Food for thought: Forced Migration
"Think about this: Why would someone leave their country?"
That's how Roderick Carreon started off our workshop on the History of Filipino Youth organizing in Montreal.
Placing ourselves in the context of our own migration can be a challenging activity, but one that is essential to understanding the experiences of our fellow kababayans. And, speaking as a Canadian-born "second generation" Filipino youth, it is a question with which we are, sadly, rarely presented in our mainstream Canadian education. Instead, we are asked, "Where do your parents come from? What cultures and values (read: food, dances and religion) did they bring with them?"
The thought that they might have left for a reason, that there might have been political upheaval, back-breaking comprador landlords, blinding poverty, a general sense of desperation coupled with the mentality that the land of our colonizers would readily welcome us . . .
"How many Canadians do you know who travel to the Philippines to visit the white-sand beaches of Boracay?"
"How many Filipinos do you know who come to Canada on ski-vacations?"
Damn.
The fact is the Philippines is a land that can sustain its people several times over if only it owned its own haciendas, cultivated its own crops, controlled its own resources. The fact is the Philippines is a land of rich soil, its mountains bursting with precious metals, its waters swimming with sea life, its people some of the most talented in the world.
And yet its people are starving. They are scrambling for the kind of education that will get them out and overseas sending money home to their parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, sons and daughters. Nursing, teaching, accounting, computer engineering. . . anything to get that higher (English) education that would eventually buy them a plane ticket to Saudi, Hong Kong, the U.S. or Canada.
"Why did your parents leave?"
"And what would it have been like if they had left you behind?"
"And what would it have been like for you to come to Canada/Quebec/Montreal 5 to 8 years later?"
The reality of the Filipino youth arriving in Canada today is that they are living forced separation under conditions of forced migration as their parents make that "choice" between survival or slums. And the further reality is that their arrival in Canada is so often a reunion of strangers trying to figure out what it means to be a family, all parties questioning why they left their homes, and all of them knowing they had no other option.
And in a related reality are the Filipino youth labelled "Canadian" and working through the vast expanse that is the mental distance between their own and their parents' transnational identities.
Think about it. No - do more than think about it: Investigate. Ask your parents why they left. And get back to me at the conference :)
UGAT: Sharing our Pinoyville Stories, Understanding Our Roots.
May 22-24, 2009
4333 Cote-Ste-Catherine
That's how Roderick Carreon started off our workshop on the History of Filipino Youth organizing in Montreal.
Placing ourselves in the context of our own migration can be a challenging activity, but one that is essential to understanding the experiences of our fellow kababayans. And, speaking as a Canadian-born "second generation" Filipino youth, it is a question with which we are, sadly, rarely presented in our mainstream Canadian education. Instead, we are asked, "Where do your parents come from? What cultures and values (read: food, dances and religion) did they bring with them?"
The thought that they might have left for a reason, that there might have been political upheaval, back-breaking comprador landlords, blinding poverty, a general sense of desperation coupled with the mentality that the land of our colonizers would readily welcome us . . .
"How many Canadians do you know who travel to the Philippines to visit the white-sand beaches of Boracay?"
"How many Filipinos do you know who come to Canada on ski-vacations?"
Damn.
The fact is the Philippines is a land that can sustain its people several times over if only it owned its own haciendas, cultivated its own crops, controlled its own resources. The fact is the Philippines is a land of rich soil, its mountains bursting with precious metals, its waters swimming with sea life, its people some of the most talented in the world.
And yet its people are starving. They are scrambling for the kind of education that will get them out and overseas sending money home to their parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, sons and daughters. Nursing, teaching, accounting, computer engineering. . . anything to get that higher (English) education that would eventually buy them a plane ticket to Saudi, Hong Kong, the U.S. or Canada.
"Why did your parents leave?"
"And what would it have been like if they had left you behind?"
"And what would it have been like for you to come to Canada/Quebec/Montreal 5 to 8 years later?"
The reality of the Filipino youth arriving in Canada today is that they are living forced separation under conditions of forced migration as their parents make that "choice" between survival or slums. And the further reality is that their arrival in Canada is so often a reunion of strangers trying to figure out what it means to be a family, all parties questioning why they left their homes, and all of them knowing they had no other option.
And in a related reality are the Filipino youth labelled "Canadian" and working through the vast expanse that is the mental distance between their own and their parents' transnational identities.
Think about it. No - do more than think about it: Investigate. Ask your parents why they left. And get back to me at the conference :)
UGAT: Sharing our Pinoyville Stories, Understanding Our Roots.
May 22-24, 2009
4333 Cote-Ste-Catherine
posted by JFC at
7:49 AM
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