Immigrant notes on Exclusion
Exclusion through immigrant lences
When I talk about immigrant issues to my white western friends or just people around, I often get the same reaction. “But whats your problem? You’re white, everything is fine for you.” Probably these people have never heard about theory of intersections, that states that our life is the intersection of dozens of different fields, of various structures. We are either privileged or oppressed, to a varying degree, we have different amount of resources, that appear from our identities. If you are a cisgender man, you benefit from male dominance, if you’re white – from white supremacy, heterosexual – from heteronormativity and so on. Equally important, if you’ve never had an access to higher education, if you’ve children – it all affects your resources to do things and possibility to act in a certain way.
There’s no single issue struggle. You are not just a precarious worker, in the same time you’re queer, immigrant, person with post soviet union background, disabled. And people around you – they are not one dimensioned. And this is highly important that people are ready to listen, to question, to reconsider. Otherwise, if a person doesn’t recognize their privilege, they benefit from it, keep using a privilege of not noticing an issue, preserve hierarchies and power structures and finally supporting status quo.
Here, I should say, that for the most of my life, i’ve been pretty comfortable, I lived in the center of russian empire, benefiting from its imperialism and colonialism. I had access to free education, medical care, I even had some basic human rights. I wasn’t afraid of cops passing by, I could afford telling them something nasty. I could go on a demo, I could afford being arrested. And many more things that I haven’t thought before now became very much clear to me, basically because I lost this privilege of being a citizen and many more. Should mention, that I suppose, it’s almost impossible to fully imagine something you haven’t experienced. But if one has an urge, you can try to get closer.
When I immigrated, I started to notice harsh difference in people’s attitude right away, but just couldn’t find words to describe it. And I didn’t know what are the structures that keep the wheels rolling. While I’ve been looking for the right words, we’ve made a series of interviews with immigrants from post soviet union countries to a western rich country or to the russian empire. We were comparing and trying to explain. And finally we’ve found some words.
Now, in western europe, in the netherlands, I feel pretty much excluded, for the most of the time. Context varies, but the reason is always the same. People are afraid of those who are different. They are afraid of barbarians from eastern europe who eat their white swans, while decent citizens been walking in their posh parks.
Exclusion is based on Othering. Here I’m the Other, I’m pretty much nobody. I mean, I have different ascribed to me identities. I’m a sold eastern european wife, I’m a circus drunk bear on one wheeled bike, I’m a press secretary of russian government. I’m dead, people don’t notice me. They speak their language, that I don’t understand, not worrying about my feelings. Sometimes I’m ‘a refugee friend’. Sometimes a poor russian girl from a broke family. I’m dancing with Lenin in a corn field.
I feel an endless necessity to excuse myself for who I am and where I am from/now.
Sorry I don’t speak dutch
Where are you from? What are you doing here? Why you’ve come? Is netherlands better than russia? Do you like it here? You accent is very exotic, I like it. I’ve been to russia. I know several words – blyat, spasibo. Your language is weird.
This way, I’m becoming a show, I’m performing, not only on wednesday nights. I’m telling exotic stories that dear spectators want to here. Wanna story about political prisoners in russia? Here you are. Bloodcurdling enough? LGBTQIA+s beeing bullied and killed. Feminist demos attacked by antifa. I don’t understand anymore whether I like telling these stories, or I’m having a Stockholm syndrome. Whom i’m trying to convince and in what.
Probably, I’ve a bit of immigrant syndrome. In my case, it is expressed in people returning me more money that they owe me. They pay for me in cafes. They do favors I haven’t asked for. I think twice before bashing back to misogynists or xenophobes, because I have to be quite and polite. And if I’m not, consequences here to appear. I’m too dependent to point out on some shit. Meanwhile I hate asking for favors, because it always is some sort of humiliation, it makes you vulnerable, dependent. Moreover, its terribly difficult to speak up, because if they assume you are a woman, and they do, none will believe you. None believes women.
And here, the western europeans, as a group, should be mentioned. You can be surprised to know that there’s a certain behavioral pattern, pretty much widespread, and for these, westerners can be hated. Hated for the terrible insensitivity, for hierarchies, that they build. Instead of bridges, they construct walls. This wealthiness, this comfortable life, syndrome of charity and rescue brigades of white westerners, all these keeps their eyes shut down. It’s almost impossible to 'join the club’. In all senses.
Westerners assume a lot. Basically, that’s the way of dealing with all these different cultures around them. They keep extracting horrible stereotypes from books, articles, films and strongly believe that they’re true. Because it’s terribly scary to live with a thought that you might not know something. Much easier is to unite everything you’ve heard in a more or less good-looking scarecrow, to frighten yourself and everyone around.
Again this popular thing of rescuing refugees/immigrants by white dutch people, in all these NoBorder groups, is not more than a mere speculation, far from solidarity, just a game in tolerance. Refugees are becoming objects, valid only until they can tell stories, but they are not your friends. Here comes white man’s burden. Possessing knowledge of how fucked up the world is, they make attempts to 'change’ it, but not by rejecting their privileges, but just throwing leftovers from dinner table of western stability.
There’ re plenty of structures lying in the basement of hate and attitude that I get: othering + xenophobia, orientalism (civilized West and barbaric East), migrantophobia. Colonial western hegemony (dominance) teaches that everything that is Western is good, its by default, all others are weirdos with strange languages and cultures. But if they have nice food or music, this can be happily appropriated. Fine.
Women and queers from eastern europe and post soviet union countries are seen as something exotic, our lives being reduced to some patterns, that might seem romantic in a way. This mysterious russian soul! With this, women are hyper sexualized and reduced to objects. We are perfect house wifes, very tender and caring, but also very easy approaching, some sort of sluts. Not to mention that, these stereotypes are being spread and popularized not only by westerners, but also by russian womens’ magazines, in articles like 'a russian woman in the eyes of a westerner’. Here the patriarchy comes into act, forcing women to self-objectify and cope with ascribed identity.
Additionally, on a cultural level there’s a terrible stereotypization of russians. Have you seen any american movies with russian rednecks fighting and drinking all the time? Any russian clumsy spies stuck in communist ages? Plenty of them. Another but similar story is with women. Western produced film of sex traffic portraits eastern europe as depressed broken places, but still very exotic, with people of a completely different habits and attitudes. Together with it, women of these countries are shown as cute but stupid naive girls, who believe everything and never think for themselves. They’re being brought to europe and sold to brothels. But here comes a brave rescue brigade of a white woman/man cop or journalist, who save their souls and bodies. Here women and kids are just mere objects of 'operation’. These movies serve to concentrate status quo, the need of borders, and finally, objectification and infantilization of women and othering people (proving their otherness as a justification for a different relation to them).
'Other’ and the relation to them, can be seen in various situation, but always it’s about a scarecrow and stereotypes. For example, people think that I deserve what I have now, my 200 euros a month is 'very good’ for me, but I doubt they’ll consider it enough for them. They think I need less to be happy and I can go and live in a refugee center. And it comes from classism and migrantophobia, the deep hidden notion of 'second rate people’.
Returning to romantic dreams and perceptions, here comes revolution of 1917. In both anarchist bookshop of Amsterdam Fort Van Sjakoo and Anarchist Library I’ve seen plenty of books about bolsheviks revolution, writings of and about Kropotkin, Makhno, Bakunin, theorizations of all sorts. The other extreme - researches written by western academics about some protest movements. And that’s it. Just because East stays fixed in time and space, it has no development. It can be only described, barbarians can’t speak for themselves.
Meanwhile West is a starting point for everything. And it’ll stay the same center of universe with the most civilized and smart people, who possess the secret knowledge of what is good and bad, ready to share it all with you, but only if you fully integrate, reject your identities that comes into clashes with comfortable reality and status quo. You can survive only if you accept your subordinate role. And they’ll try to convince you, that you both are equal, but you are not. You’ll never join the club. But do you want it anyways?