Married at first sight, Immigrants

The other day I happened to see the teaser for the program “Married at First Sight” on TV Norge on Facebook.

The feature made my immigrant heart happy.

Weird accents in a popular program

For the first time, TV viewers can see first-generation immigrants with their strange accents take part in a popular programme.

Many in the comment section expressed sympathy with the immigrant man Remi Georges Alashkar (34), from Syria and Lørenskog.

No xenophobia was to be found in the comments. It was as if he were completely Norwegian.

For a long time, first-generation immigrants have either been portrayed as helpless, poor people scattered to all winds on their way to Europe, or mean parents who force their children to marry cousins ​​from their homeland.

Or who is glued to the satellite TV screen at home, drowned in grief and nostalgia, unaware of what is happening in the children’s lives or in the wider world.

Removes “bad villain” associations

Their weird accent has been associated with being stupid or mean villains. But not anymore.

Now, for the first time, you can see them in a positive context and in a normal setting.

We see that they are also people with dreams and hopes, people who can actually participate in a reality love show.

For me as a first-generation immigrant, this is quite a big deal.

The reason is that you can usually relate to others who are similar to yourself, we are human beings – and we are to a greater or lesser extent connected to different groups.

My group is first-generation immigrants.

Also read: Are Norwegians as free as people think?

Norwegian, superior and stupid parents

I live close together with other immigrants in Oslo, and have noticed that the children often do not like to speak their parents’ language, regardless of where the parents are from.

They refuse to be associated with their parents’ culture and background.

They feel Norwegian, superior and think their parents are silly, stupid – and in other words they signal that they are not “like them”.

In other words, the skepticism towards strangers from society is transferred to the children. The children are Norwegian, and there is great care for them in society.

They are our children, you often hear on TV and read in columns. They are a natural part of Norwegian society.

Although there are evil forces that question their background and identity and make them insecure.

An existential earthquake

But the public rhetoric must not go beyond innocent immigrants who are trying their best to be part of a new society. Moving out of one’s own country is not easy, it is a huge adjustment, and is experienced as an existential earthquake both from the inside and the outside.

Throughout my long life as an immigrant, I have known immigrants with high education and respectable jobs in their home country. For example, they have been doctors in Somalia or university professors in Syria or Iran.

They often attend Norwegian courses and have to apply for approval of their education here.

They have often sat on Norwegian courses with people who can barely read and write.

Read also: The uncertainty is a bit like entering the puberty crisis again

A generalizing and caricatured picture is drawn

The diversity among first-generation immigrants often does not come across clearly enough in the public conversation.

It is a generalizing and caricatured picture that is drawn by us out there.

I remember once that my neighbor was quite impressed that I could read Norwegian books, and that I actually recycle. Little did she know that I am a writer.

It has happened that I have asked a question to a Norwegian-speaking dispatcher, and received a response as if I were stupid. It is the same with some of the immigrant children who have grown up here. Sometimes they can be so condescending, as if they think they are automatically better than first-generation immigrants.

Where does that contempt come from?

I remember that I once saw a comedy program on NRK, which gave me fits of laughter, while at the same time it was a bit tragic.

The elephant in the dresser

The presenter asked random people in Greenland in Oslo, where immigrants usually live in their natural habitat, and what they thought of the elephant in the room.

A dark elderly man angrily replied in broken Norwegian that the elephant should not be in the room, but had to get out of there.

Another got upset and really thought the elephant was in the dresser and wanted it out at any cost.

Thus a point was made. It gave a kind of impression that we are actually stupid.

Here you can read more by Mina Bai

Like everyone else: Different and diverse

Many first-generation immigrants may not have mastered either the language or the new Norwegian culture.

But it is perhaps good to know that first-generation immigrants as a group are also like all other groups: different and diverse.

The disdain sometimes shown towards first-generation immigrants is not always justified.

When children refuse to speak their parents’ language or to learn about their parents’ culture, literature or food, they miss out on a whole world of experiences, history and knowledge.

Learning about such things does not take anything away from their Norwegianness, but complements and enriches it.

I hope the elephant in the room gets this chronicle.

It’s me, and people like me.