anglais

« We are going to talk about the concept of Spaces and Exchanges.

First of all, according to the dictionnary definition Exchanges « is the act of giving or receiving something in substitution for something else (…) these exchanges can take several forms: economic, cultural and movement of people ».

In class, we focused on one form of exchange : the immigration in the USA.

immigration in the United States has always existed and it's o ne of the first places people turn to when it comes to migration.

This large influx of immigrants occupies a considerable amount of land spaces as well the country's ressources and here we ask us why people immigrate to the USA and what are the consequences of immigration ? These immigrants are leaving their own country for numerous reason and they settle in another country They can leave their country to escape from poverty, to find a better job.

The most immigrants are lured into the USA by the opportunities it offers.

It is the case, for example, of Lourdes, in the text « the boy left behind ».

Lourdes lives in Honduras with her children Belky and Enrique.

Her husband has left and she is very poor.

she is unable to buy food and toys for her children.

She has several small jobs such as door to door.

Their living conditions are very critical.

One day, she decided to leave their two children and go to the USA to have a better life in the future and a better situation for her and for her children.

She has a utopic and heaverly vision of America.This utopic vision is common for all the immigrants.

Then, in class we listened an audio document in which there was a character named Tony Lincoln.

He was 18 and he was a Mexican.

He left his country by crossing the border to come to the USA with his mum when he was 7.

He hoped to have a better future and a better financial situation Then, once arrived at the United States, these immigrants are going to meet new people, there will be exchange of people but also an exchange of culture.

As can be seen in the picture with flags, mexicans adopt a new culture as we see with the american flags but they also bring their own culture and don't forget it as we see with the mexican flags in the background.

In spite of the exchanges, the principal goals of these immigrants are the American dream.

The American Dream is the fact that every immigrant starts from scratch and make a success of his life just with the determination.

But the majority of immigrants doesn't make a success of his life.

In class, we listened an audio document in which J.

Serrano was determined to learn English.

He was born in Puerto Rico and he left this country to go to the USA.

To learn this language, still unknown for him, he listened 78 RPM of Sinatra and this allowed him to pronounce the words clearly.

Then he went to school in NY to enrich his vocabulary.

In 1990, he was a member of congress.

The fact of learning English opened doors to him.

He starts from scratch and he became a member of congress: it's the American Dream. Lastly, we can see that the immigrants have more complications when he come in the USA.

Their integration is hard.

This is evident in the text « Miss Cubanita », where the mom leaves her country and goes to USA.

In USA, she struggles with integration.

She doesn't like the music, the food, the education and instead she continues to speak Spanish.

Then, we listened an audio document entitled « Family Drama » which depicts the difficulties of getting the documents and become a citizen.

In this audio, the father of the main character worked and lived in USA for many years before being deported.

Before he settled in USA he lived in Mexico.

The government doesn't do anything to help the migrants.

The settlement of immigrants creates a wave of anti-immigration and lead to the formation Of a fence on the US/Mexico border.

Subsequently, through the audio document ( 300 parod y) it is clearly evident that prejudices against immigrants are still prevalent.

They are shown like wild, angry beast, but also invaders of the US.

We noticed a pregnant woman representing the stereotype that Mexicans have many children.They cannot find a job because of the prejudices.

Unfortunately, the lack of job means that they cannot afford to support their family through tough times.. »