specimen21 | FYP journey

Migration and the Challenges of Global Belonging by Debra Lattanzi Shutinka I began working with immigrant communities in 1995, focusing primary on new destinations. New destinations are those communities that are experiencing significant immigration, but have had little or no prior history of being locations of migration and settlement. I began my work in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, the “Mushroom Capital of the World.” Mexican men had been migrating seasonally to and from Kennett Square for years to pick mushrooms. In the early 1990s, these Mexican men began settling permanently with their wives and children. When the project began, I assumed that most of my time would be spent with the Mexican nationals who were the center of my study, as was typical of most students of immigrant communities. Within a few months of starting my project, I realized that if I wanted to understand the lives of immigrants, I would have to study their American-born counterparts as well. I did not realize that this simple act of inclusion would produce an innovative approach to the study of transnational migration. I was simply following up on something that several Mexican families had mentioned: that the American residents in Kennett Square had a significant influence on the lives of their immigrant neighbors, even in a social context where the two groups rarely interacted. Central to the workings of any new destination are the feelings of belonging that immigrants and native-born residents associate with the places they call home. Although many migration scholars have worked to understand the lives and experiences of recent immigrants, few have seriously considered how immigration changes the lives of the citizen population. As immigrants from around the globe settle in new and diverse places in the U.S., the question of belonging has become more central to the debate on how we live together. Belonging is a basic human need (Baumeister & Leary 1995; Young et al 2004; Mulgan & Johnson 2007; Mulgan 2009); it is negotiated through interpersonal relations. It is a process through which “people reflexively judge the suitability of a given site as appropriate given their social trajectory and their position in other fields” of experience (Savage, Bagnall & Longhurst 2005: 12). The majority of academic discussions about belonging focus on how immigration is transforming the nation. Wider national debates on issues of multiculturalism, citizenship, and immigrant integration often dominate discussions on what it means to belong to a community or the nation. Based on my work in new destinations, I believe that questions of belonging should be considered from the point of view of local citizens rather than from the top down. From this perspective it is possible to examine local attitudes about community change and consider how migration affects local understandings of tradition, local history, and cultural norms. In new destinations, issues of belonging often become a two-fold challenge. Local social contexts shift with the introduction of the new population, making new destinations “new” for newcomers and longer-term residents alike. Immigrant residents are understandably struggling to belong, but the same can be true for those who have lived their entire lives in what has become the new destination. In many instances, longer-term residents experience a type of localized displacement, a feeling that their “home” is no longer a familiar and predictable place, thus making it difficult to embrace the changes taking place around them.1 Kennett Square’s longer-term residents reacted to the changes in their community with a sense of privilege. Because they were “here first,” they frequently assumed that their residential longevity justified local divisions of power and the subordinate position of recent immigrant settlers. As a group the longtime residents dominated social relations, controlled local resources and worked to control residents’ access to various places in town for recreation and socializing. They also had the ability to control the circumstances of that access. The events in Kennett Square were not atypical. Indeed, I found a similar (albeit much more extreme) situation in Manassas, Virginia just three years ago. The social contexts of new destinations like Kennett Square and Manassas are interesting and complex. They are communities in transition where everyday life can be thrilling, but also often exasperating depending on a person’s tolerance for change. The longer-term residents in new destinations often complain that their communities have been permanently transformed by immigration, and they can no longer reliably expect that their new immigrant neighbors will speak English or share the same cultural beliefs and community values. When they feel displaced, native-born residents often find it difficult to embrace the changes taking place around them as their community transforms. In the most extreme circumstances, some longer-term residents find their changing communities threatening and frightening. This type of localized displacement is often expressed as through acts of intolerance and sometimes nativism. In the most extreme instances, new destinations have become virtual battlegrounds where long-term residents insist the must “take back” their communities. Activities that are designed to “take back” a community can take many forms. In Kennett Square it involved community dialogues where the nature of community was discussed and plans for incorporating Mexican families took shape. In other locations, like Manassas, anti-immigrant citizens formed “Help Save Manassas,” and lobbied county supervisors to pass local ordinances that would apprehend and remove undocumented immigrants from the community. In practice, these responses had very different effects. The anxiety that was associated with migrant settlement in Kennett Square during the 1990s has waned significantly. While there are still misunderstandings about migrants and occasional acts of intolerance toward Mexican residents, for the most part residents have come to terms with a new Kennett Square identity as a multi-ethnic community. In Manassas the county ordinances effectively alienated the immigrant population. While completing fieldwork there in 2008-2009, I found that many immigrant families decided to leave in response to the new laws, some abandoning their homes to foreclosure. Others remained, but were less likely to participate openly in the community. In the most extreme cases immigrants told me that they were reluctant to leave their homes and were mistrustful of their American neighbors. Many new destination communities have emerged in the U.S. in the last twenty years, but only a handful have had notably intolerant responses to immigrant settlement. While it is possible that communities might eventually work through the disruptions and change without intervention, in circumstances where the transition has been antagonistic or hostile, there are ways to facilitate the transition in new destinations that are constructive and can foster community solidarity. As a folklorist I have advocated the initiation of cultural documentation projects that can be used to help communities with this process. The first step is to recognize that adaptation to new migrant settlements involves change from newcomers and longtime residents alike, and adapting to these changes can be difficult. While this may seem obvious, when citizens speak out in opposition to immigration, they often complain that their fears about changes in their communities are not acknowledged and that they feel displaced. Unfortunately, the concerns about migrant settlement and community change are often couched in strong anti-immigrant and sometimes nativist discourse. The result is that when citizens express feelings of displacement they are disregarded because the broader message expresses intolerance and disregard for the needs of the immigrant community. I do not advocate tolerance for the expression of racist or nativist sentiment, and I recognize that in every community there are individuals who oppose immigrant settlement because they abhor cultural difference. However, the residents of new destinations are people whose lives have been dramatically and irrevocably changed by immigrant settlement. The communities that they built, the world that was once familiar and predictable, is gone, and the anxiety that they feel about those changes is honest and understandable. It is important to distinguish between legitimate concerns and racist tirades. Racist statements and policies cannot be tolerated. Having worked in new destination communities for many years, I also know that discounting the concerns of citizen residents out of hand only serves to heighten their fears and often has the effect of polarizing the community. My second recommendation is to institute programs that shift the focus of the community from the past, which is often idealized and viewed nostalgically, and to encourage residents to envision a shared future. I do not think it an accident that both Kennett Square and Manassas are communities that have storied pasts. Long-term residents in both communities often lamented that immigration was disrupting their historic identity. In these instances, any number of interventions might be employed, such as community dialogues to address local concerns. Shared projects that are designed to bring newcomers and long-term residents together with a common goal can also be useful. The strategies of cultural conservation, such as a community-wide oral history project, can help residents document and preserve the past that they once knew, but also chart a new direction for the future of the community. Some communities will make the transition to becoming a new destination smoothly, while others will need assistance in order to process their transition in order to see their future differently. New destinations pose particular challenges as immigrants and their longer-term neighbors adapt to one another and their new home. Projects that work to foster a sense of belonging can help residents learn to accept and appreciate the community they have rather than pining for the one they have lost.

Week 5 | 08/SEP - 14/SEP | FYP 2014 2nd Semester Updated Timeline / Gantt Chart

Week 9 | 17/MAR - 23/MAR | FYP 2014 1st Semester Updated Timeline / Gantt Chart.

Autobiographical Memory From the moment of birth, each of us is exposed to a world full of sensations and information. All of these experiences – first kisses, soft summer breezes, familiar places, sad farewells - have the potential to end up as autobiographical memories. Not all of them do, of course. Scientists have long been interested in understanding what we remember about our past and why we remember it. But figuring out a way to study autobiographical memory presents a problem. Many other kinds of memory are tested in the laboratory using experiments planned out in painstaking detail. That doesn't work so well for autobiographical "episodic" memories, which are made over time and everywhere along the way. The 19th century English psychologist Sir Francis Galton pioneered a simple method to study autobiographical memory, a modified version of which is still used today. He decided to go fishing, as it were, for memories associated with a list of common everyday words. Four times he threw out his net of words, using the same cues to try and catch his recollections. One of Galton's findings was that it was difficult to pinpoint when the events he remembered had occurred. Another was that his brain often produced the same associations over and over again. "This shows much less variety in the mental stock of ideas than I had expected," he wrote, "and makes us feel that the roadways of our minds are worn into very deep ruts." In the 1970s, researchers modified Galton's cue word method and used it to study the distribution of autobiographical memories over time. They found that the college students they tested reported many more memories from the recent than the distant past, supporting the "power law of forgetting." The law, based on numerous studies of other types of memory, predicts that most information will be forgotten shortly after being learned. In fact, a graph of the relationship between forgetting and time would resemble a steep slide. The rate of forgetting does level off eventually, according to the law, leaving a small but stable core of knowledge. As life expectancy continued to increase and interest in understanding age-related changes in cognition grew, psychologists began studying autobiographical memories reported by middle aged and older people. Imagine their surprise when, instead of a steep slide, what they found was something that resembled a bumpy roller coaster. The roller coaster began with a five-year period of "childhood amnesia," during which few autobiographical memories were reported, and ended with a sharp incline of memories, corresponding to the most recent past. What wasn't expected was the sizable "bump" of memories from adolescence and young adulthood. And that unlike many other kinds of memory, which change with age, the availability of large numbers of memories from the bump years appears to remain constant for healthy adults into their 90s. Researchers would like to explain the "bump," but haven't been able to agree on what accounts for it. One discredited theory says the bump, or "reminiscence effect," simply reflects brain functioning, that the reason so many memories are recalled from these years is because that's when the brain is working best. Another says it's because many events are new and exciting to people when they are so young, and because there's less chance for other, similar experiences to interfere with how well things are learned or remembered. A third theory suggests that people establish a narrative about who they are based on experiences in their teens and twenties, and that fewer new memories need to be incorporated into that narrative once their identity has been established. What's clear is that we have many reasons for remembering our past. Sometimes we intentionally reminisce, for example when we want to share old stories with friends and family. The retelling of the past in social settings is an intricate dance taught to children early in life. Some events are so surprising and important that they become flashbulb memories. For example, many people can remember exactly where they were when they heard the news John F. Kennedy was shot, that man had set foot on the moon, or that airplanes hit the World Trade Center. On other occasions the memories pop up out of the blue, summoned by something as fleeting as a familiar feeling. The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us," is how the French novelist Marcel Proust described it. Studies have also shown that autobiographical memories aren't necessarily accurate, that they are creative constructions that may change over time to keep up with new circumstances. And that illness or trauma can affect the ability to recall who participated in remembered events, the details of the events, and the life periods in which they occurred.

Recess Week | 03/MAR - 09/MAR | FYP 2014 1st Semester General Information as a Memory Trigger

The Art of Identity: Memory as the Maker by Allison Keeley In his recently published memoir, Nothing to Be Frightened Of, the novelist Julian Barnes offers a succinct view of memory: Memory is identity. I have believed this since… oh, since I can remember. You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life, you cease to be, even before death. Memory is identity. The reader nods, in agreement. Barnes boils it down to three words and the equation is enticing in its simplicity. It defines two otherwise ambiguous concepts with finality; it is both compact enough to be remembered with ease and grand enough to impress in conversation. Memory is identity. The letters and words combine to contain a myriad of concepts. The specific order suggests a clear connection. Yet, the phrase ultimately reveals itself to be a paradox, rather than a definition. Barnes’ definition is one of equating, presenting memory and identity as one in the same. His following logic implies that memory is the active variable, the prerequisite to identity and therefore existence. Yet, he cannot refer to memory without also giving agency to a higher sense of self. It is not memory, but the entity of “you” which dictates what is remembered and what is not. Memory is simultaneously in control of and controlled by identity. The phrase loses its appealing simplicity. Barnes’ memoir is focused on his thanatophobia, an abnormal and excessive fear of death, and so his excerpt is focused on personal identity. But the connection between memory and the self resonates with the relationship of memory to collective identity, which encounters the same paradox. Archivists often use the metaphor of memory to describe their work of collecting and parsing through information, aiming to preserve the history of a culture, society, institution, or event. In Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, philosopher Jacques Derrida purports that an archive can only be defined as such if it is exterior to actual memory. The work of archivists is therefore bounded and largely directed by the technology of their times. The writing down of a memoir, for example, is a type of archive, as is a museum. In addition to these traditionally recognized archives, a word document, a saved text, or e-mail are also external forms of memory. Regardless of which technology is employed, it is clear that the archivist, if capable of controlling it, is also in control over what that given technology preserves or discards. Derrida questions whether these new technological advances actually improve the external representation of an individual’s psychic interior or whether they affect the functioning of that interior, perhaps permanently altering it. Looking back at the history of memory, it seems that technology does have the powerful ability to change the psychic interior. In the classical western world of the first century BC, when the simplest tools of external memory (paper and printing) were unavailable, actual internal memories functioned in an entirely different way. Memory was seen as an intensely visual and internal art that had to be mastered in the pursuit of spreading the art of rhetoric, meant to animate people to action through well-argued speeches, or orations. Memory was divided into two categories, the natural and the artificial. Natural memory those captured spontaneously, during experiences. Artificial memory was that which could be organized and improved, a step-by-step mental process that orators were taught by their instructors of rhetoric. First, a student of artificial memory chose an image of a place that they were familiar with. This place, called a locus was to be a common structure or building, such as a theatre or a house. Once the locus was visualized, powerful images, called simulacra, could be placed within the rooms of the house or on and between the columns of a theatre. It was possible to choose more than one locus, the number dependent on how much experience and material an orator had and aimed to possess. Within this visual realm, the mood for memory was to be set with the perfect lighting, so as not to obscure or dazzle the images. And the actual structures themselves were subject to zoning, as they were not to be placed more than thirty feet apart. The strict structure and organization of the art of memory implies control on the part of the individual. But teachers of rhetoric recognized that natural memory was not entirely in their hands. Instead, the method of artificial memory looked to makes use of how the natural memory functioned when free from intense concentration and study. The orator and philosopher Cicero advised that cues be taken from the observed tendency of natural memory to discard images that were “petty, banal, or ordinary.” For Cicero, this meant sunsets and sunrises, because they happened everyday. Ultimately, whatever images were chosen, the art of memory was “inner writing,” as historian Frances Yates defines it. Images were used in place of words, the inner mind in place of paper. It was ultimately the dissemination of knowledge in the form of moral rhetoric that the art of memory pursued, not collective or personal identity. Instead of looking to define the inner content of the self through an external archive, the art of memory looked to influence the external world by creating an inner archive in the expansive space of the mind. In the age of an overflow of technology that can be used to compile external memory, archiving can be seen as a riff on the classical art of memory. Archivists themselves metaphorically acquire the role of natural memory, deciding whether to filter the sunsets and sunrises that Cicero marked for deletion. They decide what is to be most vividly preserved in the collective mind of a society. They also acquire the role of orator, compiling artifacts from the collective history of any given subject, and organizing them in their physical loci so that the public may access them. This metaphor sheds light on one side of Barnes’ original equation. Yet, the meticulous organization of memory and history is not a bridge to identity. Jorge Luis Borges masterfully uses fantasy to bridge gaps between how reality is understood and experienced. He plays with the notion of the universe as an archive in his short story, “The Library of Babel.” The library itself is enigmatic, its shape and size unknown to those who wander it, but its contents complete. It contains all books, organized to the best ability of its librarians. Some men organize by destroying useless work, others search for ciphers, and still others are designated as inquisitors, or official searchers: I have observed them carrying out their functions: they are always exhausted. They speak of a staircase without steps where they were almost killed. They speak of galleries and stairs with the local librarian. From time to time they will pick up the nearest book and leaf through its pages, in search of infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything. Borges’ tale introduces the issue of discovery into the work of the archivist. It implies that something new would have to found among the unintelligible substance of the library, to free the searchers from their doomed exhaustion and failure. Derrida also addresses this issue of novelty stating that in order for the archiving of any knowledge to be worthwhile and not merely an indulgent act, it must introduce something new and be connected to the future in some way. The archive of the universe does no such thing in Borges’ story. Is an archive of the collective self so expansive in its stated goal as to ultimately be useless, as well? Derrida offers a more hopeful assessment: Like every history, the history of a culture no doubt presupposes an identifiable heading, a telos toward which the movement, the memory and the promise, the identity—even if it be as difference to itself—dreams of gathering itself. With a telos, memory becomes a deliberate act-—used to moved history forward—largely through the work of the archivist. A telos separates identity, the second variable in Barnes’ equation, into three temporal types: past, present, and future. Of those three identities, it is the future that is most important. With the promise of an identity ahead, discovery is possible, not only the discovery of an evolving telos, but of how to arrive at that future identity as well. Personal identities are driven by personal telos as well. But the speed of the development of personal identity leaves it vulnerable to volatility. In his short prose poem, “The Maker,” Borges describes a moment in which his protagonist, a man who might be interpreted as the poet Homer, discovers his telos. Borges’ description shows personal identity to depart from the temporal structure that Derrida offers to cultural memory. As Borges’ protagonist loses his sight, he dips into his well of memories, which are described in active terms, as springing forward, effectively overtaking the entity that contains them: With sober surprise, he understood. Love and risk awaited him in this night of the mortal eyes into which he now descended: Ares and Aphrodite, for he now made out, since it was all around him, the sound of glory and hexameters, the sounds of men defending a temple the gods will do nothing to save and of black ships searching the sea for a beloved island, the sound of the Odysseys and Iliads that it was his destiny to sing and make resound reciprocally in the memories of men. Here, personal identity is being driven by memory, rather than driving it. Yet it is only once the protagonist can no longer form new visual memories that he gains access to his most powerful memories and can develop a future telos. Essentially, he must be removed from the present in order to do so, and in this case, blindness is his route to this disengagement. Borges takes the fantastical study of personal memory further in “Funes, the Memorious.” In comparison to the protagonist of “The Maker,” Ireneo Funes has the opposite relationship with his present reality. He is completely engaged with the present, a young man left physically paralyzed after falling off of a horse, an accident that also gives him perfect memory and perception, or perhaps more accurately, robs him of forgetfulness: In effect, Funes not only remembered every leaf on every tree of every wood, but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it. He determined to reduce all of his past experience to some seventy thousand recollections, which he would later define numerically. Two considerations dissuaded him: the thought that the task was interminable and the thought that it was useless. In the narrator’s recollection of Funes before his accident, he describes the boy in very human terms. Funes is sharp and mocking, wears loose trousers, and is best known for his eccentricities, such as always knowing the time. When the narrator finally gets a glimpse of Funes’ face, when he meets with him after the accident, the boy seems ancient and monumental. His wit is absent, his eccentricities untraceable. Funes’ gift of perfect memory robs him of the ability to engage with it, and with that loss, his paralysis becomes mental as well. Without the gift of selectivity his inner being has no “dreams of gathering itself,” as Derrida puts it in Archive Fever. In collective identity, remembering is an act driven by the knowledge of what future identity a culture or a society is moving toward. But personal identity is a less directed process, more informed by the past than in control of it. What is common between collective and personal identity is that both must be understood in relation to time, just as memory is. Still, those relationships with time differ. If collective identity is more driven by a future telos than personal identity, it is logical that Julian Barnes’ preoccupation with personal mortality plays a role in this distinction. An archivist does not seek to establish a collective identity that will expire. An individual always faces an end date, when identity is no longer of the present or future, but a trace of what is left behind. It is then that memory can directly be equated with identity. Until then, Barnes’ phrase is better interpreted as a representation of the three factors involved in the dynamic creation of identity: past memory, present existence, and the future self. Sixteen letters arranged into three words. An archive, but not a discovery: memory is identity.