Outcomes
Feedback from participants
The feedback I got from participants was overwhelmingly positive. Many of them undergo regular interviews on the way. by the police, by border control agencies, NGOs, night shelters, etc. There are also well meaning academic researchers who look to make sense of the situations through statistics, numbers and analysis. They help. We need to visualise and understand the overarching issues and it’s easier by putting together numbers, graphs and statistics to pressure governments into taking action. But these questions always focus on the same negative aspects of their lives, on trauma and violence. The questions rarely stray from gauging personal information, what identifiable marks are on their body, where are they from, who should be contacted in case of disappearance or death, how long have they been on their way, how many times have they been mugged, harassed, raped, beaten, drugged, kidnapped, and where. So the act of talking to them about songs they listen to and food they miss was mostly a very welcome distraction.
Not everyone I invited to participate in my project accepted. Some people were clear about it, some thought about it then decided not to. Some initially said no but, often they just didn’t want to be the first. Once one person braved it, others often followed. I also understand it’s not everyone’s desire to talk about anything to a stranger with a mic. There is no initial reason they should trust me and they have other much more pressing priorities.
Nevertheless everyone who did participate told me they got something out of it. On one hand there were those who mentioned the word desahogarse a few times. “To vent”. These participants said that it felt good just to talk. Either they were happy to keep their story alive by telling it to someone with no agenda, or they felt that they could vent their thoughts and feelings. Many people thanked me for giving them a break to think about something positive and unrelated to their everyday struggles even if it was for a short time. A moment where they didn’t worry about how they’d feed their family, survive the next obstacle or get through the week, a glimpse of time where all they concentrated on was trying to remember a taste and listen to a song with me. On the other hand some people jumped on the opportunity to show the world the difficult situation illegal migrants are in, through their personal stories. Many people saw the project as an important way to show real faces of people in migration and to make them visible to a wider audience.
Trends
The project is about everyone’s personal journey. Everyone’s experience of life, of fleeing, of eating and listening is unique. There are, however, some recurrent concepts, terms and themes. You can also go and read more about the foods and musics shared with me.
A general trend I noticed in Mexico and Colombia is that in most of America people in forced migration share a common language, religion and to a certain extent culture with the host country. I couldn’t help but compare this with what I encounter in my job working with people seeking asylum in the UK. Here, people who arrive mostly share none of the above elements. Yet, by talking to people in both environments I get the feeling that the deep sense of feeling alien in a new place as a result of an involuntary/forced move is similar.
La mamá
Of the ones who are fortunate enough that their traumata don’t involve their families, almost all agree that what makes a place feel like home is the presence of the family, above all “la mamá”, the mother. Interestingly it was increasingly men who mentioned their mothers and nearly always came up. This gives an idea of the importance of the role of the mother in family dynamics of the people I’ve talked to.
Tranquilo
So many people, when asked what they need to feel at home said it was somewhere where they can be “tranquilo”. A word that involves safety, security, predictability and a certain, albeit very minimal, amount of comfort.
Desahogarse
As mentioned above this term means “to vent”: to talk with no agenda and no restriction. This is something a lot of participants mentioned after the talk. Something they enjoyed.
It was important to me that people shared sounds and tastes that are dear to them personally, not necessarily typical to their geographical provenance. I often mention this in the conversations and some people changed their minds when I do. Karla, for example, first talks to me about Honduran cuisine but when I explain myself better she changes to the lasagna her mother used to make.
The result of me stressing this is that although several people shared their national dish and songs with me (the Venezuelan national anthem, for example), I also got songs from elsewhere in America, English language pop, European classical music and Disney or religious songs. On the taste side I discovered that of the participants I talked to, most people were fairly consistent in mentioning the food they grew up with. To inexperienced taste buds it could seem that the whole continent is on a very similar diet: corn, beans, plantain, meat. But home is in the detail. It was eye opening to see how the slightly different thickness of a corn tortilla (and a completely different name), the different colour of a bean or the different brand of margarine can change between the feeling of being at home or being in an alien place.