When in Italy this summer, I found myself being told multiple times by immigrants themselves that I should be careful of “the Arabs” here because “they steal.” Those interactions surprised me and made me ask if some immigrants adopt an anti-immigration attitude as a way of distancing themselves from other migrant groups to be perceived as a “good” migrant. This is a problem that I find fascinating; it makes me relate to my own life experience, as my mom’s side of my family came from Spain to France, seeking better life conditions. Even though my relatives grew up with a relatively lower income and were discriminated against for being Spanish, I still overhear negative comments about new waves of immigration in France. Those different situations made me wonder whether immigrants or their descendants, when achieving a certain social acceptance, may distance themselves from newer arrivals.
This raises the question: Do immigrants distance themselves from other immigrants to be perceived as “good migrants” themselves?
To start with, it is important to note that public discourse often creates a binary approach to immigration with the concept of “good” vs. “bad” migrants. On the one hand, when finding arguments to support immigration, people tend to use examples of successful people coming from immigration to illustrate its good side. This can be used when looking at the success story of an athlete, a doctor, or an artist. Those examples are therefore of “good” migrants, whose stories show that they contributed to the country’s economic growth and are seen as “hard workers.” To go further, Trinidad Raj Molina, in his article, The Human Side of Immigration, shows that migrants are used as economic data. He argues that their worth is calculated in terms of GDP growth, looking at what they bring to the economy instead of simply being recognized as people deserving of dignity and belonging. This narrative of the migrant being useful to the country through its economic contribution is interlinked with the narrative of the “bad” migrant. The “bad” migrant, on the other hand, is someone seen as lazy or a burden to the country. It therefore directly links immigration with productivity. It is important to note that factors such as having a disability or coming from a lower socio-economic background could directly impact their ability to contribute to the economy and therefore make those people have a higher chance of being seen as a “bad” migrant.I therefore argue that being successful as a migrant is not a problem, but making success a condition of belonging is. So, when a person with an immigrant background talks badly about other immigrants, it could be a sort of way of positioning themselves as being on the good side of immigration, as embodying the “good” migrant, as saying, “I am not like them”.
But why is this narrative so common, and how is it implemented?
Firstly, it is important to note that immigrating to a predominately white country as a white person is not going to be perceived and treated the same as immigrating to the same country as a person of color. With similar qualifications or goals, migrants who are visibly racialized will on average receive more discrimination than a white person. This underlines the concept of racialization, which is the process of categorizing, marginalizing, or regarding according to race. This means that racialized migrants face additional barriers in their process of immigration, even when arriving with similar goals. So, even if an immigrant that is a person of color is successful economically, it might not immunize this person from having a life dictated by discrimination. Take, for example, the way the Ukrainian immigration wave was handled by Western media. In their article “It Could Have Been Us”, Btihaj Ajana, Hannah Connell and Tyler Liddle explain an outpouring of sympathy and support towards Ukrainian refugees both in the media and by the public, but missing reactions and representations of other wars and refugee crises, such as those of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. In this other article, Unequal Framing in Times of Hardship? How Newspapers from Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Switzerland Portray Syrian and Ukrainian Refugees, Lukas Benedikt Hoffmann and Michael Hameleers examined 84,623 newspaper articles from Germany, Spain, the UK, and Switzerland covering Syrian and Ukrainian refugees, and found that Syrian refugees were more often framed as a threat while Ukrainian refugees received humanitarian comments. This creates an idea of hierarchy of deservingness, in which some people are worth more protection than others. Those differences in treatment may be based on race, as well as cultural proximity, religion, and geopolitical context. Therefore, some migrants are discriminated against more violently based on their race and other sociopolitical and cultural factors, which might push people to distance themselves from the groups that are seen more negatively. Consequently, distance makes it easier to navigate in society.
I therefore argue that the idea of belonging as a migrant is, at least, partially linked to the narrative of the “good migrant,” where someone needs to be successful economically to be considered worthy of belonging. Consequently, the division created among migrants forces people to prove themselves and distance themselves, which can lead them to criticize people coming from similar backgrounds. On top of that, the hate for immigration is, in my opinion, often used as indirect racism against the “other”. Being a person of color, worshiping another religion, or having customs and rituals that are seen as in opposition to the majority culture also influence how migrants are judged. This means that migrants are judged based not only on their ability to integrate into a country, but on racial and cultural criteria that push them to have to prove themselves even more.
We could therefore ask ourselves: does distancing oneself from other migrants actually lead to greater acceptance, or does it simply reinforce the same hierarchy that makes migrant belonging conditional in the first place?
Edited by Lou Didelot
This is an article written by a Staff Writer. Catalyst is a student-led platform that fosters engagement with global issues from a learning perspective. The opinions expressed above do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication.
