Forget economic betterment – large numbers of people migrate for love

I recently visited the Museum of Immigration in Melbourne, Australia, my first ever visit to such a museum. It was fascinating.

Apparently one of the major reasons that people migrate is in pursuit of love. One would have thought that the pursuit of economic betterment would be a more concrete and primary – even if boring in the extreme – reason for immigration.

Two major reasons for immigration are both abstract to a fault and extremely subjective. This is one of the most alluring facts of the world of culture and heritage, that there will always be surprises in human nature, no matter how technologically advanced, sophisticated and biologically evolved humans think they are.

Large numbers of people move around the world to be reunited with their loved ones and family members, or to marry. Traditionally, arranged marriages were included, and currently technology enables people in different continents to meet and marry.

The other major reason for migration is to search for freedom. What is freedom? In its most basic description it is the absence of subjection. Show me one human being who is not a subject to something and we shall be discussing a fossil, possibly.

In a more inclusive description it is the power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without restraint. The very idea of being without restraint in the human condition is in itself unthinkable.

REAL HUMAN STORIES

There are certain aspects of freedom that one can immediately identify with, such as the right to vote, worship, protest and demonstrate and many other freedoms recognized as basic in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Many other aspects of freedom are so ingrained in cultural systems which shape our thinking that migrating in their pursuit is like running from the self. How would the government, no matter how despotic, figure out what we are all thinking?

Humans migrate to run from war, conflict, displacement or political hostility. This particular museum has gone a step further and used ‘real humans’ to tell their stories as affected by any of the situations they were immigrating to or away from.

After visiting this Museum, I forgave any person who might have lied to the International Criminal Court with the hopes of emigrating to get away from displacement and internal conflict. It is a human condition that anyone would want to get away from, and that many other people in the world have gone to great lengths to avoid.

MIGRATING WITH EBOLA

I guess the price one is willing to pay becomes more the question, but the need to escape is very much part of the human condition or so this Museum would have us believe.

Natural disasters such as earthquakes, famine, and disease outbreaks have been reasons for immigration in the past. But some of these reasons to immigrate may not apply in the current world order.

It is unlikely that any country will accept an immigrant trying to escape the Ebola outbreak in some West African countries or any other outbreak for that matter.

If anything, all immigration procedures that I am aware of require medical records. A guessing game is a good pastime on what happens if it is realised that a potential immigrant is the carrier of a probable epidemic.

SLAVES OF OURSELVES

This particular museum is very engaged in its own agenda and it aims to showcase the beauty and advantages of immigration. There is a fun section that would have many of us hiding from ourselves that demonstrates how we are slaves of ourselves by classifying all other peoples as different from us.

The minute you refer to a person by the shade of their skin colour or by the shape of their features (physical features are a big identification mark in anthropology), then you are already locking out that highly sought-after freedom from your mind.

It is funny that at the end of my museum visit the reasons for immigration that I could least argue with and debate were the most abstract: love and freedom.

Twitter: @muthonithangwa