移民与归属

1959年7月, 我的母亲Saroja第一次登上飞机, 正从南印度前往纽约. 这次旅行花了三天时间. 她23岁，从未独自生活过.

离开印度纯属偶然. 就在医学院毕业之前, a classmate told her about a program for foreign doctors to work in the U.S. With few connections or prospects for work in India, she had little to lose by applying. That quixotic decision led her to a hospital in Brooklyn to work as a pediatrician.

1965年以前，.S. 移民法的设计将非欧洲人排除在外, so Saroja (pictured below) was a guest worker with a five-year visa. In the next few years, she met and married my father, also an Indian doctor, and gave birth to me. When their visas expired in 1964, they got jobs at a teaching hospital in Nova Scotia. 但是和美国一样.S.在美国，加拿大移民政策优先考虑欧洲人. 当我母亲申请一个高级职位时, 儿科主任告诉她:“你有背景, Saroja, but we need to give this job to a Canadian boy supporting a family.” Seeing few prospects, they decided to return to India in 1969.

In India their North American training and board certifications and my father’s American Ph.D. 毫无价值，所以他们以初级医生的身份重新开始. 工作不稳定，工资低. 他们申请移民到美国.S. 根据新的法律. 三年后，他们的申请被接受了. Thus, at the age of 9, I arrived in New York, an immigrant to the country of my birth.

Given such a peripatetic childhood, it might seem that I would establish roots somewhere. Yet I am now on my fifth migration and eighth country of residence, Costa Rica. My work on human rights has taken me to many countries for short- and long-term stays. 当我访问美国时.S., I revel in seeing family and friends, but I am an outsider there, too.

我的新家以原始的海滩和热带雨林而闻名, but Costa Rica also has the highest proportion of foreign-born residents in Latin America. 绝大多数来自尼加拉瓜, 与委内瑞拉人, 哥伦比亚人, 萨尔瓦多人, 和海地人, 等.

Nicaraguans have been coming to prosperous and stable Costa Rica for many years. They take jobs Costa Ricans see as too onerous: picking coffee, 建设, 食品加工及, 尤其是对女性来说, 清洁及家务工作. In 2018, a brutal crackdown in Nicaragua caused a wave of political dissidents to join the many Nicaraguans already working here. 2020年之后, these different waves of Nicaraguan migrants faced the pandemic in Costa Rica while having to support families who were in desperate circumstances back home.

"当我问人们是否能认出她是尼加拉瓜人时, 她指着自己的胳膊笑了, “Soy morena”(我皮肤黝黑).'"

Seeing the ways that care work has been undervalued during the pandemic has inspired my research into Nicaraguan migrant women who are domestic workers in Costa Rica. I have been interviewing Nicaraguan women to find out how they support their families and manage their own care duties. 我在海滩上遇到了妮莉亚，她是一家旅馆的女管家. 当我问人们是否能认出她是尼加拉瓜人时, 她指着自己的胳膊笑了, “Soy morena”(我皮肤黝黑). To my foreigner’s eye, she looked no different from local Costa Ricans. I glanced at my own arm, a darker coffee to her golden brown. Nelia spoke of the ways her children were singled out and bullied in school as “Nicas.” Yet both she and her children have better prospects in Costa Rica than in Nicaragua. The average income here is more than double that of Nicaragua—and coming to Costa Rica rather than the U.S. 避免了语言障碍和危险的北上之旅.

During the pandemic, some politicians in Costa Rica blamed crime and disease on the “nicas.“故事更加错综复杂, with COVID-19 affecting Nicaraguans more due to the crowded conditions in which they live and work. 尽管如此，他们还是替罪羊. 2020年4月, Vice President Epsy Campbell Barr shared photos of herself with immigration officials armed with assault rifles along the Nicaraguan border, with the caption: “What we are doing here is protecting ourselves ... 住在我们国家的人.” Her message clearly “othered” the Nicaraguans as dangerous criminals.

Studies show that Nicaraguan migrants contribute disproportionately to employment and wages of Costa Ricans, 尤其是技艺高超的哥斯达黎加妇女. In a country with a stark household gender division of labor and a lack of institutional childcare options, few Costa Rican women would be able to work outside the home without their Nicaraguan empleadas. 生育率为1.8、换人不足，哥斯达黎加需要劳动力. 但是和美国一样.S. and Europe, demonizing migrants allows politicians to distract the public from their own failings.

Looking Indian and speaking Spanish makes me an exotic curiosity, neither resented as a migrant from a poor country nor seen as a “gringa” or stereotypical American. 

在我写这篇文章的时候, the world is witnessing the largest movement of people since the Second World War with the exodus from the 战争 in Ukraine to join those from Venezuela, 叙利亚, 阿富汗, 还有很多其他地方. The global architecture and laws related to human movement are relics from the post-World War II and Cold War eras when “political” and “economic” migrants were easier to separate, “自愿”和“非自愿”也是如此.“在一个人们逃离各种自然灾害的世界里, 战争, 气候变化, 和贫困, 这些区别并不那么明显.

Sometimes the Nicaraguan women I interview laugh when they see how small I am, 对我说:“我们一起去吧。!-你长得像我们. 但相似之处就到此为止了. I came to Costa Rica with the privileges of a first-world citizen with choices. Looking Indian and speaking Spanish makes me an exotic curiosity, neither resented as a migrant from a poor country nor seen as a “gringa” or stereotypical American. 我的外表让我可以在自己的类别中浮动.

My ease of mobility comes from my parents’ perseverant migrations. I am not fleeing political oppression, the effects of 气候变化 and 战争. While I understand the loneliness and psychic demands of leaving and starting over, my experience is cushioned by an elite education and the freedom to choose where I go. 然而，我被我采访的移民所吸引, to understand the process of reinvention and the urge to leave everything familiar and transform.