“Quality of Living” Redefined
There are many misconceptions about the lives of immigrants. The common ones are that they don’t have good housing or jobs and things like that. Although this is sometimes true, it is also true that immigrants can come here and make lives for themselves that are better than the ones they led back home in their countries.
For the final project, I propose that we compare the standard of living of different immigrant groups in their old country to the standard of living in America. Now it won’t be easy because standard of living isn’t something one can measure with a scale, but through research and applying the knowledge learned through the neighborhood assignment, I believe this is possible.
Through this project, I would like for it to be known that there are in fact successful immigrants because success isn’t just having a large bank account but a better lifestyle. Other groups of people might have very distinguishable advantages, but working hard is the key to success and many immigrant groups have attained that.
During the class presentations, many groups mentioned that groups of immigrants came to America in order to escape turmoil in their own countries or for economic reasons. This project will explore if they have been successful doing that by pointing out exactly what the majority of the immigrants coming from a specific country came to America for, and examining whether or not they achieved that.
Aside from the neighborhood visits, wherein the class has already collected much information about their immigrant groups, I think it would be important to include interviews with at least one immigrant from each group of people we are observing. Interviews add authenticity to the argument we are trying to make because they provide real, perceptible experiences that we can imagine. It is not necessary to examine ever group the class has mentioned, but a class poll would be enough to determine that.
Connecting back to life here in America and New York in particular, I would like to then talk about discrimination the minority groups may face in America because that’s a big part of one’s standard of living. In the neighborhood visits and from Foner, it is clear that some groups of immigrants such as the Arabs and Asians face discrimination and stereotypes. I would like to explore those areas more and come up with a different definition of “standard of living” that does not only include the price of the houses people live in or what kind of car they have, but also their day-to-day experiences.
I think it is important to realize that the quality of life people live is always being compared to how they would’ve lived back home. As mentioned in class, many times parents say, “If you were back home in…” Drawing from that, this project will examine what exactly what happened and is happening “back home” in addition to how it compares to life here, with a concentration on whether or not discrimination and stereotypes are faced and to what extent by the different immigrant groups.
