The Migrant Project

by James

Spider Man, Spider Man. I get this at least five times a day, on the packed wet subway, in bars, eating baozi on the street in Beijing. At first, it was a completely unnerving experience to be approached by complete strangers demanding that I am a spandex-clad super-hero underneath my button-down Peter Parker work clothes. However I’ve always fantasised about being an undercover vigilante. I’m quite chuffed really that I’m finally being recognised en masse (even if im riding the coat tails of legitimate fame).

I don’t actually think it’s because I look that much like Tobey Maguire. My half Greek friend in India has been called Spider Man too. It’s a combination of things, my face, obviously, and my hair. But also in some literal way, the ability when walking around here to draw an almost super-power awe at my western mannerisms, my subconscious disregard for minute social conventions, my default egalitarianism, my bounding enthusiasm. People would much prefer I was Spider Man than the reality of my actual western-ness, which is way too audacious for any one with regular human powers.

I would much rather be Spider Man too, than the alternative cast: a sensationalist, overbaked cynical White man, already jaded and drunk on my own intellectual arrogance. I’ve seen some tired expats wearing this around, and I want to avoid this at all costs.

Middle ground is so difficult to find, and every assumption I’ve made has been wrong. No, humour isn’t an effective way. No, trying too hard has made it worse. No, shutting up simply shuts me out and shits me off. No one here has asked about me, who I am, where I’m from, what I do, who my friends are, do I play a musical instrument, whats my favourite foods/colours/songs. To do so would be an attack on my privacy, and would display a curiosity unbecoming.

So for the moment I’m Spider Man. I’m the powerful, the unknown, the untouchable. Mystery has built around me in my work place like some kind of visiting dignitary. No one has seen the real Spider Man.

And for now I think we’re both exceptionally happy with this arrangement, for now we’re actually doing all we can to fortify these positions. And at least in this, we’re sharing a common purpose.

by Matt

When I think of dangerous border crossings, I tend to think of those horror stories one hears about stolen passports and ludicrous bribes extracted deep in foreign jungles or at gun-point somewhere in Siberia. Over the past five years, I have begun to see that, for some, Australia’s borders are just as dangerous. Need I say more than Tampa. Little did I know that I would be engaging on a little dangerous border crossing of my own.

I am currently in Canada and trying to bring my partner, who is also male, back to Australia to live with me. As queer men, we are used to dangerous border crossings, albeit of the more gender-bending, transgressive social and sexual variety, but not one so immovable and unfair as that of world-wide immigration. We are two people who have fallen in love. We met at Mardi Gras, when both of us were working as volunteers, and have travelled each other’s countries and now want to start making a life with one another. In Canada, this may lead to marriage. I’ll be able to arrive at a border and tick “SPOUSE” and I’ll be in like Flynn. In Australia, he has no box to tick (which some people, including some queers, are just fine with) and he’ll have to enter as a tourist and go home after three months. One year in to our relationship, we can claim an “INTER-DEPENDENCY” and he may become a temporary resident. The word inter-dependency is the furthest representation of what we have and speaks nothing of the affection and love we share for one another.

The concept of immigration is strange to me. Why do we erect these borders in the first place? Why do we try to legislate against love? Right now, in Canada, we live as others do and have the rights that others do. In Australia, we could end up on either sides of a barbed wire fence, fingers outstretched to one another, me and my inter-dependent.

by Stuart

Oh, the idealism of youth. Of course, we agreed with our lecturer, teaching English in Thailand would make us better at teaching English to migrant Australians. Goes without saying. We would give superb lessons in Thailand, and we were going to Change the World.

But something intervened. The World Changed Us.

Those of you who assumed that a degree in Primary Teaching wouldn’t be a ticket to the jetset life, stop sniggering. Some thirty of us aspiring teachers found ourselves preparing lessons in forty-six degree heat on the outskirts of Bangkok, albeit only metres from the end of the international runway at Don Muang Airport.

Were those lessons superb? Er…no. We sweated through hours of classes with primary students, sang songs with tertiary students and even injected a certain Australian je ne c’est quoi into proceedings at the Royal Thai Airforce Academy. Our students learned very little.

But our lecturer was right: the experience would make us better teachers when working with new migrants to Australia. How? By placing us, however fleetingly, in their shoes. Like many migrants, we were living in a land where we couldn’t speak the native language.

It became clear that one could survive in outer Bangkok with a woefully small Thai vocabulary. I’d be surprised if I learned more than about twenty phrases: enough to buy food (aroi ma — very delicious!), say my name, and catch a bus going in completely the wrong direction. It became clear that one could live in a place where one didn’t speak the language: but that one’s life would be superficial and disconnected.

After living in a very multicultural place like inner Sydney, outer Bangkok was alarmingly monocultural. Everyone except us was Thai. Not to say there weren’t stark divisions between religions, jobs and wealth among the Thai people: we were surrounded by appalling poverty and ostentatious wealth, piled one on the other. But nonetheless, us pasty Australians stood out like the gangly, perspiring ferang we were.

Wherever we went, we felt like the centre of attention: I quickly learned that the woven-bamboo sunhat I’d blithely chosen to wear denoted me as a delivery person: a cyclist earning a tiny wage as a messenger. A friend had, unknowingly, opted for a hat associated with market gardening, and the spectacle of us walking to school aroused lots of comment and mirth from the locals, all in a language we didn’t understand.

Not to say that the attention was unwelcome: we were treated with such extraordinary generosity wherever we went. A young assistant in the supermarket assumed I was German, and practised her best danke schoen on me. I replied in my politest schoolboy German, so as to not offend.

As obvious outsiders, we were welcomed, and treated with warmth and affection: really the reverse of the government-sanctioned response in Australia. Nothing we could have done would have repaid the dignity and warmth of our welcome in Thailand. (And just a tenth of that dignity and warmth would restore credibility to Australia’s immigration system).

The language barrier didn’t divide us from the Thais, but it did cause another strange change in us.

My own language, even living amongst other Australians, became impoverished. We were so used to speaking simply, and in concrete terms, to be understood by our classes, that we began to speak and think that way all the time. “I am going to the garden. Would you like to come?” See Dick and Jane. Within a matter of weeks, my ability to communicate (in English or Thai), felt limited to the most obvious and literal level. Through heat or laziness or otherwise, subtlety and nuance had been stripped from our language and our lives.

I haven’t ever migrated to a country where I can’t speak the language. I don’t know if this dislocation of thought and language is a common experience for migrants, or if I can presume to generalise based on my experience. But I hope that it made me just a little more attuned to the experience of Australia’s newest arrivals.

Was it a World-Changing experience, as our idealism had hoped? No, not at all. Were we changed? Immeasurably.

by Xavier

I’m a Basque, which I suppose makes me something like an European  aborigine, or at least belong to a group that was in this land long  time before many others came.

Those are my roots, of which I have a strong sense of pride (one of the basic ingredients for cultural survival). And for example make use of Euskera, our unique language, as often as I can so that it can be transformed from a treasure kept by just a few of us into an everyday tool used by many more.

But I have always loved to travel and find out what was out there. Those travels have taken me to Australia a few times, having spent a year and a half in Sydney in the most recent one.

My time in Sydney has given me the opportunity of meeting and learning from an incredible array of people with the most diverse cultural backgrounds, an eye and mind opening experience! I believe it was a quite well balanced interchange, as I was exposed to all influences during the week and had the chance of going on Sundays to our club where I could share a sense of belonging with fellow Basques and any friends that wanted to share a meal with us.

I have also noticed that in Australia other cultures are tolerated (and not necessarily respected) under the umbrella of an Anglo-Saxon system. That tolerance, even if imperfect (remember the Cronulla incidents and how it was just a few of us a week later rallying against racism), is much better than what you can find in many other parts of the world. However, and belonging to a nation that struggles for its survival, I found specially disgraceful to find absolutely no trace of the presence of its first inhabitants, their way of doing or their knowledge and connection to the land in everyday Australian life (seeing a few people playing the yidaki – didgeridoo is not enough). I must admit here that I probably didn’t do enough to approach them, and even if they have my absolute respect as native people, in the end my personal connection with them was close to non-existent. I wish things were different or at least I had done a bit more.

Oh, before I forget, I tried to extend my stay in Sydney (migrate) where I felt really comfortable enjoying all this cultural interchange. But even if I tried hard, as many others, I didn’t succeed overcoming all the difficulties posed by the Australian migration policy, and had to leave the country a few weeks ago.

Now I’m back in the Basque Country. Back to my roots? Not really, my time out of here has shown me that this is where the source of my roots are, but that identity, those roots, are part of me and come
with me wherever I go.

It seems I will be never be able to satisfy this need to travel and learn from others but I’ll keep trying … soon, in a few weeks time, I’m going to Central America … pack my roots … and leave …we will see
what I find there.

by Deepa

I never really considered the intense relationship between first peoples and the land until I moved to the Northern Territory.

It was at Gagaju (Kakadu) National Park where some of this realisation first revealed itself to me.

The tour guide at Ubir rock (married to a local woman) had a great depth of knowledge of the local area. Tracing his finger around the natural curve of the landscape he pointed to rock faces, symbols from the rock art, certain birds, trees and fauna and said each one had a certain significance. He weaved a story with his finger and it was the framework in which the local people of the area lived by. Rich and beautiful-an existance unseparated from land.

I accept myth and story telling does not explain entirely why certain things happen, where science certainly provides more logical explanations. However these shared stories/legends is what identifies a community and provides richness and security (culture).

As I was marvelling at the raw beauty around me it suddenly hit me-LAND! This land is me!

Without a genuine sustainable relationship with the earth we have no future. If we continue to ignore our interdependance with the earth (we being both individuals, governments, beurocracies, big business etc) in the way we live, we actually destroy ourselves.

You can call me overdramatic but this is the plight of indegenous peoples all over the world-survival. Whether we accept it or not, it is our plight too.