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Home Away From Home in Egypt
By Julia Hursh
I
expected Cairo to be a large city more
modernized than much of what we had been seeing in other countries. I
did not however, expect to see so many signs of home in an area so far
away from home! I was walking down the street one morning with my
friend Adele, when we came across a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf
café. That is both mine and Adele’s favorite coffee shop back
home so we immediately went inside. I felt like I walked off the street
of Cairo into a café in California. Everything inside looked
exactly the same including the tables, chairs, menus and magazine
section. It was shocking to us both to be at that coffee shop in Egypt.
The Coffee Bean chain is actually quite small as Adele pointed out; she
goes to school in northern California and there are no Coffee Bean
stores up there. The chain is mainly only found in southern California.
What was one doing in Egypt, we wondered? It was even stranger to walk
outside and see Jeeps driving on all the streets. I drive a Jeep back
home and had not seen that American brand of vehicle in any other
country up to that point. It was then that I realized how much western
influence, especially Amerianis in Cairo, Egypt.
I looked for signs of human migration rather than
just products or corporate outlets and did not find many signs of
migrants moving in and out of the country. I did meet many people that
had migrated to Cairo from other parts of the country however. I went
with a few friends on a tour of Cairo and Giza with a guide who had
migrated from Upper Egypt. (We later realized this meant southern
Egypt, but is referred to as upper because the Nile River flows north
and the area people migrate from is around the Nile.) The guide took us
all over the city and taught us about its history. The guide said that
many people migrate to Cairo because it is the largest city in Egypt
and they migrate there hoping to find work. He said it can be hard to
find work in other parts of Egypt unless you have land to farm, become
a fisherman or do some other type of agricultural job. With Cairo
having a population of about 17 million people though work can actually
be competitive and hard to find there as well. Stephen Castles and Mark
J. Miller’s textbook titled The Age of Migration discusses migration
issues from Egypt. The authors mention that Egypt is the Arab nation
that is most populous and most affected by labor migration. The text
goes on to state, “By 2002, Egypt needed to create 500,000 jobs per
year to employ population cohorts entering the job market”
(p.133). This shows that there are not enough jobs for all of the
people migrating north to Cairo thus the migration outside of Egypt.
It might seem that bringing American companies into
Egypt may take away from their culture by adding too much western
influence, but it may be a positive thing as well. If more companies
from around the world migrate into Egypt and open up stores then maybe
more jobs in the city will be a positive result. The textbook said that
70% of all migrants from Egypt went to Saudi Arabia because they could
find jobs and make more money there. If more jobs were created in Cairo
then people would not have to leave their home.
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