The Difficult Process of Immigrant Integration: Policy Lessons from Terra Estrangeira

Jessamyn Waldman

At the start of the 21st Century, one in every 35 people is an international migrant. If they all lived in the same place, it would be the world's fifth-largest country.

--International Organization from Migration

In the globalized world, migration and dependence on immigrant labor are a reality for a growing number of countries. Interdependence is challenging one of the foundations of modern life: national sovereignty. This happens because migration limits a nation’s ability to control activity within a territory, which, in effect, confirms the arbitrariness of national borders. Through the characters in the Walter Salles and Daniel Thomas’ film Terra Estrangeira, this paper will consider the challenges of immigrant integration and how inadequate government programs to support new arrivals can lead to isolation, discomfort and even resentment of the receiving country. This is a pertinent question because inadequate policies can challenge sovereignty in the receiving country.

Immigration policy responds to the threat that immigrants pose to national sovereignty. These are policies that limit who can come and go, how long they can stay and what they are required to do while there. One of the biggest policy challenges for migrant receiving countries is integration or, in effect, socializing new arrivals to national culture. A nation’s integration policy dictates whether and when immigrants receive social services, resettlement aid, education, and, more generally, how a society receives new arrivals. For a nation concerned with protecting sovereignty, the maintenance of a cohesive collective national identity is of the highest priority. This is because it is through myths of national cohesion that a country is able to legitimize authority. In countries of immigration, integration policy is an important element of creating a sense of national cohesion and national sovereignty.

Despite the fact that integration policy plays an important role in affirming national sovereignty, governments are currently struggling to find policies that acculturate new arrivals. Evidence of this lack of policy is a rise in anti-immigrant violence and the emergence of radicalized of immigrant groups. One of the reasons for the lack in adequate policies is that when immigrants come from a multitude of places where culture differs and the factors effecting the emigration decision differ, it is challenging to create "blanket" policies that work in this diverse environment. For example, people who emigrate from countries that share a language, religion or culture with the receiving country may require less support than people who migrate from countries that don’t share these things. Conversely, when rural/ urban breakdown, economic system, and status of conflict differ greatly from the receiving country, immigrants may require additional support in integrating. In this paper, I will argue that there is another factor which influences the ability of immigrants to integrate which is situation under which a person left their home country. Namely, migrants that left their home country under duress or threat of violence are able to integrate into society and accept the hardship of being in a new country. While those who left a stable country have more difficulty integrating into the new society and may never fully accept their new homeland. This question is of great importance to receiving nations, because being able to anticipate how people will integrate makes it possible to better tailor immigration policy and thereby ensure better social cohesion and maintenance of sovereignty.

Terra Estrangeira (1996) is about the flow of humanity and difficulties associated with displacement from ones homeland. In the film, migrants from Spain, Brazil and Angola experience poverty, vulnerability to crime, and loneliness. This paper considers the challenges that those characters face in adjusting to a new country and how the conditions that compelled them to leave influence their ability to integrate, adjust to life abroad, and find happiness in a new country. Using the characters in the film, I will consider the hypothesis that migrants from more conflicted countries have a smoother integration in a receiving country and require less support in terms of government policy. This hypothesis has important public policy implications to countries that are dependent on migrant labor, for if it were possible to anticipate which migrants would have difficulties in this process, a nation could better create programs tailored to the needs of specific migrant groups and better facilitate acculturation.

The first character introduced in the film is Manuela, Paco’s (the protagonist) mother. The film quickly reveals that she is a woman who is suffering deeply from her longing to return home. Manuela was born is San Sebastian, Spain and has lived in Brazil for an undisclosed amount of time, working as a seamstress. Her son, in his late teens was born in Brazil, and from the little that we know about the character she has been abroad for so long that her memories of San Sebastian are ghosts that haunt her memory. In the opening shot of the film, we see her struggling to climb the stairs of her high-rise apartment building. Some of the first words spoken in the film are lamenting the landlord who refuses to fix the elevator. The struggle that Manuela has arriving to her apartment is symbolic of the struggle that permeates every aspect of her life. Manuela’s only solace and companionship comes from her son who she fears is preparing to move away from home. The isolation communicated by Manuela’s character is a caveat to immigration policy makers, because in the decades that she has lived in Brazil, she has not put down roots or integrated into the larger society. Instead she has remained alone and focused on the return to Spain.

In a very telling scene, Manuela tells Paco of her visceral need to return to San Sebastian, her homeland. She tells him, "I have to go to get it out of my system." When Paco suggests that they can't afford it, she insists that she has enough money in the bank for the two of them to buy tickets. Her biggest desire is to return to Spain once before she dies and she is willing to spend everything that she has saved. In the very next scene, the metaphorical and literal final blow Brazil delivers to Manuela, we see that they Bank of Brazil has frozen savings accounts which makes it impossible for her to afford the trip. This juxtaposition between scenes suggests Manuela’s inability to return to her home kills her.

While we do not know Manuela’s reasons for initially immigrating to Brazil, we do know that she did not migrate because of danger or a dislike of Spain. On the contrary, when she left the country perhaps 30 or 40 years before, she left behind parents who she loved and missed dearly (we know this because she reflects that her son looked like her father and threaten to call him Daddy) and a city that she loved dearly (she still cherishes a tattered postcard with a picture of San Sebastian). Whether she left Spain for love, opportunity or a sense of adventure, what is clear from the film is that she has regretted her decision and left assuming that she would some day return. Considering that she left a country that had positive associations for her, her integration was difficult and, after a long time living in Brazil, she still views it as an oppressive state and lives in near complete isolation. Other characters in the film, like the Loli and the Angolans, Alex and even her son, Paco feel like returning to their home is less of an option and therefore make more of an attempt to integrate, or at least find themselves a place in the society.

The Angolan immigrants play a small but significant role in "Foreign Land." The hotel manager tells Paco when he arrives, "our hotel is on the second floor, there are blacks boarding on the third floor. They have nothing to do with us." Despite this caveat, Loli, a migrant or refugee from Angola, is Paco’s first and only confident when he arrives in Lisbon. Loli is comfortable in this foreign city; he has been there for a long time and he has a network of country-mates who provide support and advice. Loli and his friends are the only migrants in the movie who seem to be content with their status. An exchange between Loli and Paco helps to explain this contentedness. After finding-out that his friend Miguel had been killed, Loli comments to Paco that, "Brazilians don’t care about death or violence." They live dangerously and take unnecessary risks. By saying this, Loli is warning Paco to behave himself because things could get worse. "I’m from Angola, back home they shot half of the population." Loli and his companions are grateful to be alive and do not experience intense nostalgia for their lost country. Angolan immigrants in the film clearly suffer because they are outsiders, but they know from experience that things can get worse. Because they risk deportation to a frightening reality, they resist getting involved in crime and violence. They value their new country and have begun to build community and roots in Lisbon. To extrapolate from a these characters to a policy perspective, Loli and other immigrants in his situation require less support in integration precisely because they feel fortunate to be away from the threat of severe physical harm.

In terms of ability to integrate, Paco, the film’s protagonist, is somewhere between the desperate isolation that Manuela experiences and the active integration that Loli and the Angolans exhibit. This confirms the hypothesis that having a difficult situation in the homeland makes it integration easier. Paco takes an offer to carry goods to Brazil following personal and economic crisis in Brazil. The situation that he leaves is desperate; unemployment is sky-rocketing, his Mother and provider has died, and the Government has seized all of their meager assets. Under these conditions he agrees to carry a package to Lisbon. Although the antique dealer doesn’t overtly state that it is illegal, Paco, who knows that there is something suspicious, but resists asking for details because he is desperate to leave. The situation is Brazil is not as overt as the brutal violence that the Angolans are fleeing, but Paco is still desperate to leave. Paco’s sentiments are similar to those of Miguel’s, a Brazilian immigrant in Lisbon whose involvement in crime gets him killed, who says to Pedro, "I can’t stay, I can’t go back. The thought of going back to Brazil sends shivers down my spine." For that reason we can observe his willingness to integrate which is much more than his mother, he does make friends with Loli, Pedro and falls in love with Alex. He does not suffer from loneliness as his mother does, but does, despite the warnings of Loli, become involved with the criminal element. Because his fear of going home is not as acute as that of the Angolans (he does not risk violence, but rather poverty) he is willing to take risks to earn money. Loli, who is scared to death of returning home, warns Paco against getting involved with crime. Paco ignores the warnings and eventually dies because of it. From a policy perspective, characters such as Paco who are more than anything economic migrants require more comprehensive policies that create incentives to not become involved in risky criminal activity and that make it easier to access legal work opportunities.

Using fiction to extrapolate to the real world can be potentially dangerous. However, using themes and characters to spark debate about how to improve society is a worth while pursuit. Characters in Terra Estrangeira suggest much about the migrant experience and can be used to think about new ways to improve government policy accordingly. While generally, integration policies serve a large population which includes people who have migrated from many different countries under a multitude of situations, this movie suggests that this is not an effective strategy. On the contrary, people who come from places, who can return home or desire to return home, are likely to have more difficulty integrating. To protect national sovereignty and to reduce anti-immigrant sentiments and friction, governments should tailor policies to these realities. If they don’t, as we have seen in Terra Estrangeira, the consequences can be dire.