1. Beginning Again: From Refugee to Citizen
- Author:
- Ahmed I Samatar
- Publication Date:
- 07-2004
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies
- Institution:
- Macalester College
- Abstract:
- A key feature of this phase of globalization is a speedy catalyzation of a heretofore unseen degree of human mobility and cultural interpenetration. Unlike the earlier epochs in the making of the modern world (16th through the early 20th-century), when Europeans were the main groups leaving their homelands to find better lives in other parts of the word, the contemporary era is witness to a dramatic reversal movement. Many in Africa, Central and South America, and Asia have come or are earnestly planning to lift their heels for the “old” West (even to Southern and Eastern Europe) and “neo-Europe” (e.g., the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). The phenomenal arrival of tens of thousands of Somalis in the United States within the last two decades (first as a trickle and then in larger numbers since the 1990s) is to a great extent part of this trend. It is a happening that is, in one sense, part of an old story, as President Roosevelt correctly asserted, and a continuous aspect in the quintessential making of these United States, marked by the settlement of people from almost every region of the world. As a matter of fact, since the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 and the Refugee Act of 1980, more than twenty million legal immigrants have entered the U.S. A dramatic demographic consequence of these flows of people, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, is this: At present, those Americans who are foreign-born and their children compose around one-fifth of the American population. If the Somali presence in America is one slice of the latest iteration, the potential for a decent, let alone notable success—in both material and mental terms—depends on how, individually and collectively, they assess the complexities of the new environment and, subsequently, snatch any legitimate turns of chance. To state this point is not to under estimate how difficult circumstances have been, are, or could be. The life histories of others who came before Somalis, including some of European ancestry (e.g., the Irish and southerners from around the Mediterranean),testify to the cruel treatment that might await and the bogushindrances that one must struggle against during the transition.
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand