Assimilation?

This recent post recently, and deserverdly, created quite a stir. Only today, thanks to kateelliott  I read this one  on the heart-rending road of assimilation at all costs.

It's easy to think that, if 'they' are 'here' (whomever 'they' are and wherever 'here' is) 'they' should conform, and then all the problems will go away and we'll be a big happy family. Problem is that... you know, it doesn't work that way.

What does it mean, 'conforming'? Learning the language? OK it's common sense, if one is in a new country learning the language makes things way less complicated, it allows one to navigate bureaucracy more easily, it makes everyday things like shopping for groceries and going to see a doctor just commonplace errand instead of a minefield that can potentially put one's life at risk (literally, there have been cases of people going in ER because of misunderstood drug dosage).

BUT if one works 12 to 15 hours at day in a sweatshop, and that someone happens to be semi-illiterate in his/her own mother language because s/he left school in second grade since s/he had to work to help the family (true case, I met quite a few people like this). do you really think they'll have either the energy or the strenght to enroll in a language course? I still remember the voice and face of the new mother that answered my 'You know, the municipality puts up free courses of Italian for new residents' , with a resigned 'we were already ignorant in China'.

When you spend months feeling inadequate, lost in the 'new country' how much energy, how much courage it takes to enter a classroom, knowing that you know nothing and don't have the tools (previous schooling, for instance) that would help you to learn at what you think is a reasonable rate?

I remember another mother, one that had asked for help from the social services, because she was a widow, worked all day, and her child was home alone when not at school (here school is 8 AM- 1 PM most days). An arrangement was made and the child spent the afternoon with the family of an (Italian) classmate, until her mother came home. When the social worker that was in charge of the case asked the mother if she wanted to make sure that the child would not lose important elements of her (Chinese) cultural background the mother said 'No, she will live here, she must be Italian, she must not spend her life sitting at a sewing machine as I'm doing'.

Those are a couple of the reasons why when I read or hear things like 'They don't want to integrate'  I feel smoke coming out of my ears.
Stop a minute and think, please: who would move a few thousand kilometers, trying to build a new life in a new country and decide on purpose to not even try to fit in?  

And yet, pray, tell me, what is enough? When that lady's child goes out is it enough that she speaks perfect Italian? Or will she worry about the shape of her eyes, pretend she doesn't know how to eat with chopsticks and become selectively deaf about stupid jokes?

I work often with schools, trying to ease the change  for  the students coming from abroad, their families and  the teachers. I think in ten years I've seen most of it: the lone student that becomes the 'exotic trophy' of the class and gets paraded as often as possible ('last year she didn't speak a word and listen to her now' ), the one that 'maybe should be evaluated by a psychologist since he's been in class for two weeks and can't say 'Can I go to the bathroom' yet' (in this case the teacher didn't even pronounce the student's name properly because 'it's too difficult' ), those that just sit quietly trying to get noticed as little as possible, those who at some point get so frustrated that they explode, thowing or breaking things and then the teachers go 'how could that happen? we did all we could'.

  The informed parents, the confused ones, those that try to go by what they know of the school in their home country, those that learn Italian from their children, those who try and give up.

The dedicated teachers, the prejudiced ones, those who haven't got a clue but try, those who 'you gave me a lot of links but I've no time to go through them', those who go 'Sum up China for me in 30 minutes' and the ones that  really don't get how the Chinese logographic system could possibly work.

And now I see the confused families that find themselves with an Italian teen who is a mistery to them, the school drop-outs who speak two half-languages, and thankfully the ones who made it and are breezing through high school or university.

But will the language or the schooling be enough even for the latter? Will they try to forget where they come from out of self-preservation, distance themselves from everything remotedly Chinese to feel 'safe' ? Refuse to speak their mother tongue with their older relatives, like my Swiss-born cousin used to do? Will they sometimes refuse to be seen with the parents that brought them here who have remained 'too Chinese' endangering the 'I'm just like everyone else' façade?

I pray it will not be, and that what I did when I met them and worked with them has helped, in some way, or, at least, that I've done no harm.