What its Like to be Excluded: an Immigrant
Today in Western Europe immigrants form over 5 percent of the total population. In one industrialized country alone, there are more than half a million immigrant children, many of them living in shanty towns. Here Natalie, a 12 year-old girl who left a poor rural area in a less developed country, describes what it's like to be in the capital city of an industrialized country-and why she would like to go home.
My father came to this country first. I didn't see him for a few years. Then one day a letter came from my father. He said "Come". We were all very happy. We were tired of our village. Everyone worked on their bit of land; it was boring. We had all heard that in cities there would be modern things to do with shows and lights and new friends to make-that the new country was a better place to live.
It didn't go that way at all. My father used to be a carpenter at home. He was a very good carpenter. Now he works in an automobile factory. In the beginning my Mum used to cry a lot. She had to get a job in an office as well as working at home, so it was a big change for her. And she missed all our family. She wants to go back very badly. As for me, I didn't make any friends because I didn't speak the language here. I was always left out of the playing groups.
I've been back home once. Everybody was happy. We all cried. But it sort of hurt as well. They are poor compared to me. They are not dressed well. But I want to go back even if it means being poor. I don't like it here. I miss the countryside and the animals. The people are much simpler at home. We were always together having a good time. Every Sunday people would have a big football game or a dance or a talk. Everyone mixed in.
I was freer at home. We have fields to run in and rivers for swimming. Here I only have a small play area because there are lots of cars and violence. In the village you have problems with the land and the animals but you don't have problems that you can't understand and that worry you.
The other thing is that people are always fighting. I nearly got into a fight the day before last. A girl said to me, "Go back to your own country; you only came to eat our bread." It happens to me quite often. If they are racist to me, I say, "Listen. We do all the dirty work for you. We keep your houses and make your food. We work in your factories; we make your cars and build your buildings. So, if you don't like it, we will just go home and see how badly off you will be without us." If she came to my country and was a foreigner to me, I wouldn't treat her the ways she insults me.
International Year of the Child Press File From the World's Children, IYC Secretariat, United Nations.
Suggested Discussion Questions
- Have you ever been excluded from a group because you were considered an "outsider"? "different"? "inferior"? What if everyone treated one another this way?
- "What strengths and resources would enable education systems in developing countries to swim with the international tide without going under? How can they get from the industrialized countries the basis they need for technological, scientific and social development without the (sub)cultural packaging that goes with it? And, lastly, for what purpose and by what means can we establish cultural reciprocity, developing the sense of the universal and imposing mutual respect?..."
(Ahmed Moatassime, Cultural pluralism and education in the Maghreb, Prospects, p. 182)
