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stjohnsglobal · 5 years

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One of the main themes highlighted by St. John’s University’s Study abroad programs is migration.

There is something amazing about being able to see the sights of Europe: The Eiffel Tower, The Colosseum, Sagrada Familia, and so on. And while I enjoyed getting to see the rich history here and learn all about these historical and sacred places, the thing that I’ve taken away most from my trip abroad is the volume of current things going on in Europe that I simply had no idea, or only a vague idea, about. My theology professor here has been living in Italy for eight years or so, and she says that she remembers how different it is in The United States. It’s like being in your own world entirely, so far removed from other countries. Because of the proximity and relationships within the European Union (EU), I think that it simply isn’t as easy to be disconnected from the rest of the world here. When you add in the size of The United States and relationships with the rest of North America and South America, Europe barely stands a chance to truly enter our news network.

For all of the places I visited, I both intentionally and unintentionally learned more and more about the issues that citizens of the countries were facing. I have been fortunate enough to travel to Paris, Barcelona, Zurich, Edinburgh, Bucharest, and, of course, Rome and around Italy. In this post, I hope to help you to travel with me and see what I’ve learned about these places and their trials. While most of the information has been compiled throughout the semester, I linked some fact-checkers and ways to read/watch more about these issues below.

One of the main themes highlighted by St. John’s University’s Study abroad programs is migration. It is integrated into every class possible, and this has helped me understand the issues. With the current climate all across Europe, there couldn’t be anything more appropriate. The first place I would like to focus on is France. My first stop in Europe was in Paris, France, and I was immediately amazed by its wonder and beauty.

However, there is no question about the political and social turmoil that has been occurring there for years. While many of us have heard about the attacks on Paris and Nice, there is a much deeper disdain toward foreigners that is not far removed from these attacks. In the United States, we refer to ourselves as a melting pot, a blending of cultures to create a diverse society. In France, it couldn’t be more the opposite. A dirty word in American history, assimilation, is their reality. When you are immigrating to France, you are expected to become French. While I’ve noticed that this is a theme around Europe and the hyphenated identities (African-American, Irish-American, Italian-American, etc.) of the US don’t exist here, it runs deeper in France. A culture that is not their own is washed away here, especially when it comes to religion. In 2004, French began the consideration of outlawing wearing burqas, hijabs, kippahs, and large displays of crosses. The one that came into effect is of any sort of face-veil, which directly targets Muslims, but it is widely encouraged to not wear any religious symbols and make yourself a target. Outside of religion but not far from it, immigrants tend to be living in suburbs or lower socioeconomic areas of Paris. They isolate themselves because they don’t feel welcome, and they create their own communities that are segregated from the whole of Paris and therefore France. While this brings in the question of open- vs. closed-borders and integration, it also creates a breeding ground for terrorists. In fact, the Paris attacks of 2015 had French natives involved. One of my classes studied how people can feel drawn to join a terrorist group and act when they feel that they are not being represented. In a society where culture erasure is meant to create a unified whole, it instead has created tense relations that have lead to attacks. In the US, we can obviously relate with recent immigrant issues at the forefront of politics.

Rome, and Italy as a whole, had similar issues with immigration. Italy quickly has become the liaison between the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries to the rest of Europe. Many people from MENA countries will enter into Italy through the Mediterranean with the intention of staying until they can make it further north. This has caused a great strain on the economy and relationships between natives and the new demographic. In this country, strict self-segregation can also be seen. In my economics class, we took a trip to a town called Torpignattara, which has been dubbed “Banglatown”. This town is full of heavily concentrated immigrants, many from Bangladesh as implied by the name, and they have made more of a town of their own than become a part of Rome. Their town is filled with stores with their native clothing, food, and other goods. They support their own small economy, not the whole of Rome. Rather, they send a majority of their money home. All of these issues have brought immigration to the forefront of Italy’s political atmosphere. There have even been talks of leaving the EU to allow them to have more ability to control their immigration laws. Another effect that has happened to Italy is called ‘The Brain Drain’. Basically, well-educated individuals are leaving the country in search of better job opportunities. This makes it hard for the country to continue to develop and westernize since the best of the best are leaving.

By far the most interesting thing to learn about was the potential secession of Catalonia from Spain. Catalonia is to Spain what, for example, Pennsylvania is to The United States. While it is just a region, it functions more as a state with its own government. This region includes Barcelona, a city that was my first international trip leaving Rome. Upon arriving, it was clear that there was some strong political movement going on. Every single apartment building had plenty of windows donning the Catalonian flag (which I initially thought were weathered Puerto Rican ones) and signs along the lines of “we won’t be silenced” and “free Catalonia”. Out of intrigue, I did some research while there to try to figure out what was going on. Catalonia is the richest region in Spain, and because of this, they pay high taxes. However, much of that tax money they don’t see coming back to their own region. Rather, it is used for other regions in Spain. Aside from this main issue, Catalonia has an entirely different culture and even their own language, Catalan. Catalan is more similar to Italian and French than Spanish, which definitely threw me off while I was in Barcelona. I am by no means a Spanish speaker, but I think that everyone in the US picks up a few things. Having traveled to Puerto Rico not long ago, I thought I could at least order french fries (papas fritas), but even that wasn’t immediately recognizable (patates fregides). The most interesting part of this whole thing to me was the numbers about who really wants this. 90% of the population that chose to vote in the referendum said that they wanted to secede. There is much more that goes into this whole issue, including violence, some people in jail or in hiding in other countries, and some lost votes. Overall based on what I saw and what the numbers show this is a very real and pressing issue in this area. Because Spain is a country that is in the Western world and there was violence involved, I assume that this is something that I would have heard of. It just enlightened me even further to how little I am in touch with the rest of the world.

When traveling to Switzerland, I figured that this would be an amazing experience to see a flourishing society. While Switzerland is best known for being neutral, making watches, and having thousands of bank accounts, I think that in general it is regarded as a country that has itself together. I know in the past I’ve heard it referred to as the world’s happiest country, so how could it possibly have issues? However, I happened to be in Zurich and fell into the middle of a women’s rights protest. Surprisingly, it was actually quite alarming. While I haven’t attended a women’s march in the United States, I have never seen images of police barricading streets at one of these. That’s usually shown in photos from much more violent events. However, trying to get off the main street where the parade arrived, it was nearly impossible. Police completely lined the surrounding streets with full barricades, even blocking off bridges. While it didn’t seem like it was meant to aggressively prevent violence and maybe rather to keep them on course, it certainly seemed much more like they were expecting a proper riot to begin. Police barricading streets and a large political protest aren’t something that you’d expect from the world’s happiest country in the slightest. When I looked into it, Switzerland was extremely late to the game in allowing women to vote. They did it in 1971. In the US all women and men were not actually allowed to vote until 1964, which isn’t that far off from this time, but at least the premise of women being allowed was introduced earlier. In 1985, a law passed that enforced that husbands no longer legally own their wives, which looking at it from a 2019 lens is absolutely insane. These dates are concerningly late, but the difference in Switzerland is the speed with which things are changing. Since the 1970s, laws about equal pay, equal opportunity, abortion, maternity leave, and more have been coming into place. So, with it’s issues, perhaps Switzerland is the happiest country in the world because of its ability to adapt and learn quickly.

My next stop was Edinburgh, Scotland. At this point, I would say that hopefully most Americans at least have heard of Brexit, the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the EU. Especially with it meaning to be enacted in March and being pushed back, it has been in the news more and more as of late. Still, I wouldn’t say the light is shed on it in America like it was around the time of the original referendum. However, here in Europe it is everywhere. Any time I have been in a place with a radio or the news on, no matter what country I’m in, I have heard the word “Brexit” even if I don’t understand anything else being said. When being in Scotland, you could see posters around either supporting or being against it. There was even a group of guys standing at a popular intersection holding a sign saying “Honk to Stop Brexit!”. In my travel plans, I made sure to have my trip occur before the date they were meant to leave the EU, simply because I didn’t know how it would change me travelling from Italy to the UK. Because I have friends that live in the UK and hope to one day study there, Brexit is something that I have been trying to follow as it goes on. Interestingly, I learned more about what the issues are through my Current Terrorist Movements government class I’m taking here. I was assigned an essay about the issues between England and Ireland in the past, which are still strongly rooted in today’s issues. With Northern Ireland being a part of the UK and Ireland not being a part of it, the biggest issue with Brexit at the moment is how trade will continue between these two regions. When that border has been closed in the past, it has led to great violence. Both of these countries being a part of the EU was a great solution because of the free movement of people and goods. While trade with the rest of the world is in question as well, this specific issue is one of the main reasons that the British Parliament has had issues with actually leaving the EU. Each deal that has been proposed either will lead to this chaos or won’t lead to a proper secession from the EU in the long run. Like I said, I have been keeping some track of this issue, but I think that it has quickly fallen out of the American mainstream media since the referendum. Great Britain is a global superpower and has always had strong ties with The United States, so any issues in their economy and global status will massively affect ours and other countries.

With my time in Europe, it was important for me to visit some part of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe has a rich and complicated past, and the effects of it are still incredibly impactful on these countries today. I would say that I have never really properly learned about the real issues there other than “the USSR was bad, and we still might not be a fan of Russia.” This trip was very enlightening for me to see a little bit more about at least one place there. I was able to visit Bucharest, Romania, which is formerly communist, supported by although not officially a part of the Soviet Union. On a tour, I learned all about their history, and I found it incredibly interesting. Romania has only been a unified country since the 1860s. Everyone calls America a baby of a country, but this is even more so by a century. They decided to have a monarchy, but their monarchy fell not long after it was put into place. Their last king was forced to renounce his crown by the communist party that came into place. After the communist party was taken down through the execution of the leader and his wife, the people actually wanted the last king to come back and to resume the monarchy. However, the crooked government that is currently in power had exiled the king, therefore not allowing him to come back into power despite the people’s want. Their current government is run by the Social Democratic Party, but the party is not favored by the people. In 2017, they saw intense riots revolving around the corruption in the country. There was a law attempted to be passed that would erase charges and free prisoners that were charged with government corruption. In easy terms, they were trying to pass a corrupt law to free corrupt friends that had just been charged with their crimes. While their issues with corruption are slowly getting better, they have been called one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. My tour guide noted that there is not a single day that there is not a protest outside of their parliament; even if it is just a few people, there is always something.

So what is the point of all of this? The United States needs to be more in touch with the rest of the world. While, of course, we should focus on our own issues, the unity of Europe is something to be desired. They all know what is going on in their surrounding countries, whereas I couldn’t even tell you what’s happening in most of the whole of America. Even one tour that was in Italy had made a joke about Barcelona and whether or not they will be a part of Spain soon, and I was proud that I was actually able to follow along. Having this knowledge makes you have a greater worldview and perspective on politics. In fact, by knowing more about what other countries are dealing with and laws and measures they have put into plan, we can take a look at our own country and scrutinize and change laws to make it a better country. St. John’s University has four words in its mission: Catholic, Vincentian, Metropolitan, and Global. The first three are things that I had experienced while studying in New York, but I couldn’t be more grateful to have gotten in touch with the global aspect. There is only so much World News with David Muir can cover, so education systems, international news sources, and most importantly individuals need to make a point to learn more about what’s going on in the world. While I still would say I’m highly ignorant to South America, Africa, and Asia, at the very least I have started my knowledge journey here in Europe and intend to continue it.

Rebeka Humbrecht, Spring 2019

Social Media Ambassador