This was actually my essay for the course "Maps of Meaning". It is nice if you are familiar the conceptual framework, but really not all that essential.
Immigration: reconstructing the map.
Part One: Leaving
I have never met an immigrant for whom the process of immigration was not difficult, painful, or frightening. In the immigrant community, there is a silent agreement that it cannot be otherwise. However, when asked the question why the process is so hard, people usually give reasons like "it is difficult because you leave behind everything and everybody you care about". This seemed to me like a good enough explanation about three years ago, but now, judging from my own experiences, I realize that leaving something is not a huge problem in and of itself, changing the environment and the way of adaptation is.
I had lived in the same country, Russia, for eighteen years and knew rather well how I was supposed to behave. I knew what people around me expected and, in turn, could predict their responses to my actions. Everything around me was very much familiar, which was the reason why, when I was told we were leaving the country, I was terrified. Although I had been to Europe and enjoyed being immersed in other cultures, I had never considered doing it for the rest of my life. I guess that travel must have been so enjoyable because I always knew that in the end I would go back home. Now I was faced with a possibility that I would never return.
I think I was in the state of fear for many months afterwards. Some sort of excitement added to it later, due to the fact that the immigration was offering certain opportunities for me: going to school abroad, having some sort of financial security, being able to find a decent job. The fear still remained, for I was not sure how to attain those goals.
Our departure itself did nothing to dissipate my fears. In fact, it made them worse. The leaving was hectic: we had to take a train to Poland, then board a 9-hour flight to Toronto. We had a dog and a huge amount of luggage, nobody was picking us at the airport, so we had to take a taxi and to try to arient ourselves in a city of which we didn't even have a map. I found myself in a totally unfamiliar place. There were rules I was supposed to follow, but I did not know them. Nothing was constraining my actions, but nothing was protecting me either...
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Part Two: Adaptation
Our friend had rented a place for us, -- two rooms in a basement of a private house. The rooms were like the rooms in Dostoevsky's novels: small and dark, brownish-yellow in colour.
I was depressed by the environment in which I found myself. I was also depressed by the fact that I was the one in the family who was supposed to deal with that environment. My parents' English was almost nonexistent, so I had to search for an apartment, get social insurance and health cards. That was when I realized that my ways of thinking no longer worked. I discovered that here people could not understand manythings that seemed ordinary to me. I had a lot of trouble trying to explain to people that a passport was more important than a birth certificate in terms of telling who you were, or that a person could have two passports for two different purposes.
I soon realized I could not get what I wanted because I assumed that the people around me thought the same way I did. That certainly was not true, so I tried to switch perspectives and to pretend I was on their side. I tried to present things that seemed normal to me as some bizarre occurences, and accept as typical things that seemed quite strange to me. I got so used to playing this game that it actually incorporated itself into my way of adaptation. I realized that this stopped being a game for me and became my way of life. I managed to reconstruct my scheme of actions; my fears gradually disappeared. I learned to be more straightforward and ask questions. I passed the English examination, got admitted into the university, made some friends. I became comfortable with my surroundings and with what I was going to do with my life. I felt, however, that my adaptation was not complete: I still had a number of issues I could not resolve. Apparently, they had been instilled in me since I was born and had become a fundamental part of my nature. I accepted them as parts of my old group identity, hoping they would help me to keep the connections with, and understand the problems of people whom I left behind.
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Part Three: Coming Back
You've finally come home. Well, what about it?
Just look about you. See? Nobody needs you.
Nobody will accept you as a friend.
Joseph Brodsky, 1961
When I was leaving, I promised my friends that I would come back for a long visit. Three, four, five years have passed, and I am still here. The problem is that I cannot picture myself going back anymore. I feel that I think differently from people back home, have different problems and priorities in my life. Even during telephone conversations with my friends I seem not to be able to find a topic for a meaningful discussion; we never go past the small talk.
This incompatibility was exemplified by a movie I went to see. It was called "East-West", and the story was about the immigrants who had left Russia in 1920s and were later allowed to come back. They did; right at the customs some of them were prosecuted, others were recruited to work for the KGB. These people were puzzled by the whole situation, they couldn't comprehend why they were treated this way. They reminded me of a rat that was taken from its litter, washed and put back, only to be killed by its former mates. These people came back to the country they thought they knew. However, the country had changed; also their patterns of adaptation had themselves changed, and were no longer appropriate for the present environment.
I felt similar to these people. I also understood why I couldn't go back: I wasn't prepared at all for what could be waiting for me. Would I be killed like that odorless rat because I no longer possess an identity that is needed to be recognized back there? What had always been the explored territory suddenly became the unknown. I felt, however, that I still had some understanding of the problems that people there might face, but I did not seem to have the right skills and strategies in order to cope with these problems. I was just as afraid to go back as I was to leave five years before. I did not know the rules again, and I was not willing to go through the process of learning them once more.
The process was exactly the reason why immigration was so difficult. Changing the environment meant that I had to change my identity, change my ways of behavior. I had to figure out the meaning of the new environment for myself, as there was nothing there to guide me any more. This seemed like an overwhelming task, but still I went through with it, and gradually I learned how to act, to talk and to think. Although my exploration was forced rather than voluntary, it still kept me from locking myself in a room and not going anywhere at all, which certainly would not have resolved any of my problems. I am glad now I had no choice, because I am not sure whether I would have made this step on my own. I had no starting point, and I also had no protection from any mistakes I could do on my way. Giving up seemed like an easier option.
I reconstructed the whole way I looked at life and the way I behaved. However, soon I realized that while the process of reconstructing a map of adaptation might not be irreversible, and it was at least theoretically possible to go back to the old scheme, the process would be painful and difficult. I could not simply switch patterns of behavior. This meant that, for all practical purposes, my new scheme would be useless if I ever went back to my old environment. This contextual dependency of my map was what turned the process of leaving into something to be afraid of, and the process of going back into something to be avoided.