The Pros And Cons Of Trans-National Displacement

Immigrants belonging to a specific country in diasporic conditions fluctuate between two identities and two different cultures. These two cultures are mentioned as donor and recipient. Therefore, a situation arises in almost all immigrants, mainly in those who have more prominent cultural distance between the donor and recipient country. Wherein a severe constitution takes place to the places of cultural identity and adaptation. This condition of riding two cultures concurrently leads to division not only on individuals but also communities in the host culture that causes social uncertainty and disorder. This occurs because most migrations are not intended, but required by socioeconomic fragmentation. Therefore, migrants do not try to make essential changes in their social-cultural assessment. They treat this migration as virtuously momentary. Thus, their continuous repetition of the cultural patterns and ethics carried with them from donor society and their unwillingness to absorb the recipient society cause conflicting conditions isolating them from the host

Immigrants and local culture can live together in the society. The adaptation of the local culture for immigrants consists of the integration of events such as customs, religion, and tradition. Events that are transmitted from generation to generation. They work to preserve those traits and customs in order to claim uniqueness and to distinguish themselves from others. “Conversely, the values and behaviors adopted by descendants of immigrants can shift towards those of the majority population by means of school socialization, the media, and friends from the host culture” (Pailhé, 2015).

Multiculturalism is the process of immigration and globalization of societies in the world. The world is made up of a mix of many nationalities, cultures, groups, orientations, or ideologies. Multiculturalism involves the acknowledgment of the different groups of ethnic people, cultures, and regions as opposed to the accepting an ideology of a single cultural identity or nation. Interculturalism involves the aspects of anthropology, cultural learning, psychology, and communication. It is these factors that cause the conflict and contrast between different generations, ethnic groups from different regions, and different character traits. The evolution of these struggles provides the root of the formation of the humankind in the society. Finally, the concept of transculturalism is the blending of all human culture styles. It involves combining elements of more than one culture. Transculturalism creates history, diversity, and the support to one another in the formulation of various vibrant experiences.

When assessing the history of the United States, it is evident that migration has served as the foundation of this country. Migration is often revered as innovative or forward thinking therefore, many begin to see the displacement of people as imperative in order to live a successful life. However, Scott Russell Sanders makes a different case. In “Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World” Sanders responds to an essay by Salman Rushdie and makes the case for settling within geographical borders. In Sanders’ response, he utilizes effective strategies to successfully convince his audience that by creating a more permanent home within borders, life is more enjoyable.

The Indigenous communities have operated in an organic family structure where there is a sense of community and everyone is contributing, however with the new family. Andrea Smith`s article is a good illustration on what social structures affect individuals to migrate. In some cases, individuals leave their country in the pursuit the ‘American Dream’, while others are forced to. My family circumstances of leaving their country to migrate are a good example of what Smith would describe the process of Orientalism. Orientalism is when individuals are displaced from their homeland and migrate somewhere else. When such individuals come to a new country they are viewed as the ‘other’ by dominant groups. They are often perceived as evil and a threat which justifies wars and capitalism. Similarly, my parents had to migrate because of a civil war that took place in their homeland. They are often judged because of the colour of their skin and religious beliefs and not viewed as equal to the rest of society. Although we have the right to practice our religion freely and have the right to have freedom of speech, we are still oppressed and discriminated against

It is the condition of separation and distancing. As such, the “trauma of displacement” has a “psychological, sociological, and environmental” effect on nations, communities, families, and individuals. On a broader sense, Frank Ritchel Ames’s careful analysis of the “cascading effects of exile” shows how the exilic experience sociologically affects individuals in three ways. First, exile diminishes resources and security. “Exile separates people from their property, including food and water, clothing and furnishings, tools, documents, and artistic, religious, and nostalgic items, as well as animals, which are a form of wealth and a source of food, clothing, entertainment, warmth, and tools.” This, Ames affirms, implies that the separation is more than material; it is a separation that “fractures social networks and community infrastructures.” Separation does not allow the taking of what is familiar; it only allows the taking of what is readily available, making it difficult for the exiled to live comfortably and secure. Second, exile increases morbidity and mortality. Ames makes the point by stating that,

Cultural tradition is how humans differ from other species and shows a form of a higher thought process. In different parts of the world we can see the variation of cultures we have. Not all cultures and cultural traditions have made it to the present and we don’t know which will still be around in the future. These “lost” cultures and cultural traditions are typically remembered with a sense of a sorrow because they are not with us anymore. One of the various causes of cultural tradition loss is by new groups of people inhabiting or influencing the location of where these cultural traditions are seen, used, and practiced. Influences can be on the physical space, languages, and religious practices. The new groups of people, in this case, are immigrants that are coming into different states both by choice and by necessity.

According to Rowels and Bernard (2013), growing knowledge of the effects of physical barriers on mobility, the way in which older adults perceive space, deeper understanding of the meaning of home to longtime residents, and more sophisticated and differential insight into the consequences of relocation have been well documented (preface xi).

Identity is at the core of Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets, Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones, and Rhina Espiallat’s Where Horizons Go. All of these Diasporic literary works deals with the manner in which the characters negotiate their relationships between their current locations and their ancestral homelands. In each work the protagonists struggle to unionize there two parts of his/her identity, to bring together the ‘here’ (where they are now) and ‘there’ (their ancestral homeland).

Immigrating to a new country is often emotionally taxing. Each country possesses a unique culture, and its citizens reflect the values that are respected in that state. Keeping this in mind, moving to a foreign place and having to embrace a distant set of ideals is a difficult task. Naturally, an inner conflict arises within a person as to whether they should discard the old values in favour of the new ones and become a member of the new country, or to retain the old values and therefore remain estranged from the new citizens. To cope with this struggle, a person might manufacture two identities: one of the old country and one of the new country. In the essays “Life in a New Language” and “An Invisible Woman”, writers Eva Hoffman and Bharati Mukherjee create a new identity to cope with the hardships of immigrating to a foreign country. However, while Hoffman reluctantly accepts her English persona, Mukherjee cannot balance her Indian side with her Canadian one and therefore leaves the country. The two essays explore the strains of changing oneself to acclimatize to a new environment and exemplify the two possible outcomes of creating a second persona in an unfamiliar place: accepting the new identity and staying, or rejecting the foreign values and leaving.

Regardless of the foreboding back-drop of this discourse, many people are still making the often hazardous journey away from their homelands

The question of identity is always a difficult one for those living in a culture or group, yet belonging to another. This difficulty frequently remains in the mind of most immigrants, especially the second generations who were born in a country other than their parents. Younger generations feel as if they are forced to change to fit the social standards despite previous culture or group. Furthermore those who wish to adopt a new identity of a group or culture haven't yet been fully accepted by original members due to their former identity.

Whether it is gender, sexuality, religion, race, ethnicity or nationality people’s self-concept is structured around multiple identifiers. Depending on context some identifiers are more predominant than others, however, these identities enable people the ability to understand and differentiate themselves from others. While all identities are important, a crucial dimension of identity often dismissed as a major contributor to self-individuality is national identity (Baldwin, 157). Partaking in a culture, society or community for a length of time the recognition of nationalism begins to diminish. The constant participation of a nationality becomes the “norm” and it is not until withdrawn from a nation that the acknowledgement of national identity occurs. Speaking from personal experience, my national identity had never been as dominant than my time spent studying abroad in the London. While I identified as an American, I never felt American until I came overseas. Customs, language, and practices were foreign to me and fitting into the culture was a learning process. In order to feel as though I belong somewhere in this new community, I found security in identifying with and as an American. Simply, I developed an imagined community to reconnect with my home country. When place in situations where exclusion from people’s nation occurs finding comradeship through imagined communities reproduces the sense of belonging, but also alter one’s self-understanding by unveiling an

He especially focuses on the juxtaposition of diaspora against concepts of the “nation-state” and on the flip side, against ideas of “indigenous” people. He feels that “the term diaspora is a signifier, not simply of transnationality and movement, but of political struggles to define the local, as distinctive community, in historical contexts of displacement". His examination of the use of diasporic language in the context of “tribal” and indigenous people is especially interesting, since as he is clear to point out, “tribal cultures are not diasporas; their sense of rootedness in the land is precisely what diasporic peoples have lost”, however when the discussion is about indigenous peoples who have been displaced, which is often the case, much of this language and framework used to discuss diasporas is readily

In his book The Location of Culture (1994), Homi. K Bhabha tries to explore the question of how can we understand postcolonial cultures and to know where can we locate them. It is a seminal work that can be located within the sphere of multi-cultural awareness which emerged in 1990s to open horizons for studies on how hybridity and cosmopolitanism affects identity and culture.