What my mum taught me about voting as a migrant.
My mum taught me the value of voting as a citizen. For many years I thought that I had to look for other role models to teach me about the value of voting as a migrant. How wrong was I?
Pic: Maria Buczkowska and Teresa Buczkowska
It never before occurred to me to properly talk to my mum about voting. Even though it was she who showed me the value of voting as a citizen. I guess when we take something for granted, we are not inclined to inspect it. Only when our life, with its small and big habits, is challenged with a new reality, we may ask ourselves; is that something still important? Now that my mum and I are both migrants I asked her to sit down with me and talk about voting.
My mum was never considered a part of the active voters’ demographics.
She is a rural woman who lived much of her life below the poverty line. She doesn’t have a high school diploma because she never sat her final exams. Against all the voters' behaviour predictions assigned to my mum due to her gender, social class, and education level she always voted. I wondered what was in the mind of a young woman living in a small village at the edge of Poland that made her vote. I asked my mother about the first time she voted. She didn’t remember, it was more than 50 years ago. She remembered however that all elections were always on Sunday. People first attended a church and then went to the ballots. That was the election day ritual in the village. Even though my mum never mixed religion with her political choices this was also her election day ritual until she emigrated from Poland.
One election Sunday, she made me a part of that voting ritual. After church, we went together to a voting station. I walked with my mum into a voting cubicle behind a short curtain. I saw her marking her vote on the ballot paper, then she gave me the paper to put it into the ballot box. This is my first memory of public election although I voted on matters concerning my family life before. I remember I was very excited to be there, and I was impressed by the solemn atmosphere around me. Only years later I realized what I witnessed on that day. It was the first free and democratic elections in Poland following the fall of the communist regime. Pretty cool thing to witness although I don’t think my mum shares my excitement about it. For her that election was full of fear ‘We were all voting hoping that this would stop a coup or worse, a war’ The democratisation of Poland was a tense time although I cannot remember much of it, I was only 7 then.
I asked my mum what it was like to vote under the communist regime. The elections were undemocratic, often rigged, and not free. My mum had no illusion about that, but she had hope that perhaps sometimes her vote could have made a difference. Hope is what my mum is made of. She’s also made of courage.
An election day was a big event in my mother’s village where not much happened worth of notice. The ceremonial character of Polish elections made it more special and worthy for her. ‘The voting box here [UK] looks so so’ she said with disgust in her voice. ‘At ours [Poland], everything was so grand’ her tone of voice changed from disgust to pride. ‘The voting box, the curtains, everything looked so sturdy compared to here. It is so modest here’ she finished the sentence with disappointment in her voice. She appreciates however that in the UK everything seems more straightforward at the voting stations. ‘There is less paperwork involved’ she says.
As a migrant woman over the retirement age, my mum again goes against the grain with her voting pattern.
‘Migrants don’t vote’ is the message that I hear all the time. The statistics are brutal, I know. However, I believe that partial fault lies in the public narrative around it. Last year I attended a round table about electoral participation of migrants in one European country. We read a white paper crafted by a think tank on this issue. The paper cited statistics and qualitative data and pointed to the ‘ambition gap’ as one of the reasons why migrants do not engage in politics. I was so taken aback by that term. This is the type of language that makes people resign from trying. I was supposed to tell the roundtable participants about the work I did in Ireland to mobilise migrant voters but instead, I told them about my mum. My mother voted, as a citizen and as a migrant, not out of ambition but out of a sense of duty. As I write this story, I realise that my mum’s voting pattern may have contributed to creating inclusive electoral policies in a European country. Not bad for a person who’s not considered a part of the active voters’ demographics.
It is not only the sense of duty that makes my mum vote. ‘I also want to participate!’.
She said it with a lot of enthusiasm and pride in her voice. She felt she needed to say more so she tried to find other words to express her thoughts. I think however what my mum said was perfection. There is no better word. Participation. Saul Alinsky wrote in his book Rules for Radicals, ‘Denial of opportunity for participation is a denial of human dignity and democracy’ My mum never read Saul Alinsky, she never studied political science, but she understands democracy and the power of her vote. I was so impressed.
The desire to participate in democracy isn’t enough. There are barriers that may obstruct people’s access to their fundamental right to vote.
Public narrative is one of the barriers. However, access to information and language skills is one of the first barriers to overcome. Even though my mum has been living in the UK for nearly 15 years she didn’t know about her right to vote in local elections until 5 years ago. She said that a letter from the local council arrived in her post-box. She couldn’t read it but as it came from the council, she deemed it important. When I visit my mum, she usually gives me a few letters to read to her. This time however she asked her neighbour. Was she surprised when she learned that she had the right to vote in the local elections in the UK? She was. Nevertheless, she was delighted that she could vote regardless of her citizenship status. My mum told me once before that she cares about having a dignified government. Her desire for a good government did not change when she migrated ‘I want all that’s good for our town’ ‘I want someone governing our town who is accessible to people, someone who will do good things for this town and not only [leave their promises] on paper.’
The first time my mother went to cast her vote as a migrant she asked her neighbour to go with her. It was the same neighbour who read to her the council letter with information about her right to vote. My mum’s limited command of English took some of her confidence away to engage with such an official setting as the voting process. This gave me the idea of creating a voting buddy program to support people with limited language ability to participate in electoral processes. My mum again is influencing inclusive electoral practices. Her methods of sourcing information to help her make political choices can also give an indication as to what support migrants may need. She reads local news using Google Translate, or she asks family and friends to read them to her. She knows that her knowledge of local politics and affairs is limited due to her limited language skills. This is the space that migrant rights groups should occupy to become political houses where migrants can find information and practical support. An issue I wrote about before.
Our conversation about voting wasn’t long but it brought me through a wide range of emotions. We both laughed when I asked if she was encouraging other migrants to vote to which my mum replied, ‘I brag about voting’. ‘Good!’ I said, ‘I brag too about voting a lot’. There was also a moment when I teared up a little. It was when my mum told me how she as a young girl went with her mother to a voting station on a Sunday after church. My grandmother was born 5 years before Polish women got the right to vote. She only ever did four years of education, but my grandmother could have been a writer if she had been allowed to stay at school. My grandmother taught me how to read at the age of four, and she taught my mother how to vote.
Most of all I feel proud of my mum.
It took some cultivation of my political awareness through grassroots organising to craft my understanding of democracy as a migrant. My mum somehow was already there. With limited language and no formal networks of support, she crafted her own opinion about her role in the local community and democracy as a migrant. When I asked her if she thinks it is fair that migrants as non-citizens can vote. She said without a shadow of a doubt, ‘Yes!’. It is fair because I live here.’ In other words, who lives here belongs here.
My mum, always a voting icon.
