When people talk about their opinions on immigrants, the first things that come to mind are: they steal our jobs, the men are violent, the women are promiscuous, and their children are a bad influence on our kids.

This may be because the changes immigrants can cause can be very sudden and challenging. To go a step further, it may be even natural, because every animal reacts aggressively when unknown individuals from the same species approach their territory.

So I think it is may be a natural reaction, but people should not keep this mentality because we are human and have the ability to think logically. The first point is that they don’t steal our jobs. They are nothing that can belong to anybody to begin with and people who have lived in the area for a long time don’t want to do certain jobs like rubbish collection etc., so immigrants only try to benefit from this situation.

Besides this, because they are individuals just like the long-term residents, not every immigrant is violent or sex-crazed. So there may of course be immigrants who kill people or prostitute themselves to get some money, but them being immigrants is not the main reason for that.

Lastly, immigrant children are not a bad influence on the other children. The behaviour of the parents can have more of a bad influence on their offspring than the immigrant children themselves. The children of parents, who genereally dislike immigrants, would come to hate everyone different from them without trying to learn or accept anything about them.

Why do people discriminate against immigrant children in the first place? There are fewer and fewer children in so many countries all over the world, so we are in need of those children to support our countries in the future.

And as to why people are afraid of immigrants, I think it is because people who are affected by their presence cannot be bothered to take the second step to think about this topic logically. This may be because they react too emotionally, but in my opinion that is still no reason to discard the human ability that distinguishes humans from animals.

What do you think about this?

by Julia Lohmann

I want to state my opinion about the phenomenon named Brain Drain. “Brain drain” can be defined as follows; the departure of educated or professional people from one country, economic sector, or field for another usually for better pay or living conditions. In short, this term implies criticism against large-scale emigration of skilled workers from poor countries to rich countries.

The term was coined in Britain in the 1960’s, when a lot of scientists moved to the US dreaming of the better pay and opportunities.

For instance, AFB news reported that in 2009 11 Americans got the Nobel Prize, and 5 out of 11 were naturalised US citizen. More controversial examples are sub-Saharan African states. It is estimated that during 1960s to 1980s, 30% of skilled labour moved to Europe. In Zimbabwe, 60 people graduates from the medical school annually but 90% of them leave the country. (Peter Stalker 1994)

On the one hand, brain drain can be regarded as exploitation of human resources by rich states; on the other hand this is a great opportunity for development and mutual-understanding. Well, I support the latter. I have three points.

Firstly, some criticise the phenomenon claiming that rich countries are buying skilled workers with money. That’s not necessarily the case. In fact, the labour markets in developing countries are excess. In Côte d’Ivoire in 1985, for example, 40% of university graduates were jobless. So I think supplies meet demands here.

Secondly, sending skilled labours abroad can bring about positive results. South Korea, who now has world highest level of industrial, medical, and intellectual technology, lost 10% of professional workers in the 1970s. So sending skilled workers abroad really is an opportunity to enhance their own growth.
Thirdly, it’s not really a “brain drain”, rather it’s a “brain exchange”. I mean international flow of skilled labour is not one-way. Multi-national cooperation’s and International organisations are placing their factories and offices in developing countries, which brings a lot of skilled workers from developed countries!. I think this is a good for both individuals (they can broaden their career path) and society (for mutual-understanding’s sake).
In conclusion, there’s nothing wrong with brain drain. Rather it can offer opportunities. So why don’ t we let the brain drain?

by Yuki Sugiyama

I saw this rainbow wall somewhere along Kawaramachi..
At first, I felt really glad to see this wall, but then I realized that most people are probably unaware of what a rainbow symbolizes — the LGBT community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) pride and diversity.　

Most, though not all, societies today seem to maintain its highly patriarchal and heteronormative nature. Such societies have managed to dominate and survive throughout history, causing tremendous impacts on today’s social climate.

In patriarchal societies, people are made to believe that men are more capable than women regarding the many aspects of their lives. This eminent ideology allows the cyclical abuse and discrimination against women, expressed in a vast array of prejudice – may it be in the workplace, or in terms of education, healthcare, and finance, or even at home – such manifestations are evident.

Aside from living in patriarchal societies, most of us today also grew up in immensely heteronormative societies. Heteronormativity refers to the assumption that heterosexuality is universal; hence heterosexual practices must be the standard. Heteronormative societies expect everybody to follow such norms; otherwise one would be deviating from what is socially accepted. Such societies create a hierarchy among its citizens, wherein heterosexuals are above non-heterosexuals – the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals. Same-sex relationships are seen either as a taboo or as an act of immorality. It was only in 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association officially removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders; this was a big leap for the LGBT movement, however until today myriads of people still continue to have negative views regarding homosexuality. This is primarily due to the heteronormative society’s unawareness, misinformation, and skewed understanding of gender diversity and equality. These societies treat the LGBT community differently, hence causing a great disadvantage among LGBT individuals. These disadvantages are manifested in the forms of social stigma, inequality in terms of work opportunities, and even outright verbal, emotional, psychological, and physical abuse.

Patriarchy and heteronormativity, as individual social conditions, are equally problematic. But if you put both conditions together in one society, the problems born from this scenario can magnify and multiply by tenfold.

Patriarchal and heteronormative societies rank its citizens. It prioritizes heterosexual men above all. At the bottom of this social pyramid are non-heterosexual women – lesbian and bisexual women. For several reasons, I believe that non-heterosexual women are discriminated in multiple levels. First, they are discriminated for the simple reason that they are women. Women may find it difficult to live in societies wherein patriarchy and gender inequality are the norms. Women’s voices are often muted, their chances of learning are often halted, and their rights are often trampled over. Second, lesbian and bisexual women are discriminated for being outside the heterosexual norm. They are seen as people who are so different from the “straight“ people. Despite the dominance of such views among most of today’s societies, these socially constructed labels are meaningless. Some lesbian and bisexual women encounter problems with their employers once the issue of their sexuality is discussed, other problems include – difficulties in finding housing, and being victimized by social stigma and violence. Third, lesbian and bisexual women are discriminated based on other aspects such as class, race, ethnicity, religion, and culture. Since we live in the age of capitalism, lower-class lesbian and bisexual women are further buried deeper in the imagined social pyramid. In certain beliefs and cultures, homosexuality is also seen in a negative light, hence stirring even more disadvantages for lesbian and bisexual women.

For many centuries, such societies have continued to heave and force its highly sexist ideologies among its citizens. Perhaps this is one of the many plausible reasons on why some lesbian and bisexual women choose to stay inside the closet – to be protected from the harsh beatings of patriarchal and heteronormative societies.

by Fritz Rodriguez

I want to write an article about British multiculturalism. As we saw in the lecture, there’s a debate over whether or not it has failed. Since this is a blog article, not an academic essay, I’d like to share my personal perspective on the issue according to my own experiences in the UK.

Firstly, let me tell you about my experiences a bit here. I’ve lived in England twice actually.
The first time was a lovely homestay with a middle class British family for one month in Coventry city. (an industrial city in Midland, England). They were what we imagine as ‘typical conservative working-class English people.
The second time was a year study abroad as an exchange student in one of the most liberal Universities in the UK named SOAS. I was living in central London, with diverse range of people. So the things were completely different from the former experience. Also I travelled a lot around the UK and Europe.
In general, I absolutely loved my life there (except for the food No offence mate!) and I think I saw quite a lot about issues of race, ethnicity or multiculturalism.

I know it’s almost impossible to assert its failure or success, since things are not that simple. I mean, it’s so hard to define what’s ‘failure’ and ‘success’, some could even say Britain is not a multicultural society at all! There can’t be unified view on that.
So, I’m mentioning both (what I felt was) positive and negative aspects of ‘multicultural Britain’ below.

Positive points

• Tolerance towards foreigners.

I have never felt discriminated against in the UK, at all. Even in a small village in Scotland, people were really helpful! I didn’t have any difficulty living in the UK as a foreigner.
I also saw a lot of people from diverse ethnic backgrounds living and working, keeping their own lifestyles. For example, in many restaurants there’s always vegetarian food or special meat designed for Muslims. Also in my University, there was a praying room for Muslim students, people could go there and pray even during the class. Those kinds of things cannot be expected in my country, to my sadness.

• Diversity(limited area)

This diversity was beyond my expectation. People are really diverse and coming from all over the world. In my university, more than 40% of all the students were from outside the UK! Also, there are plenty of Asian British, African British, Caribbean British, Muslim British or anything. I thought being British no longer means being Christian ‘white’ British. This diversity makes the country more attractive and creative!

Negative point

• Segregated communities

I wrote that diversity is limited above because outside the ‘special places’ like university where everyone agrees with multiculturalism, the communities are very segregated. There’s a area for Chinese, Arabic, Indian, or Bangladesh. When you go outside of the university and look at the reality, there certainly are hates between the groups People seemed to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream, which creates hatred. (Politically radical right wing party is gaining power and at the same time, radical Muslim groups are getting more powerful).

In conclusion, I still don’t know if British multiculturalism is a failure or I don’t know the solution for that. However I wouldn’t call it a success. At least I cannot imagine the same situation happening in Japan. This is how I feel now.

What do you think?

by Yuki Sugiyama

It is often said that Japanese people do not love their country much. People rarely see the flag in everyday life, sing national anthem, and care about its politics. It was only in the old days – before the war that Japanese people used to show their love towards Japan by demonstrating on the street or paying attention to its politics. It seems Japanese had lost its samurai spirit these days.

Japan is a homogeneous society. People speak only Japanese. Most of people in Japan are Japan-originated. However, this has been changing by the wave of globalization. Some people say it started changing after Japan lost World War 2 and let habits and customs of the United States in Japan.

Is globalization affecting the loss of Japanese samurai spirit? As one of Japanese youth, I do not think I am patriotic person. It is probably affecting me because I am interested in foreign culture more than Japanese one. Even though I have grown up in Japan, I could have much information about foreign countries by media. And in Japan, there is some kind of feelings that it is too much when someone is supporting its country so much. When the U.S. found Osama bin Laden died this year, people in the U.S. were celebrating it by shouting “U.S.A! U.S.A!” on the streets. In Japan, many people thought that it was a little bit crazy calling country’s name loudly on the streets.

Strong nationality sometimes can cause problems. But as being one country in the world, country loses its identity and it’ll eventually vanish. In this globalized world, we should hold on to our own identity harder than ever.

by Naoko Matsumoto

Fair trade is something that is very close to my heart. I have become aware of the importance of fair trade since studying Peace and Development for the past three years, and there was one event in particular that helped me realize how deeply connected fair trade is to development. Coffee growers came to my university in Sweden and shared stories about their life in Nicaragua and how dependent they are on the money that they make from fair trade. Without that money, their business would not survive. This was three years ago, and ever since that lecture, I have started buying more food labeled fair trade. And even though I know part of the reason why I decide to spend that extra money is because it makes me feel good about myself, I also feel that I am doing something good for somebody else. That money is not a big deal for me but could help change the life for the better for somebody else across the world. I do realize that it is unrealistic to ask people to only buy fair trade goods, but if everybody would choose one item of food (coffee or milk for instance) and spend a little more money on making it fair trade, I believe it would make a huge difference.

This is hard to admit, but I am also aware of the fact that some of my actions might be considered hypocritical. Animal rights have always been very important to me, and I have thought about becoming a vegetarian for many years. My only reason for not doing so yet is that I am terrible cook and would not now what food to make, which would probably result in nutrient shortage of some sort. Therefore, until I learn how to cook proper vegetarian meals, I buy meat that is organic since it gives me the somewhat satisfying feeling that the animals at least had a decent life until they ended up on my plate. The expression “capitalism with a smiley face” is applicable here, and the phrase “the worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves” also feels appropriate. Instead of buying “good” meat, I should quit eating meat all together and simply not be a part of the system.

In my opinion, Zizek is absolutely right when he is talking about “egoist consumption” and how guilt affects us when it comes to our purchases. However, I would feel hypocritical not buying fair trade goods since it is so closely linked to what I am studying. Peace and development studies are all about making the world a better place, and if I can do so by spending a little bit of extra money, then so be it. I believe that most people have the possibility to make minor changes in their daily life in order to make the world a little bit better. If I can do it as a poor student, so can you. For me, it is simply about prioritization. But how do YOU feel about spending more money on fair trade products? Is it worth it? How much are you willing to spend? And would you consider yourself an “egoist consumer”?

by Erika Selander Edström

A mere two months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into effect Executive Order 9066, which authorized the relocating of all individuals of Japanese ancestry living in the western states to hastily constructed “civilian assembly centers” and “war relocation centers,” all for the sake of “national security.” Of the 120,000 ethnic Japanese who were interned in the horse-stalls and military-style barracks, 2/3 of them were Nisei and Sansei Japanese Americans.

Shortly after the end of WWII and the closing of the camps, efforts to redress injustices committed against the Japanese Americans (JA) by the federal government began to materialize. Known, as the redress movement, JA activists and leaders, with the support of community members, began lobbying for an official apology and reparations from the government.

Popular discourses surrounding the movement generally focus on the efforts of prominent individuals and legislative milestones achieved by the JA community as a whole, but too often neglect the impacts the movement had on the development of ethnic, racial, and self-identity amongst the members of the community.

In particular, Nisei and Sansei JA’s, the former suppressing their ethnic identity to repress memories associated with internment and the latter finding little basis to establish their ethnic identities in an assimilated American lifestyle, experienced an increased sense of what it meant to be a JA in America as the movement developed. The 1960s and 70s, the decades when the movement began to gain momentum, were rich in anti-discrimination activism, and this, matched with their improvement in economic status, the growing international status of Japan, and American cosmopolitanism gave JA’s the confidence needed to fight for their rights. This pride brought forth the resurgence of Japanese ethnic identity.

Additionally, the movement contributed to the emergence of a collective pan-Asian identity. Japanese Americans began to identify with other Asian ethnic groups in America who shared similar experiences, that of discrimination, and with the prevalence of values such as ethnic solidarity and group consciousness that were reflective of the ongoing Civil Rights Movement, effectively found their efforts to be part of a greater “Asian American movement” that protested racist hiring practices, ethnocentric school curricula that were biased against minorities, demeaning popular stereotypes, and gentrification of historically Asian American neighborhoods.

Finally, their participation in the movement also pressed the Americanization of Japanese Americans that lead to them reaffirming their consciousness as Americans. Fully aware of their unalienable rights as American citizens, the Nisei and Sansei JA’s utilized every constitutional means necessary to mobilize individuals and gather support. The fight to redress was not only a JA issue, but rather an issue for all Americans – Caucasian Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans, etc – who stood on the basic moral principles of freedom and justice.

August 10, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, authorizing $1.25 billion in reparation payments to an estimated 70,000 survivors of the concentration camps. Each internee was to receive $20,000 and a formal letter of apology from the president of the United States; the redress movement prevailed.

As professor David S. Meyer writes in his article, “How Social Movements Matter,” “social movements change the people who participate in them, educating as well as mobilizing activists, and thereby promoting ongoing awareness and action that extends beyond the boundaries of one movement or campaign.” Indeed, Dr. Meyer, indeed.

 by Kenji Tran

References:

Le, C.N. 2011. “Assimilation & Ethnic Identity” Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America. <http://www.asian-nation.org/assimilation.shtml&gt; (November 22, 2011).

Meyer, David S. 2003. How social movements matter. Contexts. 2(4): 30-35.

Takezawa, Yasuko I. 1995. Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

“They speak a different language, they wear different clothes and even worse, they eat food I never saw before! I can’t understand them at all, so how come they are living here, disturbing my peaceful lifestyle which I lived for 20 years? I wish they would just disappear and go back to the country they originally came from.”

These are the thoughts a native citizen might think when he is faced with the unknown lifestyle of immigrants settling in the neighborhood.

Negative feelings against someone based on their membership in certain groups (such as ethnical groups) or better called prejudices have accompanied humanity since we exist. Easily established, prejudices may lead to stereotypes, a belief that associates a group of people with certain traits. Which is to say, that without checking up whether what we perceive is really truth, we assume another group of people as similar in certain aspects over a stable period of time. And those are the traits that may trigger fear, anger and hate towards them. If these negative feelings towards a group grow stronger and stronger, they can be reinforced by peers or experience that were made with a member of the group. In this state of mind, people may express their negative feelings through actions. This negative behavior directed against people because of their membership in a particular group, or mostly called discrimination, is the reason why intercultural misunderstandings and violence all over the world are strengthened.

So at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves how we can prevent the construction of discrimination. One answer would be to eliminate the whole vicious circle by stopping the development of stereotypes. The things that annoy native citizens may only be a result from wrong perception and anticipation, so they must not necessarily be accurate.
Most of the time, there is a gap between what one assumes to be right and correct and the actual behavior of the other group, which is perceived as a threat to one´s self-esteem. Unluckily, groups are too often seen as fixed entities, which promotes the exaggeration of intragroup similarity and intergroup differences.

In my opinion, governments and local authorities should try to solve the problem by encouraging Decategorization and Recategorization of thoughts. If the local citizen pays less attention on categories and intergroup boundaries but also perceives the immigrants in the neighborhood as individuals, he might recategorize his conception of groups. As this allows him to develop a less fixed sense of perception, he might still think the immigrants around the block are unpleasant, but he may start to interact with the ones living right next to him. He will gather more information about how these people really live and therefore understand what lies behind the surface.

In other words, contact between groups can be the key. Modern architects already take account for this by constructing new environments where poor and rich, immigrants and locals, black and white can live in the same neighborhood. Because of daily interaction, it is harder for prejudices to be built up. However, if we think of Farmingville in NY, where Mexican immigrants living among Americans caused many problems, contact is just the first step.

It is essential to take a look at the motivation and social structures underlying a person’s actions. And this is by no means something we should leave to authorities only, as it is us that build up stereotypes and therefore it must be us that help reducing them.
Of course, this is an enormous task and everyone must do an effort to achieve the goal of living in a world without prejudices. Just because it is difficult, however, doesn’t mean it is impossible.

by Julia Semineth

With the increasing borderlessness and the progress of globalization, international marriages have been increasing all over the world.  Many people tend to think that children raised in a family of internationally married couple naturally become bilingual, but it is a rough road to nurture two different languages (that of course contain proper balance) than one might imagine in a family where different cultures and values coexists.  Holding of two languages of a child is a serious problem, especially families residing abroad, and there are many cases that child only speak one language and become monolingual before one realizes it without nurturing two languages from a very young age in a planned manner.  In this blog post, I want to introduce a family of internationally married couple between an American and Japanese who live in America as an example of a family that has been adopting bilingual education policy to their children.  In addition, I also want to introduce their purpose and method of bilingual education towards their children.

Before they had children, both husband and wife agree to teach both Japanese and English so that they can create an ideal bilingual environment where children can nurture two languages.  As for the purpose of bilingual education, wife, who is Japanese, not only wants their children to speak Japanese but also share the Japanese culture and customs by learning Japanese.  Also, she wants her children to communicate with her relatives when they go back to Japan.  On the other hand, from the husband’s perspective, he understands that most of the second and third generation of immigrants lose their parents’ language and end up being able to speak only English.  Rather he wants their children to appreciate good and bad things of their mother’s culture through language, and also by being able to speak two languages he wants their children to be able to look at and interpret movies, literatures, music, etc from two perspectives.

As for the method of bilingual education, the wife has been speaking to her children since they were born to make it a custom so that children wouldn’t question why they are learning Japanese and children can develop the fundamental skill of Japanese.  In order to nurture the speaking and listening skills of her children, the wife tries to speak to Japanese almost all the times and also read books to her children.  Writing is the most challenging for her children.  Hiragana is relatively easier to learn, but learning Kanji (Chinese Characters) is really difficult for children and it’s a time-consuming process.  Therefore, she will take time and expect her children to get used to as many Kanji as possible.  However, they are aware that as the children grow, children will go to school in America and interact with other American kids. Eventually lives of their children will be based on English and there will be less opportunity to learn Japanese.  In this way, children will be proficient in English and their Japanese ability will grow stagnant.  Therefore, she expects her children to continue to learn Japanese so that children will be fluent in both languages so that they have more opportunities in the future.

In conclusion, in order to success in bilingual education, both husband and wife have to cooperate each other to make an ideal bilingual environment and also continuation (even though it is a time consuming process) is the most important part of bilingual education.

by Hirokazu Takeuchi

Unemployment among young adult segment and expansion of economic disparities are becoming the significant issues that rock the societies all over the world.  If you take a look at the economic condition in the U.S., according to the statistics of the Department of Commerce of the US, there are 46 million population of poverty, which means one in seven people live in poverty.  In a reaction to this, people conducted protests and demonstration in New York, and this demonstration spilled over from New York to Washington D.C. as well as Los Angeles within one week.  Moreover, people urged to demonstrate through the Internet all over the world, and demonstration occurred in major city in the world such as London, Vancouver, Seoul, Taipei, Melbourne and Tokyo.  These series of demonstrations were reportedly reflected by the increase in frustration towards economic stagnation including huge income gap and high unemployment rates.  However, this doesn’t answer the fundamental problem behind the economic disparity.  You have to bring in the Saskia Sassen’s argument of the Global City.

In her famous book “Global Cities,” Sassen objectively analyzed the impacts of globalization towards cities and regions.  In her analysis, she argued that legal services, accountings, publications and so on are placed where highly-specialized service industries and finance industries are located.  One hand these industries are agglomerated in a handful of megacities such as New York, London, Tokyo (what she called the “Global Cities”).  On the other hand, existing manufacturing industries decayed and this accelerates bipolarization of the societies into high income class and low income class (bipolar development).  Formation of global cities helps grow the service industry where relatively rich people work, but this formation is accompanies by creation of low income class who work in labor intensive industries (other than manufacturing industries), who are mostly minorities, immigrants, day employees, and contingent workers, that supports the works and lives of rich people working in service industries.  The most critical point of her argument is that formation of global cities naturally creates the social stratifications

Of course economic stagnation is significant factor that drive people to conduct demonstrations, but I think Saskia Sassen’s argument tries to answer structural problem of economic disparities.  She analyzed the process of development of cities through globalization (effects of the globalization to cities and how cities react to the globalization) in a dynamic way.  In my analysis of worldwide demonstration, this mechanism argued by Sassen that creates social stratifications is fundamental problem that directly contribute the creation economic disparities, and other factors of economic stagnation drove people to conduct demonstrations.

by Hirokazu Takeuchi