ESPACES ET ECHANGES :THE NEW AMERICANS

SPACES AND EXCHANGES

THE NEW AMERICANS

I’m going to talk about the notion of Spaces and exchanges. First of all I’d like to give a definition of this notion; so spaces can be the geographical and symbolic areas that all societies occupy and exchanges are the interactions between them.

This year in class, we illustrated this notion with the example of The New Americans, that designates the immigrants coming to the USA and we focused on the role they play in the exchange between countries.

My presentation will fall into 3 parts:

First of all, I’ll start with the reasons why people emigrate and choose the United States as their destination, then I will present what they can achieve in the US before focusing on the way they shape the American Identity. The documents I decide to use to illustrate my presentation are:

• A homepage of  the site destination America  talking about US immigration

• Two posts on the internet , published on pbs website and are from people who recently arrived to the US; a Cuban and a Mexican
• A visual which is the front cover of the special issue of the Time magazine.

1. So let's take a closer look at immigration in the USA and the reasons for such phenomenon.

America was built upon immigration because it started out as a nation of European immigrants since its discovery in 1492 by Christopher Columbus.

From the document we studied in class entitled “Destination America” we learnt that waves of European immigrants came to the new country during the 19th century because they were looking for freedom (freedom to worship, from oppression, from want, from fear…) as well as looking for a better life for themselves and their families, that’s why most immigrants have seen America as a promised land.

Across the centuries immigrants from all over the world haven’t stopped coming to the US to  seek  freedom as it was depicted in kayla’s post who came to the US a few years ago following her parents who probably fled political persecution in Cuba, which means that people still see in the US that land of freedom, too.

1. However we should not forget that the USA is also a land of opportunity and that it remains a very attractive country until today where  many people all

over the world are willing to take their chances as they believe in the American Dream: that America holds the opportunities to arise socially and provide a better life and are ready to bring their own contribution to the building of the country through their work. .As the case of Miguel, the Mexican immigrant who came to the country to graduate; get a diploma from an American university because of their good reputation which will allow him to have a better job and then a better life than in his homeland.

So what these immigrants can achieve there is the opportunity to change their living conditions for better, make their life happier and guarantee a good future for themselves and their children. In fact it represents their only chance to start from scratch and be able to succeed by hard work .

Generally speaking, the main goal of the immigrants is the pursuit of happiness, by seeking a better life despite all the hardships or difficulties they may face as culture shock or problems of integration .

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