The Psychological Impact Of Immigration: Beyond The Immigration Promise
Dear immigrant reader, I want to talk to you about something that is not usually talked about in the news like “He emigrated and now earns thousands of dollars a week.” The current migratory promise assumes that emigrating will free us from suffering through capitalism offering an illusion of evading the implications that reality, our mind, our subjectivity and our body entail.
It alludes to a magical and totalizing formula, which erases each person’s subjectivity from the equation and pushes us to resolve our difficulties or make a supposed life upgrade, without this implying going through our body, our uniqueness and the migratory reality. which implies putting together a world again in another place. The risk it entails is that when it becomes a mandate and expectations are not met, we find ourselves anguished in front of the beach, asking ourselves: Am I not supposed to feel better?
So, what is it really like to immigrate and what psychological implications can this mobilizing process entail? To emigrate is to encounter otherness more than ever, that there are different ways of living, ways of relating and different norms. It is immersing ourselves in a new world, with different climate, smells and objects.
If you emigrated to a place where your native language is not spoken, it may also be feeling like a child who does not know how to speak, who is disconnected from the place, but being an adult and having to earn a living It is building a life again, a new way of being and being in the world, supporting yourself in the available anchors that this new reality offers. This new construction could open up many possibilities, but it will in turn imply a great mobilization on a psychic level.
But what psychological consequences do immigration and the work of adapting to a new culture entail? Adaptation to a new place, external change, generates a demand for internal, psychic work, that is, a great mobilization of the psyche, of different processes. Therefore it will come with a wide range of emotions. Who am I in these new social and cultural coordinates? How do I relate to this new place? How do I achieve my life projects or objectives here? Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions?
What is behind these questions is a rethinking of identity. Identity has to do with those symbolic anchors that sustain us, with the ideals of each one It is what gives us a feeling of being different from the other, what distinguishes us. We could say that it is that story that we tell ourselves about who we are. But we do not build this alone but in mirror with the other, who is constantly, giving me back a feeling of unity, of formed difference.
It is a support that establishes our position in the world, it gives us a place. And the work of our mind will be to try to make the story we tell ourselves about ourselves consistent, without contradictions. That is, maintain coherence. And, what happens when we emigrate?
When we emigrate, some symbolic anchors that allowed us to build our identity may not be there “I miss the town’s Juliet” says an immigrant. Of course our identity does not disappear, but certain anchors do. And perhaps, this new environment gives us something different back to us, with which we do not recognize ourselves, and we can feel strange. It’s as if we asked ourselves, “Who am I if I’m not the town’s Juliet?”
Adaptation to the new place requires developing processes of identification and disidentification, to achieve one’s own symbolic place, different from the one I had in my previous place of origin, and perhaps different from that of the people in that new place. Although these questions that challenge our identity leave us in less stable lands and represent a challenge, it is also undoubtedly an opportunity for growth. Walking this path with the help of a health professional can help you make the experience more enriching and lead to personal growth
In turn, this process sets in motion another psychic work which is the grieving process. When we change, when we choose something, there is always a gain but at the same time a loss. Not being “the town’s Juliet” in the new place can open us up to possibilities of finding new facets of our identity, but of course it also entails pain for the loss of that known place.
And how does this impact our circles? The grief of the migrant is combined with the grief of the friends or family who must face the emigration of that loved one The immigrant’s new repositioning in life can cause a revolution in his family and social environment. Furthermore, if there were family migrations previously, this can often awaken at the family level a series of generational conflicts that are not always well resolved. In conclusion, we could say that mourning is for the world as we knew it.
Of course, we don’t find out about all these psychic processes that I tell you about here, but what we do find out about is the emotions and affects they generate. Did you experience feelings of emotional ambivalence, of love-hate towards the new place? Also, anxiety may appear, as a state of psychological helplessness, due to the loss of certainties and the elaboration of grief that the migratory process entails.
If this anxiety and lack of security is interpreted (unconsciously) as a danger, a feeling of overwhelm may appear, in which the feeling is that our resources to face it are insufficient. The difficulty in processing these emotions can lead to a series of symptoms, which will be different for each person.
Symptoms of anxiety, depression, bodily symptoms, or drastic and hasty decisions could appear as an attempt to calm that anguish. For example, suddenly leaving the country where you are, returning to the previous one, or going to a nearby one.
A mental health professional can help you navigate these processes of transformation, adaptation and emotional challenges Navigating this process with the help of a psychologist can make your immigration process more accompanied and enriching on a personal level. Analysis enables a safe place, where your vulnerability is safe.
It is desirable and important that your psychologist knows about migratory processes to be able to empathize, and address the particularities and complexities that it entails and thus help you navigate these new waters in a stronger and more stable boat. It’s about disarming ourselves, allowing ourselves to play and inhabit ourselves, and then putting ourselves back together. To accompany you to those places where we do not dare to enter alone.
