Gendered Journeys: Women, Migration and Feminist Psychology

Oliva M. Espín, A. Dottolo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781349705504
  9781137521460
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137521477
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Personality in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book brings a psychological perspective to the often overlooked and understudied topic of women's experiences of migration, covering topics such as memory, place, language, race, social class, work, violence, motherhood, and intergenerational impact of migration.

Part I

Place, Race, Memory and Migration

Introduction to Part I

Andrea L. Dottolo and Oliva M. Espín

The chapters in this first section serve to provide a topical, theoretical and epistemological frame for this collection. The chapters by Espín as well as Suyemoto and Donovan serve as a guidepost to this collection in two formative ways.

Espín situates memory in the psychology of immigrant women’s lives, exploring how the reconstructions of events over time, place and space shape and inform identity and experience. She explores how gender, language, race and class shape immigrant themes of loss, longing, separation and home, including a discussion of the implications for therapy of understanding the interplay of memory and life events.

Suyemoto and Donovan explore how intersections of power, privilege and oppression related to race, gender and nativity influence in-group relations among women of color. The experience of immigrant and US-born women as they negotiate the dominance of race as a social status in the United States, the influence of imposed meanings of gendered racialization and their relation to nativity and ways these imposed meanings affect relations between immigrant and US-born women are addressed. This chapter presents a theoretical understanding of the intricacies of relationships among racialized women both immigrants and US-born black and Asian, based on the firsthand experience of the authors.

The title of Espín’s chapter includes the phrase “geography of memory”, and taken together, these two contributions could be entitled, “the geography of identity” – referring to the identity processes of immigrant women that are examined across the chapters, as well as the “identity” of the book itself. These chapters extend the notion of intersectionality to include not only the ways in which race, class, gender and sexuality mutually construct and define each other, but also take account of nativity, language, history, memory and place, to name a few, which are also reflected in the sections and chapters to follow. Espín discusses issues that are common among all immigrant women, such as memory, place and loss, and Suyemoto and Donovan situate their experiences within institutional structures and social processes of power and oppression.

These two contributions map the terrain of the volume, marking the landscape and surveying the territory, ground and scope of the book. They do so by pointing out themes, struggles and methodologies of this collection, which is directed at improving our understanding of the lives of immigrant women. By surveying the notions of place, race and memory in migration, they serve as an umbrella for contributions about work, social class, “tradition,” violence, resistance, resilience and the intergenerational impact of migration. Both Espín as well as Suyemoto and Donovan outline many of the central psychological features of women’s experiences of migration, including memory, grief and the construction of the “other”. Both chapters also highlight the complexities and contradictions in the psychologies of immigrant women.

One especially important way in which both Espín as well as Suyemoto and Donovan situate a frame for this volume is through their explicit analysis of the power of narrative. These authors not only reveal themselves, exposing their vulnerability in their stories and in the mere act of telling them, but then acknowledge and interpret the baring and uncovering as part of their method and as a source of strength. Suyemoto and Donovan use reflexivity as a tool of analysis in understanding their own stories and their relationship with each other. Espín extends traditional psychological notions of talk therapy to encompass multiple sophisticated layers of healing through narration in the lives of immigrant women. Each of the subsequent chapters in this collection tells an important story of women’s experiences of migration using multiple methods and perspectives.

These chapters serve as a foundation for the book in ways in which the authors ground their work to the central feminist tenet that “the personal is political”. Espín discusses how her memory and very sense of self are products of sociohistorical events, connecting her life story to a larger chronicle of gendered migration. Suyemoto and Donovan also use personal experiences and an explicit analysis of “the personal as political” as a point of departure in reflecting upon relationships between immigrant women of color and US-born women of color. Memory, identity, grief, longing, feelings of belonging and otherness are all products of larger institutional and political structures, shaping and informing each other.

Espín as well as Suyemoto and Donovan also model the ways that the subsequent chapters explore questions about the ways in which migration influences how individual women and women as a whole understand themselves in relation to their immediate social structures.

Social identity theorists in psychology have been late to consider migration, place and space, or even power and privilege, in the development of self. Everyone must navigate a social terrain of imposed categories and attributions in the process of identity negotiation. Dottolo and Stewart (2013; 2008) have contributed to the emerging discourse on the ways in which institutional structures shape social identities. However, those with marginalized identities often have an additional challenge of learning to embrace an identity that is culturally undervalued or derided (Espín, 1997).

Theologian Fernando Segovia (2001) describes immigration to the US as “a mangled project of exalted principles and despicable behavior” (p. 267). However, psychology has yet to incorporate into its scholarship the historical and social complexities and contradictions that have influenced US immigration policies and how these policies have shaped individual lives. The authors in this collection demonstrate that both “exalted principles” and “despicable behavior” are present in the experiences of women immigrants. Generally speaking, our undergraduate students are still being taught about one such “exalted principle,” that the United States is a “melting pot” and that “assimilation” is and should be the goal of all immigrants, while instances of “despicable behavior” are muted, marginalized or ignored. Both “exalted principles” and “despicable behavior” translate in the personal as political.

The point that the personal is political also ties to another theme of these two chapters that help to set the stage for the book – the social construction multiple identities and realities. Immigrant women in the US experience multiple sources of social oppression. These forces include, but are not limited to, xenophobia, racism, sexism and discrimination based on poverty and employment. Espín ponders the multiple selves that may have resulted from staying in Cuba. She explores the validity, accuracy and emotional valence of memories and how they shape who we think we are. Donovan describes the social construction of racial formations, explaining that back in Guyana, she did not conceive of herself in racial terms, and only upon arrival to the US did she quickly learn that “race mattered here”. Suyemoto articulates the pain and tensions around the “border patrolling” of who gets to be a “real” Asian and who is not.

The two chapters in this section foreshadow the purpose, significance and intention of the volume as a whole by claiming speech as a political act. Telling the stories of immigrant women, as women in and of themselves; subjects, and not objects of knowledge; carving out a space in the discourses of migration; agentic and defiant, is by definition an act of power. As bell hooks (2008/1993) explains,

Moving from silence into speech is from the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and

those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech of “talking back,” that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is expression of our movement from object to subject – the liberated voice. (p. 18)

Espín as well as Suyemoto and Donovan serve as models, as templates, and together as an introduction to a collection that we believe does just that.

References

Dottolo, A.L. & Stewart, A.J. (2013). “I never think about my race”: Psychological features of white racial identities. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 10, pp. 102–117. doi:10.1080/14780887.2011.586449.

Dottolo, A.L. & Stewart, A.J. (2008). “Don’t ever forget now, you’re a Black man in America”: Intersections of race, class and gender in encounters with the police. Sex Roles, 59, pp. 350–364.

Espín, O.M. (1997). Latina realities: Essays on healing, migration, and sexuality. Boulder: Westview Press.

hooks, b. (2008/1993). Talking back. In A. Kesselman, L.D. McNair & N. Schniedewind (Eds.), Women, images and realities: A multicultural anthology (pp. 15–18). New York: McGraw Hill.

Segovia, F. (2001). Melting and dreaming in America: Visions and re-visions. In E.S. Fernandez & F.F. Segovia (Eds.), A dream unfinished: Theological reflections on American from the margins (pp. 228–267). New York: Orbis Books.

1

A Geography of Memory: A Psychology of Place

Oliva M. Espín

My life has been marked by the experience of migration; I have lived most of my life removed from my country of birth. As I wrote several years ago,

I possess the vague certainty that I could have been another person were it not for the particular circumstances that migration brought into my life. I do not know and will never know the person I could have been had I not left my country. The only me I know is the one that incorporates the consequences of migration. Even though my life has been very rich in experiences, and I have never felt particularly deprived, I know that whatever I have succeeded in creating and living has been developed at the expense of some significant losses. Of these losses I am only vaguely aware. Far more clear are the undeniable opportunities, achievements, successes, and fulfillments brought about by migration. For the person who has migrated, identity issues are further complicated by their polyvalent circumstances. One is aware that both life’s losses and failures and life’s possibilities and triumphs are magnified and distorted by the lens of the migration experience. Migration for me, as for most immigrants, has given a dual and contradictory legacy. It provided safety and success, yet it also brought losses and silence about them. Mention of them is easily confused with self-pity or even ungratefulness to the new country. (Espín, 1999, p. 1)

In 1961 I left Cuba, my country of birth, and started life as an immigrant in Spain, Panama and Costa Rica. Later circumstances brought me to Belgium and to Canada. Finally, I came to reside in the United States. Although I have been a citizen of this country for several decades, my memories of childhood and adolescence in Cuba and the memories of early adulthood in other countries continue to be at the core of who I am.

Historical events and individual lives intersect to create autobiographical memory. The historical events I have witnessed or lived through in different parts of the world have served to frame my life in reality, to give it a sense of groundedness despite the many breaks and dislocations that have characterized it. Conflicts that occurred in places where I was living at the time – such as the Cuban Revolution, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion or the incidents at the Panama Canal Zone in the early 1960s – serve to anchor my memories. With aging has come a clearer sense of the importance of the events I have witnessed and of how entangled they have been with the fabric of my life, as well as the need to understand at a deeper level what role they have played in the weaving of that fabric.

In this chapter I discuss the role of memories in the formation, preservation and integration of self and identity, particularly for immigrants, as well as the role of language in the encoding or decoding of those memories. The importance of memories of place and the place of memories – what I call a “geography of memory” – are central to my discussion.

Memory and identity

Some psychologists who study autobiographical memory (e.g. Rubin, 1986) believe that we are our memories, that we are what we remember, real or imagined. Although autobiographical memory is important for everyone, for immigrants or those who have lived in many places throughout their lives, memory provides the only sense of continuity. Places and people change; the only way of knowing who you are – that you are – is to remember. Memory functions to construct a sense of continuity in our lives. The thread created by memories binds multiple experiences into a sense of personal identity and subjectivity – a sense of continuity to feel whole, which can be summarized as “who I am” (Taylor, 2010).

When powerful dislocations occur in life, as in migration, memory may be the only tool to recover a sense of self. Memory is the only witness to immigrant lives. It is the only way to re-member all the scattered pieces of life. As Chilean author Isabel Allende explains, “[t]hose of us who have moved on many times ... lack roots and corroboration of who we are, we must put our trust in memory to give continuity to our lives” (2003, p. 79).

However, psychologists know that memory is precarious, fragile and changeable. Psychological and physiological studies demonstrate that memory is not always reliable, that autobiographical memory can be distorted, that memory is affected by many factors (e.g. Kandel, 2006; Schacter, 1996; 2001), including the languages in which memories are encoded and decoded (e.g. Javier, Barroso & Muñoz, 1993; Schrauf, 2003; Schrauf, Pavlenko & Dewale, 2003). But memory betrays, it mixes events and it leaves holes precisely about the moments you need to remember most. “Memory is always cloudy, we can’t trust it” (Allende, 2003, p. 79).

Absence of places and people and even familiar smells create a discursive obstacle in the creation of identity that is unavoidably filled with “remembered” imaginings. Memory is not just a residue or a fixed reproduction of events but also a dynamic, conflictual and constructive process, deeply intertwined with values, communications, language and feelings, to name a few. Emotion both intensifies and obliterates the memory of events.

On the positive side, as cognitive psychologist David Pillemer (2000) explains, “although examples of memory distortions exist ... those memories that do persist into later life are likely to generally be truthful” (p. 56). Memories of peripheral details tend to be more susceptible to distortion than the memory for central themes, which tends to be very reliable. Pillemer tell us “that we can largely trust our vivid memories of emotional events (p. 56) [because] emotional memories, although not infallible, are often broadly accurate” (p. 55). “Memories of apparent trivial details can [also] fulfill important psychological functions” (p. 62). Critical insight and engagement also have a transformative effect on memory and narratives.

I know that my individual memory is simultaneously my own process, connected to the nerve cells in my brain and the product of relationships and social contexts that have shaped it to determine what is important to remember. I also know that, to some extent, all ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part I  Place, Race, Memory and Migration
• Part II  Work, Social Class and Traditional Gender Roles
• Part III  Violence, Resistance and Resilience
• Part IV  Intergenerational Impact of Migration
• Index