The World Belongs to Immigrants, Nomads, and Gypsies
Where are you from?
A complicated answer to a simple question.
“Where are you from?” Last night, this was a topic of discussion at a round table dinner. We had people around the table who are born in different places — France, Hungary, China, Canada, India, and North America.
Anyone who lives in cosmopolitan New York City hears this question at least a few times per week. It’s a rather simple question to express curiosity about someone when you meet them. The answer to such a simple question is becoming more complicated every day.
When people ask me, “Where are you from?”, they’ generally already have an answer in their mind — typically India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh. The tan-brown color, the softer face structure, the height, the gait — everything indicates that genetically I hail from South East Asia.
The fact is, I associate with being an Indian. My parents still live there, I can speak a few different Indian languages, and I have an accent. But does that make me only an Indian?
I have been living in this great country of United States of America (USA) for the last 12 years or so, and almost 7 years of that has been in the New York City area. I pay taxes here, I have my doctor here in NYC, and I’ve been working for North American companies for the last 15 years.
I successfully transformed from a non-resident alien to resident alien a few years back through my work permit. Soon I could potentially be a citizen. I have started associating myself with the lifestyle and ambitions of a proverbial New Yorker. Native Indians don’t believe anymore that I’m an Indian. I attend startup events, frequent Chinatown for dumplings, indulge in an occasional slice of pizza, and hang-out in local pubs in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and downtown Jersey City. Eyes roll when I tell my American friends and colleagues that “I live in New Jersey and work in New York City”. It’s seems hard to carve out an identity different from your ethnicity.
“Where are you from?” may be answered by some as “where do you want to come from?” Where I want to come from and the places that I visit most may actually better express my spirit. Barcelona is a place I really like and have visited several times over last many years. I have an appreciation for the laid back life, the sangria, the tapas, the fashion, the cobbled roads, Gaudi art, and the beautiful sea. I wish I could live there forever and avoid having to get a Schengen visa every time I visit. I doubt many Catalans relate with my expressions of close association with native Catalans, given that I don’t speak a word of Catalan. So, where do I come from?
Diversity is around you.
Even if you leave me aside, I find it incredibly challenging to determine the home for my multi-cultured colleagues and friends — who come from mixed heritage and parental roots, worked in multiple countries and speak multiple different international languages, and are in relationships with people who are not from their culture and home country. The chairman of the company I work for is born of a Sri-lankan dad and an American mother and grew up in Jamaica, and currently a citizen of USA. What is the identity of my product strategist colleague born of Russian-Mexican parentage in Mexico and studied + working in the USA for the last 5+ years? Are all people born in France and working in other countries for long time can be considered as pure French? Is my Swedish client working in New York City actually more American than Swedish? What will be the identity of my colleague’s kid who has relocated to South Korea? How much does birth place have to do with the real identity of a person?
This is what I think. The place where one is born and grown up has a strong influence on one’s identity — the “superstructure” of geography, traditions, religion and beliefs, and more. The superstructure is augmented continuously as we migrate and learn new cultures and habits, speak new languages, and have partner from a different society. Home for them as well as for many of us is a moving target, a patchwork quilt that is stitched with nuggets of different experiences, different sensibilities from each and every place we have lived for a while, of every place where we want to go and live for a while, and much more.
Identity is definitely more than where you biologically originate from or have your ancestral roots. We truly have concepts of culture in our definition of “Where are you from?” more so than concepts of nations. This doesn’t mean I’m not an Indian by ethnicity, it means I have a complex and nuanced identity which extends beyond my ancestral roots. There is more than one way to identify myself — the people that I call as friends, the colleagues that I closely associate with, the music that I listen to, the memories of places that I have, the food that I love to gorge on, the things that I don’t do, and much more.
To gauge my true identity, you definitely need to scratch beneath the surface. I feel privileged to embrace this ambiguity of answering this question “Where are you from?”. My father moved from Bangladesh to India back in 1964 for economic and political reasons and successfully created a new identity as an Indian. Most of our grandparents and parents never got the opportunity to grow beyond the identity of the place that they were born or they moved once, however, we have this enormous opportunity to define and redefine what and where we want our home to be and break the traditional borders of a nation state by becoming true cultural and global ambassadors and create our own community.
Everyone is affected by us.
As per UN statistics, over 231 million people live in countries that are not their birth home and it’s growing faster than ever before — which is more than the population of the Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world (after China, India and USA). We have to be respectful and understand that not all of the migration is by choice, but sometimes could be driven by compelling human tragedies — as the chart below from UN shows that refugees do count in this burgeoning human breed.
USA is still the most popular destination country for immigrants — attracting about 20 percent of the world’s international migrants in various forms — naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, refugees and asylees, international students, and others on long-term temporary visas, or unauthorized immigrants. Contrast this to the fact that in 2014, WSJ published that more than 50% of the Hispanic workers are born in US and hence have primary US identity over Latino traits. If the trend continues, then these Hispanic workers would be Americans first, and Hispanics next- much like the way earlier European immigrants have become mainstream Americans. What would be the true identity of these Hispanic workers?
The financial crisis that hit Europe between 2009 and 2012, has doubled the number of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian immigrants to France during those three years. Among the 802,000 newborns in metropolitan France in 2010, 27.3% had at least one foreign-born parent and about one quarter (23.9%) had at least one parent born outside of EU. Can these migrants call themselves French or do they only hold the identity of their birth country?
These facts reinforce that the world is increasingly becoming multipolar. Add to that the increase in global south trade volumes and you will find all the reasons behind this unforeseen migratory human system that is changing the world. This time it’s not just Guns,Germs and Steel but formidable transformation will be driven by reverse innovation, access to labor markets with experience in ICT (information and communication technologies) and growth of new businesses upending everything that we believed as everlasting. A great example of such a new business that thrives on the inherent sharing nature of the nomads is AirBNB. The $20 billion rent-lodging company now operates in 34,000 cities and 190 countries with the biggest markets in USA, Thailand, and Indonesia and have forever altered the way we think about hospitality industry.
MSF or Médecins Sans Frontières or Doctors without Borders is a great example of a polyglot and multicultural humanitarian organization of global impact. MSF was created by doctors and journalists who believed that all people have the right to medical care regardless of race, religion, creed or political affiliation, and that the needs of these people outweigh respect for national borders. Today, with an annual budget of $160 million (80% of which is individual donorship), MSF doctors are present in more than 70 countries working tirelessly to serve the population. Having its genesis in the Biafra secession, MSF remains independent of any political, religious or economic powers and a true inspiration for humanity.
Not everything is as it looks like.
Not everything is going to be positive and upbeat with this massive movement going on around the world; this population transposition will pose serious human challenges at multiple levels.
Plato suggested that no one should travel abroad until they are 40 years old and even then they should minimize interaction with the natives to avoid acculturation — the cultural and psychological changes that happen when people from different cultures and backgrounds intermix. The biggest fear some philosophers and researchers have is the potential loss of individual identity during acculturation with a dominant culture resulting in decay of nation state loyalties, family ties and more. Though it supposed to be a two way process, acculturation often leads to perceived sense of homogeneity rather than the promise of a rich tapestry of diverse traditions, family values, art, music, food and faiths.
One of my North American colleague last year decided to work out of our Uganda office. He belongs to a privileged few; has the right set of skills and experience to be able to work from any part of the world and earn a decent living. Being a North American, it was not much of a trouble to get a work permit to work in East Africa. Not everyone is as fortunate as him. We still live within the notion of nation states and this creates huge pressures on free movement of talent across borders resulting in illegal human trafficking across the world at any given point in time. Hundreds of such illegal migrants recently died in a boat catastrophe in the Mediterranean Sea while they were escaping the atrocities of civil war in Libya to Italy.
Inequality has been fostered as a result of internal migration too. Continuous movement of internal Chinese population to urban centers from villages have created a floating population affected by tremendous inequalities and sub-par living standards which could potentially slow the overall growth experienced by China.
We may experience epidemic outbreaks due to cross border migration in certain parts of the world and the recent spread of ebola in West Africa was closely linked to post-harvest migration of human population across the porous borders of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
We are all humans
Though the risks are many, the upsides to immigration are more than many. Much like me, my big and growing tribe of migrants know how to embrace ambiguity, conquer complexity, accept volatility, and seize new opportunities to come out successful even in the most difficult scenarios. So if you are a business, you can put huge bets on us; we bring in strong ethics and a hunger to make things happen. If you are an educational institution, be ready to introduce new language classes and bring in more teachers who embrace diversity than ever before. If you work in immigration department, get used to scanning multiple visas from multiple countries and please don’t raise an eyebrow — we are real. If you are someone who have some spare time and some money in the bank, please do travel and if possible live and work in another country for a while and get to see our world through your own senses.
While it may be easier to pull together statistical numbers, it is really unfathomable to measure the degree of impact that this global mobile population can usher and transform our cherished values and traditions. Business schools have long started teaching on how to be more culturally adept when doing business globally. If you are not already doing so, very soon, you will be working with one of us — the hybrids, the transplants, the nomads, the ex-pats, the aliens, the travelers, the one-not-from-here. We will be your next door neighbors.
We will bring diverse thoughts, imagery, and senses that are going to deeply impact our world. We are going to speak in different languages and we are going to expose you to new culinary adventures. We are going to bring in new fashion and new ways of doing business. We are going to be probably younger and create new technologies and techniques to change the way we eat, sleep, work, play, and live. So find the next person who is from a different country in your vicinity and say “Hello”, “Bonjour”, “Hola”, “Ni Hao”, “Salam Ale kum” and “Namaste” — make a connection and open new experiences for you.
Envision a multi ethnic world order that is a true blend of black, white, brown, yellow and other shades of people, that is free of cultural bigotry and discrimination, and ushers in political freedom for all. You just stepped into our bubble. Welcome to our world. This world belongs to the immigrants, nomads, and gypsies.
I was inspired to write this note after watching an invigorating Ted Talk by Pico Iyer where he says, “home is not a piece of soil…but a piece of soul”. The arc is to use a personal journey to connect with a global phenomenon. Global human migration had started from the onset of our civilization. But the degree to which this is happening now is unforeseen in human history. And the results are tumultuous to say the least. Almost everything that has been held cherished for long as indigenous will change due to this large mass of migratory population traveling all around the world.
