How does the dangers of a single-story impact immigrants across different borders?

Student Presenters:

• Jennifer Mawi
• Giulia Gonzalez Jimenez

Transcript:

Have you ever thought about borders? Not the physical kind, but the one that separates or defines differences between groups, cultures, and ideas?

Well, if you’re interested in hearing about it, welcome to Immigration Talk, the podcast where we share the in and outs of immigration. My name is Jennifer Mawi.

My name is Giulia Gonzalez Jimenez, and this is a podcast for living in the hyphen immigrant cultures at the border from the University of North Florida.

For today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about how the danger of a single story impact immigrants across the different kind of borders. Before we start, I just wanted to preface, we are not experts in this, however, we are trying to share our knowledge and let other people know about the different kind of borders immigrants may face throughout their life to fit into the norm.

Yes, to add on to what she said, we’re just trying to share what we learned this past semester because we both started off knowing nothing about this topic as well.

Can I be honest? When our professor first talked about borders and how there are many that may affect immigrants, I was like, are you telling me crossing a physical border has more meanings than what it actually sounds like?

Same. I did not know there were non-physical boundary borders that immigrants were also facing and going through.

To continue what she said, as you may already know, when we think of borders, we think the physical line between countries, lands or rivers. However, it has a deeper meaning to it also, which is not physical, but non-tangible borders between groups, cultures, and ideas.

There are so many borders to be mentioned today that I cannot count with my hands, but we’re only going to talk about three today, which will be language, identity, and economic borders. To begin with the first one, what are your thoughts on language borders, Jennifer?

I think the danger of a single story can create a language border for immigrants by reinforcing stereotypes such as them struggling with speaking English, or they may be seen as uneducated because they wouldn’t be able to understand or speak the language as good as other people, making it harder for them to fit in.

Yes, that is so upsetting that they would think that. A quote that I heard refers to something like this. It is from Anzaldúa, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” It says, “I am constantly being told to speak proper English, that I am not educated, that I am not smart.”

That quote actually fits in perfect. To add on, an example of this may be someone that just came to America that started school and knows very little English. Because of that language border, they’re not able to keep up with lessons, assignments, or homework like natives can, which in turn, will make them feel frustrated or a sense of isolation because nobody can relate to their problems.

If I were put in that situation, I would feel very lonely, almost as if I don’t exist.

Oh me too. If I were put into that position, I feel like I would be behind all my classmates almost as if I’m in the wrong grade.

Right! So moving on to the economic borders, I think immigrants are often portrayed as low skilled laborers and systematically in lower economic positions. For example, employers might overlook them for higher paying or skilled positions, even if they have the qualifications, they’re portrayed poorly, as they can’t speak English or they’re not meant for higher class job positions because they wouldn’t understand what’s being thrown at them.

There is a Nigerian novelist and short story writer that shared her life stories on TED Talk named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She states, “Show a people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again, and that is what they become.” This quote fits so strong with your statement because immigrants are, in my opinion, portrayed as a certain way because of their past life story, and that is what all people will believe and see firsthand.

What a world we live in? For the last border, ‘Identity Border’, I feel like immigrants may be seen as burdens and because they’re so accustomed to that, they may think of themselves as being incapable of having higher roles in life.

For an example, I think it creates a border within themselves actually, where they may feel stuck between their real identity and what society expects them to be, which makes them feel like it’s probably 10 times harder to succeed and have a good life because instead of following their own dreams, they tend to become fixated on the American dream.

I would never want to feel like that either. The TED Talk that you mentioned earlier stated something that interested me so much. Stated that, “…all these stories that make me who I am, but to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and overlook the many other stories set for me.” What do you think about this quote?

I actually love this quote because it says so little but means so much. People love to see only the negative side of stuff and never how that person overcame the negative and found a brighter side to stuff. In this case, immigrants may have a hard past life story that they’re trying to overcome and people only bringing up the negatives and judging base off that shows a lot in the society.

Yes, that is so true. We could talk all day about this, but this is just our feelings and opinions on this, and we really hope that you guys understand and see the boundaries immigrants have to cross in order to fit the norm.

Hopefully you guys can put yourselves into those positions and think about what boundary borders you have to cross to fit into this society if you are an immigrant.

Jennifer, do you think the danger of a single story impacts you across the different borders?

I do think so. Not being born here, people probably definitely thought I couldn’t speak English as well, but that didn’t stop me from learning it, so, yeah.

This definitely resonates with me. I really hope you guys enjoyed our very first podcast where we will continue to spill information.

Yes. As we made it to the end of our podcast, we just wanted to say, thank you for listening and we hope you guys can learn something out of this. If you’re interested in hearing more things about this, you can continue to do your own research as well.

Yes, there are so many other borders that immigrants go through, but these are just a few from many that we chose to talk about today. We hope you enjoy and continue to listen to our podcasts.

See you guys next time. Bye.