The quadruple exile of adolescents from immigration

The children of immigration are a heterogeneous universe. The term refers, on the one hand, to children and young people who have accompanied their parents in the migration process, either either by making the trip together, or by meeting with them after a few months or years by regrouping family.

They can also be considered as sons and daughters of immigration, those young people who were born when their parents were already residing in the foreign country; the so-called second generation immigrants, as if immigrant status could be transmitted, carried over or inherited. This article aims to collect some reflections about the sons and daughters of immigrants who are or who have reached a stage of the life cycle commonly considered critical such as adolescence, and the "exiles" that occur in they.

Immigration adolescent child transits

The adolescent suffers, among many aspects, from maturity. A deficiency is presupposed that must be resolved, thus prescribing a period of training, development, which allows the constitutive deficiency to be solved. From an anthropological perspective, adolescence can be approached as a period of transit, of passage; it is a stage that in pre-industrial societies has been thoroughly ritualized. It is suggested here that the adolescent children of migration are forced to go through all kinds of vicissitudes; not only those related to a migratory process, parallel and with particularities with respect to that of their parents, but a quadruple migration around 4 elements: body, territory, certainties and rights. Four metaphorical and literal migratory processes that intersect, feed back and enhance each other; trips in which children-young people are led involuntarily, and in principle without the possibility of return, allowing these last particularities to consider these transits, more than as a simple migration, as a exile.

With regard to migration and exile, it is common to speak of the grief that it entails. The word mourning works in the four exiles in its two connotations, that of pain, around the rupture and acceptance of the multiple losses that adolescents are compelled to assume; and in the connotation of conflict, challenge and struggle, with respect to the obstacles and challenges to overcome.

Exile I: Body

The first exile refers to the transformations that adolescence itself brings about. Adolescence is not a sought-after option: mutations just happen. The adolescent is expelled, in a forced way, and without any possibility of return, from his childhood world, from his prepubertal body, from his magical thinking. On the one hand they increase their quotas of freedom, but they decrease (and it is necessary to renounce) aspects to which he was firmly attached, and which provided privileges, prerogatives and comforts.

It is necessary to adapt to a new body, to the new demands of their parents, of their peers, of the society, which floods them with messages through the media about what is expected of they. The sense of what has been being and doing is entering into crisis.

Questions arise about who you are, how you would like to be, how you should be, how you are perceived. Hormones rush. Priorities and aspirations change, they become more complex. Games have increasingly serious implications. The paradise of the infantile world no longer provides multiple satisfactions and new responsibilities are acquired. Faced with emptiness and uncertainty, a great need is felt to belong, that is, to equalize and at the same time to be unique, to differentiate. The gaze and opinion of others is despised and, at the same time, their approval and recognition is of vital importance.

It is a time of exploration of the different areas to which it begins to have access. It is, therefore, also a period of confusion, falls, discoveries, illusions and disappointments. Of facing a host of insecurities, contradictions and ambiguities.

Parents are no longer wise or omnipotent for him or her, but annoying, backward and coercive adults who are loved or hated, denigrated and admired according to the moment. Idols are now singers, actors, athletes, the group of friends. One of the challenges of adolescents is to recognize their parents and themselves in their humanity, in their imperfection, in their contradictions. The adolescent's greatest desire is to be left alone, but at the same time she yearns for and longs for parental care and protection. These contradictions sometimes make him feel like the best in the world and sometimes the most unfortunate.

Adolescence represents the actualization of the myth of the rebellion of children against parents, that challenge essential for the establishment of a new social order, or at least new conditions of said order Social. It is an act in the adventure to meet oneself. The expulsion from the children's paradise is the path of knowledge, of choice, of transformation. It is a painful and enriching exile necessary for the development of autonomy and a broader, more complex and profound awareness of oneself and the world.

The exile wound of adolescence is not completely healed. The relative adaptation that has been achieved will cease to be appropriate to the new demands of the context. Thus, after some period of relative stability, in which the foundations of a flexible identity are built, circumstances will emerge. that will conveniently awaken our nonconformity, our rebellion and the desire to do things, to be or live in a different way way.

Exile II: Territory

The adolescent children of immigrants add to the identity crisis, dissatisfaction and conflict that is often present in adolescence, the conditions that generate tension and uncertainty that surround the process migratory.

Migration is usually in adults a voluntary decision supported by desires and motivations that function as support for get a constructive idea of ​​the situations that can be found in the host environment, thus facilitating their process of adaptation. Children and adolescents, for their part, can be considered as involuntary migrants, since they are frequently taken from their lived space, from their daily lives, from their ties, of their territory, of those aspects that provide them security, without being able to actively participate in the decision and above all without being able to measure the breaks and abandonments that it implies. They are, in some way, drawn into the decision of adults, who in many cases rationalize their well-being (that of children) as a motor for family migration. For many children and adolescents, migration, more than an opportunity, can be perceived as a threat of losing many elements to which they are strongly linked.

Probably those who have to deal with the greatest loss situations are children or adolescents who they were in charge of a close relative while their parents achieved certain conditions that allowed them to bring them to them with him. They have to face a double duel, first the separation of one or both parents, and later that of their caregiver, which after, in many years of waiting, may have become a parental figure with strong emotional ties to which they have to let go of new. In addition, the construction of the bond with the parents, after years of distancing can also be problematic.

For them, for those who have come with their parents and for the children of immigrants who were born in the host country, it is particularly relevant being exposed to two socialization environments, that of their place of origin, represented by their parents, and the place of reception that are manifested in the interactions they establish in their school, with the media and in the "Street". These two socializing environments may have dissimilar demands, expectations, and principles. Even the same conception of adolescence and what is expected of them at this stage may differ in both contexts. There are usually differences in consumption patterns, in the way of relating to adults, in the relationships that are established within families.

The double context of socialization becomes relevant during adolescence, considering that it is a critical period for the construction of identity, becoming of utmost importance the way one is perceived and valued by others, the latter aspects being the basis on which esteem is built own.

With the arrival of adolescence, the cognitive capacity to recognize the evaluations regarding the group to which one belongs and with which it is related is intensified. In this way the adolescent becomes more aware, and sometimes even hypersensitive to situations of discrimination, pejorative prejudices and xenophobic attitudes to which you can be exposed at school and in the Street. This ability to distinguish with respect to the valuation of social groups is also manifested in adolescents of the place of reception, and it is the moment where they tend to express prejudices and xenophobic attitudes that had not been manifested in the childhood. Many children in the receiving group who used to share time and space with immigrant children, stop doing so when they reach adolescence. Discriminatory attitudes towards immigrant adolescents can also increase as they are perceived by people from the receiving group as more threatening as they approach the adult body.

The negative feedback that the adolescent receives of her image by the majority group, who place her reference group as lower in a social hierarchy, can be a great source of frustration and discomfort emotional. Given the above, the adolescent can choose to try to blend in with the majority group, adopting in a forceful way ways of being and behaving of their adolescent peers of the group receiver. Sometimes the attempt to blend in is received by the adolescents of the receiving group with indifference or manifest rejection, being quite devastating for the immigrant adolescent. It is evident that not all adolescent children of immigration are exposed to the same prejudices, and the usual thing is that it can be revealed a social hierarchy related to the place of origin, physical appearance but above all by the socioeconomic condition that they are attributes.

The attempt to mimic and identify with the receiving group as a reaction to the negative perception of one's own group, may be accompanied by the adolescent of a feeling of rejection towards their own culture of source. It then adds to the generation gap between parents and adolescents, which usually affects the conflicts that arise between them, rejection and shame that he may feel towards her parents, for they are representatives of the culture that is negatively valued in the context of reception.

Faced with the rejection and indifference of the adolescents of the majority group, the adolescent can then seek refuge and reception in adolescents of the same culture or who are going through similar discrimination. Resistance identities are then constructed, in which adolescents mostly interact with other immigrant adolescents, trying to highlight or build ways of being with which they can feel part of a community that supports them, manifested in certain types of music, ways of speaking, of dressing, of to walk. The group of peers becomes a refuge from the perception of a hostile environment.

The double context of socialization can also be experienced by adolescents as different demands and demands of two groups to which a feeling of loyalty is kept. It can be seen as an update of the archetypal conflict between the tradition represented by the parents and the new and refreshing, represented by the host culture.

When the adolescent has a family environment that provides sufficient support and recognition, and a social context of the receiving group that is sufficiently respectful of their particularities. The adolescent manages to maintain the tension of the conflict of loyalties, allowing himself to explore and "play" with the possibilities and benefits of each socialization context. The adolescent then identifies and promotes in himself those aspects that are more attractive and interesting to him from one context or another depending on the vital moment that he is going through. He then achieves a broad and more complex perspective of himself and of others, perceiving the fact of coexisting between two cultural contexts more as an enrichment than as a limitation. The double contexts of socialization allow adolescents to develop so-called multicultural competences, this is the positive management of diversity. culture that is currently common to find in work environments, leisure, etc... as well as the ability to function adequately in cultural contexts other than own self.

Many writers and artists attribute part of their creative capacity to the estrangement and tension of living between two cultures. The children of the adolescents of immigration have the advantage of being more aware that each person and culture is a kaleidoscope of influences of ambivalent dynamics, of mixtures.

Exile III: Certainties

This third exile is shared by adolescents with the rest of the inhabitants of the contemporary world, but they are more vulnerable to its impact due to the addition of previous exiles. It refers to the involuntary expulsion and without the possibility of return of the certainties and rationalities of modernity.

The world that contemporary adolescents have landed on is an unpredictable world, dominated by role ambiguity, vanished utopias, and fluid relationships. It is described as a liquid, volatile world, difficult to grasp. A society in which it is necessary to constantly live with risk and uncertainty; where time and space have constricted. It is argued that religion, science, politics have ceased to be mediating institutions of meaning, or at least in the way they were for previous generations.

In the contemporary world, the quotas of choice in terms of ways of being and doing have increased for adolescents. Such magnitude of options gives feelings of freedom but also generates vertigo and bewilderment. Their identifications are therefore ephemeral, volatile, emotional, contagious, paradoxical. Traditional ways and progressive attitudes can coexist in a person. A desire for novelty and an interest in his roots.

The predominant dynamics of the contemporary world has many aspects that make it resemble the adolescent character. Like them, the postmodern world is not very clear about what it is or where it is going.

For some social scientists like Michel Maffesoli, the contemporary world is in search of new principles, logics and modes of relationship. He considers that modernity and its conception of the world are saturated, questioning even one of its fundamental premises, such as the notion of progress. We are then in the somewhat erratic search for new paradigms that allow them to be viable or at the same time. Fewer put off humanity's experiment as part of this ecosystem for a longer time. planet.

Migration, which has increased dramatically in recent decades, is defining of the contemporary world, being at the same time consequence and motor of the transformations that are coming generating. The adolescent children of migration are therefore a lofty expression of the nascent world, in which they and their descendants will be the protagonists.

Exile IV: Rights

Immigrant status or a certain type of immigrant continues to be a strong factor of vulnerability for discrimination and inhibition in the enjoyment of fundamental rights on which dignity is based human. To the previous exiles, the adolescent children of the migration have to face seeing many being marginalized from the possibility of leading a dignified life, in which they can develop their potential under the same conditions as the rest of the teenagers.

Many of the adolescents have to live with the fear that one of their parents will be expelled because He has not managed to regularize his residence after many years and a life built in the place of shelter. Some are forced to return to their country of origin, sometimes being a place they hardly know.

They can also be the object of suspicion by police entities, when they relate to gangs or groups that have committed violent acts, restricting their right to transit without having to explain their appearance or manner To wear.

They are also exposed to the job insecurity of their parents, to their frustration, to having them in Sometimes they work long hours longer than other parents, to get enough money to be able to hold on. That they cannot participate in the election of the rulers, that they cannot influence the policies that concern them.

Human rights and dignity cannot be renounced without feeling mutilated. The exile of rights is not convenient to mourn, but to channel it so that it is the engine of activism and vindication against any type of exclusion. The suitably unresolved grief for rights is the spark for resistance to unworthy living conditions.

And the parents of the exiles?

Faced with difficulties, some parents even wonder if it was not a mistake to have emigrated and to expose their daughters and sons to situations that they now feel are getting out of hand. There may be uncertainty as to whether the difficulties are going through them, are part of adolescence, or consequence of being between two cultures, or their personality, or the way their relationship with they. Doubts, for example, about whether when your child states that he is discriminated against at school, this corresponds to objective facts, a hypersensitivity, or an excuse to justify himself in his neglect.

Fear and impotence in the face of the ambiguity of gender roles, the experience of sexuality, the high consumption of alcohol and drugs to which their children are exposed. Doubts also about how far you should go in your role as parents, about the limits between being authoritarian and understanding, controlling or too permissive, about what is the best strategy to get what we want from them, and what is the most suits them. The use of leisure time is perhaps one of the biggest issues of conflict.

You can feel guilty about mistakes that may have been made in your education, and anxiety about those that will surely continue to be made.

For parents, their children's adolescence can also be experienced as an exile. They can come to feel the degrees of autonomy that they are acquiring and the identification of their children with the reception context as an abandonment. He is seen to be forced to mourn his son's childhood, to give up being his idol, to sometimes endure being the subject in which they channel their frustration. To gradually lose their degree of dependence, which on the one hand may have been lived as a relief, but also with frustration at ceasing to be so immensely important to someone.

It is necessary to learn to renegotiate a new type of relationship with a person who is no longer a child but is not He is completely an adult, who asks for responsibilities, who needs limits, but also the confidence to assume risks.

It also implies assuming that no matter how much they want it, it is impossible to control all the variables that prevent their children from being exposed to situations that will make them suffer. Also assume that they did not come into the world to fulfill the expectations and dreams of the parents. Be open to being surprised by their uniqueness, and try not to burden them with your own fears, prejudices and labels.

An adolescent usually implies a repositioning of all family dynamics, roles that are transformed, attitudes and behaviors that cease to make sense. Adolescents for example require less attention, less energy than when they were children. Surplus energy that parents need to re-locate in their own lives, in their own projects. The best thing that can happen to a teenager is to have a parent who is relatively comfortable with himself or herself. A father and a mother who occupy part of their motivations and interests in their own well-being and who assume and manage their own exiles.