Bodies on the Move by Razack.pdf

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Bodies on the Move : SpatializedLocations, Identities, and Nationalityin International Work

Narda Razack

Transformations of space, place, and environment are neither neutralnor innocent w ith respect to practices of domination and control. Indeedthey are fundamen tal framing decisions—replete with multiple possibili-ties—that govern the conditions often oppressive) over how lives can belived. Such issues cannot be left unaddressed in struggles for liberation(Harvey, 1996: 44).

First, whiteness has the ability to move; second the ability to move resultsin the unmarking of the body. In contrast blackness is signified throu h a

marking and is always static and immobilizing (Mohanram, 1999: 4-5 ).Introduction

T HIS ARTICLE EXPLORES TH E MEANINGS OF RACE IDENTnT AND NATIONALITY INinternational w ork to illustrate how the self is constituted in spaces abroad.The analysis is underpinned by the fin ings of a research study of the experi-ences of Canadian social work faculty and students, who went to a develop ingcountry to conduct research, collaborate on projects, and fulfill practica courserequirements.' Experiences include the voices of white and minority students.Faculty collaborations abroad are not new areas for exploration and analysis(Kobayashi, 1994). However, in the context of a new era of globalization, andgiven the increase in international activity within the sphere of global capitalism,differential analyses are warranted. We appear to be plunging headlong into moreinternational commitments and not stopping to fully analyze the effects.^ Institutionshave displayed an urgency to respond to the impact of transnational corporationson the state. Some responses to globalization take the form of vigorous moves tointernationalize the university. The message is clearly stated in this directive from

a report from one university:

NARDA RAZACKi A i t P f d G d t P D i t i th S h l f S i l


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urgent ground exists to take concerted action that will allow us to makethe most of opportunities which are presenting themselves in an increas-ingly competitive environment.... Our report therefore is a call not torest on its laurels but to think afresh. It is an opportunity for all sectorsof the community to work collaboratively both internally and externallyto effect changes [to] be a leader in international academic affairs (YorkUniversity, 2000: 1).

The response includes seeking research funds and organizing collaborativeprojects and partnership ventures with a host of international partners, which ha

increased faculty co llaborations abroad

Schools of social work cross Canada haveorganized international practica as requests for placements in Southern countrieshave increased. Placements are organized on an ad hoc basis in most schools ofsocial work, w ith the lack of supporting infrastructure resulting at times in formof professional im perialism, since there is little attempt to ensure reciprocity andto analyze these North-South experiences (Razack, N., 2002). Since social worktreads the well-worn path of imperialism, an analysis of these work-abroad initiatives is all the more urgent (Gray, 2005).

The discussion begins with a twofold theoretical exploration of space. FirstI relate how spaces are imagined and how identity is produced in and throughspaces at home and abroad; second, I illustrate how white and minority bodies areviewed differently in Northern and Southern spaces. Mohanram (1999) describesthe significance of movement for white and black bodies in terms of their raciaand spatial attributes. She states that place and landscape are not inert, but thingswhich actively participate in the identity formation of the indiv idua l(p . xii . Spaceis therefore central to the formation of racial identity.

Next, I examine how notions of identity and nationality become more acutely

present when conducting work in an international setting. International work translates into travel from one territory or place to another, but also involves a host ofrelational meanings and explorations of the self and the body politic. I examinehow identity is constructed in these travels and illustrate the struggles for minority students and faculty who travel alongside their white counterparts. Given thecomplexities of international work, I close with critical insights into the struggleinherent in it so that we can avoid sustaining hegemony in North-South encoun ters.I also argue that the experiences abroad can lead to a new imperative for studentand faculty to recognize and attend to the nuances of how race and identity shapthe professional encounter. Such learning can enhance domestic practice.


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research and practicum. My rationale for focusing on Northerners going to devel-

oping countries extends earlier research I conducted that critically examined theNorth-South international practicum in my own school (see Razack, N., 2002). Inoticed the binary of how subtly dominant/subordinate positions are produced.Moreover, as an academic committed to transformative practice, I felt the timingfor further research on this topic was critical because of the increased attention tointernationalization in universities.

Selecting the Sam ple

Ten schools of social work across Canada were represented among the 4

fac-ulty members interviewed. Four of the faculty members organized internationalplacements within their respective schools. I avoided naming minority facultyparticipants because there are not many in Canadian schools of social work, and,with such a narrow focus on international work, confidentiality could be easilybreached. Eighteen students were interviewed and represented six schools. Theseschools were chosen because they have attempted to organize international practica.However, all the participants shared an ambivalence abouttheir school's comm itmentto international social work. Most of the students I interviewed had completed aninternational placement in the last one to three years. Of the 18 students, 10 werewhite and eight identified themselves as nonwhite. In this article, minority refersto students who are considered nonwhite.

The faculty administrators at one school assisted me in organizing a focusgroup of eight students who went abroad with faculty supervisors for a two-weekeducational program. Participants traveled to Latin America, Asia, Africa, andthe Caribbean; some faculty paid frequent visits to the same country, since oneproject led to others. Interviews lasted approxim ately tw o hours. I began by asking

the participants to reflect on why they wanted to go abroad and what they hopedto gain from this journey. I also asked about their images of the host country andthe realities upon arrival. Further questions allowed me to examine their relation-ships with the local people, their status in the host country, and differences theyencountered while abroad, especially concerning race, whiteness, and identity. Ibegin by spatializing the journey.

Und erstanding Spatialized Locations in nternational Work

Why does space matter to the international discourse? Canada is a settlersociety with a history of genocide and colonization.-^ Spatial theory helps us to


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works of Lefebvre (1976), Soja (1996), Sherene Razack (2002), and Mohanram

(1999) to explain some underpinnings of spatial theory. *We are taught that everything occurs in time and is distinctly historical. There-fore, all our actions are located temporally and historically. Lefebvre (1991: 129)argues that there is also a spatial dimension to social and historical realties:

The study of space offers n answer according to which the social relationsof production have a social existence to the extent that they have a spatialexistence; they project themse lves into a space, becoming inscribed there ,and in the process producing the space itself Failing this, these relations

would remain in the realm of pu re abstraction— that is to say, in therealm of representations and hence of ideology.

Soja (1996 :46 ), picking up on Lefebvre's argum ents, appeals for similar ac-tion-oriented and politicized ontology and epistemology for space: that 'everything 'also occurs in space , not merely incidentally, but as a vital part of lived experienceas part of the (social) production of (social) space, the construction of individuaand societal spatialities. All our social relations and interactions become real andconcrete when they are spatially 'inscribed'— that is , on retely represented—inthe social production of social space {Ibid ; emphasis added).

Other theorists have examined the relations of colonialism and race to space(Mohanram, 1999; S. Razack, 2002). Sherene Razack argues that a theory ofspace recognizes that the dominant notion of space as innocent does not allowfor an understanding of the dialectical relationship between spaces and bodies, inwhich some are marked as degenerate and others as bourgeois (2002: 9). Brownand black bodies predominantly inhabit the degenerate spaces. These argumentare crucial to international w ork, since the white participants in this study com e to

claim space and ties to nations in ways that differ d istinctly from those of participants of color. Racial identity is tied to landscape, and notions of race are part oa discourse about the nation. In this study, the participants told particular storieabout how their ties to country, notions of citizenship, ideas of global citizenryand bodies were shaped by their experiences abroad. These stories are spatializedsince they illustrate the abstract and concrete experiences of space. In going abroadparticipants become marked by the spaces they occupy, by how they com e to knowthemselves in this space, as well as by what is produced within that space in termof relational practices.

These theoretical constructs will allow us to pay attention to how Northerntravelers are located in privileged space in comparison to many in the South When


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minority and non-minority, constitute themselves in Southern space, and how does

their Northern privilege unfold in the experience?Occupying Spaces Abroad

From tourism to the marketing of novels, the manifestation of culturereminds us that the imperial division between a secure , stable us and aninferior, unstable, exploitable them no longer applies. This postcolonialorder is one characterized by fluidity and hybridity, a cultural c risscrossing,what has been referred to as the in-be tween (Murray, 1997: 4) .

Many participan ts reported being keenly aware that they were entering a spacemarred by poverty and political upheavals, but the possibility of experiencingcomplications or conflict in the country of destination generally did not concernthem unduly. Upon arrival, they all became immediately aware of their privilegedstatus in the South. However, the conditions under which the manifestations ofprivilege and oppression occur in postcolonial societies are far more complex andsubtle than those in the colonial era, where there was a definitive colonizer andcolonized. Postcolonial subjects are struggling to decolonize their minds and so-

cieties, and postcolonial epistemology stresses a comm on heritage of oppressionand subsequent decolon ization, of the struggle for the right to produce, rather thanconsum e, images of self and the local (Murray, 1997: 9).^ In the host country,the participants occupied space in the Third World, which is viewed as not asgood as the First World from which they originated. These realities did not affecttheir initial hopes to learn from the racialized other and to work in a diflFerentcultural env ironment.

Occupying Space Abroad Participants of Color

Even upon arrival, many of the white subjects were apparently treated differ-ently than the minority participants were. The nonwhite participants immediatelynoted the power of whiteness in the South. Acco rding to one minority participant, if you are white coming to a placement, you had more privilege from the begin-ning ; another noted that white people were treated with privilege immediatelyupon arrival. She described a scene at the airport, where she was treated like anAfrican and therefore catego rized: I jus t lost it and he said to me, if I'm Africanand I said no, I'm from Canada, and he made the general announcement, she is

Canadian and then they were going to serve me .The living spaces also proved to be challenging. Many participants of color


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[the workplace] and then going home and in this nice place and having whatever

I want to eat, and having this really comfortable, nice room and you know it wasa contradiction.This student struggled to bridge the gap between her Northern privilege and

the poverty of the people with whom she worked in her host country—peoplewith whom she felt she shared a history of colonization. Another minority studentworked with a foreign agency and lived austerely in a dormitory. Her clients andfriends constantly told her that she should not be taking the bus since her co-workerswere well-paid Northerners and they were constantly kidding me about that . Yetanother minority participant spoke of clear distinctions in the living arrangements.Rooms for the foreign workers were air conditioned, but those elsewhere in thebuilding, where the locals lived, were not. Meals were also prepared separatelyand the dining area was divided.

There was a clear division, and actually I respected it. But it was funny,because when I was by myself they were fine about me sitting there be-cause I blended in, again, whereas someone else who was m aybe w hitewere told, no, you should go over there.

When this student, who was of similar ethno-racial and cultural background,tried to mix with the local clients, she encountered resistance from herfellow foreignworkers. These differences created a new awareness for the participants of color asthey realized that even in Southern space, where they are in the majority, they hadto struggle to find he ir own space. These contradictions allowed the participants ofcolor to forge ahead to create a positive workspace in which to form relationships.Differences in the way that white and nonwhite participants were treated does notsuggest that the white participants did not have strugg les. The participants of co lorwere clearer in their goals to eliminate as many barriers as possible and w ere morecautious not to create or perpetuate binaries of dominant/superior position, sincethis was their reality in their home country, Canada.

Occupying Space W hite Participants—Facing Cultural Differences

Upon arriva l, many w hite students felt like liens in their environment. However,these feelings were short lived as they became more attuned to their environmentand came to realize that whiteness signified superiority and privileged status. Somewhite participants even yearned to have a warm glow to their com plexion, thatis, to becom e more like the other, while others indicated that they cam e aliv ein the South. Some initially appeared oblivious to the complexities of forging re-


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participants, and the local people observed this special treatment. One white studentshared the following:

I think they were apprehensive of me; my supervisor would not let me goanywhere alone.... She always sent a driver with m e and I know that mycolleagues were wondering, why do get a drive in? There w as this feelingof being different from my colleagues and being treated more special.

In a residence where another white student lived, the way in which men andwomen related to each other was clearly demarcated. She confessed to beingunaware of these cultural norms and went out with the men alone, creating angstamong local studen ts, especially the women. These students ostracized her and sheclaimed to be unaware that her behavior led to negative feelings.

I was the only w hite person to be seen and that was comm ented on a lot....They were all guys that took me out...it actually took me a while beforeI could actually talk to them (the other students); they weren't especiallyfriendly.... Yes, that took me a while to establish any kind of rapport.Really strange, really nervous—it felt like a few months was going to beincredibly long.

She had completed a placement abroad before this practicum. In that country,she felt like a minority and believed the local people were against white people.This student was unable to understand that others may have m aligned her becauseshe behaved as a privileged, white Northerner, who was acting out a colonizingrole in her interaction with the local people. After sharing her frustrations with lo-cal students, she realized the gaps in awareness of cultural differences, especiallyrelating to gender. When people from differently ordered spaces from the North and

the South meet, there are consequences. According to Pratt (1992: 6), this spaceof colonial encounters, the contact zone, is one in which peoples geographi-cally and historically separated come into contact with each other and establishongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, andintractable conflict. Th is student undoubtedly experienced conflict in her contactwith the racialized other, and like other participan ts, was constituted in and by herrelations with the other.

Living conditions were sites of learning for some white students as someventured out of their quarters to experience them firsthand within the community.They were invited to spend time with the local people, their colleagues, and theirfamilies. This opportunity to experience how the other lived provided insights


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intact after the experience. Thus, the natives were on display. This white studentgave the following account of a stay with a local family:

I lived with them for a weekend without electricity, without running water.That was when I really felt I experienced how they live and I thought, it'slike camping.... I can handle it for three days, but I thought, this is howthey live and this is fine. This is what they know.

Th is sojourn into the tow nships to experience and witness the lifestyle of thepeople reassured her that the native people were comfortable in their environm entand she got over feeling sorry for them, since they really did not know any bet-ter. She equates the living conditions of the people in the township to cam ping ,generally a summer holiday tradition of many in Canada, where roughing it isassociated with a spirit of freedom and getting in touch with nature. These utter-ances therefore unequivocally state that the participant could not live like them;however, they are used to these conditions and therefore they did not know anybetter. Privileged people easily explain away the plight of the poor by rationalizingand managing their feelings when confronted with poverty. Such rationalizationmakes it easier for the student to other the local people and to relegate them to

almost subhuman status. According to Goldberg (2000 : 155), the spaces of theOther— thecolonies, plantations, reservations...the villages and townships...becomethe laboratory in which these epistemological constructs may be tested....

Other whites deliberately chose to live austerely like the natives, which begsthe question : Did they believe that by going native they could level the playingfield

You know I lived in the camp; I slept in worse conditions than refugeesin some cases. I ate there. I jus t did everyth ing. I was what they call, you

know, almost went, what's the word, natural or whatever, you know.

This participant wanted to be like the other, to experience their living condi-tions, but with a specific goal, to verify authenticity in her research. In the prev iousexample, living like a privileged white had its problems. In this example, livinglike the natives also had its problems. It appears that these efforts, while allowingthe foreigner to taste a bit of degenerate living conditions, also helped to deepenthe divide between the privileged Northerner who can move in and out of privilegeand degenerate living conditions. These situations indicate that living space can

become sites for domination and subordination, as these arrangements can deepenthe binaries of rich and poor, bad and good, squalid and posh, and dominant and


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unsettled by the poverty they witnessed all around them and continually referred

to themselves as privileged in comparison with the local people. Living cond itionsabroad allow students to become more attuned to their lifestyle at home and, w hilein the moment, they become quite concerned about their own consumerism andprivilege.

Occupying Space The Faculty

Some faculty members spoke of living in very sophisticated quarters. Theyrecognized that such upper-class accommodations w ere unavailable to them in theNorth and out of the realm of possibility for many in the South. Many appeared to beinnocen t of their role in sustaining hegemony in the South in their role as academicfaculty. One faculty member described her upper-class living conditions withoutdismay or concern for the contradictions inherent in these arrangements.

We were living like our colleagues, not the people we were attemptingto serve. We actually lived in an upper-class neighborhood, so the peoplewe interacted with socially were not at our social level. Like we wereoften invited to parties that a minister might be giving , so we had a littleexperience of being a prince...some of our colleagues came from well-established families.

The local academics cam e from privileged backgrounds, but still held the whiteNorthern academic in esteem, because they viewed them as the experts.

Another white academic discussed her living conditions in apologetic terms,but ultimately appreciated the luxury because of safety issues.

Again, I'm going to use that word embarrassment...for safety sake theyput me in what I call tourist town, and so that was a bit of an embarrass-ment. I had, I guess, by their standard all the luxuries, but each day theblacks that I would first see would be the chambermaids and the guardsaround the hotel, and beach guards.... By the time I walked my eight toten blocks to get public transportation, then I re-entered the w orld whereI was the only w hite. I would have much preferred to live in a neighbor-hood where I had an opportunity to have more interaction, but I alsoappreciated safety.

Th is participant clearly felt the d ivisions and w anted to live differently, but alsoappreciated that her living quarters were luxurious by their standards. These dif-ferences in residential quarters set up a hierarchy for the foreign worker with the


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still better off than the average native. he above participant experienced contradic -

tions such as being in the house of the governor in the morning and later hav ingdinner in a shack with all kinds of people peeking in the window because they areso excited. I hadn 't thought of it until afterward, but I would be as a dignitary.

Such experiences were more common to white participants, whose skin colordistinguished them. These distinctions w ere sometimes m ore problematic for thestudents of color, especially when they observed how the local people elevatedthe white subject. It is noteworthy how identities are produced in living spaces.In these situations, can white bodies become disembodied in the South in the waythat bodies of color are disembodied in both the North and Sou th? Despite efforts

to narrow the divide by living like a Southerner, their privilege and status remainedunchanged . Minority participants in this study struggled to define their status in theSouth. Spivak (1999:79) notes that postcolonial academ ics in the West are alwaysconscious of their minority status, especially after having recognized themselvesas tokens of the entire Third World and as affirmative ac tion alibis. I am con-scious that I appear to depict the white subject solely as refashioning colonizingbehaviors and minority participants as non-colonizers. The minority participant isalso privileged as a Northerner. My point is to illustrate how Northern imag iningsof the other, and the behav iors, experiences, and learning from going abroad arefirmly rooted in history, as well as how history continues to shape and influenceNorth-South relations.

Nationality and dentity

My examination of how participants occupied spaces while abroad revealedcommonalties in the experiences of white and nonwhite participants and distinctdifferences in power and privilege. I now explore how the dialectic of race andwhiteness, nationality and identity coalesce to produce complex relations in thisjourney to learn. According to Hill Collins (1998), our ties to the nation vary ac-cording to where one is placed on the racial hierarchy. Social locations of raceand culture sharply affect one's images and feelings about nationality, and theselead to ongoing debates on identity and citizenship . The m inority participants whocame from postcolonial territory to inhabit settler-state society are relegated to themargins. Lew is (2(X)0: 262) describes the state as a geopolitical and adm inistrative settlem ent, which has two elements. The first is the legal and political authorityto assign citizenship and the second is the imagined community in which there is

cultural belonging, forms of inclusion and exclusion. When ethnicity and cultureare subsumed under something called the national, the national stands for thej i d h d fi d ' h i ' d fi d h ' h ' d ' i i '


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The contradictions and tensions produced from whiteness became evident in

the stories of many of the

participants, including those of the minority participants,who w ere overwhelmed with the degree to which whiteness operated as a sign ofsuperiority in the South. According to Lipsitz (1998: 1), although whiteness iseverywhere in the North, it is especially difficult for white people to see. Manyof the white participants had not considered how whiteness might affect them informerly colonized spaces. They generally had not read the abundant literatureon this topic.^ Perhaps this unfamiliarity stemmed from their uneasiness with thesubject of whiteness, which like race and racism, produces tensions and anxietieswhen discussed because it forces recognition of privilege and dominance and has

a bearing on how one is positioned abroad.Many of the minority participants had recenUy immigrated to Canada or

descended from immigrants who live and work in the North and carry specificremnants of a postcolonial culture (this, in and of itself contains contradictoryand shifting meanings). Imm igrants have been pivotal to the building of Canadiansociety and Canada has become a more dynamic and vibrant society because ofimmigrants (Fleras and Elliott, 2000: 252). They possess the rights to citizenshipand the right to be different, due to our multicultural policy. However, nonwhite

immigrants that fail to blend into white societal norms encounter prejudice, dis-crimination, and racism in all sectors of society (Ibid.). These feelings hold truefor the offspring of immigrants bom in Canada. Nationality, therefore, when takenup by minorities in the North, differs from that of most white immigrants, whoseclaim to Northern space is more auth entic . Notions of nationality and citizenshipare further disrupted when minority people visit postcolonial sites.

Am bivalence and Identity Participants of Co lor

Some of the nonwhite participants discussed their disconnectedness fromCanada, their country of residence, and felt they occupied an in-between space.

minority student grappled with her emotions when she realized she was returningto a space she had fled as a refugee a few years earlier. She recognized changes inthe country and recounted the similarities she still shared with the local peop le. Inthis journey, she realized that she could never identify as a Canadian:

I looked like them [the local people]. I was not different. I also had thesame cu lture.... I am Iranian. I never consider myself Canadian because I

do n't belong to the culture. I

just came here because I had to. I live here.I belong everywhere; that it is not just one country I belong to.


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has been forged by racism, alienation, resistance, and change. I find it

exasperating to continually explain that all Canadians are not white andthen to be totally ignored with the determined question of W here areyour parents from?

People of color even if they are birth citizens in a country dominated by wh ites,will never feel an absolute sense of belonging because of their racially marginal-ized status. Continually haunting them at home and abroad is the question: W hereare you from?^

Like these nonwhite subjects. Rath (2000: 23) describes himself as being in

this Third Sp ace as a naturalized U.S. citizen bom in India. For him, being anAm erican is a spatial identity, which is a constructed dom icile arrangem ent...inexchange for my willingness to accept the subject-hood of the sovereign nationcalled the United S tates. Bhabha (1994: 2) uses the concept of Third Sp aceto describe diasporic identity and notes that individual experiences are part ofthe larger processes of historical change . He states that it is in the emergence ofthe interstices—the overlap and displacement of domains of difference—that theintersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, orcultural values are nego tiated. Some minority participants questioned their mixedfeelings of being a naturalized citizen in a country that marginalizes them. Forexample, one minority participant illustrated how traveling abroad exacerbatedher fragile sense of Canad ian identity:

When I am in another country, I do becom e more nationa listic. I identifyas a Canadian and find myself having to justify my citizenship to curioustravellers and at border crossings. I have to prepare myself to explain whyI see myself as a Canadian first before Japanese.

This student indicated that being abroad heightened issues around nationalityfor her. Feeling compelled to assert her identity as a Canadian, she felt she became more nationalistic. The need to justify her citizenship as Canadian for thoseabroad is due to the global imaginary of a Canadian as white; in the eyes of thelocal people, she did not fit that image. She constructs for herself a hierarchical,hyphenated status (in Canada she is seen as Japanese-Canadian), claiming to be Canadian first before Japanese. Such hyphenated statuses construct the minority s outside the national discourse. For Spivak (1999), home for people in the m arginsstands for a safe place where there is no need to explain oneself to outsiders, aswell as for community. Media images and national myths are quite potent, sincemany local people who had not visited the North had clear visions of who fit the


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know if identified myself as a Black person. Acceptance was definitelymixed, some of it was acceptance and some of it was I was an outsider.

Other minority participants who discussed their national identity did not claimto be Canadian first. Som e of them becam e more fervently attached to a hyphenatedidentity and/or more keenly aware of how they were connected to their country oforigin. Another minority participant related her feelings when in the South:

One of the things that surprised me, though, is that I went there thinkingof myself as Canadian , but I found that in Africa I got further a feel thatI was Jamaican first and C anadian second.

The process she described passed through stages: she claimed one status, thenanother, and finally concluded that even though she lived in the North, she wasJamaican first and Canadian second. According to Mahtani (2002: 78), hyphen-ation produces spaces of distance and complicates questions of national identity.One can claim a Canadian identity, be a Canadian citizen, and also be positionedoutside of the nation because of being racialized in particular ways. Many of theparticipants of color were ambivalent about claiming Canadian nationality becauseof their knowledge and experiences of racism. They preferred a hyphenated nationalidentity because they are scripted as different by their ethnicity, and spatializeddifferently on Canadian soil from wh ites of British ancestry who are the principalones able to claim Canadian identity as an unmarked category. Notions of nation,nationality, and citizenship can produce difficulties, especially when race is takeninto account.

Reflecting on the Experiences The White Participants

According to Bhabha (1990 : 11), the essence of a nation is that all individualshave many things in comm on, and also that they have forgotten many things. Awhite participant was indignant for having to apologize for being a Canadian andfor being seen as belonging to a white nation. How she constructs herself withinthe nation of Canada conforms to the colonial imaginary of who belongs to Canadaand indicates how easy it is to forget historical relations of power. Her exaspera-tion showed when she described her life of privilege in comparison to those in theSouth and felt she had to justify her status:

Of cou rse, you feel guilty, you know, for a while. You know a lot of peoplethere tell me you can 'tfeel guilty because you were born in North Am erica.It is jus t/ar e of the gods that we were born here and they were bom there


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her privileged status and the suffering of the people from the host country resultfrom the fate of the god s. She fails to see the causal role of global disparities ofwealth and resources in creating such imbalances. Nor does she fully grasp howthe North, where she resides, is implicated in the inequities in the South. There iscomplete denial of our implication in each other's histories and realities. Bhabhabelieves that forgetting is crucial to the creation of a nation, since inquiries intohistory reveal the violence that helped to construct a particular nation; we thereforerealize who benefits from these consequences. In Canada, the Aboriginal peopleinhabited the land before Europeans arrived, but have been made persona non gratain their own country. For the construction of Canada as a country of tolerance and

liberality, it has been necessary to forget the violent history of the Europeans, w hoperformed acts of conquest and genocide to forge the nation in their own likenessand being.

While abroad, the political implications of one's identification with a nationemerged. white, male participant stated it was far better to identify as a Canadianthan as an Am erican because of mixed responses to the power and hegemony ofthe U.S. He stated that:

Canada is viewed in fairly high regard in many places and certainly I

found that...once they found out that I wasn't American, that seemed tobreak down some of the barriers right away.

Another white participant described how her travels abroad led her to a moreconscious aw areness of her Canadian identity:

I never really thought of my Canadian iden tity until I traveled abroad andI was able to question who I was, the expectations around me, and thelifestyle I lived. I did n't recognize m y Canad ian identity until I was able

to remove m yself from it and experience a life and culture that I was unac-customed to . My travels helped me refiect on who I was as an indiv idual.On a national level, I identify myself as a Canad ian.

These identifications with nation distinguished how white and nonwhiteparticipants processed their journey abroad and the profound impact the journeyhad on their national identity. Some of the white participants in this study spokeemotionally about how nationalistic feelings emerged during their travels to theSouth. Going abroad caused the participants to refiect on their nationality and

citizenship . Two white participants initially experienced m ixed feelings about theirCanadian identity. Yet later they were roused , as Bhabha notes above, to claim


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I can't separate who I am from where I come from. I am em bedded in my

history and in my society as much as other people.In contrast, two minority participants living in the North recounted their mixedfeelings about being Canadian:

I never consider myself Canadian because I don't belong to that culture.

I have an identity and I know where I am. In ternally, definitely, but externalacceptance is definitely more there [than in Canada].

In this study, the feelings of nonwhite participants of being an insider andoutsider to the nation are significant for their claims to nationality. Kaplan (1997 :28) argues that discourses of nation and nationality impact on race . Nationalismcan be linked to forms of patriotism that emerge in times of national crisis. TheSeptember terrorist attacks created a crisis of identity for many people in the U .S.Som e minority group m embers felt compelled to proclaim their sense of patriotismby pledging allegiance to the Am erican nation. These groups, already marginalizedby dominant society, were also aware that they would be under extensive surveil-lance in the aftermath of these attacks and felt that they had to show their supportfor the country in which they reside.^

A postcolonial world calls for powerful re-imaginings of nation, as peoplefrom formerly colonized societies move to white settler societies and colonialmetropoles. These shifts disrupt the taken-for-granted forms of nation, and newtheories and reconceptualizations of nation are required (Murray, 19 97:1 2). Minor-ity participants felt that their presence in the host country sharpened within themfeelings of alienation from the country in which they reside. These feelings wereexacerbated when they witnessed how their white colleagues received preferential

treatment abroad and how racism and imperialism operated within the spheres ofinternational social work.

Professional mperialism and Social Work

International work has intensified in the era of globalization. Global and politicalunrest, weather-related disasters, and ongoing economic struggles in many countriesaffect the m igratory patterns of emigran ts, refugees, and displaced persons. Theseglobal and local issues demand new consciousness and more informed responses.

This is especially true for social workers, who work with the disenfranchised insociety. Some view going abroad as one way to responsibly address global problems.


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1992: 15). There is an innocence of their implication in these global inequities, and

how they are constituted in and by their relations with each other Ibid.:

7).Many social workers share the ideals of global justice and human rights, whichthey seek to promote in their work and in their pursuits abroad. Some are moreconscious of the limitations of their subject positions in local and global space. Thepower and privilege of whiteness in Southern space can interfere with their originalintent to practice global justic e and human rights. Many of the participants agreedthat racism and imperialism are inherent in the internationalization process.

For the participants of color, visiting or revisiting colonized space unsettledtheir relations to nation, nationality, and citizenship. The ir identity did not becomeas secured as that of white participants, who ultimately claimed ties to their nationof residence and citizensh ip. For minority participants, citizenship is inscribed onpaper, but not fully in their minds. Further research is needed on the experiences ofminority participants who leave a Northern space, where they are marginalized, toa Southern space, where they form the majority. Development work and researchin the South have been the domain of white Northerners and the literature confirmstheir stronghold on this area. However, the terrain for work is shifting, as moreminority Northerners are pursuing work abroad. Given the complexities inherentin going abroad for teaching, research, and practica, it is imperative for the profes-sion to make concerted efforts to respond to many of the dilemmas noted in theseinternational pursuits. This is the ongoing task for international work.

N O T E S

1. See N. Razack (2004).2. Gillespie (2003) exam ines the pitfalls and paradoxes of eross-cultural exchange in the post-

colonial era, in which research collaborations and programs for international study abroad, as well as

through virtual means, are being explored and established.3. Abo riginal people still experienc e a colonial style of adm inistration, since those in power

decide on their rights and forms of entitlement. See Lawrence (2002).4. Soja's analysis of Thirdspace and S. Raza ck's Unm apping of a White Settler Society

rely heavily on the groundbreaking works of Henri Lefebvre's The roduction of Space (1991) and Reflections on the Politics of Spa ce (1976: 31). Lefebvre argues forcefully for a triple dialectic: thelinking of historicality and sociality w ith spatiality. He propose d that th concep t of social space includesmental and physical space, containing the social relations of prcxiuction and reproduction, Lefebvre(1991:7,39) identified three elements in the production of space: perceived, conceived, and lived. SeeMohanram (1999) for examinations of how space/landscape is critical to the construction of identity,

5. See Bhabha (199 4), Mani (1998), and Suleri (1992) for further readings on decoloniza tionand postcoloniality.

6. See Roediger (1994), Lipsitz (1998), and Frankenberg (2000,19 97) for various discussions on


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Bodies on the Move by Razack.pdf

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Transcript of Bodies on the Move by Razack.pdf