No longer need to speak Danish

**Skjaldemjøden** · 02-15-2018, 08:47 PM

She was the only immigrant in her class when she arrived in Gellerup. Today Amal Najjar teaches 98% migrant children at her old school.
25 years span between the photos bellow. The first shows Amal Najjar, 15 years old. She was part of the first scoop TV2 did on a new phenomenon: Ghettos, which gradually fill up with immigrants and grow further and further apart from the community. That was in 1993. At the time, just two in three residents of Gellerup were immigrants. The next photo shows Amal Najjar, 40 years old. Today she meets with TV2 again to speak exactly of the same subject. Because today there are far more immigrants gathered within Gellerup's gray concrete than there were 25 years ago.

^{Amal Najjar in 1993, when TV2 met the Lebanese woman for the first time - 15 years old. Photo: TV2}

^{Amal Najjar 25 years later on TV2. Photo: TV2}

"When I started my elementary education here, I was the only immigrant in my class. Today 98% of the pupils are immigrants," says Amal Najjar when we meet her outside Tovshøjskolen in Gellerup. It was here she started studying shortly after arriving with her family from Lebanon. She returns to this place every single day. Because not only has Amal Najjar remained in Aarhus Vest; she is today a teacher at Tovshøjskolen, where she herself was a pupil.
"Back then I came here and discovered that there were countless possibilities. That one could do what one wanted, and that the possibilities were far better here than those in my homeland. That was the general opinion among migrants who came at the time. They were refugees and fled from war. They were thankful for the possibilities they were offered in Denmark. But things have changed," says Amal Najjar. In the span of the 25 years that have since passed, the proportion of residents with immigrant background has risen from two in three in 1993 to four in five today.

First Arabs, then Somalis and then Kurds
"At the start of the 90's the Arabs came, then came the Somalis. And later still came the Kurds. They all ended up out here. It was an obvious outcome, although there was talk for this entire period of time that the opposite should happen. And there was a great change. Because suddenly it wasn't only refugees that came. It was people who came to make themselves and their families a better life. And they soon learned that the children were provided with schooling, that food was handed out and life was comfortable whether or not they worked", says Amal Najjar.
Today the ghettos' future is once more a matter of debate. The government wants to end what it dubs "holes in the map of Denmark." And one of the areas that gets the most attention is Gellerop with its 5,874 residents.

No place in Denmark
"But it's easy just to point a finger at Gellerup and the people who live here. Because these people, who came here, have for years been told there was no use for them or for what they have to offer. They haven't felt like there was a need for them, or that they had room here in Denmark. That's why they never became a part of the community, " says Amal Najjar.
In the 25 years that have passed since TV2 met Amal Najjar for the first time, she has gotten married, been certified as a teacher and mothered five children. And she also - in contrast with the rest of her family - moved out of Gellerup. Today she resides at a house on the other end of Silkeborgvej, which forms the southern border of the famous and infamous quarter.

Arabic everywhere
"Back then in 1993, the premise was that people spoke Danish with each other. When we were two Arabs, we naturally spoke Arabic, but there was a need to speak Danish to get by. That is no longer the case. I can get by speaking Arabic everywhere, because we are so many out here now. There is no longer a need to speak Danish. And when the need is gone, so is the motivation for learning it. Why would one bother?"

"Isn't it a good idea to tear down the blocks and spread the people then?"

"I don't think one would contemplate these methods dealing with ethnic Danes. I mean, force people and take their rights to decide for themselves where they want to reside and how they want to live their lives. The problem here is more about a group of people who do not feel that the community has a use for them, or that there is a reason to leave. And as long as that is the case, tearing down building and moving people around would solve nothing, because the problem isn't in the walls," says Amal Najjar.

http://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2018-0...nsk-laengere-0