First week (even though is publish later. :) )

 This first entry is about belonging somewhere.

Here it goes:

Journal – first class Aug 22– Aug 26, 2024 

The first class was a great dynamic because of the interventions, but above all, two stayed stuck in my head. Two girls in the class are daughters of immigrant Latinos in the USA. Usually, you think, that when an immigrant raises their child, they become more included in society. My cousin was born in Colombia and grew up in the States, but she identifies as Colombian because of her childhood in Colombia. My classmates have a different situation: they were born and grew up in the States. Are they from here or there? Or both?

Before, I had heard this feeling of being from nowhere of immigrants who decided to move their lives to another country. This is because when they are in the foreign country, they are aliens and if they return to their home countries, especially for a long time, then they become from the other country. Although these classmates were born in the USA, and of course, they lived their parent's culture at home and their ‘American' life at school or in the street. And even though, maybe they don't know where their parents came from, still they are experiencing some kind of discrimination.

Now I remember that wasn’t the case for some close friends. They moved to Spain and their kids were born there, but didn’t feel like they arent from Colombia or Spain. Their parents did, of course, but they, really feel Spanish people with Latino roots. They have nostalgic feelings about Colombia because of what their parents have shared with them, but they feel part of Spain totally. So, maybe it depends on the community where the kids are born and how friendly, this community is with others. Also, How this community established the point to appropriate people. In other words, if for the community is enough to be born in that place to be considered their own and not half of it. How many generations, for other communities, must be to consider that family or those children of their own. Or how many years?

This brings to my mind, a Mexican friend who was born in France, but to be French, he as a baby, must live in France for the first year. His parents didn’t stay that long, so he doesn't have the french nationality. He feels proudly Mexican, but every time he tells that story someone asks him if he wants to be French. Each country legally has its own requirements, but also it goes further than that because is not only a legal nationality but to be included as part of the society. And this is a very difficult issue.

This matter also makes me wonder, what if he had French nationality, if he moved to France, would he be discriminated against? Probably yes.

Now I´m asking myself, about inside Latinoamerica. For example, being an immigrant in another Latino American country. There is also discrimination depending on where you are coming from. That's what Venezuelans are experiencing now doesn´t matter to the country they move to. It can be a country in Latin America, Europe, or other places.

About this subject, what has left me is that immigrant discrimination may continue to the next generation even though they are born in the next country depending on the community which the immigrant person arrives and other issues because is not only where I arrive but what I bring or numerous people bring to the next country. For example, we Colombians have to deal with narcotrafic publicity in foreign countries.