They work from a room measuring five by seven meters in a nondescript office building. Their company was founded four years ago by a woman from Curaçao who has clear eyes, but can now hardly see.
However, when you enter the Emmaüs HomeCare office, you do not immediately notice what makes this small home care company from Dordrecht exceptional. When you meet founder Jureling Candelaria (41) and two other Antillean-Dutch employees, you already have a suspicion. But it becomes clear when you meet intern Manal (23), a Moroccan-Dutch woman with a headscarf, who prefers not to have her surname in the newspaper, and who has just returned from a client’s funeral. And when you hear that the other colleagues are of Afghan, Somali, Surinamese and South African descent.
Director-owner Candelaria consciously hires people from different cultural backgrounds. She would also like to hire white Dutch people, but that has not been possible so far. “They don’t apply here,” says administrative assistant Runaiska Felicia (23) with a shrug. Emmaüs HomeCare only employs women of non-Western descent.
Last autumn, the Social Cultural Planning Office (SCP) published a study with the main conclusion: more diversity in the workplace leads to friction rather than to a sense of inclusion. People simply prefer to work with people who look like them, the research shows.
Researchers found that employers who bring people of color into their organizations don’t always realize how often these people are excluded. They also often have no insight into the ways in which this happens. Employers often overestimate how inclusive their organization is. The fact that few people with a migration background hold management positions does not help, according to the SCP researchers.
However, employers will have to work on diversity and inclusion. The SCP study states that more than one in four employees in the Netherlands has a migration background. Among young workers (between 25 and 35 years old), the ratio is almost one in three.
My mother always said: ‘You have to do your best so that they can’t criticize you behind your back’
Reason enough for that NRC to further investigate difficulties surrounding diversity in the workplace. But that turns out to be difficult. Countless phone calls and emails to people with negative experiences only yielded responses such as: “I recognize it, but I prefer not to say anything about it in the newspaper” and “I don’t share my story because I’m afraid of losing my job.”
Professor of social (in)justice Judi Mesman explains why there is so much fear and discomfort that people do not dare to talk openly about friction due to diversity in the workplace. “People of color think twice before talking about it out loud. They know that talking about it always leads to trivializing or angry reactions. And white people are terrified of being called racist.”
But here, around the two large desks in the office space of Emmaüs HomeCare, the four women with a non-Western background want to say a few things in response to the conclusions of the SCP research. Although Candelaria, Felicia, Manal and Michelique Manuel (38) choose their words cautiously.
Fear of misunderstanding
“My mother always said: ‘You have to make an extra effort so that they can’t criticize you behind your back,’” says Felicia. In the predominantly white organizations where she worked, she did not feel free to speak out. She also did not dare to share much about what was going on at her home. She was afraid that things might be very different among white colleagues and that they would find her strange. “I was afraid that they wouldn’t understand me. Or that they would think I should keep work and private life separate.”
Her last experience at a predominantly white organization was her internship as a medical assistant at a general practice. There the work clashed with her values and standards. Because so many people were not received by general practitioners who, according to her, should have been received. And then it was up to her to tell those people that they should just take a paracetamol or just wait and see. While she really felt that there was room in the agendas of the general practitioners for whom she worked.
She found her internship so terrible that she immediately quit her studies. Fortunately, she does have the feeling that she is helping people here, she says. Fortunately, she feels understood and safe here among like-minded people.
Michelique Manuel (38) previously worked in a predominantly white, large home care organization. After she could no longer make home visits due to physical complaints, there was no longer a place for her in the company. She was surprised that there was no desk work available for her at such a large organization and she suspects that the employer may have found it difficult to retrain her. At Emmaüs HomeCare she is now being retrained as a human resources office employee.
Home care aide Tisha Somersall has made sandwiches for a client.
Photo Merlin Daleman
Here she also feels there is room to make mistakes and learn from them, so that she can develop further. She did not feel that space at the white organizations where she worked. There she had the idea that she should be able to do everything immediately. There she felt stupid or difficult when she asked something. So she didn’t dare to ask anything.
All four women think that difficulties in the workplace are mainly caused by cultural differences. They agree that the norms and values of non-Western people of all different nationalities are closer to each other than those of white Dutch people. As a result, they feel a greater distance from white Dutch people than from each other.
“Look at her, me and Manal,” Felicia gestures to the intern sitting next to her at the desk. “We live next door to each other and have been friends for years.” There was once a Dutch girl in their group of friends, she says. He wanted to come and stay, but in Moroccan or Antillean cultures you simply don’t do that until you’re eighteen. She didn’t have to start working at thirteen to earn some extra money, like she did. She could go out as often as she wanted. Felicia: “Well, then you grow apart.”
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Serious crime
Candelaria did not choose a career in healthcare after high school, like her mother and sister. Despite her visual impairment (she became blind in one eye in her youth and developed socket vision in the other eye), she completed a higher professional education in law. She then worked for the police in a detective team that dealt with serious crime.
Her hero was always Peter R. de Vries. After his death she changed course. She wanted to do less dangerous work. She no longer wanted to judge people, but wanted to help them.
Candelaria started her home care organization after the corona period. Her goal was to mainly provide home help to people with a non-Western background. And by care providers with the same background, because she believes that recognition in culture, language and life experience leads to more trust and understanding. And because she sees in her environment how difficult non-Western people find it to apply for home care.
In practice, Emmaüs HomeCare has so far only helped white Dutch people. It is and remains extremely difficult to find clients of non-Western origin. The women in the office explain why that happens.
Shame
The fact that non-Western elderly people do not request home help has to do with shame, they say. Shame to have to ask for help outside the family. But also shame about what others will think. Manal: “My grandmother has a walker but refuses to go outside with it. She says: ‘When people see me with a walker, they think I’m weak.’” In the end, her grandfather was so ill that he could no longer go to the toilet. His daughters had to carry him to the toilet and his wife had to help him there.
The culture on Curaçao is very different: parents take care of their children, children take care of their parents, the Antillean women say. Felicia: “My mother is now even in Curaçao to take care of her mother there.” Candelaria: “My father’s leg was amputated, but he doesn’t want help from strangers. Fortunately, my sister works in home care and she can help him.” And to her relief, Candelaria’s parents have now accepted domestic help.
On Curaçao, families often live in different houses on one piece of land with a shared garden. There it is easy to help each other. But if parents of non-Western origin live in a Western society, such as the Netherlands, Candelaria believes that they cannot simply expect their children to take care of them. “That is simply not possible here.” And that is why its mission remains unchanged. “Non-Western people also have the right to home help.”
The women in the office have arranged for two white Dutch clients to be visited today. Not when the home help is there to care for them, but at a quiet time of the day.
French teacher and alpinist
The first client lives in a spacious terraced house with a gigantic garden. Her name is Rietje Smits-Billet (87). Her husband is deceased and her daughter lives in Norway. She used to be a French teacher and alpinist. Now she can hardly walk anymore due to nerve compression in her back.
She previously had help from a large home care organization, she says. “Then Jan, Piet and Klaas would come and play their numbers without love. They didn’t want to make breakfast for me. That wasn’t allowed according to the rules. They didn’t think along with me at all and sometimes stood outside again after five minutes.”
Since February, Tisha – “she’s from St. Martin” – comes in the mornings during workdays and Kaisha – “she’s half Dutch, half Moroccan” – comes at weekends. Smits-Billet discussed with them that she largely does the daily washing herself and needs more help with her morning routine. “They think along with me and there is always something to laugh about.” The fact that Tisha and Kaisha have a non-Western background is not an issue for Mrs. Smit-Billet. As a teacher, she saw students from all kinds of backgrounds passing by. “I look at people’s hearts.”
The second client lives in a small house full of oak, pottery and dark paintings. An older man in black sweatpants sits on a bed in the front room. “I am Mr. Branten,” he introduces himself. “I’ve been sitting on this bed for three years,” grumbles the 82-year-old man. “I can’t walk.” What follows is a bitter waterfall of speech. About arguments in the family. About problems with arranging reimbursements for a mobility scooter. About his youngest daughter, 63, who is disabled and has been in an institution since she was seven.
When he is asked about home care at an unguarded moment, he unexpectedly brightens up. “The girls come in the morning and evening. They do everything for me. They shower me, put me in clean clothes, inject insulin, prepare my food. It is a calling, as they take care of older people.”
It is also unimportant for Mr. Branten that his caregivers have a different cultural background. “I am from Brabant, Laila is from Morocco, but we both have family in Helmond.”
On the way back to the office, Felicia says cautiously: “Look, that’s such a difference. That you immediately tell your entire life story to a complete stranger. People from my culture would never do that.”
Home care assistant Tisha Somersall from Emmaüs HomeCare visits a client.
Merlin Daleman
