FMP/ Migrant Integration — 01. Introduction
In no time, we found ourselves running the homestretch on the journey of MA UX. “Gear up guys, the clock is ticking” — something which our tutor used to tell us always, finally rang a bell.
It meant that we had arrived at the last semester allotted to working on the Final Major Project (FMP), an individual research-led project spanning across a duration of six months. I was enthusiastic yet felt intimidated as I realised that this time there wouldn’t be any pre-defined brief to be provided. My mind got entangled in a labyrinth, comprehending all the pathways that could be taken to find a relevant research problem.
Finding that Cause Close to the Heart
Since this unit was brief-less and also didn’t present other constraints except for the delivery deadline, I chose to commit to a cause that had been close to my heart. It was to improve the experience of migrants in destination countries.
The consideration for this subject developed from my lived experience of settling in as an immigrant in the UK when I had arrived three years ago. At that time, little did I know that I wasn’t just changing my country of residence but also entering into a completely new way of being.
The amount of familiarity that one could gain through accessing widely available information about any new place is most certainly to be overridden by the practical experience of being there. Coming from India, I noticed that things in the UK were not only dissimilar but sometimes contrasting as well. Some of the differences which I mapped in my mind existed within the bigger categories of religion, food or language, and further could be arranged under the smaller headings of sex ratio, disparity in per capita income, familial structure, social etiquettes, etc. So for me, it was not only about adapting to a different culture but also undergoing a metamorphosis. Older conceptions were broken and new were formed — only unlearning facilitated learning.
Through these years, I confronted several challenges but cautiously tackled them one by one. I started by joining the Welcoming which is a charity supporting integration of new Scots in Edinburgh. They do it by fostering community built around a range of activities such as learning English, cooking together, exploring the city, gardening, pursuing creative arts and practising interview skills amongst others. Going there on a weekly basis, I happened to interact with a number of people both from the UK and other countries which helped to inculcate in me the feelings of confidence and belongingness.
Potential Project Collaborators
To pick up momentum, we were asked to submit a project proposal early on in the month of June before going off for our summer holidays. Now that I had discovered a topic to pursue with conviction, I needed to propose a plan comprising details such as the timeline; knowledge about the research methods that could be used; collaborators (if any) and the intended outcome.
It occurred to me that through meaningful design intervention, a place like the Welcoming could itself become the beneficiary, besides being a premise serving the other beneficiaries.
Hence for the FMP, I pitched to collaborate with this organisation and produced a list of the others working towards similar goals. I found out about Saheliya, a charity supporting mental well-being of women especially of the BAME community, which is also based in Edinburgh. That is why I determined to base my project off of Edinburgh to enable a fruitful partnership with these potential collaborators.
Educational toolkits, field guides, speculative workshops, apps or space installation — the outcomes could take varied forms, only to be established later as the project would proceed.
Who is a Migrant? What is Integration?
Who counts as a migrant? This was a crucial question to ask to myself in order to ascertain who all would be the target beneficiaries. Even though ‘immigrant’ is used to refer to someone intending to settle in a new country while ‘migrant’, to someone temporarily resident, both the terms are usually used interchangeably. The definition of a migrant also extends to accommodate refugees, asylum seekers and even sometimes children who are UK-born but whose parents are foreign-born.
After the first few sittings of literature review, I learnt that integration was first sought to be implemented in the early twentieth century following the large wave of immigration in post-colonial America. This invited interest of scholars worldwide to examine the impact on the lives of first descendants of immigrants who started emerging there.
Integration was initially explained by Valle and Burgess (1921) through their assimilation theory describing it as “process of interpenetration and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons and groups and, by sharing their experience and history, and are incorporated with them in a common cultural life”.
Historically, integration was seen as a one-way trajectory however research has shown that the outcome of the process is significantly influenced by the responses of the other citizens whom migrants engage with. It has now come to be referred to as a two-way process, the goal of which is to motivate both the migrants and the hosts.
What is Hospitality?
From the last week of June, we began convening at our college every week on Thursday for a month, so as to gain critical feedback from the tutors and classmates before setting off independently by ourselves.
After getting to know my project proposal, I was advised from my tutors to look into the concept of ‘hospitality’ and what it meant for a nation to be showing hospitality. John encouraged to go out in a public place such as a tube station, a bank or a library to record observations on how those spaces were or weren’t hospitable.
These observations were not to be made in pertinence to the migrant-host relationship but instead in the spirit of grasping an essentialist viewpoint of the concept of hospitality.
I comprehended visually how hospitality could be shown by a country. For me, specifically taking the example of the UK, it would be the metaphorical imagery of borders expanding to welcome an influx of migrants coming from various parts of the world. I drew this out in a mind map and jotted down important keywords and concepts.
National Hospitality — a multicultural nation of fragmented differences becoming into a co-created intercultural nation
Having learnt that integration is a two-way process, I started to think of the benefits that a hosting country reaps when migrants immigrate for different reasons of their own. This led me to read about the Social Exchange Theory, extensively studied by various researchers giving their point of views. Lévi-Strauss formulated one in respect to gift exchanging in kinship systems. It is a sociological framework which suggests that within interaction between two parties, reciprocity as a norm plays a fundamental role. To stabilise a relationship, it is said that benefits should be returned and that participating entities should consider more than one’s self-interest. (Spielberg and Donald, 2004)
For a nation receiving newcomers in great numbers, an environment of cultural diversity is harvested. “Cultural diversity is a driving force of development, not only with respect to economic growth, but also as a means of leading a more fulfilling intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual life” (United Nations, Cultural Diversity for Dialogues and Diversity).
Thus, it is imperative for the residents of a hosting society to be made aware of the gains that their country gets in return of welcoming migrants. This could be done successfully when differences are celebrated and cultural literacy is encouraged. It became clear that a fresh thinking is needed to bring the many cultures existing separately into forming an intercultural nation by the co-operation of all the members. Maybe, going forward in this direction I could be revealed to a potential research aim — of achieving interculturism by bridging connection between different cultures and eliminating visible minorities.
References
Ager, A. and Strang, A. (2008) ‘Understanding Integration: A Conceptual Framework’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 21(2), pp. 166–191. doi:10.1093/jrs/fen016.
Alba, R. and Nee, V. (1997) ‘Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration’, The International Migration Review, 31(4), pp. 826–874. doi:10.2307/2547416.
Braude, L. (1970) ‘“Park and Burgess”: An Appreciation’, American Journal of Sociology, 76(1), pp. 1–10.
Association, T.W. ‘The Welcoming’, in. Strategic Plan 2020–2023, Edinburgh.
