The complexities of immigration sometimes mean that its not the newly arrived migrants who have trouble settling in but also their second- and third-generation migrant relatives.
With the globalization process, international politics has changed deeply. Not only are trade, labour and goods globalized, but also people and the ‘new generation’ feel the impact of globalization. From the outset of the 21st century, politics has gained new elements. It is no longer the “local” who rules the country. Thanks to immigration, many immigrants are taking positions in governments, academic or media in the host country. This, at first glance, can seem and is expected to help to establish a better world where people can understand each other. It is fair to expect that the immigrant will show the true side of their original country to new follow-countrymen and women, eliminating misunderstanding, prejudices and barriers.
While this in mind, in the political area, things are not moving the way we wanted to. In many countries today, immigrants who hold positions in their new country are making the situation worse. France’s presidential candidate, Nicholas Sarkozy, himself an immigrant, wants to get rid of immigrants in France. That is how he defined his presidential campaign and there is strong evidence that it might work. Sweden’s newly appointed Minister for Integration and Gender Equality Nyamko Sabuni, who is originally from Congo, urges that immigrants either adapt local values or face the consequences. Similarly, many Arab-Americans are the ones who actually support the war and the interventionist American policy in the Middle East, although many of those have fled from war and conflict. From academia Professor Fouad Ajami, who is intellectually behind the Bush administration with Bernard Lewis; and ex-news anchorwoman and now anti-radical Islam activist Brigitte Gabriel do come from Lebanon and now live in the US with their American citizenship, but they staunchly supported Israel in the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War. Gabriel went on posting an open letter in her organization’s website, the American Congress for Truth, thanking Israel deeply, while Israel was destroying her country, Lebanon. She expressed joy and happiness in her letter while Israel killed innocent people and bombed infrastructure. Fuad Ajami as usual serviced his intellectual capacity to legitimize killings by providing strategic reasons. It is also not surprising that the daughter of an immigrant to the US, now Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice represents the most hawkish politician in the US cabinet.
Why are the immigrants becoming more supportive of the ‘king’ than the ‘king’ himself? Why are they turning their backs to where they come from, and lending their full energy to serve where they are, rather than trying to bridge the gap of understanding between where they come from and where they live? Without answering these deep questions, and creating a new generation of immigrants that understands both sides without condemning one for the sake of other, I do not think we can create a globalized world in which all can live in peace.
Having such a result on the contemporary world, partly shows the failure of the integration process based on assimilation. Coupled with the ‘standardization’ of modernity, such processes created a kind of immigrant that is neither local nor foreign. Their ‘standing’ for old values in a changing society is a mere indication that they are neither psychologically nor politically stable. Their life has passed on the edge most of the time. One the one hand, they worked hard to be disconnected from their past, on the other; they wanted to be accepted fully by the society in which they live. None of them was successful and as a result of increasing personal trauma, as a last resort, they thought that to be more in favour of the ‘king’ than the king’s supporter would solve this dilemma.
There are several issues that need to be discussed to solve this puzzle. First, as a new generation, we must question the ‘representativeness’ of immigrants. They are creating new obstacles rather than solutions in understanding, and actually blocking to create new space for understanding. The worst thing is that they are consciously or unconsciously monopolizing the ‘voice’ of the country they came from. Second, integration/assimilation policies of the West need to be reconsidered and discussed seriously. If the West wants its immigrant to be ‘assimilated’, this is not even to the West’s own advantage. The cited example above is just the indication of symptoms that such a trend is prone to create more problem than solution.
Sociologists, anthropologists, politicians and psychologists have utmost responsibility to do research on this process and its implication, if we all want to see a ‘tolerant’ and ‘accommodative’ future. In short, from such an understanding, globalization and immigration are not actually serving for a better world. We need to think about this deeply.
Originally published in A DIFFERENT VIEW, Issue 12, March 2007.
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