Tag: Immigrant Rights

From Gaza to Tijuana: Militarization and violence at the hands of the state

Juan Pablo Blanco
TCCS ’19

“Protesting voices are not soothing. It is not in their nature to lull the listener to sleep, comfort them, reassure them that all is fine. Protesting voices must shake the listener out of their slumber.” – Nada Elia

These are the words written by Diaspora Palestinian writer and activist Nada Elia in her essay, “The Burden of Representation – When Palestinians Speak Out” within Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging (2011, Syracuse University Press).

Her words have never rang more true today. In a time when attacks on vulnerable populations grow increasingly harsh and blatant, and centrist “liberal” discourse keeps asking us to play nice, focus on bipartisanship, and some idea of common ground, Elia makes clear the uselessness of these attempts to play nice. Or, as Elia cites Audre Lorde’s ever-pertinent wisdom, “We were never meant to survive, that our silence cannot protect us, because ‘the machine will try and grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak’” (Lorde, 1977).

These days, it is hard to not make a connection between the struggle against occupation and apartheid in Palestine and the so-called migrant caravan reaching the U.S. border. Some quick research of both will show a militarized border wall, tear gas canisters in the air, and a professional military force attacking unarmed civilians with impunity. Both cases show narratives that end up blaming the victims, whether it is the reductionist argument that equates anti-Zionism (an opposition with the state of Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territory and its attack on the Palestinian people) with anti-Semitism (the historic vilification and oppression of Jews) or the idea that migrants shouldn’t be complaining about teargas canisters being launched their way because they were told this would happen if they made it alive to the U.S. southern border. Both these narratives, in short, are used as silencing tactics.

Moreover, political discourse is also present that criminalizes civilians and turns them into war criminals. For example, in right-wing political commentaries, one can find narratives that speak of the use of “human shields” both in Gaza by Palestinians as well as at the U.S. border by Central American migrants and refugees. By grabbing hold of this narrative, Israel and the U.S. (as well as the Mexican state in the case of the border) all wash their hands clean of any responsibility for the violence directed upon these people. These narratives also turn these vulnerable peoples into, not the victims of the wars that they have been unjustly subject to, but the actors of wars who are to be treated under the rules of military combat.

While “liberal” media sources have, to some extent, criticized U.S. military tactics at the border, it is imperative to remember that oftentimes, due to claims of “impartiality,” these atrocities are left out of the public narrative. Elia points to this censored-storytelling as she recounts the BBC’s refusal to broadcast the massive slaughter of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip leaving more than thirteen hundred Palestinians dead in January 2009. The BBC’s refusal to broadcast this news was due to their desire to “maintain impartiality in its coverage of the massacre” — that is, a twenty-two day military offensive launched by Israel from “the air, sea, and land, against a weakened, quasi-starved imprisoned people, the majority of whom are refugees and children” (Elia, 142).

While I am not trying to equate the more than 70 years of occupation at the hand of Israel with what is happening at the border today, it is important to remember that these are both examples of colonization, occupation, and violence enacted on innocent people by a militarized, racist state. It is also important to remember that we cannot look at these struggles in a vacuum, and that we must understand that until all of us are truly free, none of us will be. We cannot wait to ground into dust.

Can you tell which photo is from Palestine and which one from the U.S.-Mexico Border?

A photograph of a large group of protesters facing tear gas from a police force in an unknown location
Photo credit: New York Times.
A photograph of a large group of protesters facing tear gas from a police force in an unknown location
Photo credit: New York Times.

Navigating through the red tape for workforce development

Fernanda Macedo
TCCS ’19

Students learn hair cutting techniques at a cosmetology school.
Cosmetology students practice hair styling techniques. Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/codnewsroom/15580904957

Have you ever wanted to help your community and been slapped in the face with bureaucracy when you attempted to do so? I have, to the point that I am getting a Master’s degree to help me research about the government red tape in my industry as well as to shed light on whom this bureaucracy is marginalizing in my community.

I am a cosmetologist by profession and would like to teach cosmetology to others who could benefit from learning this trade. I am also a Brazilian immigrant who understands the lack of workforce development that the Brazilian community faces in Massachusetts. I can make a difference and close the gap that my profession has provided me by teaching the profession to other Brazilian immigrants, some of the people in most need of workforce development. Along the process, I am finding out how and why the Brazilian community specifically is being marginalized by the current difficult access to enter the cosmetology industry in this state.

Along the process, I am finding out how and why the Brazilian community specifically is being marginalized by the current difficult access to enter the cosmetology industry in this state.

The beauty industry, much like any other field to which someone dedicates fully over many years, has the ability to provide financial stability for its professionals, benefiting that individual, their household, and also community. Therefore, I am using the TCCS program to best research the needs of my community with a long term goal of using that research to open a low-cost cosmetology school that meets those specific needs.

However, I have spent the first third of my master’s research facing the board of cosmetology’s bureaucratic and unresponsive structure. Many of the requirements to open a new cosmetology school in the state of Massachusetts, like square footage per student and minimum station numbers, are excessive and add to large overhead costs, making student tuition unnecessarily high. I am using all the tools I am learning in TCCS to put together my research findings to the board of cosmetology, to reveal to their policymakers that these excessively-high costs serve to marginalize the most at risk in the community, including those with the lowest opportunities for workforce development, like Brazilian immigrants, in Massachusetts.

I am using all the tools I am learning in TCCS to put together my research findings to the board of cosmetology, to reveal to their policymakers that these excessively-high costs serve to marginalize the most at risk in the community…

Since the Division of Professional Licensure of Massachusetts requires that anyone interested in becoming a cosmetologist must obtain a minimum of 1,000 cosmetology school hours and pass a written and practical state board exam, and also that no individual licensed cosmetologists can teach students outside of an accredited cosmetology school, I argue that access to affordable cosmetology schools is an important first step in improving workforce development for vulnerable members of the community, like Brazilian immigrants, who reside in this state.

Lastly, I hope to use my TCCS research to learn about policy change and how legislation is approved as well as changed. It was not until the early 2000s that the written Massachusetts state board exam required to obtain a cosmetology license became offered in Vietnamese and Spanish. Prior to that, cosmetologists like my grandmother paid and took the board exam every 6 months to maintain a legal permit to work at a beauty salon until her next attempt at an exam in a language she did not know, regardless of being the best cosmetologist I know.

Sometimes the need for change is obvious, but the red tape to make change happen is long and tangled. TCCS is helping me take it apart to improve Massachusetts’s cosmetology workforce development and to decrease institutionalized marginalization of vulnerable communities like my own Brazilian immigrant population residing all around the state.

Isolated in the city: The precarious position of migrant workers in Singapore

Taina Teravainen, TCCS ’19 Student

A picture of the Singapore skyline

Singapore is small in size, only 279 mi², but it is densely populated with approximately 5.6 million people living in this space. Over 245,000 people in this figure are “foreign domestic workers:” women who live in their employer’s homes, cook their meals, wash their clothes, and care for their children and elderly. “Foreign migrant workers,” on the other hand, make up the over 296,000 men who migrate to Singapore to labor in the booming construction industry.

As a Singaporean, I have often seen men squat by the side of the road with yellow hardhats waiting to be ferried back to their dormitories in the open-air back of lorries. In the evenings, they can be spotted playing cricket or having a beer in pockets of unused grassy spaces. The women gather en-masse on Sundays in public spaces that they rarely get to visit, except on their single day off. They have picnics with friends, attend religious services, and send remittances to their families in their home countries. This day off isn’t a certainty though.

Due to the precarious situation foreign domestic workers live in, the exploitation they face includes denial of time off, forced work without sufficient rest, and docked or withheld pay for months on end.

Due to the precarious situation foreign domestic workers live in, the exploitation they face includes denial of time off, forced work without sufficient rest, and docked or withheld pay for months on end.

When I asked my mother about how much time off the domestic worker of our extended family hired received, she said that the worker had chosen to forfeit her day off for increased pay. This is more than just industriousness, I know, but rather a necessity. She has her own children and parents in her home country who depend on the money.

Following independence from British colonial rule in 1965, Singapore’s rapid industrialization has firmly cemented its spot as a global financial centre and, in turn, created a segmented labor market that is filled by cheap and disposable labor from peripheral countries such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, China, The Philippines, and Myanmar.

While these workers provide essential labor and services for increasing production and economic growth in Singapore, they are also denied pathways toward citizenship and are viewed as unable to integrate to Singaporean society. This seems at odds with the Singapore government’s party line that the Singaporeans live in multiracial harmony and raises the question: Who gets to be included in this vision? The racial language used in anti-migrant sentiments raised by local Singaporeans, who themselves are mostly only a few generations removed from their immigrant ancestors, certainly does not support it.

Who gets to be included in this vision? The racial language used in anti-migrant sentiments raised by local Singaporeans, who themselves are mostly only a few generations removed from their immigrant ancestors, certainly does not support it.

Of course, similar migration structures exist in the U.S. and other countries worldwide, but because of land size, Singapore seems to exist as a microcosm of the larger problem of exploitation of migrant workers and a racial hierarchy that stems from it. While living in the small citystate ensures that locals are never too far from encountering a foreign worker, it remains easy enough to avert one’s gaze and one’s thoughts from the abuses that go on within boarded-up construction sites or other people’s private homes, especially if societal rhetoric is that migrant workers are to remain outsiders and less-than, always. More needs to be done by the government, the employers and local Singaporeans to confront the neoliberal ideologies that reduce migrant workers to their labor and erases their personhood.

How to paint our own mural: the need for transnational solidarity in the undocumented peoples’ struggle

Juan Pablo Blanco
TCCS Student ’19

A mural in Belfast, Ireland with "Ireland stands with Catalonia" written on a peace wall.
Mural in Falls Road, Belfast supporting Catalunyan self-determination. Photo Credit – Extramural Activity 2017.

I remember walking down Falls Road in Belfast, Ireland in the spring of 2015. I was still dumbfounded by the sight of the “peace lines”, the harrowing barbed wired steel walls that separate predominantly republican neighborhoods from loyalist neighborhoods.

However, as I walked through what is referred to as the international wall just a few blocks over, my mood changed and I could not help but feel empowered by the messages of solidarity and strength that these murals proclaimed. From Palestine solidarity messages, support for the self determination of Catalunya and the Basque Country, to the image of a smiling Leonard Peltier, one can see that the message was that Irish liberation could not happen without it also working for the liberation of all oppressed peoples.

This was my first trip outside of the U.S. since I had migrated 16 years prior due to my undocumented immigration status. Back then, as someone who was just starting to get involved with organizing and activism, I could not help but think why there didn’t seem to be any transnational movement like this uniting undocumented peoples around the world.

I am originally from Argentina, a country that as of 2010 had 1.5 million undocumented people living within its borders (statistic from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs), and I have seen the racist and xenophobic narratives on immigration that are prevalent among many Argentinians being carried to the U.S. as people migrated even when many of them become undocumented themselves.

Photo from a march with undocumented immigrants in Argentina holding sign that reads, translated, as "Migrant Workers Present."
Undocumented immigrant activists and allies in Buenos Aires mobilizing against Argentine president Mauricio Macri’s controversial mandate to limit immigration. Their sign reads “Migrant Workers Present.” Photo Credit – Prensa Roja Internacional 2018.

This false consciousness makes people think that their experiences are somehow categorically different from that of other irregular migrants throughout the world. What could a transnational movement of and for undocumented peoples and people with precarious migratory statuses do that these movements alone cannot?

What could a transnational movement of and for undocumented peoples and people with precarious migratory statuses do that these movements alone cannot?

I don’t have a definite answer to that question yet. However, as globalization has internationalized the economic systems that often become catalysts for migration patterns, why shouldn’t an international problem be faced with a transnational solution?

This does not mean that local groups will stop working on their particular campaigns, since after all the socio-political paradigms of the states they reside in will dictate what will work and not work for them. What it means is that this local work can continue to happen and a space where perspectives could be shared, tools and strategies worked out, and solidarity and cooperation be fostered can be created to make each local movement more powerful and revolutionary. We only need to pay attention to other movements that have become transnational in scope and how that has affected the kind of work they are able to do.

The Indigenous peoples struggle can be a very salient example. As Guillermo Delgado, human rights activist and anthropologist at UC Santa Cruz, writes: “ …a cross-border indigenous movement in the Americas needs to be seen as an intellectual space that allows for the ample circulation of proposals, including the need to press for dialogue on policies—especially those sponsored by the international financial institutions—that directly affect indigenous peoples.” Bodies like the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, or the Indigenous Peoples’ Network, have shown that solidarity and cooperation have not only been able to achieve changes in international law, but more importantly have allowed Indigenous people to put pressure on states in a more profound way than they would have solely from within that state’s borders.

A photo of a mural in support of Kurdish self-emancipation and resistance in La Plata, Argentina.
Mural in support of Kurdish self-emancipation and resistance in La Plata, Argentina.
Photo credit: Comité Solidaridad con Kurdistan – La Plata 2016.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a panel at the University of Toronto on Canadian undocumented youth and access to education. The panel, “Reality of Shadows: The Reality of Undocumented Youth,” brought together students, activists, an immigration lawyer, a sociology professor at the university and the co-founder of a Toronto refugee center.

This was an incredible opportunity to not only get myself acquainted with the barriers undocumented migrants are facing in Canada but also see the ways people are mobilizing and organizing against these same barriers.

For example, undocumented students in Canada, even if they graduate from a Canadian high school, have little chance of being able to enroll in a college or university. In response to this, FCJ Refugee Center has created a pilot program called Access to Education at York University in Toronto giving access to 10 undocumented students without having to apply as an international student, the first of its kind.

This is incredible work that is happening across our northern border where undocumented people as a whole are not part of the national conversation as they are in the U.S. A way for activists and organizers in the U.S. to learn from the work that is being done in Canada needs to be created because the mainstream media is not paying attention to this issue.

A lot can be learned by activists and organizers in the U.S. from what is happening in Canada, and vice versa. This struggle needs to go beyond the borders that deem us undocumented in the first place, and bring together the incredible mobilizing that is already happening all across the world. The big question for me at the moment is how exactly this can begin.