Intersectionality in The Immigrant Experience
I moved to Washington, DC in 2017 for college, and before that, I was living in Singapore with my parents. I was also an immigrant to Singapore; we moved there from India when I was nine years old. Having lived in three different countries, home has always been malleable for me. That might be an odd word to use to describe home, but I’ve never fully felt part of any body politic. However, I’ve also never experienced mere alienation from the societies I’ve lived in — India, Singapore and the United States simultaneously feel like home and foreign lands.
Unsurprisingly, leaving India exposed me to subtle annoying racism, or more commonly known as microaggressions. I call it subtle because it's not very discernible — not your typical racist statement which would get you cancelled on Twitter. It's annoying because it was seemingly harmless, but still extremely unnecessary and definitely painful. For example, after practicing a speech with a teacher during an English Literature summer course, she said it was really good but I tend to pronounce “w’s” as “v’s”. I then asked her to elaborate and she taught me the difference in their pronounciations. Although she did add that English was a diverse language and that my pronunciation should be fine, I still felt self-conscious about it, and put in the necessary efforts to change my pronunciation. I was also glad that she taught me the right pronunciation because I was bullied for it at school — the bullying was perhaps why I still felt self-conscious even after the teacher emphasized the diversity of English. Another important point to mention, I went to an international school in Singapore with many influences from the West. Therefore the perception and pronunciation of English by the students was largely western.
If I were a white immigrant in Singapore or the US, I would most likely not have to experience those types of microaggressions. Also, white immigrants are often referred to as expats, i.e. someone living outside their home country. On the other end, non-white people living outside their home country often get termed immigrant, i.e. someone who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.
I understood through everyday conversation how many of my white friends in Singapore were called expats while I was referred to as an immigrant. Colonial and neoliberal institutions both in the West and the global South have fashioned a strong socio political connection between the term immigrant and people of color living outside their native country. Therefore, immigrant communities of color are doubly oppressed through the language of risk, alien, white supremacy, religious bigotry and classism. Putting all immigrant experiences in one box contributes to the general culture of racism, classism and the victimization of the other. Not all immigrants are oppressed in the same way you think we are.
I arrived in DC a couple months following Trump’s inauguration. I noticed “Immigrants Are Welcome Here” signs pretty much everywhere, most noticeably around campus. The International Services Office created many of the signs around campus — they read, “You Are Welcome Here” in different languages. In mainstream popular culture, there has been an outpouring of support for immigrants. To cite one of many examples, when Meryl Streep won the Cecil B. DeMille award at the Golden Globes in 2017, she emphasized the diversity of filmmakers in Hollywood, saying the industry “is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts which are not the Arts.”
Photograph ℅ Simple Citizen
Yes, there has been an amplification of anti-immigrant rhetoric under Trump, but painting broad brush strokes across all immigrant experiences and oppressions is very problematic. The United States has historically welcomed economic migrants but not refugees fleeing persecution. Clumping all immigrants together in one group creates a narrative in which refugees and asylum seekers’ voices are ignored, and only the troubles faced by wealthier and more privileged immigrants are heard. While their problems are still important to address and are a result of deep rooted racism, they are not the same as the intersection of classist and racist injustices working class immigrants face or the additional state based oppression that refugees experience.
I mentioned that my first experience with discrimination on the basis of social identity was outside India, and that was because I did not face the same religious, casteist or militarized oppression that many non-Hindu Indians, lower caste Indians or Kashmiris face. My experience moving to Singapore or the US as an economic migrant and international student is completely different from the experience of a refugee fleeing India to come to these countries. The loudest voices outside of India are usually those of upper caste Hindus.
The conversation about the need for safe spaces and more representation shouldn’t reach its conclusion after you have that one token person from that one specific country do something great in the US (or any new country they go to). Regions around the world have many layers, intricacies and hard truths engraved within them. Not every resident’s experience within one country is the same, and hence their experiences do not suddenly morph into one when they leave that country to go to another.
It is important to frame our current discourse on immigration through an intersectional lens and understand how various social identities intersect to create different lived experiences for different people. Postcolonial and transnational feminist activist, Chandra Talpady Mohanty, talks in her book, Under Western eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, the institutionalization of unequal power relations between the west and the global south. This unequal relationship gives rise to even progressive issues being advocated through pro-racist, elitist and imperialist modes. Talpade says, “Sisterhood cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete historical and political practice and analysis.”
Similarly, unity among immigrants (or advocacy for us) cannot be simply assumed on the basis of if somebody is a foreigner or not, it needs to be accompanied with a fierce reckoning of differences in institutional privilege, access to safe spaces and justice.
About the Author
Himaja (She/her) is a third year student studying International Affairs and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at George Washington University. Himaja is passionate about creating more intersectional feminist spaces rooted in anti-imperialism.
