The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization and Hybridity
Nikos Papastergiadis
The subjects of history, once the settled farmers and citizens, have
now become the migrants, the refugees, the Gasterbeiter, the asylum seekers,
the urban homeless.
Migration, in it endless motion, surrounds and pervades almost all aspects
of contemporary society. As has often been noted, the modern world is in a state
of flux and turbulence. It is a system in which the circulation of people, resources
and information follows multiple paths. The energy and barriers that either
cause or deflect the contemporary patterns of movement have both obvious and
hidden locations. While nothing is utterly random, the consequences of change
are often far from predictable. For the most part, we seem to travel in this
world without that invisible captain, who can see ahead and periodically warn
us that, "it is necessary to return to our seat and fasten our security
belts". The journey nowadays is particularly treacherous with financial
storms which can break out in Hong Kong and have repercussions in New York,
acid rains which are generated in the North drift South, the global emission
of CFC gases directly effects the growth of the hole in the ozone layer above
the Antartic, the threat of atomic fallout looms larger as the nuclear arsenals
of thirty or more countries are positioned along jagged lines of brinkmanship,
and the systemic flooding of the ranks of the unemployed as the chilling technology
of economic rationalization bites into every locale. These are just some of
the known sources of fear. There may be other storms on the horizon which we
cannot name, let alone control, that force people to move.
The turbulence of modern migration has destabilized the routes of movement
and created uncertainty about the possibilities of settlement. The scale and
complexity of movement that is occuring currently has never been witnessed before
in history, and its consequences have exceeded earlier predictions. To take
account of this excess, migration must be understood in a broad sense. I see
it not just as a term referring to the plight of the 'burnt ones', the destitute
others who have been displaced from their homelands. It is also a metaphor for
the complex forces which are integral to the radical transformations of modernity.
The world changes around us and we change with it, but in the modern period
the process of change has also altered fundamental perceptions of time and space.
Countless people are on the move and even those who have never left their homeland
are moved by this restless epoch.
These changes have a profound effect on the way we understand our sense of
belonging in the world. It is impossible to give an exact location and date
for the emergence of modernity. Modernity has had multiple birthplaces. Giddens's
general definition of modernity, as referring to the institutional changes that
took place somewhere around the 18th century, is about as accurate as one can
get. Throughout the modern period, most people have understood their sense of
belonging in terms of an allegiance to a nation state. This task of conferring
clear and unambiguous forms of belonging was never a straightforward operation.
Nation states were from the outset composed of people with different cultural
identities. Among the central aims of the project of nation building, was the
unification of these diverse peoples under a common identity, and the regulation
of movement across their territorial borders. However, the complex patterns
of movement across national boundaries and the articulation of new forms of
identity by minority groups, that emerged in the past couple of decades, have
destabilized the foundations of the nation state.
This book seeks to examine the interconnected processes of globalization
and migration and to explore their impact on the established notions of belonging.
It seeks to question the dominant forms of citizenship and cultural identity
which defined belonging according to national categories and exclusive practices
of identification, by exploring the emergent forms of diasporic and hybrid identitites.
There is a great urgency in our need to rethink the politics of identity. If,
the historical and cultural field that shapes contemporary society is increasingly
diverse and varied, then we can no longer exclusively focus on the traditions
and institutions that have taken root in a given place over a long historical
period. The identity of society has to reflect this process of mixture that
emerges whenever two or more cultures meet.
The political will to adopt such an approach towards migrant communities
and minority groups has not been readily forthcoming. While there is a growing
recognition that we are living in a far more turbulent world, a critical language
and affirmative structures to address these changes have been lagging behind.
A haunting paradox lurks at the centre of all claims to national autonomy: while
the flows of global movement are proliferating, the fortification of national
boundaries is becoming more vigilant. Every nation state is at once seeking
to maximise the opportunities from trans-national corporations, and yet closing
its doors to the forms of migration that these economic shifts stimulate. New
pressures and new voices have emerged in the cultural and political landscape.
Even countries like Germany and Japan, which have boasted of their ethnic homogeneity
and aggresively restricted the right to citizenship, are increasingly confronted
with the inevitability of seeing themselves as a multi-ethnic society. As nation
states are losing more and more of their power to regulate activities within
their territory, they are becoming increasingly aggressive about the defence
of their borders. Tougher laws against asylum seekers, the rounding up of gypsies
and ruthless eviction of 'economic migrants' are part of the ways in which governments
vent their frustration in a world where they have seemingly lost control but
dare not admit it. The need for global action to address local issues has never
been more necessary, but there are few signs of supra-national cooperation,
nor any new agencies with the powers and responsibilities to address human needs
on a global scale.
The 'chaos' of Global Migration
The current flows of migrant labour are now fundamentally different to earlier
forms of mass migration. There have been dramatic shifts in the destinations
of migration, restrictions on residency and strict limitations on settlement.
The great metropolitan centers of the North and West; New York, Paris, London
- in terms of migrant influx - have been eclipsed by the capitals of the East
and South. Is this because the prospects of work are better elsewhere, or are
there other reasons? There are currently more construction cranes in operation
within the new economic zones of China than there are anywhere else in the world.
The world's tallest building is neither a cathedral in Europe, nor an office
block in New York, but the twin towers of Kuala Lumpa. Mexico City is swelling
at a rate that is stretching its urban infrastructure to breaking point. After
the Chernobyl nuclear disaster over 400,000 people were displaced; the ecology
of their homelands ruined for centuries to come. Today people are on the move
for a variety of reasons. NAFTA agreements force peasants to be on the move
across the Americas; political and ethnic clashes have displaced millions from
their homes in Africa; some of the most educated women in the Philippines accept
exploitative contracts to work as housemaids in the Gulf States. Do all these
people fit under the term migrant?
The early mappings of international migrations were predominantly Eurocentric.
They were defined either in relation to the colonial ventures from the sixteenth
to the nineteenth century, or to the processes of industrialization and rapid
urbanization in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Between 1500 - 1850
approximately 10 million slaves were transported from Africa to the Americas.
Between 1815 - 1925 over 25 million Britons were settled in predominantly urban
areas of the colonies. The 'classical period' of migration referred to the trajectory
of peasants, from the peripheral-rural based societies to the core-industrial
countries of Western Europe, United States, Canada and Australia.
For many migrants the first sight of their new country was caught from the
deck of their ship. After the First World War, most migrants heading for the
United States would have probably disembarked and gone through immigration procedures
on Ellis Island, just off New York. The dock and hall of Ellis Island is now
part of a museum. At the end of the twentieth century, the aeroplane has become
the dominant means of mass transport. Today, migrants mostly arrive by descending
into what Marc Auge calls, the "non places" of modern airports. The
journey from a Third World village to a First World city can now be calculated
in terms of hours. The greater levels of mobility in modernity, however, have
not been reciprocated by more hospitable forms of reception.
The current trends of global migration reveal a far more multidirectional
phase. In this context, migration is neither directed to, nor exclusively generated
by, the needs of the North and the West. The vast majority of migrants are no
longer moving exclusively to the North and the West, but also between the new
industrial epicenters within the South and the East. While for the earlier periods
of migration, movement was generally mapped in linear terms, with clear coordinates
between center and periphery, and definable axial routes, the current phase
can best be described as turbulent, a fluid but structured movement, with multi-directional
and reversible trajectories. The turbulence of migration is evident not only
in the multiplicty of paths but also in the unpredictability of the changes
associated with these movements. However, this has not meant that the pattern
of movement is random and and the direction is totally open-ended. There are
also strict barriers and firm counter-forces which either resist or exploit
the flows of human movement, just as there are 'passengers' who carefully control
their journeys rather than being swept toward unknown destinations.
The relationship between work and migration has always been unstable and
ambivalent. During the colonial period migrants from the 'mother country' were
selectively encouraged to 'settle' in the 'new' societies. The rapid urban expansion
and industrialization in the nineteenth century also demanded that some migrants
were also recruited when certain needs arose, and expelled when their services
were no longer deemed necessary. However, in the current geo-political climate
these relationships have become even more jagged. Where migration is now regulated
through contractual or negotiated terms, the civil and work rights of migrants
are severely limited. Where migration is permitted for temporary periods, policing
is extremely draconian and the abuse of human rights is rife. An increasing
number of migrants are taking employment and entry into countries on an illegal
basis. The migrant in all these circumstances effectively lives in a police-state
- susceptible to exploitation and constantly in fear of punishment and deportation.
Along with the shifts in global geo-politics there have been profound changes
in the patterns of economic and cultural exchanges. The revolution in information
technology, which has coincided with the restructuring of capitalist markets
and the dismantling of the socialist command economies, has had a drastic impact
on the forms of migrant labour. The new dogma of 'flexibility' in the workplace
has meant that working class communities can no longer assume that employment
can be guaranteed in their particular locale. Declining public transport and
congested roads has also meant that the journey from home to work is often increasing.
Commuting times of 2-3 hours a day is not uncommon, in Los Angeles and Moscow.
Meanwhile politicians across the world are instructing their labour forces that,
in order to be competitive in a global market and in a technologically advancing
world, they must accept the inevitability of both the mobility of the workplace
and the redundancy of traditional skills.
Migration, it must be stressed, is not a unique feature of our modern times.
>>From the perspective of the frantic mobility of the present it is tempting
to imagine the past as a stable and relatively isolationist period. Yet, people
have travelled vast distances throughout history. Examples of cross cultural
exchanges, complex networks of trade and translocal identities are ever present
throughout history. Anthropologists have painstakingly examined how different
communities borrow religious symbols from each other and develop rituals for
integrating different types of strangers. These strategies for internalizing
difference have been remarkably elastic, varying from the incorporation of the
'prized' bride of a neighbouring community, to the introduction of a liminal
position for the anthropologist. All cultures seem to have mechanisms for making
a limited space for others, or for selectively absorbing strangers as 'one of
their kind'. Archaeologists have also mapped extraordinary trading routes in
ancient history. For instance, the discovery of traces of silk and cocaine in
Egyptian tombs has suggested possible links between the Mediterranean, China
and South America. Our knowledge of the extent of ancient sea travel is still
very crude. Even with Thor Heyerdahl's brave reconstructions of the ancient
techniques for trans-Atlantic and cross-Pacific routes, we have only begun to
gain a glimpse of the persistence and breadth of pre-modern forms of long distance
navigation.
However, until the invention of the 'tall ships', the railway, steamships,
automobiles and ultimately the aeroplane, the frequency of movement, the volume
of migrants, and the distance that could be crossed, was restricted. Today there
are over 100 million international migrants and 27 million stateless refugees.
This means that there are more people living in places that are outside their
homeland than at any previous point in history. The turbulence of migration
is not only evident in the sheer volume of migrants, but also by the emergence
of new subjects, communication networks and forms of economic dependencies.
The modern migrant no longer conforms to the stereotypical image of the male-urban-peasant.
Women in manufacturing, electronic assembly lines and domestic workers are now
at the frontline of global migration. Over 65% of the migrants from Sri Lanka
and 78% from Indonesia are women. The value of remittances sent to the homelands
of foreign workers has been estimated as being over $10 billion. These transfers
of payments are second in value to the trade in crude oil. In places like the
Philippines and Albania the major contributor to the national economy is accredited
to the earnings of foreign workers. The paradigm of the nation-state as the
principle anchor in the conferral of identity has also blinkered our understanding
of migrant flows.
Modernity and Migration
The tension between movement and settlement is constitutive of modern life.
As Derrida noted, the condition of exile is at the center of the nation's culture.
By not confining the significance of migration in terms of the paths into and
alterations within the nation state I am not denying the value or relevance
of this body of scholarship. The nation state is still an active force in the
regulation of migration. We do not live in a borderless world. The significance
of migration in the formation of nation states has only begun to gain its proper
recognition. My concern with the broader patterns of global migration is not
driven by indifference to or ignorance of such tasks, but is motivated by a
parallel need to outline the general context in which migration is occuring
and to evaluate the available concepts for representing this phenomenon.
Movement is not just the experience of shifting from place to place, it is
also linked to our ability to imagine an alternative. The dream of a better
life and the nightmares of loss are both expressed by the metaphor of the journey.
It is not only our 'life narrative' but the very 'spirit of our time' which
seems to be haunted by this metaphor. The journey of modernity - which sought
to base action on the solid foundations of reason, which sought to build a rational
order that would supersede all previous forms of waste, folly and mystification,
which believed that truth and proof could substitute for dogma and religion
- has turned out to be an endless march into the unknown. The future which was
filled with such promises of progress, liberation and emancipation is now darkened
by fear and insecurity. Zygmunt Bauman, one of the most astute and sober critics
of the transformations of modernity, argues that the preset destination of modernity
is now unattainable and that there has been a break in the vision of progress
and control. His account of post-modernity is not an apocalyptic declaration
of ending, nor a naive proclamation of succession, but a bitter-sweet appraisal
of the way modernity has lost its direction and driving force. The measurement
of modernity against its own goals has revealed that its aspirations and promises
can no longer be plotted onto a linear graph, or situated in a privileged location.
At this juncture, modernity does not seem to follow a clear path, progress drifts
and tumbles. As Bauman noted, the distinctive feature of post-modernity is that
while it can no longer predict what lies ahead, there is still the insistence
that it is better to keep moving.
The dynamic of displacement is intrinsic to migration and modernity, however
the links between them have been largely overlooked. Migration was often interpreted
as a transitional phase within modernity. As a consequence, the earlier sociological
models, which shared the founding assumptions of modernity, have tended to represent
migration in terms of trauma and disruption. The emphasis given to tracking
the harsh economic, desperate political or brutal military forces that push
people away from their homes, has often obscured the less tangible desires and
dreams for transformation which gives migration its inner heading. Since the
pioneering work of sociologists like Stephen Castles and Jean Martin in the
1970s, there has been an unequivocal demonstration of, both the central role
played by economic and political structures in the regulation of migration,
and the distorted levels of cultural exchange caused by the migrant's socio-economic
inferiority within the host society. While the sociological mainstream emphasised
the levels of stratification and integration, the critical schools stressed
the contradictions and conflicts, but both positions understood the social as
a total system. Migration was thus seen as either a necessary addition or an
unwelcome burden to this system. The impact of migration was reduced to a temporary
feature, rather than as an ongoing process which constitutes modernity. However,
as the post-modern critiques of the social have attempted to redefine the boundaries
and processes which shape society, there has been a further opportunity to reconceptualise
the relationship between migration and modernity.
The Stranger in Modernity
What is also overlooked in many of the recent debates on identity politics
is the relational aspects of identities. While it is necessary to recognise
the specific contexts within which identities are constituted there must always
be a concurrent process of connecting identity to a broader social consciousness.
Edward Said has been particularly critical of the tendency toward exclusivism
in identity politics. He argues that the politics of ethnic affirmation has
been driven by the logic of displacement where one form of ethnic particularity
competes with another for the position of authority. To counter this ingrown
and defensive vision, Said offers a mode of being that he calls 'worldliness',
which is a form of identity that emerges through the practice of connecting
individual meanings of cultural differences within the "large, many-windowed
house of human culture as a whole."
Hybridity has become one of the most useful concepts for representing the
meaning of cultural difference in identity. In the work of Homi Bhabha and Stuart
Hall identity is defined as hybrid, not only to suggest that origins, influences
and interests are multiple, complex and contradictory, but also to stress that
our sense of self in this world is always incomplete. Self-image is formed in,
not prior to, the process of interaction with others. This interpretation of
identity as hybrid is a direct challenge to earlier quasi-scientific claims
that hybrids were sterile, physically weak, mentally inferior and morally confused.
The colonizing fantasies of the 'master race' as culturally and eugenically
superior were underscored by a stigma that was projected on hybrids. This stigma
has now been converted into a positive gain. In many of the recent applications
of this concept, the figure of the hybrid is extended to serve as a 'bridging
person', one that is both the benefactor of a cultural surplus, and the embodiment
of a new synthesis. However, this benign view of hybridity has a number of limitations.
By stressing the hybrid's positive achievement of reconciliation between cultural
differences it blurs the very relational process that hybridity ought to highlight.
In the rush to find an alternative to aggressive and chauvinistic forms of identity,
the concept of hybridity has frequently been promoted to the position of a new
form of global identity. This celebration of identity as hybridity has failed
to pay sufficient attention to the deeper logic of accumulation and consumption
that frames modern identity. In a society where the principle that dominates
social relations is not reciprocity but consumption, hybridity is often reduced
to the occasional experience of exotic commodities which can be repackaged to
sustain the insatiable trade in new forms of cultural identity. Hybridity, as
a metaphor for identity formation, can only function critically when the dual
forces of movement and bridging, displacement and connection are seen as operating
together. It is only when there is a consciousness of this oscillation between
different positions and perspectives, that hybridity can offer a new understanding
of identity.
Communities of Difference
In the final chapter of this book I conclude that the significance of migration
for modern society will not be grasped if its meaning is confined to conventional
definitions of physical movement and social settlement. As a consequence of
the restless dynamism in modern society, the boundaries of community, as well
as the more general sense of belonging, have changed radically. We need to understand
the flows of cultural change from at least two perspectives: the movement of
people, and the circulation of symbols. However, as noted earlier the introduction
of foreign symbols and different cultural practices is no longer dependent on
the physical presence of strangers. New channels of communication travel across
established borders, meaning that cultural displacement can occur without the
movement of people.
This transformation in the cultural politics of belonging is clearly linked
to the expansion of media technologies. Benedict Anderson astutely tracked the
influence of the invention of the printing press and the mass literary projects
that led to what he called the 'imagined community'. Once texts could be reproduced
in greater volume and circulate across vast distances new affiliations between
people could be formed. Communities were established with less regard for geographic
proximity and more attention to a common language and shared ideals. People
felt a belonging through a communion of certain structures of belief, rather
than by the obligations and responsibilities that are drawn from day-to-day
and face-to-face contact.
The revolution initiated by 'print capitalism', which altered the sense of
'togetherness' as it magnified the possibilities for disseminating narratives
of 'us' and 'them', has taken a further turn with the ascendancy of camera and
computer based telecommunications. The increased domestic access to telephones,
faxes and electronic mail, the diversity of uses for televisual screens from
pleasure and information, to security and surveillance has led collectively
to a proliferation of images and messages. These technological advances enabled
optimists, like Marshall McLuhan, to prophecise over the birth of a new communitarianism.
However, as McLuhan also noted, the essential drive of telecommunication is
interruptive: "Nothing can be further from the spirit of the new technology
than 'a place for everything and everything in its place'. You can't go home
again." For him, this radical transformation of our relationship to space
was meant to mark a liberation from the 'tyranny of distance', and provide the
network for a single and integrated society that would occupy the whole planet.
Such enthusiasm has not been shared by all the commentators on the new technologies
of telecommunication. For Guy Debord, the promise of a global village was warily
perceived as either a mirage or a new form of totalitarian surveillance. The
illusion that home was everywhere in the spectacle was, for Debord underscored
by the haunting feeling of being at home nowhere. He predicted that the access
to the new media technologies would be highly selective, and their uses reflect
the vested interests of existing holders of power. Whether or not we agree that
the increasing role of the media has led to political emancipation or cultural
enrichment, it is now beyond doubt that, for those who are 'hooked' into these
circuits, there has been a series of transformations in the modalities of individual
perception and collective memory. Paul Virilio also claimed that, as the screen
dominates the post-industrial interior, the moral density of civic society is
eviscerated.
At the end of the 20th century, urban space loses its geopolitical reality
to the exclusive benefit of systems of instantaneous deportation whose technological
intensity ceaselessly upsets all of our social structures. These systems include
the deportation of attention, of the human face-to-face and the urban vis-a-vis
encounters at the level of human / machine interaction. In effect, all of this
participation in a new 'post urban' and transnational kind of concentration.
The links between modernity, migration and the media have remained relatively
under theorized. However, Scott McQuire's recent work has excavated many of
the deep philosophical and cultural paths that intersect at the junction of
camera-technology, modernization and displacement. The age of the camera not
only coincides with modernity but heightens out attention to the anxieties of
the 'homeless subject'.
The Limits of Explanation
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, and even in the early 80s, there were vigorous
debates within sociology over how migration could be explained. It was presumed
that migration doesn't just happen, it has to be caused by something. There
were two prevailing models. First, the voluntarist perspective which defined
the movement in dual terms of an internal push out - due to the stagnation at
home, and an external pull up - from the promise of greater opportunity elsewhere.
Second, the structuralist political economy perspective, which charted migration
according to the global division of central industrialized capitalist societies
in the West and North, and peripheral peasant based societies in the East and
South. There were inherent limitations to both of these perspectives, with the
former overly stressing the individual's decision as rational calculation, while
the latter resulted in a form of economic determinism that subordinated race
and gender under the heading of class.
These social divisions and their relationship to migration have now been
addressed in a new series of debates on agency. However, despite a period of
intensive theoretical contestation, the debates about the paradigms for understanding
the causes of migration have lulled. Most contemporary accounts of migration
are now either more empirical, or present an eclectic theoretical model which
is composed of both voluntarist and structuralist concepts. The presentation
of a new general theory of migration, or even an extension to the previous theoretical
debates is lacking. This has left a serious gap in our knowledge of the turbulent
dynamics of migration. For by continuing to explain migration purely in terms
of cause and consequence of other forces, the social scientists have remained
dependent on an out-dated mechanistic universe. Both the conservative-functionalist
and the progressive-Marxist models have tended to explain human movement in
terms of a water-pump system. The energy for movement was confined to the flows
that were generated by the engines of industry and regulated by the valves of
state policies. As industry demanded labour, governments turned valves, and
the flow of migrants either contracted or expanded. This crude model is unable
to accomodate what I call the auto-dynamics and multi-vectorial flows in this
turbulent phase of migration.
The social scientist's version of the water pump model of equilibrium, assumed
that something will emerge only if there is an attending force to displace something
else, or if there was a pre-existing vacuum from which it could be drawn. Such
structuralist models were also transposed onto the subjectivities or the life
narratives of migrants. To construct the stereotype of the 'migrant as victim'
a number of social forces were given priority over the agency of the individual.
Translated into cultural politics this means that the identity of the migrant
was extracted from the fixed repertoire of stereotypes associated with the place
of origin, that the space for the representation of different perspectives in
modernity was finite, that the resources for mutual understanding amongst strangers
was limited, and that the success of one interest was always at the expense
of another. Narratives of migration in the social sciences have thus repeated
the territorial competitiveness and binary oppositions that they were meant
to critique. One of the crucial aims of this book is to present alternative
models for conceptualising cultural exchange.
The task of rethinking the social with cultural difference as a constitutive
feature is only just beginning. This task will need to proceed on at least two
levels, one which can attend to the changes in the configuration between the
local and the global, and the other which develops a broader conceptual framework
for representing the processes of cultural transformation. Given the enormity
of this task, it might be worthwhile by beginning to note the steps that have
already been taken. Many scholars have commented on the problems associated
with administering the social policy of multiculturalism on a national basis.
There is also growing debate about the contradiction in the political trajectories
and the poverty of the philosophical framework for representing cultural difference.
However, while the issues emerging from cultural difference may seem complex
and intractable within the context of the nation state, how much more demanding
do they become when viewed from a global perspective? What framework will structure
the negotiation of cultural differences in the age of globalization? Under whose
jurisdiction and with which tribunals will the rights of minorities be represented?
The aim of this book is not so much to complete this task of re-thinking cultural
identity in the context of global migration, but to lay down a number tracks
that will assist in the understanding of the changes that are taking place all
around us.
The urgency of such a task is particularly evident in multicultural nation
states like the United States and Australia. Three decades after the civil rights
movement political leaders are now being compelled to confront the entrenched
divisions and unacknowledged crimes perpetrated along the lines of cultural
difference. While the indigenous peoples of Australia struggle with the legacy
of genocide, one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, countless
unexplained deaths of young men while held in custody, the pursuit of land rights
through the courts and compensation for the stolen generation of children which
were taken away from their family in order to be assimilated into white society,
the Prime Minister John Howard vacillated over his own moral duties. He responded
to these burning claims by insisting that the current regime should not bear
the burden of the past. Meanwhile he pursues a path of consolidating the interests
of mining companies and pastoral leaseholders at the expense of the indigenous
people. Across the Pacific Ocean, the University regent of California Ward Connely,
who is black, and must surely be aware of the bitter statistic that for every
black male that completes a university degree one hundred are sent to prison,
dismissed President Bill Clinton's attempt to initiate a "great and unprecedented
conversation about race", because he claimed that "where the American
people want to go is beyond this whole issue of race."
Within what sort of framework is it possible to get beyond race and re-think
the issues of cultural difference? There is little evidence of success so far.
The practices of exposing institutionalised racism are in themselves but the
first steps towards dismantling the structures and categories of domination.
New techniques and strategies are necessary for critiquing the hierarchies of
power and justice. The liberal principles of equal opportunity seem inadequate
to the task of achieving social equality and often conflict with their intrinsic
claims of cultural neutrality. Should there be one form of identity which is
central and dominates others? Does a minority position threaten the cohesion
of the social? These questions have intensified as the multicultural debates
begin to consider who defines the parameters of the social, the limits of tolerance,
and what sort of identities are considered compatible with the codes of modern
society.
While not a new phenomenon, migration has never been as multi-directional,
and the experience of displacement has never been as multi-dimensional as it
is today. When the performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and founding member
of the Border Arts Workshop, asked himself the question: 'Who am I?', his response
- an itinerary of multiple and mixed places of origin - was not presented as
a sign of an exotic biography, but as a metaphor for the contradictions and
complexities of belonging.
I wake up as a Mexican in US territory. With my Mexican psyche, my Mexican
heart and my Mexican body, I have to make intelligible art for American audiences
that know very little about my culture. This is my daily dilemma. I have to
force myself to cross a border, and there is very little reciprocity from the
people on the other side. I physically live between two cultures and two epochs.
I have a little house in Mexico City, and one in New York, separated from each
other by a thousand light-years in terms of culture. I also spend time in California.
As a result, I am a Mexican part of the year, a Chicano the other part. I cross
the border by foot, by car and by airplane. When I am on the Mexican side, I
have strong artistic connections to Latin American urban pop culture and ritual
traditions that are centuries old. When I am on the US side, I have access to
high-technology and specialized information. When I cross back to Mexico, I
get immersed in a rich counter-culture: the post-earthquake movement of opposition.
When I return to the US, I am part of the inter and cross-cultural thinking
emerging from the interstices of the US's ethnic milieus. My journey not only
goes from South to North, but from the past to the future, from Spanish to English
and from one side of myself to another.
Cultural identity is increasingly in excess, or excluded from the traditional
political categories of exclusive membership to a singular nation-state. But
then, how to represent an identity that does not correspond to some form of
national origin? The difficulty of grasping this complexity is linked to a series
of fundamental questions which theorists are now confronting simultaneously:
'what is the future of the nation state?', 'what are the boundaries of society?',
'how do cultures survive?', and 'how do we understand agency?'.
We now need new models not only because the density, velocity and multi-directionality
of current migration flows have baffled analysts and discredited earlier theories,
but because they also need to be related to the economic and cultural phases
of globalization. The decentering and dematerialization of economic activity
has summoned the spectre of 'placeless capital' and the 'homeless subject'.
Vital decisions that affect local economies are increasingly made elsewhere.
We have entered an era which Lash and Urry call the 'end of organised capital'.
This turbulent state should not be confused with an evocation of so called 'postmodern
indeterminacy'. It simply means that the nodal points of economic and social
activity are neither integrated within the spatial coordinates nor synchronised
according to the temporal rhythms of the nation state. The neat binarisms and
linear oppositions of the colonialist and nationalist expansions are no longer
the appropriate grids within which the contemporary flows can be plotted and
mapped. The flows that these new formations have stimulated need to be mapped
in terms of multi-variate circuits.
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