Spaces and Exchanges : What drives people to leave their country to go and live in another country and what difficulties do immigrants face when they arrive in a new country?

Spaces and Exchanges

To begin, I would like to give you a definition of the notion. The different spaces of the world are nowadays more and more connected to each other. The exchanges can appear on many forms: people, trade, or information. The immigration is linked to this notion as it implies the motion of legal and illegal people to other countries.  We will focus on the journey of immigrants who leave for news countries. What drives people to leave their country to go and live in another country and what difficulties do immigrants face when they arrive in a new country?

Indeed, the first document we studied in class, is a film titled Bread and Roses, directed by Ken Loach and published in 2001 (two thousand and one). This film is inspired by the book of the same name written by Paul Laverty. This film tells the story of Maya, a girl leaving clandestinely Mexico, her country of origin, to join her sister Rosa in the United States, more precisely in Los Angeles. Maya found a job quickly, enough to provide for her needs but will be forced to pay some of his earnings to his superior. She and her colleague Ruben, live the same situation; the life of "undocumented". This document shows us the different migratory exchanges that can be in different countries, based on the case of Maya who, especially here, from Mexico to the United States, to pass a more general message, on the consequences of intraterritorial inequalities and especially the consequences of poverty. This document is therefore well linked to the notion "Spaces and Exchanges".

The second document studied is an article from the newspaper "The Daily Telegraph", written by Henry Samuel and published on 14 (fourteen) November 2018 (two thousand and eighteen). This text tells of the arrest of 9 Iranian immigrants attempting to cross the Channel by boat to Britain. These Iranian immigrants are usually political immigrants, who suffer the unstable politics of their country and who wish to leave. The status of political immigrants being very complicated to reach legally, they are obliged to flee their country of origin to new countries illegally, as is the case here. The Iranians are not the only ones to have to make this choice since, many states like Israel, or still in Palestine suffer from political instability. France shut the notorious “Jungle” migrant camp in Calais late 2016 and both French and UK authorities said that this would put stop to attempts to illegal enter Britain, but it was wrong, since the arrest of 9 young Iranians and the proof that migrants are persecuted and that it is far from over.

The last documents studied are photographs, on the subject of immigration as well. One of the pictures is on top of the employers, as the picture says, is a cover of a magazine called "the business week" and shows us a man half in the USA, well dressed, in the middle of sublime houses and hands laden with shopping; while the other half is a less classy man holding a garbage bag. The caricature is clear: the poor are from Mexico and if they come to the US, wealth is waiting for them, but is not it just an illusion? This phenomenon, well known in the United States of America, is known as American Dream. In fact, the United States has the reputation of being a country where the majority of people succeed, so this is one of the reasons that pushes people to immigrate to this country.

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