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CHALLENGES OF ADULT
EDUCATION FOR MIGRANTS:
NEW SENSIBILITIES, NEW LIFE SKILLS
(Some Thoughts on Reading Hinzen and Duke)
By
H.S. Bhola
Professor Emeritus, Indiana University
I am struck by the complexity of the
existential conditions of various populations of Migrants, and by the
challenges involved in designing and delivering adult education programs
and projects to serve the needs of all those various groups.
Differentiations among and between the Migrant groups are many:
- 1.
Social
Geography: Migration from what home
country to what host country? Migrations from South Asia to the
Gulf States constitute quite a different phenomenon than migrations
from India to U.K. or USA or Morocco to France or from Hong Kong to
Canada or from Nigeria to Libya.
- 2.
Legal Status:
Has the migrant entered the host country legally or illegally? It
may not always be possible even to organize programs of adult
education or literacy in a second language for those groups who
entered a country illegally.
- 3.
Education /
Literacy Status: What kind of
educational background does the migrant has? Is the migrant
literate in the mother-tongue language?
-
On entry into the host country, the migrant enters
into a quadrangular relationship with the following four categories of
agents:
- 1.
The Migrant
Population: Following the
unavoidable “herd feelings”, the new migrant seeks other people from
the same home country from which he (or she) came.
- 2
. The
Host Country Community in Immediate Surroundings: They are
unavoidable, of course. Race, religion, education and economic
class of the people in the immediate surroundings (in informal
situations or workplace) will matter a lot. The working class people
even if they would not accept the jobs that migrants would do may
yet be resentful and may see them as free loaders who are putting
their livelihoods in jeopardy. Middle classes who will employ the
migrants at home and employers in health and construction business
will be more tolerant.
- 3.
The Governing Elite: The governing elite who first make
immigration policies and later administer those policies will matter
a lot to the lives of immigrants. Governments even if they have
congenial laws on books may use Orwellian language in their day to
day proclamations to serve their own political purposes and keep
their own poor pacified.
- 4.
Progressive Influencials: Progressive individuals and
institutions, both within host nations and at the international
level will play an important role in making the lives of Migrant
populations tolerable not always with success. So far
international agencies have been the best friends of migrants around
the world.
Coming to Terms of the Guests and the Host
Host countries most often brought or let Migrants in the country
with the hope that they will go back home at some time in the future.
During the last decade the realization has emerged that most migrants,
if not all are never going back home. Demography is destiny. Indeed,
more and more migrants will keep on coming from the poor and populous
countries to the rich countries and even to those in transition to
higher level of development.
If Migrants are not going anywhere and more and more will keep on coming,
the new arrivals and the host country citizens must face realities and
look at ways of being and working together on mutually acceptable
terms.
The discourse of coming to terms used to talk of assimilation,
but now more frequently integration. Assimilation meaning
absorption into a system is not acceptable today. Indeed, some of
today’s highly politicized Migrant groups want to live in the host
country on their own terms. Integration is to make a new part a
component of the whole. This is acceptable to more and more.
I suggest a third term accommodation, a mutual adaptation with
each other in the spirit of compromises. This should precede ultimate
Integration at least during the next generation of present day Migrants.
Role of Adult Education in Creating Mutual Accommodations; and
Enabling Acquisition of New Life Skills
We suggest that program and curricular plans for Accommodation will
be what Paulo Freire had called Conscientization raising sensibilities
of learners (both from migrants and their hosts) about their respective
existential conditions, about the existing global realities that pulled
the migrants to host countries in search of paid work. The host country
protagonists should understand that the migrants are here to serve the
purposes of the host communities and countries and, of course, heir own
purposes. The migrants should realize that now that they are in, they
should have the sense not expect to live and act in their new home,
exclusively on their own terms.
The Conscientization will be only half the part of the challenge of
adult education. This will have to be joined with the teaching of
communication skills which may include both learning to speak in the
host country language and, then, literacy in the host country language);
and livelihood skills. Additional content may continue to be added as
needed and as appropriate in various settings.
Fernanda D´
Almeida: Comments to the text ICAE Confintea VI Seminar [14]
Hello,
I think this is a good sociological analysis of migrant’s situation, but
I believe it’s very general. In my opinion, it will be important, from
now, to grasp the essence, to get to the base, before the communities,
to identify their living conditions, their needs (felt or not felt)
within a context where they not always have a systematic approach of the
realities of their global nature, as they sometimes live in their own
little world or they have a vision taken with a prism distorted by
feelings, resentments and approaches specific of the community.
Sometimes these communities face, more than the general population, very
difficult socioeconomic, cultural and sanitary situations, and it will
be necessary to have a well determined strategic and operational plan,
mainly with regard to adult education; for instance, migrants are not
touched by development plans in their countries or in the host countries;
in this case, it would be essential to see how to take their needs into
account given that the networks that take communities into account do
not integrate those communities of migrants.
In Senegal, when one is not part of religious, “historical” families or
power circle networks, one certainly will have integration problems,
more than the poorest people in society, one becomes a rejected person
who doesn’t even say his/her name and who sometimes receive a rather
pejorative name like “ngagne" , "ngak" etc…
The problem is not only the discovery of a situation like this one, it
is too, and mainly, what to do to identify social policies that take
into account these “minorities” needs of which migrants are part.
It would be also clever to see what are the answers already put into
practice by these communities, to identify the most clever ones and
multiply them, amplify them, support them and pull from them elements of
internal policies and between countries concerned.
These are some thoughts that your document inspired on me, a document I
find very deep and constructive
Thank you
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