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Filthy immigrants - an offshot of the m'lords thread...

  
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
19:26 / 16.08.02
from Yawn's typically laconic definition of self as 'foreign parent class':

how does immigrant status/process affect participation in the class process - of the home *and* adopted countries?

How does moving from one country/culture to another intersect with class and status?

Grant says that the foreign accent equalled posh, exotic? In spite of eminating from 'Boer rednecks' .

I've mentioned family positioning themselves differently (essentially sliding down the scale), partly due to economics, and partly due to a foreigner's inability to read the class signs when deciding where to live.

Lurid says " I am the son of working class immigrants which is actually quite different"

Does leaving one country and entering another entail a movement up or down in class? Immigrants move to 'improve themselves', to provide for folks at home, to gain opportunities they don't feel they have at home... and many more reasons. How do expats interact with the society/class system they've 'left behind'?

How do immigration and class intersect?
 
 
grant
19:31 / 16.08.02
Michael Dukakis (who lost a presidential election vs. Bush elder) made much hay of "living the American dream - immigrant parents who worked hard and made good for their kids."

That said, thick accents usually = lousy jobs here, and a bit of looking down noses. Unless it's from an English-speaking country. (Canada, for whatever reason, doesn't count.) I *think* even Jamaican or Trinidadian immigrants are treated as "higher class" than their African-American colleagues.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
19:42 / 16.08.02
yeah, think that's the immigrant dream all over, isn't it? or at least how it's portrayed and hijacked when you want to appeal to immigrants for something.

Your point about afro-americans vs afro-carribeans interests me, as I'm also fascinated by the class strucutres/snobberies *between* immigrants. I was brought up certainly with an implicit sense that we (indians) were 'better' than afro-carribean immigrants, to separate myself from them. We were better educated, wealthier etc.... There's a great deal of racism from indian subcontinental immigrants towards afro-carribeans.

Also there's a status that comes from how integrated an immigrant culture is. We (high caste/educated Bengalis) are proud of our culture but again give ourself status on the grounds that professionally/culturally we're *good* at integrating. Whereas among other regions' immigrants (Bangladeshis, Gujeratis, for example) Bengalis have an 'coconut/posh snobs eager to emulate the brits' reputation.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
20:40 / 16.08.02
My parents were immigrants, before their return to their country of origin. Having now returned to my country of origin with a british accent and upbringing in tow I feel externalised from the class system and my class or even classification is dependant on interpersonal relationships. I can vary from high class posh to low class limey and I think that this, in part, is determined by a persons experience with british people through either experience or media representation.

By stereotype standards I don't really meet the criteria for or represent any class, but at the end of the day my father is upper-middle class and my mother through personal character more than ambition has fairly much elevated herself to his class from a very distinct working class background. Thus by peoples determining standards and by product of association I am middle class, which is largely how class is assigned..

I wouldn't say that I'm treated like an immigrant. Given Canada's close relationship with England and the cultural similarities, I would say that if it is at all a class then I would be ex-pat.

When moving to another country then your opinion isn't fixed or a given. It's determined by the viewer and based on their first impressions of you and more so their opinion of your race and the country you come from.

Having kept fairly close ties with friends and family in England, my interation with the class/society system is little different from when I left, although it wasn't a lot in the first place. I recognise now a lot more of the system than I did before I left though. I guess you really don't notice it it's gone.

I will say this, Canada being a largely anglophillic country has benefited me a great deal. If I had come from a less economically/technologically developed country then I would certainly have had a lower status conferred upon me.
 
 
w1rebaby
22:28 / 16.08.02
It's an interesting topic and one I was going to go on about on the other thread.

Both of my parents are immigrants from South Africa. Admittedly they are white and speak English and all of their parents were originally from the UK anyway, so the culture wasn't entirely alien... but it's still obviously an issue for both of them.

My dad, who moved after university and having worked in SA for a while, claims not to recognise the concept of class. I used to think he was being right-on, but he truly has no perception of class at all, and doesn't recognise signifiers that you'd think were automatic from living in this country. The class structure was obviously much different in SA being tied up with race and it apparently doesn't transfer. He's got better at it as time goes on but he still thinks the whole thing is silly. Being a scientist and going into lecturing, he became middle-class by default.

My mother, on the other hand, moved when she was younger, did some of her schooling here and is very class-conscious. Not in a bad way, but she's very sensitive to it. Her accent is completely Anglicised now (as opposed to my dad's) and she's developed the mannerisms and hobbies of the English upper-middle class.

From my point of view this speaks of necessity. My dad was a lecturer and his colleagues came from all sorts of backgrounds; my mum a doctor, and starting in the 70s, when I expect being female was a disadvantage let alone being foreign. In addition he had grown up in an environment where he wasn't a foreigner, whereas she was here much earlier and would have suffered stigma growing up. If you're secure in your position then you have less reason to participate in the system for social comfort, if you have other problems to face you might want to get into the system so as to at least make that part of your life easier.

As well as that, the younger you move to a country, the more you're likely to internalise its class system.
 
 
w1rebaby
22:29 / 16.08.02
oh, and the SA accent is never considered posh or exotic, it's just horrible. Luckily I don't have it, though I can put on a decent Transvaal accent and apparently a passable Jo'burg one.
 
 
Jane Doe X
20:36 / 17.08.02
Ive live in England (south London) all my life, but I'm actually Arabic, Iraqi infact. This was never really an issue for me and I've never really been all that aware of racial prejudices because i'd never experienced it first hand. This has now all changed because of the Spetember 11th bombings and the current situation with the possible war. I'm now being viewed in a different light by all those that don't know me but somehow know my ethnic origin. I'm automatically branded a terrorist or in favour of Saddam. I think its not just people being shortsighted but the simple equation of how arabs are portrayed in the media and also any personal encounters anyone may have had. Basing assumptions on people's political views solely on ethnic origin or class is completely inaccurate these days. It may have worked back in the days of Marxism but its no longer applicable.
 
 
Turk
04:06 / 19.08.02
"I'm automatically branded a terrorist or in favour of Saddam."

Of course you bloody love him! We all know what an evil murdering dictator he is, how downtrodden your ethnic chums back in Iraq are due to is hideous tyranny. Totally makes sense you'd love the fiend, yes, totally makes sense.
 
 
Lurid Archive
11:46 / 19.08.02
My parents came from different parts of Italy, though both from working class backgrounds. Though they stayed working class here, in terms of employment, it would be misleading to say that they were properly working class. I think that there are other qualities associated to class which are separate, if not completely divisible from, money.

As a trivial example of this, when I met Mordant she thought that olive oil and mozzarella were the province of the wealthy and possibly pretentious. I've always thought of italian foods like that as staples. Probably more significant is the immigrant desire to improve oneself which turned out very well for me. Had I been working class in Italy, I suspect that getting an education would have been much harder. The pressure to earn money and stop chilidish things like "school" would have been far greater. Especially since I was the first in my family to enter tertiary education, though my brother soon followed.

I think that this has meant that, in the eyes of people back in Italy, immigrants do become different in a way that is similar to class difference. I was faintly surprised that my rejection of Italian family values (which are shockingly antiquated, especially with the working class) is interpreted as snobbery. Its a culture clash that has typified my interactions, and to a lesser extent my parents, with those back "home".
 
 
grant
19:39 / 19.08.02
fridgezilla: oh, and the SA accent is never considered posh or exotic, it's just horrible. Luckily I don't have it, though I can put on a decent Transvaal accent and apparently a passable Jo'burg one.

I've said this before when someone else brought this up, but a Zulu accent is beautiful - nicer than French or Irish, even. Afrikaans, however, is more of a throat disease than a proper language.

Natal/East Coast accents, though, are kind of similar to British English, as far as I can tell. In fact, the hardcore vaalies seem to think of people from Natal as British immigrants, if I remember right.

In fact I think a lot of public perception during the last days of apartheid was shaped by an impression of white South Africans as immigrants - more than once I heard people here say, "Why can't they just go back to Europe?" Not realizing, of course, that white folks have been there as long as they have in North America, just about.

So where are your folks from? And when they moved, was South Africa still a colony/commonwealth, or was it the (independent) RSA? (My South African history gets hazy - I know there was a shift in the 1940s and another in the 1960s, but I can't recall which was which).
 
 
w1rebaby
19:58 / 19.08.02
3/4 of my grandparents were Scottish-born, and one of them is Cornish; I'm not sure about exactly when/why they moved, but probably for the usual reasons, better life, more money... they're definitely not the hardcore, though. None of them even speak Afrikaans, more than a few words. Yeah, there's a definite gap between those of Afrikaaner descent and the more recent immigrants, though I think a lot of it is the usual town/country divide. I still detect the assumption from my lot that Afrikaaner = ignorant farmer.

There is one thing that Afrikaans excels in, though - scaring the cat.

It's interesting how South Africans have become basically the new Australians in London. I've seen the jokes about always being served by Australians in bars gradually mutate into jokes about South Africans... I can see more new SA doctors moving here, with the recent regulations about them having to work several years in outlying hospitals after graduation.

Dragging things back to the class question, there's a sort of neutrality that immigrants possess to start with that seems to be affected far more by their profession than it would for a native. You're always a foreigner, you have the accent, but that really changes your standing within your profession rather than overall. If you're a doctor, you're a slightly inferior doctor at your level, but you're still better off than a native who cleans bogs. The "immigrant" status is a negative applied to an activity-derived class.

I expect to be able to comment more on this once I move to the US and experience the situation from that POV, though the US attitude to the UK I think is a bit of a special case.
 
 
grant
20:40 / 19.08.02
I definitely think the idea of the "colony" is going to affect immigrant status.

Odd - my paternal grandfather grew up in Natal, but his father (who lived in South Africa most of his life) made damn sure to hustle the wife back to Edinburgh to make sure the wee lad was *born on British soil.*
Technically, see, they were all British subjects at the time - but the veld was just not British enough. (Too many of my mother's kaaskop ancestors still around.)

The US seems to act like an overachieving little brother or eldest child to the UK in lots of ways. Sorry I had to break free, Ma, but look what I can do now! You like it? You like it?? I dunno. We're still the colonies in some ways, I think.

(as a slightly off-topic observation, I have a South African cousin who moved to England, worked menial child-rearing jobs for a while. But here in Florida, we've had a major influx of doctors, dentists and architects from ZA. I think the climate is just similar enough. Plus, most of the immigrants I've run into seem to be Jewish, and there's a vast Jewish population here, so that could be a factor.)
 
 
w1rebaby
20:48 / 19.08.02
I think the "colony" thing is very important, yes, particularly to Brits. Although it's interesting how much a lot of the British media is obsessed with what the US media thinks of them. I'd love to see how those of Afrikaaner descent were perceived in Holland (I've got a friend with Dutch background, I'll ask him some time.)

Do people in the US recognise a South African accent as being from SA?
 
 
Persephone
21:43 / 19.08.02
There is one thing that Afrikaans excels in, though - scaring the cat.

Funny, c.f., in Norman Rush's Mating, "I was jumping over ditches and getting hoarse shouting Footsek! at the terrifying roaming ridgeback hounds. Footsek is Afrikaans and is the only thing that gives them pause, somehow."

And also, from Whites, "...the Dutch-Boer interface is so freakish and tense anyway. The Dutch call Afrikaans "baby Dutch." Boers are a humilation to the Dutch, like they are their ids set free in the world or something similar."

The US seems to act like an overachieving little brother or eldest child to the UK in lots of ways.... We're still the colonies in some ways, I think.

This is where I am too, after some thought. It's really making sense to me to think about American class structure as an appendage of British class structure, and I am of course not Anglo. But then I also sit down at seder and say Once we were slaves in Egypt along with everyone else. I mean, is this obvious? What's weird to me now is that I wasn't seeing this as weird before.
 
 
No star here laces
10:04 / 20.08.02
just on afro-caribbeans - there is even more snobbery going on within this.

Jamaicans are lazy, stupid and aggressive (according to Bajans and Bahamians).

Bahamians are backward and unsophisticated (according to Jamaicans)

Bajans and Jamaicans seem to unclear about just why they hate each other, but they do.

The other weird immigrant group in the UK are the posher-than-posh Indians. You know, public-school educated, sports-jacket wearing, soho house member with a cricket fixation. Class.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:34 / 20.08.02
Or "caste", as the case may be...
 
 
w1rebaby
10:46 / 20.08.02
shouting Footsek! at the terrifying roaming ridgeback hounds

That's exactly the word I was thinking of. My gran shouts it at the cat when it goes on her chair. It's off there in an instant.

afro-caribbeans

I heard from people who've lived in St Lucia and Trinidad that those in both places considered Jamaicans to be a bunch of gangsters. I don't know how much this carries over here.
 
 
grant
14:58 / 20.08.02
I was going to mention the word "footsek" myself, but couldn't think how to spell the damn thing. Vut? Fot? It literally means "foot it!"
It's fucking international beast language, that word.
Any animal will run.

fridgezilla: Do people in the US recognise a South African accent as being from SA?

No, mostly not. Australian is a popular guess, although recently I was told that "some old Jamaican lady was calling for you" when a co-worker spoke with my mother on the phone. Mysterious, that one.
There are distinct advantages to having an unplaceable accent.

I'd love to see how those of Afrikaaner descent were perceived in Holland (I've got a friend with Dutch background, I'll ask him some time.)

If you haven't already, you need need to read Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart. Discusses the inverse of immigration - being an exile, and then a return to the homeland. He starts out plumbing the roots of his family tree. Back in the 16- or 1700s, one of the Malans helped lay apartheid's foundation. More to the point, he quotes passages from old travelogues from that period, Dutchmen visiting their former colonists now gone utterly wild. One guy describes Boer children pawing his bag and rifle like curious monkeys, never having seen such "advanced" technology.
The language, while comprehensible to speakers of Dutch, German, and Flemish, is not enjoyed by them. (I don't speak Afrikaans, but I've seen this firsthand.)

Persephone: "ids set free in the world" is pretty much exactly right.

It's really making sense to me to think about American class structure as an appendage of British class structure, and I am of course not Anglo.

Of course? I think "appendage" is less accurate that "mutation" - similar traits, expressed differently.

But then I also sit down at seder and say Once we were slaves in Egypt along with everyone else.

Jewishness is really vexing to people who like strict definitions of race and class. Especially the idea of diaspora - having a nation without a nation, a permanent immigrant, even if you were born here (wherever "here" might be).

I mean, is this obvious? What's weird to me now is that I wasn't seeing this as weird before.

I'd really love to know how much Spanish class structures seeped into the American Southwest. Hmm. In Mexico, the more Spanish you are, the higher class you tend to be. I get the feeling that Castillian Spanish (the kind with the lisp) is treated there like King's English is treated in the States. So maybe it's the same damn thing all over again.
 
  
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