2.3 Immigrants in a municipality near madrid: the teaching of  (Page 5/9)

Another group corresponds to adult women; mothers whose clear and singular objective to immigrate is to save enough to pay for their children’s education. As one of the mothers explained, "Education back home is very expensive. I come to work in Spain so that my children can study." The emigration plan is temporary. The entrance strategy is with a visa. The destination is really anyplace where they can save money. A Polish mother said to me, "I wanted to go to Germany, but it wasn’t possible with my visa and they said Spain was easier. Spain? I never thought about Spain; I looked at the map and I said OK, Spain." These women usually work as domestic servants or as care-takers of children and elders, living with their employers to save a greater amount of money. The children of these women often perceive their mothers as women with gold visas living in El Dorado.

Communication and interpretation problems of the social reality

One thing is to learn the Spanish language: another is being competent in communication. Verbal language does not make up communication as a whole. Nonverbal language, culture, customs, and the values constitute the other components of communication. Strictly verbal communication transmits relatively little. Due to the fact that the immigrants’ interaction with the native population is limited, restricted to relations at work, television becomes a window to know about Spanish customs. Via television, they observe a reality to which they do not have easy access and believe that it is the exact reflection of Spanish life. But television displays extreme, exaggerated situations that have nothing to do with the daily life of this country’s citizens. For example, a very difficult situation to understand happened on the program, “Big Brother,” in its first edition. The program became very popular and had great repercussion in the street. Immigrant students constantly asked me to explain what it was. Their interpretation of the show generated a great controversy among them. They would ask, “They are married, right? Why do they all live together?” Furthermore, they were concerned that the show’s participants were “locked up without being able to escape.” The program’s presenters commonly used the phrase, “They are prisoners,” which spurred the conversation “no, they are not prisoners. Why are they in jail? This is not jail.” This first edition of the show was set in a town called Soto de Real; which, as they all knew, has a prison known as the Prison of Soto de Real: this caused even greater confusion.

I like to ask them at the beginning of class; “What is new today?” Sometimes their personal situation is static: “nothing, nothing has changed, no papers, no work, many problems.” This tends to be the habitual answer , but one day someone said, “Chenoa and Bisbal have separated,” and they all happened to know about the gossip. I was surprised about their extended knowledge that even I did not know about. They said to me, “It’s just that there is so much on TV, drama and gossip,” and they continued speaking and commenting about other famous breakups. Immigrants remain apprehensive of reality as it appears on television, which reinforces the stereotypes of the western culture as atheist, materialist, individualist, libertarian, and lacking respect for elders. To base conclusions on isolated data, which is an error we all make at times, obviously leads to interpretation and communication errors between natives and immigrants.