Is there still no place like home?
By Luis Alberto Fierro (*)
Introduction
In this essay, I will discuss what home is; what
do most people consider home; why some people leave their homelands for another
country; how they do or do not integrate into their new societies; how they are
linked back to their homelands; and if they can ever go back home.
1.
What is home?
What is “home”? Is it where you were born? Where you currently live? Where your family lives? Is it defined by a physical building
structure? By a family clan, a community, a village or a nation?
Many of us have grown up
in different countries, in different states, different cities. Do we call home
the place of our earliest childhood memories? Or where we were married? Where
we have had children? Where we were happiest?
Many times, there may be different answers to these questions.
This is fairly
subjective; perhaps the first generation of immigrants continue to consider
their original homeland “home”, while the second and third generations feel
more at home in their new countries.
Which place goes deepest
inside you? Where do you feel you belong? Where do you dream of being? If you
could be anywhere in the world, where would that be?
Is “home” whatever you
carry inside with you? Is it a physical
construction or a sense of belonging?
What do nomads consider home?
Their tents (or, nowadays, perhaps their mobile homes)? Some retired people also have adopted a
nomadic lifestyle and move about in their mobile homes. Is their home what they
bring with them?
If you lose your house
and all your personal belongings in a natural disaster, does your “home”
disappear? Now that we have digital
copies of documents, photographs, videos, and other mementos in the “cloud”,
can anywhere with an Internet connection be considered home?
2.
Where
did human beings originate?
Humanity (homo sapiens) originated in Africa;
modern humans moved to other continents starting from about 300,000 years ago.
Since then, humans have
been constantly on the move; they reached the Western Hemisphere approximately
35,000=40,000 years ago.
Civilizations started to
emerge in fertile river valleys, in present day Iraq and Syria, in Egypt, in
India, in China. These were the Tigris & Euphrates Valleys, the Nile River
Valley, the Indus River Valley, and the Yellow River Valley. Civilizations
developed around rivers because their waters provided fresh water, as well as
places to hunt and fish. As the rivers flooded, the lands around them became more
fertile, enabling the rise of agriculture.
The cycle of flooding
(monthly, annual, multi-annual) generated the need for advances in astronomy,
mathematics, languages.
The development of
agriculture and livestock enabled the creation of the State, of public
functions, of a greater division of labor and specialization. This led to
forming communities, tribes, and eventually nations.
However, up until the 19th
century, the vast majority of the people did not travel more than 50 km from
the place they were born. Still today, most people do not travel far from where
they were born and tend to marry spouses from the same community. This is truer for rural communities,
peasants, indigenous peoples, who are more “tied” to the land.
3.
Why
do people migrate?
There is increasing
migration, both within nations, and at an international level. There are now an
estimated 220 million people living in a different country than that in which
they were born.
In a few cases, the
borders have crossed them as the people have stayed still. The city of Szczecin (Stettin), for example,
has belonged to Poland, the Duchy of Saxony, the Holy Roman Empire, Denmark,
the Swedish Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, the German Empire, and, following
World War II, it became part of Poland again.
The collapse of the
Soviet Union also led many people to have been born in a city within the Soviet
Union, and now live in a city with a different name within a different country,
without having ever moved.
Some young people
identify more with their cities or regions than with their national states; or,
conversely, with the European Union, a multinational institution.
One test of your identity
is who you root for in the World Cup of soccer.
Many Mexican-Americans continue to root for Mexico, even when the
national team plays against the United States.
International migration
has increased in recent centuries. This was fed by improved means of
transportation; demand for labor in newly “discovered” or colonized areas;
excessive population in other areas.
In addition to voluntary
immigration, there was also the forced capture and transportation of slaves,
mostly from Africa to the Western Hemisphere.
Many migrants were
fleeing persecution in their homelands, due to political, religious, ethnic or
other motives; and many others were also compelled to move due to economic
conditions in their countries of origin. In the past, many individuals were
exiled from their home cities or countries.
According to the UNHCR,
the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide reached 65,600,000 at the end
of 2016; the highest level since World War II, with a 40 % increase taking
place since 2011.
The current high levels
of migration are fueled by:
o
Climate change
o
Political and military conflicts
o
Political persecution
o
Persecution due to religion, ethnicity,
race.
o
Drug trade, citizen insecurity, high
homicide rates
o
Demographic changes
While the total
population is starting to fall in countries like Japan, Russia, South Korea,
the Baltics, northern Europe; it is still growing in Africa, southern Asia,
Central America. The median age is growing in Japan, Italy, Germany
A large senior citizen
population will put pressure on social security systems and will also generate
demand for care-givers. This will also
likely lead to opening countries to immigration, especially for doctors,
nurses, other caregivers.
In most cases (almost
all), the socio-economic conditions of the immigrants will improve by moving to
“developed” countries. In fact, according to some studies, the global GDP would
receive a large boost if there was open emigration.
An article in “The
Economist” (July 13, 2017) estimated that the global GDP would nearly double
(by $78 billion) if migrants were free to move from developing to developed
countries. “Workers become far more
productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can
join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable
legal system.”
Leaving one’s homeland
requires courage and resilience. In many cases, migrants will not initially
find other people that share their language, religion, customs; although later
family members or people from the same communities of origin may follow them to
their new land. They will also face a different weather, usually colder and
darker (if they move from developing countries to Northern Europe or Canada,
for example).
4.
Can
immigrants integrate?
How will these immigrants
integrate? Many will not be of the same
race or ethnicity as the majority in the receiving country; many won’t speak
the language of their host countries; many won’t be of the same religion as the
majority in the receiving country. This may
generate increasing tensions, xenophobia, and even racism.
However, even the recent
influx of millions of Venezuelan refugees in neighboring Latin American
countries (where they share the language, religion, customs, and for the most
part ethnicity and race) has caused stress and tensions. This despite the fact that in past decades
hundreds of thousands of citizens of other countries (Colombia, Ecuador,
Portugal, Spain, Italy) emigrated to Venezuela.
The large waves of
refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries in conflict has
also created stresses in Europe.
There are differences in
the “integration” process of immigrants in different countries and
cultures. The integration policies are
more effective in the United States, Spain, France; and less effective in
northern Europe, East Asia.
Some second-generation
immigrants feel alienation, exclusion, and in a few cases even resort to
terrorism or religious fundamentalism.
The United States has
traditionally been very open to immigrants, despite some occasional
countervailing forces (some ethnic groups were banned over the years, including
Chinese, Jews and Romani). However, in
the past few years the Trump Administration has made xenophobia and racism part
of the official discourse.
In late 2018-early 2019,
Trump even shut down the government because Congress would not fund a
(physical) wall on the border with Mexico (after he had campaigned on building
the wall and forcing the Mexican government to pay for it).
A majority of the US population,
however, was opposed to the shutdown, opposed to the wall, and were opposed to
scapegoating immigrants. Trump has campaigned on casting immigrants as
criminals, rapists, and even terrorists. However, in the US, the foreign-born
are only a fifth as likely to be incarcerated as the native-born.
Younger generations tend
to be more open, less racist, less xenophobic. Many are multi-ethnic and
multi-cultural.
However, de facto segregation by races is still
common in the United States, based on school districts, communities, States.
In the US, non-Hispanic
whites will become a minority soon (they are already a minority in some States
such as California, and among school-age children).
In 2011, non-Hispanic
whites accounted for under half of the births in the country, with 49.6% of
total births. Between 2042 and 2045, the United States is projected to be a
majority minority nation (that is, no single racial/ethnic group will be a
majority).
Trumpism / white
nationalism (and the so-called right-wing populism in Europe) is a backlash to
this trend. White supremacists consider that (non-Hispanic) whites are under
siege, that their place in society is being threatened, that there are powerful
forces (usually linked to anti-Semitic, “globalist” conspiracy theories) that
seek to replace them as the pillars of society.
At the same time, there
is increasing numbers of inter-racial marriages and children. Eventually,
people will ignore “races”, and will consider themselves part of the human
race.
Will this also lead to
considering that our “home” is the planet Earth as a whole?
5.
Children
without roots?
The Quechua word
“wayrapamuschca” means “child of the wind”.
It was used to refer to illegitimate children, or more generally to
people without roots. However, do people
lose their roots if they move to another country? Can they maintain their own
culture? For how many generations?
Will “home” for the
second or third generation still be the town/city/country of origin, or will it
become the new city or country where they live?
How can different
cultures and languages be maintained?
Does it matter if a language is lost? Many indigenous languages and
dialects have already been lost.
It is likely there will
be increasing “fusion” of cultures and languages. This can already be seen, for example, in
cuisines. Even before recent trend
towards “fusion cuisines”, Peruvian cuisine, for example, integrated European,
indigenous, African and Asian elements.
Some cities, such as
Toronto, New York and London already are quite a mix of races, ethnicities,
cultures, languages, etc. New York, for example, has neighborhoods in which
there is a predominance of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Italians, Jews, Chinese, Caribbean,
among others. There are 800 languages
spoken in New York City, and 36 % of the population are first generation
immigrants. Other European groups have mostly integrated by now (Germans,
Irish, Russians, etc.).
In the case of adopted,
fostered or orphaned children, they may grow up in a family that is very
different from their birth parents. Is home for them the house of their
adopted/foster parents?
6.
The
Jewish diaspora and new homeland
One particular ethnic
group that has suffered persecution and displacement throughout history are the
Jewish people.
By the 18th
century, most Jews lived in Europe (especially in Poland, Russia and Ukraine).
Very few lived in Palestine, and there were communities in several
Muslim-majority countries.
With increasing
persecution, a significant proportion left Europe for the Western Hemisphere,
concentrating in the United States, Canada, Argentina, and some other Latin
American countries.
Nearly 6 million Jews
were murdered during the holocaust.
In 1947, the United
Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Palestine recommending the creation of
independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan
was accepted by the Jewish Agency but rejected by Arab leaders. The following
year, the Jewish Agency declared the independence of the State of Israel, and
the subsequent 1948 Arab–Israeli War saw Israel's establishment over most of
the former Mandate territory.
Currently, 6 million Jews
live in Israel, and between 6 and 10 million live in the United States.
Do some Jews consider
Israel to be their “home”, even if they don’t live there? There is some controversy about the
settlements in the West Bank.
7.
Nomads;
the Romani people
There are some cultures which are nomadic. They carry their belongings with them, on
never-ending caravans. The word nomad means “people without fixed
habitation”. There are an estimated 40 million
nomads in the world today.
Some are pastoral nomads, and they move about with
their livestock, seeking forage for their animals. These types of nomads are
common in infertile regions such as steppe, tundra, or ice and sand, where
mobility is the most efficient strategy for exploiting scarce resources.
Most nomads travel in groups of families, bands or
tribes. These groups are based on kinship and marriage ties or on formal
cooperation agreements.
One particular group of nomads are the Romani, also
known as gypsies or Roma. They are a traditionally itinerant ethnic group living
mostly in Europe and the Americas and originating from the northern Indian
subcontinent, from the Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab regions of modern-day
India.
The Romani arrived in
Mid-West Asia and Europe around 1,000 years ago. Both genetic and linguistic studies confirm
their origin in present-day India.
There are an estimated 10 million Romani people in
Europe. Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkans, in some
Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia and Ukraine. Several million
more live outside Europe, in particular in the Middle East and in the Americas.
The countries with the highest estimated Romani
population are: Egypt, the United States, Brazil, Spain, Romania, Turkey,
France, Bulgaria and Hungary.
They have also suffered persecution, being expelled
from several countries in the 15th century, and even ordered to be
“put to death” in Switzerland, England and Denmark. They were also hunted and
killed in the Netherlands, France, and other countries. During periods of time, Romani
immigration has been forbidden (for example, Argentina in 1880 and the United
States in 1885).
During World War II, the Nazis embarked on a
systematic genocide of the Romani, a process known in Romani as the Porajmos. Romanies were marked for
extermination and sentenced to forced labor and imprisonment in concentration camps. They were often killed on sight, especially
by paramilitary death squads on the Eastern Front. The total number of Romani
victims has been estimated at between 220,000 and 1,500,000, consequently one
of the worst mass killings in history.
In Europe, Romani people are often associated with
poverty, and they are accused of high rates of crime and behaviors that are
perceived by the rest of the population as being antisocial or inappropriate
(including, for example, child marriage). Partly for this reason,
discrimination against the Romani people has continued to the present day.
What led the original Romani to leave India? Where they persecuted or enslaved? Why have
they continued to travel, including to the Western Hemisphere? Where do they consider “home” to be? In many cases, they have adopted the
language, religion and customs of the countries in which they are at (for
example, Catholicism in Catholic countries, Islam in Muslim countries). They
have also influenced the receiving cultures (through music, clothing, other
artistic expressions).
8.
Leaving
the home planet?
In the future, some human
beings might move to live on the Moon, Mars, space stations, or even further. This will likely strengthen the notion of the
planet Earth as “home”. Although it will
re-open, on a broader scale, some of these questions.
Another possibility is
that contact will eventually be established with extra-terrestrial intelligent
life forms; this might also contribute to strengthening the notion of human
beings as a single race.
9.
Can we go back home?
In the end, home is where
your loved ones are, regardless of whether it is the place you were born or
not.
In some cases, given the
greater facilities for travel and communication technologies, people can go back
to visit their homelands, or stay in touch via videoconferencing or other
electronic tools.
The presence of social
networks and videoconference applications also facilitates keeping in touch
with family and friends around the world (not only in your country of origin,
but also from other places where you have lived, studied, worked, etc.).
In a few cases (e.g.,
low-lying small island states), the “homelands” will disappear. In a few others, security conditions can be
so dire that it would not be advisable to visit in person (Syria, Afghanistan,
Somalia, etc.).
Sometimes, people no
longer feel “at home” when they go back to their country of origin, after
several years or decade abroad. It is possible that the cities have changed
(more traffic, different weather, more insecurity); but it is also possible
that the individual has changed and can no longer tolerate certain behaviors
that are still commonplace (racism, social exclusion, long lines to obtain
certain goods or services, or at public services offices.
Where do people feel “at
home”? Is it possible to create a new home in a different country?
(*) This was my entry for the Nine Dots Prize (https://ninedotsprize.org/). It was a brief summary that was to be expanded into a book.
