2.3 Immigrants in a municipality near madrid: the teaching of  (Page 9/9)

This “duel” is generally understood as the alteration of personality that takes place when something significant to that person is lost; something that makes up the affective and personal history of that person. The duel is a natural and frequent process in peoples’ lives whenever they must leave behind something with which they had an affectionate tie. However, this adaptive approach to reality helps maintain psychological balance.

Immigration brings about some of the most difficult changes a human being can face. Such as; the loss of family relations, friends, the landscape of one’s childhood, the meals, scents, colors, the language, the climate, the customs, different cultural codes, status, the way of dressing, the sense of time, and often the change from life in the fields to an urban way of life. It is a loss of all the bonds one has formed as a person, which were constituted during the first stages of life. Immigrants must try to maintain these bonds through which they can express their personality and identity, but they must also simultaneously develop new bonds through interpersonal relations in order to adapt to a new society. Those who had idealized their future life, or who arrived with the hope of an easy life, meet greater degrees of frustration, feelings of failure, depression, and anxiety. Due to this psychological strain, many of these suffer from stomach aches, headaches, and insomnia. Some health professionals, who are ignorant to the “Duel Immigration Syndrome” as described by Atxótegui, perceive immigrants facing these problems as hard to deal with.

Human necessities and health

The psychologist A. Maslow, whose parents were immigrants, reached diverse conclusions about human nature based on the following two ideas (1976): (a) human beings innately tend towards superior levels of health, creativity, and success; (b) neurosis can block that tendency. He observed that the peoples’ behavior is different when they enjoy a state of positive health as opposed to struggling with their health.

Maslow described the necessities of human beings as being staggered in such a way that the necessities of the more basic level must be covered before moving up to the next level. The most basic level of human necessity, according to Maslow, includes the physiological needs: food, water, and shelter. When the human being has those necessities covered, one begins to worry about the security of having these things in the future, and how to protect them. Once the individual feels physically secure, they want to be identified with, and participate in a social group. In this group they look for affectionate feelings, friendship, and love. When the individual is integrated into social groups he or she begins to feel the necessities of gaining self-esteem, prestige, success, and respect from others. Finally, individuals that have all the steps covered reach a culmination and wish to feel achievement, that they are giving everything they can of themselves they wish to create.

An undocumented Romanian woman with a warning to leave the room she rented said to me, “I have so many problems that I do not even have time to think about me.” Instability and uncertainty demand individuals to focus on resolving the most urgent problems. When all the energies are used to satisfy the most elementary necessities, there remains the unfulfilled possibility of satisfying the necessities of superior order. Therefore, psychosomatic maladies, such as digestive problems, unspecific pains, anxiety, and sadness, are not uncommon.

Open door for hope and education

Hope is to think that things can and will improve. Hope is a feeling that tells us what we wish for can be obtained. Hope is the feeling we experience when we envision a road toward a better future. Human beings actively hope in order to fight against the difficulties.

Emigration produces the ambivalence of suffering pain and loss while hoping for a better future. When a person decides to assume the risk of emigrating, it is because there is a strong perspective of hope: that hope ignites the motor for “the big jump;” a great jump that is not physical, but emotional. But hope is not blind; it knows the obstacles of the future. It gives us the courage to face our circumstances and the capacity to surpass them. 

Education provides the key for a new, better world; a more just world. Bertrand Russell (1997) said that one generation could transform the world, giving birth to another generation of brave children, not twisted in unnatural ways, but candid, generous, affectionate, and free. Their ardor would sweep the cruelty and the pain that we support today only for being sluggish, cowardly, hard of heart, and stupid. It is education that has given us these bad qualities, and it is education who must promote the opposite virtues. References

Atxotegui, J. (Eds.). (2002). Los duelos de la migración: una aproximación psicopatológica y psicosocial . Barcelona: Bellaterra.

Atxotegui, J. (1995). Migrar: Duelo y dolor. El viejo Topo , 90, 32-38.

Calvo Buezas, T. (2003). La Escuela ante la inmigración y el racismo . Madrid: Popular.

Cots, F., Castells, X., Ollé, C., Manzanera, R., Varela, J.,&Vall, O., (2002). Perfil de la casuística hospitalaria de la población inmigrante en Barcelona. Gaceta Sanitaria , 16, 376:384.

Maslow, A. (1976). El hombre autorrealizado: hacia una psicología del ser . Barcelona: Cairos.

Russell, B. (1997). Bertrand Russell, respuestas a preguntas fundamentales sobre política, sociedad, cultura y ética . Barcelona: Península.

Salazar, A., Navarro-Calderón, E., Abad, I., Alberola, V., Almela, F.,&Borrás, R., (2003). Diagnóstico al alta hospitalaria de las personas inmigrantes en la ciudad de Valencia (2001-2002). Revista Española de Salud Pública , 77, 713-723.

Isabel Gentil García has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology and Professor of the E.U. of Infirmary, Universidad Complutense Madrid and Collaborator of the CEMIRA.