Migratory Grief: What It Is And What Psychosocial Elements Make It Up
Traveling to a new country or city is never easy. Whether leaving voluntarily or because the situation in the land of origin is complicated, the migrant has to face a whole set of unpleasant emotions and sensations when looking for a new life abroad.
Immigration grief is a complex process associated with having left behind a lot of things with which one has grown up and lived.: family, friends, landscapes, language… We live as if we were facing the death of something, only it is not something definitive and can be re-experienced over and over again.
Below we will talk in depth about migratory grief, what it entails, what its signs are and what phases it entails.
Immigration grief is everything an elaboration process that occurs as a consequence of the losses associated with changing the country or city of origin, that is, the migratory experience. This grief occurs regardless of whether the migration was by choice, such as seeking new job opportunities or wanting to learn languages, or whether it is due to some external factor, such as not finding employment, economic, political and social crises, or an environmental catastrophe in the land of origin.
In popular language, grief is associated with the idea of death, something that is forever. However, in psychology, grief is related to the idea of losing what we love most, something that can be temporary. As living beings, we are constantly winning and losing things, so it is perfectly normal and common for us to experience grief. Some grief is especially hard, such as the death of a loved one, a permanent and very painful loss, but in other cases we talk about more mundane things, such as losing a job or breaking up with a partner.
Understanding this, it is clear that the idea of migratory grief implies losing something, but what do those who emigrate lose? Well, actually many things. People who are forced to leave their homeland and end up in a totally unknown country They feel that the main things they have lost are culture, language, family, friends, status, contact with the ethnic group and the land..
1. The language
The migrant does not forget his language, at least automatically, but he does lose those people with whom he can use it. He feels frustrated because He cannot fully express himself with the people of the new place he has had to go to.or even that you still have to learn many things about the new language in order to feel that you function in the new society in which you now live.
This often leads to feelings of insecurity and shame, since the person does not know how to fully convey their ideas and feelings. It may also happen that, even if you master the language, there are certain nuances of it that you do not fully understand, such as the sense of humor or informal and social expressions, something that is exclusive to each language and is one of the elements that causes the most cultural shock. they imply.
2. Family and friends
Of course, the greatest loss experienced by migrants is that of their family and friends. They know that they are alive, they know that they will be able to visit them, but not having them close implies very intense suffering. The migrant has left behind all his contacts, a social and support network that has been built over many years.. Although you may arrive in a new country and meet new people, it is inevitable to feel alone, since these new people do not replace lifelong friends.
One’s identity is closely related to the ethnic group in which one has grown up. Within our reference group we find ourselves in a paradoxical but not negative situation. On the one hand, we are equal, sharing language, beliefs, race or other aspects, while on the other, the personal characteristics of each one are highlighted, such as personality and status.
With migration the feeling of being different increases and this balance between similarity and difference is broken.. At some point in the migratory experience, the immigrant realizes that no matter how integrated he is in his new country, he will always be a foreigner, he will always be different, even if he does not suffer from xenophobia or be a victim of racism. Furthermore, his ethnic group of origin will begin to see him as someone foreign, someone who has influences from other people, who is not “as much ours as he was before.”
4. Cultural references
Who is leaving? loses cultural references, ways of being that are typical of their ethnic group or native region such as social norms, the musical genre, the taste of food, the way of thinking and beliefs, aspects that, until the day the person left their country, accompanied them throughout their entire life.
5. The status
In most cases, the migrant begins to perform lower-skilled jobs in the country where they have ended up than those they did in their country of origin.. The reasons behind this tend to be varied, but the main one is their legal status, with a limited or undocumented residence permit and the fact that many foreign qualifications are not recognized in other countries, making it not legally recognized to have such a degree or qualification.
Although the migrant can wait for this qualification to be recognized in the new country, the process is usually long and during that time they are forced to work at whatever they can to survive. For this reason, the migrant loses his status, since he has to “lower himself” and do things that he would never have done in his country. Even so, even if this circumstance does not occur, being a foreigner, lack of proficiency or accent usually entail a loss of status in itself.
6. The land
The mourning for the land is the loss for the landscapes and the climate. It may seem unimportant, that they are simply landscapes, however everyone has grown up seeing the silhouette of their hometown, the shape of the mountains on the horizon, the sea, warm summers or some landscape and climatic characteristic exclusive to their home. country. Moving to a place where this is not the case causes homesickness and melancholy.
Why is it a special mourning?
What differentiates migratory grief from other grief, such as the death of a loved one or having broken up with a partner, is that It is a multiple, partial and recurrent grief. Multiple implies that there are many things that are left behind and that motivates you. As we said, the migrant has to say goodbye to his or her family, friends, customs, language, landscapes… And since there are many things that are left behind, it is very easy for the person to feel migratory grief at any time that one of them is remembered. very intensely. Partial means that there is always the possibility of returning.
For example, when a loved one dies there is no human way to reunite with them, since the loss is absolute and they cannot be resurrected. On the other hand, in the case of migration there is always the possibility of returning, because what is lost, this is the land, the culture, the family… it does not disappear, it is still there, but it is very far away.
It is a recurring grief because it is activated every time you return to your homeland. It sounds paradoxical, but the truth is that many people when visiting their country of origin to see family or go on vacation when they return feel as if they were abandoning it again, as if they were starting over. This can happen even if they have built a whole new life in their new country and are doing well. But it is not only the visits that reactivate the grief, Sometimes a simple conversation via video call or seeing photos of the family or the town of birth reactivates it..
The signs of this duel
Before explaining what the signs of migratory grief are, it is worth highlighting a fundamental idea: it is neither a disorder nor an illness. Although it is true that migratory grief is a risk factor for presenting psychopathology, in itself it is not a mental disorder, but rather a very complex psychological phenomenon and not necessarily pathological. For this reason, instead of talking about symptoms we talk about signs, among which we can find:
1. Feelings of anxiety
The person feels sad, irritable, moody…This can happen to you even if you have achieved the goals you wanted to achieve in the host country. It is possible to feel isolation and loneliness.
2. Somatizations
The migrant may feel physical discomfort such as a lump in the throat, pain in the stomach, back and head, tics, mental and physical fatigue…
3. Difficulties associated with identity and self-esteem
It is common that when the migrant arrives in the new country they do not pay much attention to the feelings of sadness due to the loss of living outside their native country, or even deny them. It is possible that he idealizes the host culture and undervalues that of his homelandseeing his country as a horrible place and that no one should stay and live there.
The reason for this thinking is easy to understand since it is easier to adapt to a new place if we think it is the best in the world and we convince ourselves that what we leave behind is not worth it and we even feel ashamed of coming there. But it happens that we don’t stop being from there, something that begins to be seen as very bad and affects our identity and self-esteem. In the end you end up having a feeling of being neither here nor there.
4. Paralysis of the life project and difficulty making decisions
Faced with the indecision of whether to stay or return, many people delay personal decisionssuch as committing to a partner, having children, thriving professionally, starting an important personal project…
5. Guilt
You feel guilty for having left significant people behind in your home country. He feels like they could have made more efforts and brought them with him or that he could have tried other options while in his homeland, even if it meant having a very poor standard of living. There is the feeling of having left family and friends to their fate, and they worry about not knowing what will happen to them if they never return to their country of origin..
The phases of immigration grief
During migratory grief you can go through different phases, very similar to those that occur with other grief. As in any period of loss, these phases do not have to follow a different order; in fact, they can be experienced several times and in a cyclical manner.
The migrant tries to act as if nothing has changed or is different. It’s as if he didn’t care much about going to a new country or having to process the loss of anything. This phase also occurs when the migrant does not allow himself to truly build a new life in the place where he has ended up, but instead tries to maintain as much as possible the same lifestyle that he had in his homeland, something very difficult.
2. Rationalization phase
You become aware of the decision that has been made. The migrant becomes aware of where he is, what he has left behind and the reasons that have made him travel.. It is in this phase that contact with oneself is made and that gives rise to the other emotional phases of the migration process, in addition to allowing the individual to be realistic and aware of what they are going to need and what steps they must take to try to prosper in their new host country.
3. Anger or protest phase
In the event that the decision to change country or city is due to external pressures, It is normal for the migrant to feel anger towards what has forced him to leave.. But even if the decision to migrate was voluntary, you can also go through this same phase. It is normal to feel angry about how difficult the change is and how difficult it is for you to adapt to the new place since you do not know in advance everything related to how things work in your new home nor do you know how friendly the native people are.
4. Sadness phase
Sadness is the easiest emotion to identify in migratory grief, but that does not mean it is the easiest to manage nor the one that has the least effects. This sadness can be enormous and can profoundly affect the person’s proper functioning in their new country, lasting even for years. ANDThis emotion arises from the constant reminder of what has been lost and can be accompanied by a deep sense of rootlessness.feeling of being in no man’s land or of not having a country, neither the one of birth nor the one of reception.
5. Fear phase
Fear is present throughout the entire migration process, both before traveling and once it has settled. This is totally normal, since the unknown and new scares. There are many questions that the migrant asks himself and he is not sure if he will be able to solve them: will he adapt? Will he learn the language? Will he know how to use public transport? Will he make friends? will you find a job?…
If not managed well, this phase can cause a deep feeling of helplessness, of not knowing what to do once you get there and fearing that you will never succeed or achieve the immigration project.
6. Acceptance phase
In this phase, the migration process is accepted both rationally and emotionally, that is, the person is able to truly say goodbye without feeling debt for what is left behind or fear of losing it forever.
7. Forgiveness and gratitude phase
In this phase, the person allows themselves to connect with the good and the bad that they have experienced before leaving their country and, also, with respect to the decision made. Forgive the things and people who have harmed the migrant, and you are grateful for what you have managed to take with you, what has made you grow personally. All the good things that have been learned during the process are valued.
8. Phase of new attachments
In this phase new ties, new roots and a new life are established. It is the moment in which the migratory mourning has been carried out and ended, this being what confirms that the person has known how to adapt to the new place of residence, but without feeling that he has lost his roots or what he has grown up with.
