Roles and perspectives of women mediators in France [website]
Project aims ...
The study focuses on the role and activities of women working with migrants living in underprivileged
areas in (mostly) French suburban cities and how they have come to mediate between migrants,
but also underprivileged individuals in general and local authorities.
Most of those women are themselves migrants or daughters of migrants. We can also notice that a wide part of those professionals are women but a very few are men. Starting with those observations, the study aims show their personal life stories, their practices, and how they progressively can build professional abilities, while questioning the evolution of this recent profession. The work of these ‘médiatrices interculturelles’ exemplifies in various ways the urban and social policies of French State whilst still maintaining the universalist profile that characterizes French interculturalism. It also puts a light on the contradictions between universalist discourses in one hand, community practices in the other hand, both held by public institutions. The different experiences studied, in different local contexts, illustrate in the end how those mediators can play a role in the definition of a new citizenship.
Methodology
The research project combines several methods:
participant observation, semi-guided and group
interviews with mediators, family stories based on
biographical interviews and life stories of different
members of a whole family, one of them being
mediator. The mediators were chosen to show their
diversity (institutional context of intervention, status,
activities, previous professional experiences...) and
study the effects of those differences. All of them
have been mediators for more than 5 years. Only
women were met and they all this common point,
making them mediators: their work consists in create
a relation, solve a conflict, between citizens and
public institutions (school, social services, housing,
justice court...). Eighty interviewed with mediators
were collected.
Also the policy makers were interviewed and their
discourses studied (a hundred interviews). And the
legislation was of course taken in account to explain
the evolution of the profession and understand how it
can impact differently the life stories of the women
met.
This study was made in different suburban areas,
allowing an interesting comparative work between
semi-rural and urban areas, with different socioeconomic
backgrounds, and different political issues
and options.
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Research findings
The first result concerns the tasks and trust to the mediators: basically, these women mediators are
assigned the task of counselling in the form of
provision of language interpretation and information
especially in relation to the authorities. Their work
however rarely remains limited to these functions,
expanding to include assistance with the search for a
job or housing. In this, they could be said to intervene
with the objective of regenerating the social fabric
and fighting exclusion. In other cases, they intervene
to consolidate the relations between parents and
schools. In this research framework, the women
mediators also take part in the preventions and
solutions of neighbourhood problems by explaining
religious rituals and cultural practices. In seeking to
develop solidarity bounds, they also organize
campaigns for the prevention of delinquency and drug
addiction. Further, as the contact women develop
their activity in ethnically crowded neighbourhoods,
among labourers and paupers mostly, they set an
example for a new model of women. Furthermore, in
presenting themselves as capable to communicate,
adapt and open new roads towards social
participation, they promote understanding and set
positive example for immigrants and the indigenous
population. In this, they are contributing to the
development of a positive identity of the
neighbourhoods. Working together permits the
development of a Republican awareness and
contributes to the concept of consolidation and
equilibrium without falling into the trap of
‘assimilation’.
This type tends to reinforce the model of
assimilation of immigrants in
The second result concerns the definition of the
function of contact and mediation. Two notions of
contact and mediation became apparent during the
study. The first defines the function of contact person
as arising out of the difficulty of response to the
specific needs of population in a problem situation.
This function is limited to the rule of intermediary
between the immigrants and the institutions. From the
point of view of the State, these women have a role to
play with reference to social policies, employment and
housing, as they help to surmount the barrier of
limited mutual understanding.
This type tends to allow a co construction of new ways of
understanding, of new social behaviours and rules
The function of
mediation has a much wider range of scope than the
function of contact. It involves new forms of social
guidelines and dialogues. With this perspective, the
mediator function calls for the creation and recreation
of social ties. The mediator women become a centre
of reference and active participants in the handling of
projects.
We can summarise these different functions of mediation in two ideal types, in these figures, as following:
Key messages
An important part of mediators become opinion leaders and participate actively in communal policies. They are important actors in the fabrication of social policy which target not only migrants, but all inhabitants of the urban sector.
Nevertheless, their role in the social life, as professionals, still appears under recognize especially by local authorities, even if those institutions recruit them. This shows a certain form of discrimination in how those professional women are considered. Indeed, they are more often seen as “family mother” helping in the community life, and not as real professionals.
An effect of the mediators’ actions appears as surprising comparatively to the excepted ones. Mediators were first thought as linkages to inhabitants with specific difficulties in communicate with public institutions. In the different contexts studied, their actions show wider effects, particularly in improving intergenerational relationships.
Policy recommendations
After nearly twenty years of practices,the recognition of the professional role of mediators is necessary . A professional diploma should be created. The fact it doesn’t exist yet tends to reinforce one of study’s conclusion on the discrimination they experience. This creation would also easier allow the development of the second ideal type presented (creation of social ties), which carry more benefits for all together inhabitants, public institutions and mediators, in developing better knowledge on one to the other.
As most of the mediators intervene in different civil organisations, those ones should be helped in their activities, especially when they directly play an important role in the local social life, as it is the case.
Following this idea, public institutions should develop contacts and occasions of cooperation between mediators, at different levels: local, regional, national... Those professionals would be thus able to exchange their experiences and learn ones from the others, for better practices.
More widely, the mediators’ experiences should be disseminated nationally and internationally. To get more public recognition, this profession should also be opened not only to immigrant women but also to national men and women. Intercultural dialogue ability appears actually more as attitudes and cannot be resumed in gendered and ethnical characteristics.
In the same time, the women’s rights need to be reinforced and taken into consideration. The women’s actions allow fighting conjointly against racism and sexism, as long as their activities are plainly recognized.
Representatives of institutions such as Ministry of Education, Ministry of Work should take into consideration the mediators’ experience and modify their policies. As said, two directions could be followed:
- Allow the mediators to have a clear professional status, taking in account the benefits their activities offer to the local social life, thus encourage their development
- Facilitate the access to the career for different kinds of individuals, allowing then the profession being seen as made of abilities and specific skills, rather than being a reserved field to certain kind of populations (immigrant women); this would be a way to fight stigmatisation more widely.