by Tamara Imboden, on 20 May 2019 (view profile)
Let me tell you a story. In the winter of 1993, I was born in the tiny village of Schleinikon. 700 people and 700+ cows. Hidden away in a valley of Canton Zurich, Switzerland. For the first few years of my life, I spoke Swiss German to my Valais father, as well as to my Maldivian mother. When I was 5, we decided to move closer to my mother’s family in Malé, Maldives, and then to the neighbouring country Sri Lanka, where I spent the bulk of my childhood. I went to a British school, learnt how to speak English with a Sri Lankan timbre and learnt how to wobble instead of nod my head. But in 2009, 15 year-old me moved away from my mother and brothers, to live in Switzerland again. When I joined Kantonsschule Wettingen in Aargau, I was at a loss. My German had been frozen in time at the level of a 5 year old’s. My High German was just good enough to let me pass my O-Levels. People didn’t get why I spoke outdated but accent-free Züridütsch. They thought it amusing. I failed, and dropped out of that school. I felt alone.
The diversity of my class in Sri Lanka: I'm the one with the yellow badge, front right, aged 9.
In the Switzerland of 2009, my school was not equipped to deal with a struggling, lonely, different kid. I had no one to relate to except the constantly changing waves of exchange students – but I didn’t get to ‘go back’ like I knew they always would at the end of term. Although I did eventually move away again and only returned much later to settle, I feel that my experience of high school in Switzerland could have been very different. Psychological guidance, linguistic guidance – things that would probably have been readily available, had anyone thought about what was wrong with my situation. I was a Kid with Migrationshintergrund*, but I didn’t know it.
Children like me existed and exist all over Switzerland. Sometimes, their coherence with society is absolutely seamless. But sometimes, some additional guidance is necessary: perhaps students need language courses if they have moved from abroad during childhood; maybe their situation requires additional pedagogical attention; but, perhaps, what is lacking is simply a relatable story. Everyone’s story is different – of course it is: people come from different places, different families, different backgrounds; they play different sports, read different books and eat different food. But I think it would have helped me to know that other people felt different too.
Birthday celebrations back in Sri Lanka, aged 15. This photo is a great example of the multiculturalism I experienced
growing up. Read more about this photo.
So, years later, after having settled in Switzerland, after realising that my voice is worth something, I have learnt to speak with confidence. And I have decided that I’m ready to hear those stories that I would have loved to hear ten years ago. But many of the stories out there do not show me accounts by people who have experienced 'different'. I have seen loads of stories about people whose skin colour doesn’t match the 'norm' or whose German is accented or not mainstream, but they all seem unreal. They are not represented as real humans. They are puppets.
Let’s just discuss one example of what I mean. You’ve probably seen that episode of Sherlock called "The Blind Banker", in which the detective and Watson need to go up against the Black Lotus, apparently a Chinese crime syndicate involved in drugs, murder, the whole package. Do you also remember the helpless Chinese museum employee, Soo Lin Yao (played by Gemma Chan), who first needs rescuing by Sherlock but then (SPOILER!) gets killed by her own family member? These are not uncommon ways for people of East Asian heritage to be represented on the screen. As Wei Ming Kam, the author of an essay in The Good Immigrant, phrases it, "if we’re not villains" (the murdering brother) "we’re delicate women who need saving" (Soo Lin Yao), "usually by white men" (Sherlock) (95).
Stuart Hall, renowned researcher in the field of Cultural Studies, explains that when discussing difference, people of a diverse culture (or of many diverse cultures) are often presented as being made up of simplistic, inherent traits that are somehow strictly related to where they come from 'originally' – they are subjected to "stereotyping" (Hall, "The Spectacle" 257). As can be seen in the above example, people from China, Japan, Korea, to name a few, are thrown into one pot and are said to share inherent qualities attributed to the overarching category 'Asian'. First of all, of course we cannot equate dozens of nations and claim they are all the same. Second, even if this image was supposed to represent just one of those nationalities, how can it? It is nothing but a crude imitation of one possible character that may be found in any other culture too. It’s time for the West to wake up and realise that we are all individuals. Not every caucasian Swiss person is the same. We cannot say that they all beat around the bush, that they are all punctual. This image, too, is based on stereotypes. Similarly, we cannot keep pretending that all migrants are the same. The only ways in which we are similar are in that we are all different, and in that we are being spoken about and are not given enough platforms to speak for ourselves.
These stereotypes gain their grip in popular media (in TV series like Sherlock), in novels, or in newspapers and magazines. Surely, part of the reason these media are so full of stereotypes is that we immigrants are not usually the ones who write about our own images. Presumably, stereotypes are given space to take root because there is not enough material to challenge the status quo. In an interview with the Tagesanzeiger, children’s literature expert Elisabeth Eggenberger argues that children with migration backgrounds are still underrepresented in children’s books (par 9). While representation of kids with diverse families is on the rise, the main focus of these stories is still on the difficulties of migration and, often, the protagonist of these stories can only be rescued by their white friends (par 12-13). This plays into the above image we witnessed in the Sherlock episode.
This is a huge problem. Stereotyping causes a distortion of the image of the international community, which results in miscommunication, misinterpretation, perhaps even mistreatment. In the end, we, a community of more than 2 million people, are faced with dehumanisation, an effect that may trickle from the media into reality. How can people accept us as fellow beings if we’re seen as mere puppets? In discussing his theory of how the 'Orient' is often talked about, studied, discussed from a distance, Edward Said states that this attitude shows "a kind of intellectual authority over the Orient within Western culture" (Said 19, original emphasis) and that, as a result, "the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action" (Said 3). Likewise, if we migrants are only studied, only discussed from a distance, how can we be "free subjects of thought or action"? plus41 may be a stepping stone towards better representation. We are taking back the authority that we are entitled to. We are going to write ourselves into the story, something which, according to Elleke Boehmer, helped authors of colonised countries in the past "assume control – take charge of the past, of self-definition, or of political destiny" (187). We will join the debate, maybe even lead the discussion, about who we are, in all our magnificent diversity.
Aside from changing the way we are perceived, we must not forget to think about how we perceive ourselves. We often don’t realise what an impact a lack of representation or a false representation can have on the mind of an individual. An essay written by Darren Chetty in The Good Immigrant in 2016 gives us a small hint. Chetty’s essay is called "Stories have to be about white people". The title, he explains in his essay, originates from an experience he had teaching children from multicultural backgrounds. In a creative writing class, one of his students reprimanded another for writing about his non-white uncle and claimed that stories must be written "about white people" (97). How absurd! Where could this idea, that only white people get to be in stories, come from? Possibly from the lack of multicultural children in children’s literature that I mentioned above.
Our identity is not about "roots," – where we come from – but about our "routes" – where we will go next.*
So it is clearly necessary for people like me to be heard. People like me – with my heart in the Sri Lankan palm trees and my nose in the delicious aroma of Lindt – need to read more stories about people like us. To draw your attention to Stuart Hall once more, identities are formed partly based on how we have been talked about in the past. We need representation to figure out where to go and who to become. Our identity is not about "roots," – where we come from – but about our "routes" – where we will go next (Hall, 2011, 4). So if the only reference point that we’ve got is the stereotypes about us, where can we possibly go?
So we absolutely need new reference points. We need to show ourselves who we are as much as we need to show everyone else. So we will represent ourselves here. We will write our stories, we will show our diversity, we will give our children some material to work with. We belong to all the cultures we have been touched by, including and especially Swiss culture. We are giving ourselves somewhere to look for unfamiliar familiarity – unfamiliar because we each have our own stories; familiar because we all share the fact that we have been marked as 'different' from the beginning.
To sum up, plus41 is here for multiple reasons. If you are unfamiliar with people from backgrounds different to your own,
you can delve into this world and see that it is not as intimidating as it may seem. If you feel you have not been represented by Swiss society in a way that you would represent
yourself, you can find an alternative perspective here. If you need to read about others like you and feel less alone, this is the place. People from
minorities are regaining their voices. We are, as Elleke Boehmer would have it, "imagining the world" from our perspective (181), as authors in ex-colonies, such as Chinua Achebe, did through
writing novels. The act of writing these articles is placing us within Swiss history, and allows us to flaunt and develop our identities to their full potential.
Comfortable in my skin, navigating multiple cultures, me in Sri Lanka this year, aged 25.
by Tamara Imboden, on 20 May 2019
Sources
Assmann, Jan and Czaplicka, John. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” New German Critique 65. Duke Universit Press, 1995. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/488538 on 10 May 2012.
Boehmer, Elleke. “Independence.” Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors. 2nd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 172–213. Print.
Chetty, Darren. “‘You Can’t Say That! Stories Have to Be About White People’.” The Good Immigrant. Ed. Nikesh Shukla. London: Unbound, 2016. 96–107. Print.
Eggenberger, Elisabeth. “Kinderbücher mit Migrationshintergrund.” Tagesanzeiger, 17 December 2018-. Retrieved from www.tagesanzeiger.ch/kultur/buecher/oft-steht-ein-problem-im-zentrum/story/19543555 on 20 May 2019.
Hall, Stuart. “Introduction: Who Needs ‘Identity’?” In. Eds. Hall, Stuart and Paul du Gay. Questions of Cultural Identity. London: SAGE Publications, 2011. Print.
Hall, Stuart, Ed. “Introduction” and “The Work of Representation” in Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. Print.
Hall, Stuart. “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’.” In Ed. Stuart Hall. Representation. 223–279. Print.
Kam, Wei Ming. “Beyond ‘Good’ Immigrants.” The Good Immigrant. Ed. Nikesh Shukla. London: Unbound, 2016. 84–95. Print.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2003. First published in 1978. Print.
“The Blind Banker.” Sherlock: Season 1, written by Steve Thompson, directed by Euros Lyn, BBC, 2010.
Shukla, Nikesh, Ed. The Good Immigrant. Unbound, 2016.
Fischer, Peter A. “Einwanderer und Expats machen einen Viertel der Schweizer Bevölkerung aus: Wer sind sie?” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 13 May 2019. Retrieved from www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/migration-und-mobilitaet-in-der-schweiz-drei-typen-in-mms-umfrage-ld.1481127 on 20 May 2019.
* At the time, I was unaware of the distinction between Third Culture Kids and Children with Migration Background. Due to the fact that I have a Swiss father, I don't technically count as the latter. While this is of great significance in many ways, I feel that my perception from the outside is still that of a child with migration background. People who first encounter me do not know my background. And that makes my experience parallel to many experiences of children with migration background.
* Stuart Hall’s words, not mine.