de-victimizing migrants
By shag carpet bomb • Aug 18th, 2008 • Category: Nation State, Racialization, Teh Sexan awesome interview with Laura D’Agustin, who also has a new blog, where I found this interview. the rest of it is about the panic that surrounds sex work, border crossing, and the rescue industry:
Most people do not arrive penniless, they arrive with their own or borrowed money, even if the amounts don’t seem large to richer people.
They arrive with a plan, they’ve got the names and telephone numbers or addresses of people they already know, or have been referred to.
If you focus solely on the moment of crossing the border – for example, between Mexico and Arizona— then it all looks like violent drama and desperation. However, most crossings are uneventful and people move on, without the media or vigilantes ever seeing them.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t have to borrow a big amount of money or go through scary moments along the way, and it doesn’t mean these are all happy endings.
But the characterization of everyone as “desperate” is not helpful if you want to de-victimize and acknowledge migrants’ skills and desires to get ahead– however they define it.
People who decide to try their luck abroad, need to be flexible and adaptable in how they will live. They’ll have to share space with people in a way they wouldn’t at home, eat strange food, navigate without understanding much of the language around them, deal with loneliness, and take available jobs.
A lot of the jobs offered them are low-status: busboy, farm worker, maid. Some people are temporarily grateful to get these jobs, but plan to get out and move up as soon as they can. Making money to pay back debts and send home becomes the priority.
http://www.nodo50.org/Laura_Agustin/susie-bright-interview-with-laura-agustin
shag carpet bomb is
Email this author | All posts by shag carpet bomb
“A lot of the jobs offered them are low-status: busboy, farm worker, maid” - I taught English as a Second Language part-time at the local community college for about five years, 1997-2002. These jobs are exactly the same ones worked by my totally legal, affluent enough to pay tuition, and generally already educated students. I had surgical nurses cleaning houses and waiting banquets. Definitely not desperate. Give the same opportunity to all the immigrants, instead of fucking with them, and they would be so in so fast.