the mayor, the teacher, us, europe

9 june

You arrive and you work your ass off, because you know that you are better off here than wherever you came from. So you work, and you work hard. The years pass. Beyond doubt, you are satisfied. The years of hard work might not have made you rich, but the few times you went back to visit, you could brought some presents, and you had some new clothes to wear in the family reunion. Nobody expected you to become millionaire, and you count your blessings. Still, you know that not all is ok. I remember one time, when we would have been living for few years in Venezuela. Both my parents had solid jobs. We were all, parents, sister and myself, waiting for some bus to arrive. A man jumped the line and my father confronted him. After the first exchange, the man heard the argentinian accent, and told my father to go back to argentina, if he didn’t like it here. I still remember the anger of my father, normally a peaceful man. I remember him shouting “I pay taxes and I have rights!”

All the same, these moments are exceptions for you, the first generation. My father refused to go back to Argentina untill he died, as far as I can tell always committed and grateful to Venezuela. He knew that venezuelans weren’t free of racism, he knew that he would never be fully accepted. Yet he still loved the country. 

The second generation is a different tale. 

I myself, born in Argentina but grown in Venezuela, am writing these lines in The Netherlands. Different than my father, I love Venezuela but I do not feel that I must tie my life to it. I left and I am not coming back. I suppose that I am lucky, because I could leave. The combination of my parents upbringing, their effort to place me in a decent high school, and mostly my luck in having stimulating friends, put me through university, eventually giving me skills to live wherever I want. But I wonder about the ones less lucky than me. Going from argentina to venezuela, my parents almost automatically belonged to some sort of intelligentsia. Their education level was above the venezuelan average. But what about the millions and millions of people that moved into Europe, the ones that rebuild this continent in the economic boom of the eighties, but belonged to no elite whatsoever? What about the moroccans, and the turks, and the many many others nationalities that worked the night shifts of the fabrics that created the welfare that I, and the rest of the dutch and european middle class enjoys today? What about their broken backs, their early medically forced retirements? I tell you what, they are still grateful. They are my neighbors and I greet them every morning, and they are grateful and peaceful, just like my father was. 

The second generation is a different tale, though. 

I just read a long article in the New York Times about Trappes, a suburb of Paris where a philosophy teacher and the mayor fought the battle that, harsher or softer, with more or with less publicity, is being fought in the whole continent. The teacher claimed that the town was gone, taken over by the islamists. The mayor, himself a second generation moroccan, disagreed. Their quarrel went public, and for a while, caught the attention of whole France. Then the tale of the teacher crumbled away. But it does not matter that this teacher lied, and got his tale wrong. We all can read the numbers. The integration of the second generation, and the third generation of migrants in Europe is still work in progress. By far and large, my fellows are in no way as lucky as I was, or am. For some ethnic groups, I myself have researched and reported similar levels of education than residents, but much lower levels of employment and salary. Beyond doubt, discrimination and systemic racism are relevant causes for the inequality of Europe today. To make it even more unfair, I have also documented that the foreign worker, and the second generation, is crucial to the economies of the cities of Europe that are prosper and rich. So we build this Europe of us, and many of us are still discriminated. Just like my father, the first generation is reasonably happy, now entering advanced age. But my generation? 

Where does my generation belongs?