The Sommers Hypothesis

Otsuba Park, Osaka, Japan, June 2017

As I was doing my fieldwork in Japan I came across something that is referred to as the Sommers Hypothesis.  Scott Sommers is a Canadian who has lived in Taiwan since 1996 and before that he lived and worked in Japan and South Korea.  His website says that he is working on his PhD in Educational Psychology at Ming Chuan University in Taipei where he also teaches English.

I read the old posts on his blog from time to time and I enjoy them. He has eclectic interests, writes well, and he's a thoughtful man with a lot of experience living in Asia.


In his blog archives I found several posts by Sommers where he looks at the EFL industry in Asia through the lens of my passion, international migration.

Foreign English Teachers as Economic Migrants

The Economic Migration of English Teachers in Asia

The Myth of the Adventurous English Teacher

The Issue of Social Class Among Foreign English Teachers

Sommers begins his inquiry with a puzzle.  Why is it that so many Anglophones from developed countries came to Asia in the 1980s and continue to come in large numbers today?  Some of this flow is Global North-North migration (Canada to Japan, for example) and some of it is Global North-South (UK to Thailand).    You have only to look at the Japanese immigration statistics for this population to see that this phenomenon is real.

Japan Statistics (see 2-14 Foreigners by Nationality and Age (Five-Year Groups) (1950--2005)(Excel:88KB)) show that in 1965 there were 12,685 US,  1,940 UK, and 1,460 Canadians in Japan.  In 1980 there were 18,590 US citizens.   In my MA dissertation Anglophone Migrants in Japan Mobility, Integration and the Secondary Labor Market  I took note of this in the larger context of increasing immigration to Japan:

• "But with the rise of the Japanese economy, foreign labor was welcomed in the 1970s and 1980s (Douglass and Roberts 2003, pp.6–7). By 2008 the foreign population had grown from less than 1 million to over 2 million (Chung 2010, p.3). Most of the migration was from other Asian countries like China but the number of Americans, British and other English speakers grew too. In 1985 there were 25,170 US citizens in Japan (Statistics Bureau n.d.). In 2010 those numbers had risen to 50,667 Americans and 16,044 British (Statistics Bureau 2016a)."

So Sommers was absolutely on to something interesting.  And he was right to focus on the sector he knows the most about, the EFL industry, because I would argue that this was the "pull" that brought these Anglophones to Asia.  All of them?  No.  A majority of them?  I would say Yes.  My study seems to confirm it and there is research to support it (See D. Hawley Nagatomo's work, for example, or a close at the visa categories they used when entering Japan).

Sommers argues that any explanation of this migration must take into account "[t]he large and seemingly endless number of Anglo-Americans who are leaving their homes; its origin in the 1980s and "[t]he fact that they move almost entirely to those places in Asia where English teaching jobs are available without special training, the income is reasonably high and the standard of living is comparable with their mother country."

He is using a push/pull model where the "pull" is:  a good economy, jobs, decent wages, and a high standard of living with a minimum of professional credentials required. He is correct that EFL jobs can be had in Asian countries with only a BA in any subject.   On the ECC website two of the requirements are: 1. "Bachelor’s degree in any discipline from a recognized institution" and 2. that the applicant be a "Native speaker of English (grade 1 through completion of high school conducted with English as the main language of instruction)."  Compare that to teaching in a public school, say, in a province of Canada which requires a degree and certification.  Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in the public schools in the US has a similar certification process (depends on the state). 

That's the pull, but what was the "push"?  Why did they leave the US, UK, Canada, Australia?  It's all the more puzzling when one considers that these were mostly young, college-educated individuals. If you look at the country statistics they don't appear to be the least privileged members of their societies.  In 2015 only 33% of Americans had a college degree. So what's up?

Some people are satisfied with a very short answer:  it's all about the adventure  This is a "lifestyle" choice  (and let's stop the conversation right there.)  But Sommers isn't satisfied with that explanation and neither am I.  For one thing, "adventure" is a very broad term and means wildly different things to different people.  For another it's a self-reported state of mind, not (as Sommers points out) something tangible that you can measure.  If someone says to me "I'm moving to France to have an adventure" then I need to follow up with "What does that mean to you?" And when she returns (if she does) what are the indicators that say "Adventure achieved." (Or not, as the case may be.)  

At some point I suggest that you have to dig deeper and go beyond what people say and look at who they are, what they did at home, how they were able to move abroad, and what they do in the host country.  I personally believe that "adventure" is indeed one of the motivations, but is it the only one? Highly unlikely.  Migration is almost always multi-causal and there is no reason to think that Anglophones from developed countries are any different.  

And here is where Sommers raises hackles because he suggests that these anglophones are not just migrants, they are economic migrants.  In general, Americans, Canadians, Brits do not like that term and don't want it applied to them.  To them, it implies low status and puts them on the same level as the unloved and unwanted immigrants in their own countries.  I fully understand their position even though I disagree with it.   

In what sense, then, are they economic migrants according to Sommers?  It has to do with their relative position in the home country job market, the capital they left home with, and the positions open to them in the host country.  He speculates that :  "Anglo-american groups are represented in East Asia as English teachers in proportion to their disadvantage in their domestic labour markets."  

And what is this disadvantage he says they have? Their degrees.

• "Since the late 1980’s, I estimate that close to a million Anglo-americans have taught English in East Asia; Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Over a number of posts, I have developed the idea this is a direct result of the decline in workplace value of the BA (Bachelor of Arts). Graduates who are not able or willing to gain further merit through graduate studies or professional education have been marginalized. Without this merit, liberal arts graduates have been forced into underemployment in the ‘dead-end’ jobs of their mother country or to move to the margins of the industrial world where their language and cultural skills have been commoditized and are thus sellable."

In other words, when young people are unable to get jobs at home that are commensurate with their university-level education (and paid well enough to cover the cost of that education), they look to opportunities abroad that leverage their degrees and native-speaker English skills.  EFL companies in Asia actively recruit young, college-educated people from those "core" Anglophone countries.  

Very interesting hypothesis.  He points to studies in the 1990s that suggest that there has been a decline in the value of the BA in those countries.  I did a quick but not extensive search for more recent data and, frankly, I found a lot of studies but no firm conclusions other than general agreement that having a tertiary education is better than not having one.  There is a good 2016 article in The Atlantic about a study that would seem to support Sommers' point.  My own study suggests that, yes, it's mostly (not always) young people with liberal arts degrees that come to Japan to work in EFL.  It was definitely the top employer by far. 

Still that's just one study and it's not proof of "push." Most college graduates in the US and other countries stay home, even those with liberal arts degrees.  What is the difference between those who stay and those who leave?  And I don't think that this can simply be a difference between the "adventuresome" and those who do not want to take the risk.

Another way to look at it is through the lens of socioeconomic status (and a degree is often used a proxy for that but I'm starting to think that this is deceptive).   In addition to degrees we might want to take a closer look at other indicators like how they were able to finance going abroad.  I came across a very few cases in my study where the adventure was almost entirely financed by the family back in the home country or personal savings. They didn't need to work and could devote 100% of their time to making connections and studying the language and culture until they were ready to find a job, open a business, or go to a Japanese university.  I can't help compare their experience to that of those who came to work "on the economy" in local jobs where they were hired for their English skills.  Almost all had a least a BA, so the real difference could be one of resources.  In a couple of cases connections were important - they already had a family member living in Japan and they lived with them until they found their feet.

Why am I so interested in this?  Am I simply being a "spoiler of fun" and all around buzzkiller?  I would defend my interest (if I must) and Sommer's hypothesis for two reasons:  1. It's my passion and I really want to dig into migration puzzles like this one.  Sommers asks good questions and right now my answer to them is "I'm not sure but I'll take that hypothesis and run with it."  Even if it takes me into uncomfortable territory.  And that alone is good enough for me.  

But then there is the second reason which concerns all of us.  One of our (Americans abroad) arguments against the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and for Residence-based Taxation (RBT) is that we are better characterized as working people with average incomes and assets, and not professional class or above, champagne-swilling, sushi-eating elite "expats."  We even write books that homelanders read about how how our experiences have greatly enriched us personally and professionally. And then we turn around and ask them to support us in our efforts to only be taxed in our host countries. It's not just the mixed message here, it's the fact that we have precious little proof that we are what we say we are. We know what we personally experience, we listen to our friends, but we know precious little about other Americans around the world or even in the next city.  And I think this matters a lot to how credible we are in this fight.

Sommers gives us one place we could start and he is to be commended for that.  But we need more data, more studies to support or refute what he has to say.  I would say that we need more studies about migrants from developed countries period.  A lot of government policies about immigration in the countries I have cited in this post are based on perceptions.  It's no different with emigration. We can kick back and listen to some politician or government bureaucrat tell us who we are (and grumble because we don't like it) or we can know ourselves and tell them with data to back it up.

And if it happens that the data show that some of us are, indeed, economic migrants?  So what?

It takes a lot of courage to pack up and leave and it takes a lot of hard word to build a life in another country with few resources.  We can be proud of ourselves for going where the work was, and there is nothing about that that says "failure" to me.

That's my unvarnished take on it, mes amis.  But I'm very interested in hearing what you think.  So fire away.

Bob Dylan and True Tales

The songwriter Bob Dylan was given the Nobel Prize for Literature a few months ago.  A few days ago his lecture was published on the official Nobel Prize website.

In my imaginary Dylan belonged firmly to my parent's generation.  I was born in 1965 and in my earliest memories one of my parents and her friends were dragging the sixties into the seventies.  (You can read more about that in A Hippy Childhood.)  Trying to be a rebel, to do something different in that context was frustrating.

• "Taking drugs as a form of adolescent rebellion simply loses any meaning when the adults in your life have already claimed that territory. Other ways had to be found. So, one day I came home and informed my mother that I had joined the Young Americans for Freedom, a very conservative youth organization. To my disappointment my mother replied with something very mild and along the lines of, 'That's nice, dear.' My mother is no fool."

When just about anything goes, so goes the inter-generational game.   We were tricked.  Tricked, I say.  Damn them for their tolerance.  Hell, might as well take up with a Frenchman and go off and be a foot soldier for international capitalism.

But Bob Dylan was there on the edge of my consciousness.  I always knew who he was.  I couldn't own him in my mind for my generation but I did listen to some of his songs and read some of the lyrics of those songs which were pure poetry.

So his lecture was something of a surprise for me.  It's brilliant. He pays homage to who and what came before him.  He stepped into the moving river of migration himself when, as all migrants do, "I left home..."  That's it.  The first step of all travellers, tourists, migrants and expatriates; each and every one heading out into the world on a Hero's Journey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

Dylan connects the world of folk music to some of the great literature of the world and they are about travellers: books like Moby Dick that "make demands on you."  I know what he means.  I finished Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner a week or so ago.  This is a story of marriage and migration:  a trailing spouse and a native son; love, pride, hardship, catastrophe, and forgiveness.  It's fiction but it's still a "true tale" which eschews formulas and happy endings for something deeper and darker. I closed the book feeling changed.   I have to read it again and I will.  As I have reread All Quiet on the Western Front many times over the past thirty years.  Books like these just stick with you.  And it doesn't matter that they are fiction; they are still true.

Take the The Odyssey by Homer.  This is the tale of a travelling man who is not trying to make a home abroad, he's at the tail end of his journey there and he's trying to get home.  Dylan notes that it's not so easy to return.  Those of us who have been a long time away from "home" can certainly relate to this:

• "In a lot of ways, some of these same things have happened to you. You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. You too have been spellbound by magical voices, sweet voices with strange melodies. You too have come so far and have been so far blown back. And you've had close calls as well. You have angered people you should not have. And you too have rambled this country all around. And you've also felt that ill wind, the one that blows you no good. And that's still not all of it.  When he gets back home, things aren't any better. Scoundrels have moved in and are taking advantage of his wife's hospitality."

Oh yes.  You go off to be changed and while you're gone the people and places you left behind move on.  In one of Dylan's songs Down the Highway he sings the perspective of those left behind and hints at how migration can be a chain:  one person leaves and then another decides to do the same.  Rural areas, small towns and villages all around the world empty out because of this.

"Well, the ocean took my baby
My baby stole my heart from me
Yes, the ocean took my baby
My baby took my heart from me
She packed it all up in a suitcase
Lord, she took it away to Italy, Italy
So, I'm a-walkin' down your highway
Just as far as my poor eyes can see
Yes, I'm a-walkin' down your highway
Just as far as my eyes can see
From the Golden Gate Bridge
All the way to the Statue of Liberty."

Here is the audio of Dylan's lecture.  Find a quiet place and just listen.  Then, and only then,  have a look at the transcript.  Heard or read, it's pure poetry.   And I like to think that because I did listen, Dylan comes a little closer in my mind to being a part of my experience in the US and abroad.  Like all great minds, great artists and great writers, I think he has something to express that transcends time and touches me deeply and personally.

Migrants and the Fantasy of Return

"Fantasies are real and true in themselves; they happen in our psychic lives and they are consequential in so much as all our thoughts influence our perspectives on life (and are influenced by our experiences). Fantasies affect our actions, to some extent, simply because of the discursive possibilities they open up (Moskowitz 1995, 552), whether or not we act upon them."

Bolognani, M. (2016). From myth of return to return fantasy: a psychosocial interpretation of migration imaginaries. Identities, 23(2), 193-209.

How prevalent is the myth or fantasy of return among migrant/expatriates?  I think it's very common. As content as we may be in our host countries, who has not mentally played out the "What if?" scenarios at different moments in our transnational lives?  For, as long as we retain citizenship, we have the option to return.    That fact that we do not exercise that option is irrelevant.  What matters is that we have a choice and every day we know that we have actively chosen to stay in our host countries. We are the actors, not the acted upon.

Two things interfere with the fantasy.  The first is that the longer we stay, the higher our personal investment in the place we call "home."  To choose to leave might mean selling the house or apartment, leaving behind a spouse and children, losing health and retirement benefits, walking away from a perfectly decent job.  There is a cost associated with return that can be higher than the price of the initial migration.

The second concerns government policies and public perceptions.  Yes, international law is very clear that any citizen has a right to return to a country of citizenship but there is no law that says they must encourage return and welcome you with open arms.  In a sense a returnee is viewed with the same suspicion as any immigrant.  What do you have to offer?  What benefit is it to us that you are now here and not there?  Will you be a burden and not an asset? Have you returned simply to reap the benefits of our social welfare system?

It's all about age and social/economic capital.  Migration policies tend to favor the young, the healthy, the well-educated and those with significant financial assets.  These are the citizens a country doesn't want to lose and these are the immigrants they want.  Rightly or wrongly, an older returnee to a developed country is likely to be less welcome than a young, single, migrant entrepreneur from a less developed one.  Unless, of course, she is bringing back money that can be invested to build a house, create jobs, and contribute something significant to the local economy.

At some point in our migration journey reality intrudes: our home countries are either indifferent to whether we return or not, or they might wince at the thought.  Our families do care but there are not enough of them to make much difference in the home country.

Exhibit A in our day is, of course, the British living in the EU who, because of Brexit, are in a very precarious position.  This is mirrored by the precarity of EU citizens in the UK.  All of them fear (and rightly so) that the choice to stay or not will be taken out of their hands.  The fantasy of return could become a nightmare of forced return or forced citizenship.  For all the soothing words that say that calmer heads will prevail, there are reasons to think that calm heads have already looked at it and like or dislike what they see according to national interests.

An article by Elizabeth Collett and Meghan Benton on the MPI website argues that there is an asymmetrical nature of the negotiations over these migrants.  They write:

"[I]t is clear that the United Kingdom may be negotiating on an uneven platform with a number of countries. From the available data, it is clear that more than half the British population in Europe’s sunniest climes—Spain, Malta, Cyprus, and Portugal, among them—are over age 50 (and one-third in Malta and Spain over age 65). This sits in stark contrast to an overwhelmingly youthful EU population in the United Kingdom, with just a handful of pensioners from Spain and Italy... Similarly, some of the countries that have donated their youth population to the British economy are keen to see them return, as in the case of Poland. Thus they have less at stake than a UK government happy to see its older UK nationals continuing to enjoy the sunshine elsewhere."

In other words, they are suggesting that EU countries send their young to the UK, while the UK is more likely to send the the retired or semi-retired.  Thus, "return" would not mean the same thing to the UK as it would to the EU.  Yes, they would be drawing their pensions in the UK and spending it in the UK but this ignores the potential costs of having them come "home."  They will need to find housing or places in retirement homes, they will need medical care, and they will most likely not be in the workforce and not paying into the social security system.  The younger EU migrants in the UK do both.

However,  expanding our view to the EU level, British retirement migrants (65+) are estimated to be about 189,000 out of 890,000 British citizens living in EU countries.  It's only in certain EU countries like sunny Spain or the south of France where the numbers of retirees are high relative to the overall migrant population. But remember that all EU countries have a say in the negotiations over Brexit. So the question is  How do France and Spain feel about UK migrants?   Overall, are they a benefit to these countries or not?  And the answer, I would think, would depend on what contribution the 20-64 population is making to these countries.  I'm sure that governments are running those numbers and taking into account the political landscape/public perception of the let them stay vs. send them back debate.

My take on it is that retirement migrants and migrants who "age in place" are extremely vulnerable and merit extra protection.    Whatever the fantasies a migrant may have had about returning, the reality is that they have built a life somewhere else and it becomes harder and harder every year they stay to go back.  To those who say that letting them stay is a "reward" for breaking the law or is somehow contrary to national interests, I would counter that with:  Ahem.  You were very happy to have them around to revitalize small towns, spend retirement money, keep your food cheap, teach, write code, or care for the elderly.  Behind each and every one of those activities is a human being who will, like you, grow old.   I believe that the number of years spent in a country and age should confer strong protection against deportation.  In some countries it does; in others not so much.

Reflect for a moment on the vulnerability of all migrants which varies with age, socioeconomic status, country of origin, and so many other things.  States still make the rules. So we dream of options that nonetheless narrow with time and, one day we may wake up to find that in spite of our citizenship, our preferred alternative has become impractical, if not impossible.  As for our staying on, how frightening it is to learn that is up to others to decide.  In migration we are not always the captains of our fate; the end of our migration story is not always ours to write.  But I still think the migrant life is one worth living and fighting for. 

“And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo, adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on, and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same..."

Sam in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Cats and Crows

Cities are not always inimical to wildlife.  In the morning I wake up to the sounds of the crows cawing.  I walk out on the balcony of my Osaka apartment and watch them fly from one rooftop to the next.  They are not beautiful birds and the noise they make borders on bothersome.

If I walk out of my apartment and walk along the small streets to the covered shopping area in Shinsaibashi there is a colony of cats.  They are not pets, they are feral creatures that no one owns and no one would want to own.  Some are in good health, others are mangy and bear the scars of dominance fights among themselves.  In season they are just as loud as the crows but you hear them mostly in the middle of the night.

Both are migrants. Both are considered to be a "problem."  They are pests.

The crows are Corvus macrorhynchos, Jungle crows, and they are native to East Asia.



They came from the forest and when humans built their  own jungles of concrete and steel, the crows came and settled in.  They are very adaptable and they find life in the city to be very congenial.   The humans are less amused:

"The conflict between humans and crows has increased as the crow population increased in urban areas. The major complaint by the citizens was scattering of trash on streets by scavenging crows (Ministry of the Environment, 2001; Kurosawa et al., 2003). The citizens in areas with a higher frequency of garbage scattering had strong negative feelings towards crows."
Kurosawa, R., Kono, R., Kondo, T., & Kanai, Y. (2003). Diet of jungle crows in an urban landscape. GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH-ENGLISH EDITION-, 7(2), 193-198. Available on-line.

Felis catus, the feral or domestic cat is considered to be an invasive species in Japan.  Hard to know when they were first introduced but this article says 500 AD.  They were welcome because they chased the rodents that ate the manuscripts in the temples.  Today they are simply part of the urban landscape.  If you take a stroll along the Philosopher's walk in Kyoto you will come across an old baby buggy filled with sleeping feral cats.  In some places like Aoshima Island there are more feral cats than there are people:



Both the crows and the cats coexist nicely with humans.  Most of the time.  Note that crows are more likely to be deemed a nuisance to be exterminated while those cuddly kitties inspire efforts to "save" them. 

Personally I prefer to think that they do just fine without human intervention.  Yes, they get sick, they fight, they scatter garbage but so do humans and last time I looked we were weren't poisoning, capturing, and neutering them.   And I admire their ability to find a niche and survive and even thrive in urban environments.  They live off human activities - the building of cities and the waste we produce.  If we are smart and make some compromises, our relationship could be symbiotic with no need for one to threaten the other.  The cats kill the rats;  the crows eat the garbage that we pay other humans to take away.

Above all, I am put off by the idea that they must be under human control - that they are creatures to be domesticated before they can be useful (not unlike the notion that human beings must be "integrated" to be worthy of acceptance).  My views on this probably come from rural family:  "Livestock belongs outside" and "Don't mess with the snake.  Just back off and leave it alone."  As I watch the crows fly past my 14th floor dwelling and the cats sleeping away under trees in the park, I have no desire whatsoever to tame them, to feed them, make them my little friends, or to stop them in any way from doing what they do.  

In The World Without Us by Alan Reisman (a really fine book) he asked what would happen if a big city like New York had no humans at all.  It might, he and others suggest, go like this:

In the first few years with no heat, pipes burst all over town, the freeze-thaw cycle moves indoors, and things start to seriously deteriorate. Buildings groan as their innards expand and contract; joints between walls and rooflines separate...Rain and snow blow in, and soon even poured concrete floors are freezing, thawing and starting to buckle.  Burnt insulation and charred wood add nutrients to Manhattan's growing soil cap.  Native Virginia creeper and poison ivy claw at walls covered with lichen, which thrive in the absence of air pollution.  Red-tail hawks and peregrine falcons nest in increasingly skeletal high-rise structures."

"Long before, the wild predators finished off the last descendants of pet dogs, but a wily population of feral house cats persists, feeding on starlings."

In other words, the crows and that cats will probably make it, even if we don't.  Leaving you with that cheery thought, I am heading outside to enjoy the city.  While it and I are still here.

France and the Competition for the Highly Skilled Migrant

The new president of France, Emmanuel Macron, has spoken directly to the American people in response to Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Accord, an international agreement to fight global warming.  Here is Macron's message:




A very good short speech.  I suspect that he deliberately used migration as an example of one of the bad consequences of climate change. For those who are anti-immigration (and they are legion in both the US and France), they hear their own position which is that migration is a bad thing.  Thus,  fighting climate change is also a battle against immigration.  But for the supporters of immigration (or the immigrants themselves) they can assume that Macron was referring to "forced migrations" due to climate change.  Very deft.

The most interesting part of the speech (to me anyway)  was his call to American entrepreneurs, scientists. and researchers to "come and work here [France]."  That might seem to be a complete contradiction to how the French feel about about migration these days.  But note that he did not use the word "immigrate."  Nor did he mention anything about integration.  He did not extol the virtues of French life, language, and culture as reasons to come to the Hexagon.  Macron implies that this is a "come as you are" migration party for the lucky few who fall into the category of "highly skilled migrant."  France wants their degrees, their research, and their entrepreneurial skills and in exchange they are being offered honor, support, and recognition.  A powerful benediction in which the words "migrant" and immigrant" will never be used because these are the kind of "quality foreigners" that even an anti-immigrant country is happy to welcome.

What is particularly noteworthy about this is that it is rare to see such a public invitation to the citizens of another country coming from the highest levels of  the government.  Yes, many countries have programs to attract the highly-skilled but you don't see the Prime Minister of Japan holding a press conference to personally invite French or Germans to bring their talents to the land of the rising sun.  Migrant recruitment (and, yes, they are migrants) exists but it is discreet.  It is as if there were an unspoken agreement among developed nations that, yes, countries can try to skim off the cream of another country's citizens as long as they aren't too obvious about it and the trickle of brains leaving one country for another does not become a flood.

So what Macron said was very daring - an in-your-face shot fired against the Trump administration. But I'd say that there is very little risk involved.  The Trump administration is very unpopular in France and the United States and Macron will only gain politically at home by taking Trump on. And how he did it is fascinating. Macron has used the Internet/social media to bypass the American president completely and to address the American people directly in fluent English.  And what does the world see when it watches this contest?  A young, dynamic leader running circles around a tired, bewildered, old man.

Sad.

Geology: Acquiring Another Passion with Purpose

My reading takes me in strange but wonderful directions.  For the past week or so I have sat in my blue armchair in my Osaka apartment vicariously living the time and travels of geologists.

What I knew about geology was mostly confined to experience with volcanism and seismology and practical information about what to do during an earthquake.  Quick quiz: during an earthquake in an urban area where is a major "kill zone" - the place where you are most likely to die?  Answer: in the shadow of the building you just exited.

This was the part of the education for a child of the Pacific Northwest and the Ring of Fire.  I was in high school when Mount St. Helens blew and I will never forget the massive ash cloud rising into the sky and coming down as grey rain onto our lawns and cars.  It was sublime in the Burkean sense of that word:  "Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror..."

http://www.oregonlive.com/mount-st-helens/

Aside from these great and terrible contemporary events, Geology has a slower, softer side in the study of the layers of the earth where even a small stone or even sand can be of interest.  This is the study of the Earth over almost inconceivably long stretches of time.  Human lives are measured in decades; the earth in hundreds of millions of years.  The age of the dinosaurs ended "only" about 66 million years ago. This is the longue durée on a scale few of us contemplate as we toodle down the highways in our cars listening to our radios cursing the 15 extra minutes it will take us to arrive at work that morning.  Geological time, too, is sublime;  it is terrifying to think that what we hold most dear and most important right now is utterly irrelevant to an indifferent Earth.  We will die one day and become part of just another layer of sediment on  this planet.  Take a moment to ponder this:  one day our bones will be part of the fossil record. We will all inevitably be "brought down to Earth";  no need for our fellow homo sapien sapiens to do it for us.

Ichthyosaurs attending a lecture on fossilised human remains Henry de la Beche 1831

When the object of study is the Earth itself it cannot be confined to one country or region. And so geologists travel with passion and purpose.  The Englishman Sir Roderick Murchison travelled to Russia in the early 1800s to study rocks and fossils which could be compared to these things found in other regions of the world.  His findings were presented in beautifully written letters which are still a pleasure to read today.  Have a look at When Life Nearly Died by Michael Benton for an excellent history of the discovery of the Permian era and the mass extinction of life that occurred long before the dinosaurs appeared and disappeared.

Today, for the general reader interested in geology and other sciences, "creative non-fiction" is a genre that is not only accessible but has produced literary masterpieces.   John McPhee and his Annals of the Former World , for example.  What an extraordinary work.  For just a small sample, here is one of the most quoted passages in this most worthy book:

"The Himalayas are the crowning achievement of the Indo-Australian plate. India in the Oligocene crashed head on into Tibet, hit so hard that it not only folded and buckled the plate boundaries but also plowed into the newly created Tibetan plateau and drove the Himalayas five and a half miles into the sky. The mountains are in some trouble. India has not stopped pushing them, and they are still going up. Their height and volume are already so great they are beginning to melt in their own self-generated radioactive heat. When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in a warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as 20,000 feet below the sea floor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.”

My passion is the study of human mobility which is something I discovered because I was one of the mobile.   My foray into geology, however, makes me wonder about the intersection of the two.  For years as I have sat on the back porch of my house in France I have stared at my garden wall and I have never once wondered where the stone came from and what it might be. Why that stone and not another?  Human minds made those decisions based on what was available, I presume, and they were instantiated by human hands.  And what was the barrier for since it extends the entire length of the street?  It was meant to keep people and animals out but what people?  As I stand on my balcony in my apartment in Osaka the main features I see is a low basin surrounded by small mountains.  What forces carved that basin? How old are those mountains?  Before the tunnels and railways how did human pass from one side to another?  Facts on the ground?  Absolutely and we have no power to wish them away.  The plates will move, the volcanoes will erupt,  and the mountains will rise only to be eroded away.

And it occurs to me that my vision, my passion and my knowledge are terribly limited when I confine it to modern times and one species.  If "the proper study of man is man" (and we can quibble about that one) then surely the forces that act on us are equally important.  In Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines Caroline Brettell and James Hollifield argue for this broader approach: "Migration is a subject that cries out for an interdisciplinary approach.  Each discipline brings something to the table, theoretically and empirically."  Their books brings together anthropologists, geographers political scientist and economists and each chapter adds something to the great questions about why and how people migrate?  I searched the book  for mention of geology and "no results" appeared on my kindle screen.  However,  there is an excellent chapter on migration and geography by Susan Hardwick.

I resolve to persevere anyway.  I find geology fascinating and I like reading these books that send me to the dictionary or web pages for terms and concepts that I didn't know or had forgotten.  And I have new questions to ask whether I am gardening in my backyard or walking in the mountains in Japan.  I aspire to understand better what made that mountain blow in the Pacific Northwest, what made the rocks in my garden wall, why I see mountains, mountains, mountains when I travel around on this island in East Asia.  Above all I treasure the sensation that I am transcending the ephemeral.  I would like to think in geological time as easily as the geologist.

If nothing else that longer perspective calms me.  All those issues around international mobility that excite such passions?  They are the air that is moved by a butterfly's wings to an Earth that has seen hundreds of millions of years of far greater, more terrifying things.  The sublime in the modern and Burkean senses of that word.

"All of those broken bones in northern Japan, all of those broken lives and those broken homes prompt us to remember what in calmer times we are invariably minded to forget: the most stern and chilling of mantras, which holds, quite simply, that mankind inhabits this earth subject to geological consent - which can be withdrawn at any time."  Simon Wincester

Know Before You Go?

"This desire of travelers not to be seen as tourists is at least in part connected to an interest
in how they are perceived by the local population of the places they visit. This interest
forms another aspect of the tourist/traveler distinction: travelers try to be culturally sensitive
in a way that they believe ordinary tourists are not. tteehee describes that a tourist
'goes to a place and want everyone to know that they are tourists,' whereas a traveler
'spends time knowing about the place they are going prior to departure. Knowing the
culture, history, customs and way of life' (15 October 2009)."

Week, L. (2012). I am not a tourist: Aims and implications of “traveling”. Tourist Studies, 12(2), 186-203.

There was a comment from a few days ago that had my brain buzzing.  And I cannot thank the reader enough because while I think that she is fundamentally right, I wasn't sure why I agreed with her.  But I like a good puzzle.

There is something really irritating about  watching ignorant travellers who could not be bothered to learn some basic information about a place before he/she carelessly meanders into it.  Case in point:  Donald Trump's recent foreign adventure where he explained to the Israelis that he had just got back from the Middle East.  Note the reaction of the gentlemen on the right in the video.  That is a cringe worthy moment from someone who at the very least should have asked for and got a better briefing before going to the region to represent 320 million Americans.  Israel is in the Middle East, Mr. Trump.  Just look at the map:

Now we all make mistakes but you don't have to be one of the "over-educated eggheads" to find this really troubling of a "world leader."  At the very least it was rude - a signal that he could not be bothered to know where in the world Israel is.  At worst, not understanding the geography means that he doesn't understand what drives much the of politics of the region.  (See The Revenge of Geography by Robert Kaplan.) And that simply will not do.

Trump is a leader and normally we expect better from our representatives.  But what about the traveller/tourist?   How much basic knowledge should be acquired before arriving as a guest in a foreign country?  "Should" I think is the right word because a certain judgment of ourselves and others is at work here

The answer to the first question surprisingly enough can be "None."  Some people travel purely for leisure.  It's a vacation, not a "back to school" experience.  How many French tourists on the beaches of Brittany care about the history of the small towns and beaches they appropriate in the summer?  My grandmother used to go every year with her friends to Maui.  What were they looking for?  Fun.  And you have not lived until you have watched a group of middle and working- class senior citizens living it up outside the continental US:  Sex, Drugs (alcohol) and Rock 'n Roll," on those beaches, baby.

There is another group that prefers not to know and these are the ones seeking an authentic adventure.  Tourism/travelling (and even migration sometimes) is "mediated" by blogs, guidebooks, expatriate autobiographies and the like.  As for the historians, geographers and sociologists they are not neutral (or even honest) in what they write about other countries and people and so they cannot be entirely trusted.  True adventure is avoiding all of them and relying on direct experience which is superior to secondhand information even from the locals.  One participant cited in L. Week's article above said:  "Your signs of authentic this or traditional that don’t blind me into believing these are the real things in your world. No, I know better." (p, 188)

Finally, there is the "Did you know?" syndrome.  This is where a traveller/tourist turn to a local and says, "Did you know that in your [insert country/city/region]...?"  Think about that one for a minute. Is the purpose of all that study to educate the locals about their own country and culture?  One would hope not but, alas, it happens.  I had lunch with a friend today who described listening to a North American teacher explaining Japan to his/her Japanese students.  She was torn between hilarity and mortification as he/she filled the entire English lesson with this nonsense.  I think the intention is good - showing the locals that you have taken to the time to learn something about them.  However, it can come off as rude and condescending.

In Week's article she used this quotation from another article where a  local in Indonesia gave his thoughts about the tourists versus the knowledgeable travellers:

''The traveler thinks they know everything about the local people and the country. But it’s usually
because some other traveler told them before. But they do whatever they like—some travelers
are good, but 90 percent are not, they can be very impolite. With the tourist, everything is
organized, so they don’t destroy as much. The traveler wants to see something new, and wants
it to be cheap then tells others about it. I prefer tourists; they go to specific places, it is more
professional. But the traveler is uncontrolled—they won’t go to the places already prepared for
them; they want to go to other places and then they spoil it—and don’t spend any money!'
(quoted in Mowforth and Munt, 2009: 142)" (p. 197)

Is what I've written thus far an indictment of the knowledgeable traveller who spends some time learning something about the destination country and how not to offend as a guest?  Not at all.  Frankly, I don't think any knowledge is useless, but not everyone agrees that this is a high priority.  If I had told my grandmother that she should stop partying on the beach with her friends and spend more time reading about and interacting with the local culture, she would have blasted me off the island with a lecture about the lot of working-class people, the Great Depression and World War II.  And, yes, I would have shut my mouth.  Such is the power of a grandmother.

Aside from the whole question of values and "shoulds" I can think of a very important reason to learn before you go (if you don't happen to be the president of the US who has higher and more important  responsibilities) and that is safety.  Some of the most important things that aren't talked about in guidebooks or expat autobiographies is that, like in nature, some of the mammals are predators.  You may know that it's dangerous to go off the beaten path in the forest because of the snakes, but be realistic cities, towns and even rural areas have their own reptiles that slither on two feet.

There are neighborhoods in many places where you would not want to go at night, if at all.  A friend of mine in Paris has a chilling story about an American woman that she and her husband helped after she had been raped. They called the authorities, got her to a hospital and called the consulate.  The consulates in Tokyo issue warnings about certain bars in Roppongi where foreign men and women are lured away, beaten and stripped of their wallets and purses. In Thailand, a place I was clueless about and where we went for our 25th wedding anniversary, the guide came with a driver: a really big guy with really big muscles who told us he did martial arts.  I didn't "get" why he was there until we stopped at an ATM in a small town. I stayed in the car and the guide stayed with me while Mr. Driver accompanied my husband to the cash machine.  And I remember a trip to Central Washington, USA which has the most beautiful scenery around and there was dog that came up to us begging for food.  The dog had been beaten and starved.  Looking past the dog was a house where the owner of the dog lived and he looked like one scary SOB. None of us were willing to confront him even though the poor dog broke our hearts.  It's one of the few situations where I really wished I had had a gun.  Problem is, I was pretty sure the owner had one.

In Deep Survival Laurence Gonzales said, “Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion.”   That is just as true in "civilization" as it is in the "wild."   It can be deadly to focus too much on the fun, the adventure, and what other people think of you because you might forget that getting back in one piece with your knowledge is just as important as going in the first place.  And so I humbly suggest that the most important qualities you can take abroad are as Gonzales says: "Gratitude, humility, wonder, imagination and cold, logical determination..." And, yes, knowledge.