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Stories of the Migration Experience

Lessons from The Border

I picked the state capitol as a place to start my search for the border in Phoenix.  That place were two cultures bump into each other and eventually mesh, but not before throw up signals of impermeability to each other.  The state government is a good example of where two counties meet and sometimes bloody themselves.  Before I met Joe (link to that story), I asked a number of people going in and out of legislative hall their opinions of the latest battle in the cultural wars, the march supporting immigrants on March 24^th.  Most of the workers looked at me suspiciously, even after I showed them my student I.D.  The animated conversations in which they had just been engaged with co-workers abruptly changed to a hesitant reply with carefully chosen words that did not reflect an actual opinion.  Joe said that was because they wanted to be careful not to offend anyone.  That may be but, offending people has not really been a concern of the state legislature. 

            Our definitions of migrants will have to change, just as we have changed in our interactions with the people of other counties.  It is no longer appropriate to think that the multitudes are here to adopt our way of life and language, to blend in seamlessly in a generation and to never look back.  In Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration, the authors refer to this new conception of migration as “transnationalism.” (Schiller, Basch, Blanc-Szanton 1992)  Those migrants who keep a foot in the old world as well as the new, maintain supportive relationships in both spheres as well.  The authors suggested that difficulties migrants faced in gaining a foothold in the United States would facilitate this “transnational exisistance.” 

Instead this is a business proposition.  Many times it is similar to a proposition that we, as a country, have made with these new migrants on their own soil.  Our businesses have gone forth into the global quest for reduced employee costs and cheaper operations.  Were we expected to become one with this country and melt into the population, learn the language, or adopt the dress?  Or we were just expected to write the checks for the goods or services delivered?