Semester at
Sea Fall
2006 Voyage 
- Home Page
- My bio
- "Crossing the Globe" Comparative Migration Project
- Incoming
- From Hong Kong to Beijing
- India is not only the Taj
Mahal
- Mac-ing it!!!
- Where religion takes you
- Colombians in Spain
- Open Letter
Crossing the Globe: Discovering
Migration
By Margarita I. Gotay
Traveling
the world has been an eye opening experience. I’ve learned a lot about
the world and myself. As the title of the book for this course reads, The
Age of Migration, everything that is developing and changing in
the
world has something to do with free trade and the consequences of that,
migration of people and products. Obviously there are different
opinions on whether free trade and
migration
are good or bad things for our world, for the rich and the poor.
It's a topic that has been even talked about in our Global Studies
class. Migration has lots of advantages. The blending of cultures,
enriches
them. And if people learn to live together in peace there will be fewer
things to worry about.
Who benefits from free trade and
migrant workers? The rich countries benefit from immigrants that come
to live and work. Although most immigrants move to richer
countries with more job opportunities they never forget whom they left
behind and send money back home. Many send half their paychecks
back home to their loved ones. Many think that the act of migrants
sending money back to their homelands affects their economy but not
really.
This project includes six papers of
some of the countries I visited during these past three month and some
signs of migration I observed in each one. "Incoming" talks about
Japan and its need for incoming products. “From Hong Kong to Beijing”
talks about my experience in China and Hong Kong and compares both a
little. “India is not only the Taj Mahal” talks of my travels in South
India. “Where religion takes you” talks about migration having to do
with religion. “Mac-ing It” talks about Mac Donalds in all the
countries where I spotted one, and the last one "Colombians
in Spain" talks about job
situations that Colombians are having in Spain.
It’s important for people to
understand migration because it has revolutionized the markets after
the Cold War. As it is says in Chapter 1, of Stephen Castles and Mark
J. Miller’s book, The Age of
Migration, one of the defining features of
the Post Cold era has been the growing saliency of international
migration in all the areas of the world. And these stronger
interconnections that exist in the world are changing our views and
relationships with one another. Asian magazines start looking more
western. Mac Donald’s, Burger King, Starbuck’s, KFC start spreading all
over--in front of the Pyramids, in almost every block in Hong Kong, in
Chennai, everywhere.
Migration has become globalized, and has grown at a fast
pace, entailing labor migration, fleeing refugees, permanent settlers,
female migrants, and politics that talk about migration or defend it.
That’s what is evolving today. Migration goes way back in time to
nomads and colonialism.
The period of colonialism as
said in Chapter 3, of Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller’s book, The
Age of Migration, stresses that colonists gave rise to various
types of
migration, they migrated as sailors, soldiers, farmers,
priests, traders and administrators. And in this webpage you’ll find
many of these examples extended. Actually our shipboard community has
“migrated” by the means of sailing all over the world for the past the
months stopping in Hawaii, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Burma,
India, Egypt, Turkey, Croatia, and Spain. In Croatia
and Spain articles I talk more about colonialization and how
missionaries
migrated since colonization to spread the word of God. In Spain you can read about the effects that
colonizing countries have on their subordinates.
My classmates and I have been asked to
keep our eyes open to the world, to everything new, homey, and
disturbing and our projects talk about some of the things we've found
along the way. Around the world we saw how the Coca Cola cans and
flavors changed. We learned how every culture has an effect on the
others. And mostly how migration connects the east with the south, the
south with the west, the north with the south, the north with the west,
the west with the east and so on.
We've come to know
the five myths stated in Douglas S. Massey's article, "The Five
Myths About Migration: Common Misconceptions Underlying U.S. Border-
Enforcemt Policy": the poorest nations are
not the majority sending migrant countries, neither is migration is
caused
by rapid population growth in migrants' home countries, wages are not
the primary reason why people migrate, migrants aren't atracted to the
US
generous public benefits and the don't intend to live in the US
forever.
There is much people don't know about migration that is
very important, because migration is currently shapping our world. So I
urge you to discover signs and migrant movements around the world and
you may even discover a little about yourself. Remember some of our
histories are tied to a foreign land.