Life history research: A contribution to processes of adult learning ...

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present in the developed world. At a personal level, these stereotypes affect relationships; at a systemic level they affect women’s well-being and opportunities for advancement. Immigrant women need to develop their voices and re-create themselves consciously; the creation of women’s life histories can be what Chandra Mohanty calls "a discourse of oppositional consciousness and agency". The practice of remembering "against the grain of 'public' or hegemonic history" suggests a rethinking of sociality (Mohanty, cited in Anh, 2000). Rewriting and remembering history are crucial; they are part of the process which is significant not merely as a corrective to the gaps, erasures, and misunderstandings of hegemonic masculinist history, but because the very practice of remembering and rewriting leads to the formation of politicized consciousness and self-identity. Writing often becomes the context through which new political identities are forged. It becomes a space for struggle and contestation about reality itself (Anh, 2000). One of the main benefits I gained from the process of writing this work was an increased sense of social and political consciousness, the emergence of the decolonized voice Anzaldua (1987) speaks of. Introducing and guiding this work of biographical writing could be an effective educational practice among immigrant women, as it would offer the space for them to reflect on previous identities and life experiences, and to think about fresh possibilities of being in their new context. The racialization of immigrants that come into Western nations is generalized, regardless of national origin; this also holds true for immigrant women (Thobani, 1998). The four participants in the study are university educated. After a number of years in Canada, Papalotl, Gloria and Erica developed their professional activity of choice in their new country. At the same time, all of them, except for Papalotl, said that most of members of their personal social networks are people from other Spanish speaking countries. Initially I thought this was merely a matter of preference, but when I started seeing my stay in Canada as something permanent, it became important to seek friendship with other Spanish-speaking people. One of the reasons was the similarity in the cultures; another one was the fact that, with one’s conationals, it is unnecessary to fight ethnic stereotypes. It takes a degree of emotional strength to venture into circles of white people and deepen friendships when one perceives biases, or deep lack of understanding—oftentimes unconscious, against people from one’s ethnic origin. Immigrant Women: Understanding Internal and External Images In order to understand immigrant women’s lives, it is necessary to study them before and after immigration. The notion of identity can be divided into “auto-identity” and “exo-identity” (Gimenez Montiel, 2002, my translation). An individual or a group’s identity is defined by the negotiation between these two definitions. Naturally, the entity with more political and social power has the right to define the others. Immigrant women need to translate themselves for the system, the effort towards communication does not happen the other way around. The four participants are all “Mexican women” yet; they built their identities differently in Mexico and in Canada based on the nuances of their lives in their particular social locations. The rupture in continuity implied in the immigration experience provides an opportunity for women to reflect on their lives. From an educational perspective, the practice of writing about this experience— before and after immigration—can be a powerful exercise for them. Feminist thinkers use exile as a discursive metaphor for women’s experiences of social exclusion (Karpinski, 1999). The metaphor does not necessarily imply physical displacement, nor the narrow definition of exile related to political prosecution. The classical feminist writer Elene Cixous urges women to reclaim the bodies they have been alienated from through the practice of writing (Cixous cited in Conley, 1984, p. 80). Writing is a practice that can ground the self and help people maintain wholeness during, and after this significant transition. The theme of exile is woven throughout; the four participants and myself chose to leave Mexico, not by force, but because something was missing in our lives there. The missing part was related
to gender. Adela, Papalotl, Gloria and myself came to Canada looking for a space to open up aspects of ourselves that we hid—even from ourselves—in the Mexican socio-cultural context. In describing their experiences of self-expression in Mexico, Papalotl and Adela spoke about “coming out”. They did not refer to their sexual preferences, but to lifestyle choices that were different from the mainstream, such as being a single mother by choice, or simply living in ways that were different from the expectations for women their age in the Mexican communities to which they belonged. Relocation to Canada was a long process. It took time to understand I was in a truly different context where I was seen in ways I was not aware of. In Mexico City, I was a professional, middle-class, mestiza; 1 in Toronto I became a female, non-white, graduate student living on a limited budget. I was away from everything that was familiar: class context, community, and language among others. I lost the sense of class-based power I experienced in Mexico. In exchange for that, I had a space to reflect extensively about my life and context. I also had opportunities to get to know myself in different situations; for the first time, I faced the challenge of becoming fully independent. I gradually came to the understanding of how different combinations of social locations play out in one’s sense of identity (Hall, 1993. The process implies understanding the different categories that society uses to classify us as “the other”: immigrant woman, Latin American, woman of color, graduate student, professional, artist, mother. The lived experiences described in this work amount to a balancing act between socially imposed definitions of self and immigrant women’s desire to find and enact their agency. Immigration from the developing into the developed world has powerful social, political and cultural connotations for women. Speaking about identity and social location Joan Borsa (2006) said: [By] articulating our specific experiences and representing the structural and political spaces we occupy, we offer concrete accounts of where and how we live, what is significant to our experience of cultural identity, how we have been constructed and how, in turn, we attempt to construct [and reconstruct] ourselves (p. 17). From a cultural perspective, immigrants often live in the third space; a hybrid and always changing location (Escobar, 2000; Bhabha, 1990) in which the immigrant reconstructs herself continuously in response to both the influences from her native culture and the cultural context in which she now lives. This is a translation that goes beyond language, in an attempt to translate each culture into the other (Anzaldua, 1987). Hyphenated identities such as Mexican-Canadian allude to this reality, where migrants are not Mexican in the way they were in Mexico, nor Canadian as people who have been in this land for generations. Third space educators are practitioners that have crossed borders, either metaphorically or physically, between North and South, colonizing and colonized, and become aware of what their presence means for learners in the midst of all these social intersections (English, 2005). A better understanding of the cultural experiences of immigrant women can enrich curricula and in general offer an improvement tool for educators in a variety of settings. Creating a life history text that describes the identities of immigrant women in Canada requires addressing the women’s lives pre-immigration as a way of understanding who they are and the ways in which they negotiate their presence in Canadian society (Epp, Iacovetta & Swyripa, 2004). Identity is defined by the influence of the social structure and its play with each person’s agency for self-definition based on their particular values and aspirations (Woodward, 1999). Each one of the participants created her own way of being in different communities in Canada; the Mexican and/or Spanish-speaking communities, and various business, cultural, and social circles. Finding a community not only meant looking for other Mexican people; affinities in terms of class, educational background and life values also played a role in these women’s choices of groups to socialize and build community. In my seven years of life in Canada, I have constantly experienced situations of “trial and error”, trying to find my place within 1 Mestizo refers to the ethnic mix between Spanish and native blood in Spanish-speaking Latin America.
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