GLOBALISATION
[adjective] (1) Relating to the whole world; worldwide. (The Oxford English Dictionary)
In general, people’s reasons for migrating from their home country fall into one of two categories: push and pull factors. Push factors exist in the country of origin and are those social, political, or economic conditions that mishandle or repel citizens, pushing them to seek better conditions elsewhere. Pull factors are those conditions in a target country that attract migrants to seek to build a new life, one they believe will be better than their old one. While push and pull factors are often discussed on a large scale, accounting for the mass exodus of war refugees or a great influx of migrant workers, these factors apply on all levels of personal migratory motivation.
I came from my homeland with the memory of many grievances – some of which were the natural birthright of the disillusioned native of any city: the overexposure effect. Part of me did move for the novelty and my belief is that the world is too wide to stay put. I had a desire to be someone of my own choosing, a desire to reinvent. Moving transatlantic is a lot like leaving your parents’ house: inconvenient. It’s loads of other things too. Wonderful. Exciting. Life-changing. But inconvenient all the same. You have to make your own money and find your own way and build your own support systems, all while swiftly losing the charms of youth and innocence. You grow your own wit, your own grit, and your own reasons. But most of all you learn, perhaps for the first time, what your own strengths are.
Then begins a process of rebranding. It started with “programme,” which I haven’t spelled the American way in nearly four years. Then the “u” crept into words like “neighbour” and “behaviour.” However I still leave the “z” in “analyze” and use group nouns with verbs (it’s “my family is crazy,” not “my family are crazy”). What begins to emerge is a person affected by echoes of the past, even while embracing the changes in the present.
“Home” is a word I try not to use, because it connotes some form of true belonging I never quite felt. It’s more than a place to be or a group you were born into. There’s a certain amount of ownership to it that makes the word truly realized; something reciprocal. A home is a place you belong to and that belongs to you, and my experiences in both have been largely in half measures: from my immigrant parents rejecting the maxims of my birth country; from my experience living as a minority among light-faced Caucasians while my cousins abroad sat in class with others like them; and even now, as the American blurring the line between the land I was given and the land I chose. I like the idea of blending cultures, of being a citizen of the world, forged in the fusion of opposites. The fact is that there is no home; and everywhere is home. The land I choose could be anywhere, filled with anyone, shaped by any past, facing any future.
Yet there’s not really another word for the place I come from. “Home” is a stand-in word for “that place you hear in my voice” or “that region that taught me my worldview” or “that land I’m running from.” “Home” is the English language letting me down. I use “home” for lack of another word.
They asked me why I wanted to move away from “home,” a question I never really knew how to answer. But I wanted to outrun the negative stereotypes of my country, to transfer into the cultural and historical romanticism my people associate with this part of the world, to access the historical legacy that has shaped much of the modern world, to trace the lineage of the civilization that brought me up. I wanted to develop a new cultural fluency. And so I moved to a hub that could give me all of those things. But most of all, I didn’t want to stay put. And I, as a citizen of the world and with a wanderlust to fill the oceans, wanted a multinational experience.
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