Symposium Speaker

I attended Thursdays talk titled, "Out of Place: From Exile to Flexible Citizenship" by Maria Gabriela Nouzeilles. Ms. Nouzeilles talked about the hard social and economical transition that individuals make when immigrating to a new country. I think that one can assume that Ms. Nouzeilles is talking about those migrating to top tier nations, say like America, France, England... countries with an established and more sophisticated government. I think that her speech shed a valuable light on how immigrants are portrayed in a more developed society. The barriers that she highlighted as those that were difficult for an immigrant to transcend were realistic and feasible, that is to assume that the immigrant(s) came from a lesser developed nation. But what about those that migrate to nations that are less developed, or those with money that can bridge the drop in social status that is associated with moving to another country. I guess a formal but loose definition of what an "immigrant" is would have been a nice touch to the presentation. I do think however that it is an interesting perspective...that of an immigrant... myself having never been put in that type of situation. I recall when my Mother and I moved to Canada. We lived in Calgary, Alberta for close to a year. Yet during this time I never felt like an immigrant, we looked like most Canadians, we just talked a little different! Curious Canadians would ask us what part of the United States we were from, hearing the accent, and when we would respond with "Washington" we were assumed to be tourists. There wasn't a lack in the transition between Canada and the United States, we seemed to fit in just fine.

Ms. Nouzeilles paints a different picture. She indicated that immigrants are discriminated and out of place in their new country. She gives her reasons when saying that immigrants are treated different based on the color of their skin, the accent and or native languages they speak, and the views of the general public when dealing with said immigrants. She lists the place of the immigrant in the social structure as at the bottom, as well as saying that immigrants have a difficult time transitioning into the upper classes. She evidences these points with stories, some colorful, describing encounters are subways, observations from others, as well as videos highlighting unique experiences while traveling as well as individual profiles of those we see as "different" to us. She says that immigrants are different from tourists and are thus treated differently. Money seems to be the root of the issue here. With money one can immigrate into a new society fairly easily...but most immigrants are in the search of more money with a little slice of the promise of a better life. That sort of life is developed through time, often through many generations. Perfect example: Immigrants to flow through NYC in the late 1800's and early 1900's... some prominent families grew out of a few immigration tales.

To recap, we must ask what immigration is as well as determine social and economic factors of the countries involved in the transfer before we can say that all immigrants are truly discriminated against. Sidebar: if you are going to give a presentation to college age kids it is better to integrate them into the presentation then to read it to them People learn by involvement not listening.