The following is a reflection from Ronald Sultana triggered by the publication of a Manifesto in favour of Inclusion, highlighting the role that career guidance can play in promoting decent work and equity. The Manifesto captures the view of more than 600 researchers, practitioners, and students, and was an initiative of the La.R.I.O.S. team at the University of Padua.

A manifesto: from the Latin manifestum, meaning ‘clear’ or ‘conspicuous’, even ‘blatantly obvious’, as in “It is manifestly the case that the earth turns around the sun”. Today it should be patently obvious that diversity is to be celebrated, and yet it is manifestly the case that we need a manifesto – a declaration of principles, a public statement of position – that has to be shouted out, affirmed, and fought for.

Why?

Because slowly and imperceptibly at first, but increasingly quickly and blatantly, we are sliding back towards fear of the Other, a fear that soon translates into rejection, vilification, and expulsion from our midst. The Spartans dashed the unwanted against the rocky slopes around their polis, and the children of Europa had their ship of fools, their ghettoes, and their asylums. Walls went up to keep the Other out, and walls within the walls to keep those inside, but unwanted, apart. Walls of all kinds and shapes and sizes: a yellow star, a tinkling bell, a label: it took years and years for us to learn to break down those walls and live in peace in our family, in our clan, in our nation, in our global village. A long, long journey of learning – truly life-long, epochal learning. Learning to stand in awe of the Other in our midst, seen as an end, not as a means to an end, in front of whom we ‘tremble’ in response to the transcendent call for dignity and respect.

But travellers sometimes lose their way, and some journeys take us back to the starting point… and we have to start again our search for the humanity in us, that humanity that is lost every time the Other is maltreated for being manifestly Other. And the cries of injustice rise up from the thousand places where humanity has gathered over the ages to make a living… and to deny a living to others.

Lessons are learnt, and learning is lost: we are now indeed at a loss, living in an interregnum, when old social forms are giving way, but new ones have yet to take shape. We share with the poet that sense of foreboding of the shape of things to come:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(“The Second Coming”, William Butler Yeats)

It is a liquid world, where things truly seem to be falling apart, where the centre cannot seem to hold. Uncertainty and insecurity breed fear, and the craving after certainty and security throws us back onto ourselves, our family, our clan – and up go the walls again… Against migrants and refugees because ‘they take our bread’; against the vulnerable because ‘they are a burden’; against the Other because, because, because … s/he is an-Other, ‘not like us’. And we again fall for that old temptation – crying out for that ‘strong man’ to guard the walls, to build more walls, to keep ‘them’ out. Indeed, we have made good progress… in building border walls on our planet: from 15 in 1989, to 70 today … and counting.

Those walls have been torn down in the past, and can and will be torn down again. Some walls are not only more difficult to tear down, but are more difficult to see because we do not want to see: the walls between homes for the poor and homes for the rich, the walls between schools for the ‘bright’ and schools for the rest, the walls between spaces for the able and spaces for the dis-abled… and yet, all are walls of shame, whether they are made of stone or of words, real or virtual: they bring us neither honour, nor glory.

Such walls of shame can be torn down… but for them to fall, we need to shout out, we need to manifest in the squares and in the streets, as well as in our homes and in our offices, as parents and as lovers, as citizens and as workers. Shouting in unison, in one voice – signing up to a Manifesto to make sure that the ceremony of innocence is not drowned, to show that it is best that are full of passionate intensity, and it is the worst that lack all conviction, and not the other way round…

…”And on the seventh day”, we are told, the Israelites “sounded their trumpets, and gave a loud shout, and the walls of Jericho collapsed”.

Manifest. Shout. Break down those walls!