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 | Defining "Home": Divided Loyalty or Dual Loyalty | | 25.01.2003 | | Annual Meeting 2003 | In our mobile world, an increasing number of people live in countries other than those of their birth - some by choice, many due to circumstances beyond their control, said Alexander G. Higgins, Bureau Chief, Associated Press, Switzerland. All face questions about their loyalty. Have they forsaken their homeland? Can their adopted country trust them? Such questions have assumed new urgency since 9/11.
Lourdes Arizpe, Professor of Social Anthropology, National University of Mexico, Mexico, reviewed some of the major themes of migration. Migration, she said, has traditionally been the result of a push and a pull, usually economic. In the past, immigrants had to sever ties to their homeland she said. Now, immigrants often send money back, becoming a crucial source of income to those they leave behind. These modern-day immigrants forge dual loyalties and many countries now recognize this with dual citizenship.
We don’t get to define where we come from. We are defined by where we come from, said Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature, Harvard University, USA. Bhabha related his experience as a Zoroastrian Parsee raised in Bombay by Jesuits, educated in England and now working in America. "We carry where we came from in the stories we tell and the food we cook," he said. The most important thing is to be able to bring these things to a new home and combine them without losing the sense of their uniqueness, he said. Assimilation is futile, he said. The best outcome is when a host culture adopts the culture of its new residents, becoming like a millefait.
Roraima Andriani, Chief of Staff, International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), Lyon, told of her father, an Italian who at the age of 20 moved to Venezuela, married and raised a family, but never relinquished his conviction that Italy was superior to his adopted home in every way. Though he paid taxes and spoke Spanish, she said, he was never loyal to Venezuela. Thirty years passed and he moved back to Italy, only to find that he did not feel at home there either. Italy had changed, and so had he. We may be citizens of a land we leave, but in some ways we lose that identity the minute we embark and become composites of the places we have been and the people we love.
Susan F. Martin, Director, Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University, USA, pointed out that long before 9/11, Americans worried about the divided loyalties of their new citizens, like Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans. Were they more loyal to the Pope? Over time, however, the hyphen, which to outsiders might seem divisive, has in America been used to join cultures together. In the last century, revolutions in transportation and communications have enabled immigrants of even modest means to keep a foot in both countries, becoming part of a transnational community. The challenge for governments is to be able to distinguish between those who are benign and those who pose a security threat.
Julia Ormond, Actress and Co-Chair, Advisory Committee, FilmAid International, USA, noted that historically only one percent of refugees are ever resettled in a new country and that there are now 37 million refugees worldwide. Home is definitely where the heart is, she said, but for those who have been parted from loved ones, living abroad poses a wrenching and emotional challenge. It was her own divided loyalties as a child, with a working-class mother and upper-class father, she said, that inspired her to work with refugees. "For me, it’s a way of taking what I do as an actress, as a storyteller, and allowing home to come to them," she said.
Several participants were selected to summarize their table discussions. Carlos Ghosn, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nissan Motor Co., Japan, noted that the children of expatriates appear to cobble together their own unique multinational identities. And the benefits of cross-cultural living are worth the strains, especially for the tolerance it instils. |
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