The truth about Diasporas life is that, it is a personal experience. It is characterised by focusing on hard-work, thus robbing one of social life. It is about subjugated people who have regained control of their own destiny and taken up opportunities they see for a sustainable, independent and presumably bright future. It is about cultural identity, in terms of "shared culture" particularly people with a shared history and ancestry. This in essence reflects the common historical experiences and cultural codes, norms, values, beliefs etc. This "cultural identity" defines what the immigrant has become due to the surrounding environment, constantly undergoing transformation. It is from this perspective that we can understand the traumatic character of Diasporas' life experience - "cultural limbo land" creates an individual "without an anchor, without horizon, colourless, stateless, rootless... etc."While the past continues to speak to the immigrant, it no longer addresses what makes the Diasporas survive because the immigrants' relationship to it is betwixt - thus it becomes more unsettling and problematic.
However, it is characteristic of humans to need to make meaning out of experience and forming a cultural identity is part of that task. Formulating a cultural identity allows one to interpret and evaluate experience and helps to orient oneself in time and space. It creates ties between an individual and a society, thus providing a sense of belonging but also instilling the obligation to adopt and follow certain normative behaviours and values. But what happens when an individual does not possess a cultural identity?
Necessity, But at a Cost!!
What you will find and how will you be treated when you live in a foreign country?
How will you get along not knowing the culture, social life, customs and having your new country not knowing yours?
If the individual possesses more than one identity due to circumstances involving emigration, some of the possible results are psychological confusion, cognitive dissonance and anomic (lacking normative guidelines to follow). Without a solid cultural identity, individuals become disconnected, disoriented and alienated from society. Due to their vulnerable position in Diaspora, immigrants are at risk for developing a host of problems, including depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse and other maladaptive coping behaviours. Some migrants manage to assimilate quickly and easily, but most do not. The majority of immigrants struggle with problems that arise when attempting to change their cultural identity from home to that of their host country. They end up with two competing cultural identities and in some cases they feel as if they possess no identity at all.
To fully understand how some of these cultural identity crisis and how the process of migration affects cultural identity, it is worthwhile to examine the work of an important social anthropologist whose cultural analysis can help shed light on this discussion - Victor Turner, Rites of Passage and the Process of Identity Change.
Make No mistake about it.... Making the ultimate decision to emigrate requires courage, resilience, endless patience and persistence. To many it means not starting over, but starting from scratch and the ability to positively adapt to the new environment. It means the individual must develop strategies to cope with the impact on a person's self-esteem, in some cases divorce, loss of friends, your credential and your job history.
My name Is Nobel Pasi
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