[LINK] "Daughters of Diaspora: two Algerian sisters, one in Texas, one in Paris"
Al Jazeera America's Alia Mazek has an extended study of two Algerian emigrant sisters, one ending up in the United States and the other in France, and their contrasting experiences.
Both were part of a diaspora, and they had landed in places quite different. France and the U.S. were unalike in many ways - in their attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities, in the public benefits available to those in need, in their histories of immigration and in the paths available to those seeking citizenship.
And Nada’s and Meriem’s journeys into diaspora were also different. Nada’s mother, Djida, refused to unpack one of her suitcases for her first two years in France, with the hope that she would be returning to Algeria as soon as the violence subsided. In contrast, when Meriem’s mother, Nora, first met her husband, an Algerian native who had interrupted his studies in the United States to return and do his compulsory military duty, she teased him, “Put me in a suitcase and send me to America.”
It didn’t quite happen that way or that fast, but Nora and her husband, Wahby, eventually settled in Austin, Texas, where they raised Meriem and her brother. To her relatives in France and Algeria, Nora had adopted “American” characteristics: She was career focused, successful and so optimistic. They teased her that she was perfectly Texan - impeccably groomed, femininely dressed, inoffensive in her conversation, dutifully religious and a corporate riser in her sales job. They joked that she was “high heels and high fives.”
Meriem’s family felt welcome in Texas, partly because most people didn’t know where Algeria was. “South America?” she was often asked, and her classmates usually assumed she was Mexican. But it didn’t much matter, as the U.S. - even in its moments of xenophobia - was a nation of immigrants.
The French, on the other hand knew, exactly where Algeria was, and the relationship between the two countries was quite complicated.
Both were part of a diaspora, and they had landed in places quite different. France and the U.S. were unalike in many ways - in their attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities, in the public benefits available to those in need, in their histories of immigration and in the paths available to those seeking citizenship.
And Nada’s and Meriem’s journeys into diaspora were also different. Nada’s mother, Djida, refused to unpack one of her suitcases for her first two years in France, with the hope that she would be returning to Algeria as soon as the violence subsided. In contrast, when Meriem’s mother, Nora, first met her husband, an Algerian native who had interrupted his studies in the United States to return and do his compulsory military duty, she teased him, “Put me in a suitcase and send me to America.”
It didn’t quite happen that way or that fast, but Nora and her husband, Wahby, eventually settled in Austin, Texas, where they raised Meriem and her brother. To her relatives in France and Algeria, Nora had adopted “American” characteristics: She was career focused, successful and so optimistic. They teased her that she was perfectly Texan - impeccably groomed, femininely dressed, inoffensive in her conversation, dutifully religious and a corporate riser in her sales job. They joked that she was “high heels and high fives.”
Meriem’s family felt welcome in Texas, partly because most people didn’t know where Algeria was. “South America?” she was often asked, and her classmates usually assumed she was Mexican. But it didn’t much matter, as the U.S. - even in its moments of xenophobia - was a nation of immigrants.
The French, on the other hand knew, exactly where Algeria was, and the relationship between the two countries was quite complicated.