Spaces and exhanges

SPACES AND EXCHANGES

The notion I am going to deal with is « Spaces and Exchanges ». First, I’d like to give a definition of the notion : an exchange is an act of giving and receiving something else in return.  It can also be seen as a continuous   movement   or   circulation. There are different kinds of exchanges: media, people, trade.... To illustrate the notion I've chosen to talk about immigration in the USA. We way wonder to what extent immigration may be considered as a form of exchange.  So I’ve chosen 3 documents that I’ve seen at classroom with my English teacher. Let me explain the reason why I have chosen them: I think that the immigration is linked to this notion as it implies the motion of legal and illegal people to other countries.

First of all, we studied a painting of Jean Leon Gerome Ferris named “The First Thanksgiving”, painted in 1915. In that painting, we can see the Fathers Pilgrims, the first American immigrants who sailed from England on the Mayflower and landed at what became Plymouth to have more liberty to practice their religion in 1620.

My second document is an extract entitled “Texas”. This story relates the crossing of the border by two brother and sister with other Mexican illegal immigrant, called wetbacks with help of smuggler. In the extract we studied, the author want to show what difficulty have the illegal immigrant when they cross the border fence, in the story, more than 8 Mexicans died because of the many reason like the temperature…

The last document is a photography shot by Danny Lehman. The picture show a lot of people: men, women and their children, crossing the Rio Grande. This crossing is very dangerous because the level of the water is high. These persons who risk their life are undocumented people. They migrate to the USA which appears as a land of opportunities as far as the job market is concerned. That is the reason why many destitute Mexicans cross the border, whether legally or illegally.

In the three documents, the idea is immigration. So It can be linked the notion “Spaces and exchanges”. Spaces because the main space concerned here is America and Exchanges because there is an important flow of person who migrate to this country. They move to America hoping for better prospects, they are often offered menial and painful jobs and accept low wages. As we have just said, it enables economic exchanges: while Mexicans are given the opportunity to improve their living conditions, the US economy benefits from their adaptability.

To conclude, I think that the migrate to the US can be a real opportunity because some migrant become rich or have better life.

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