of advisors, 2 the vast majority of welcoming work is dispersed throughout people and organisations in the community who care deeply about the work of welcoming immigrants. It appears that the initial plan approved by city commissioners as well as the institutional structures that emerged afterwards offer scaffolding for community groups and individuals to continue and grow participation. We anticipate if this institutional structure and the initial document keep the founding vision in front of the community and continue to privilege conversation and interaction around issues of immigration and general inclusion, that the Welcome Dayton effort will continue evolving. This evolution would not be prescriptive or replicable by another community as it will have the unique contributions that reflect the particular ecology of people and place of a given locality. Yet, if at the core of the work of Welcome Dayton and efforts in other communities, is the creation of community where people feel that their agency and efforts are recognised and included, the work in the community will continue shaping and evolving the welcoming work.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
1.
Authors are local residents and are connected with Welcome Dayton in various ways. Colleen Saxen, MPH, scholar at the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory at Stanford, worked in the Burundian community and served on the initial Welcome Dayton planning committee. Tom Wahlrab, former director of the Dayton Mediation Center and a Fellow with the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation, facilitated the meetings leading to the development of Welcome Dayton in his capacity as Director of Human Relations Council. Jacqueline Housel, PhD Associate Professor of Geography at Sinclair Community College, is a long-time member of the Cultural and Diversity Caucus of Dayton, which advocates for immigrants and refugees locally.