No One Leaves Home Unless Home is A Mouth of a Shark: Paper Example on Immigration

Introduction

In the recent days, Immigration all around the world has become a big matter, more specifically in the business, trade, and economics. The population of a country may increase extremely when there is a high number of immigrants whether they are illegal or not. In most cases, immigrants are usually forced to move away from their homes due to the harsh conditions that they may have faced at their former habitual residence (Portes 30). There a variety of conditions that may contribute to immigration, for instance, craves for economic prosperity, inadequate or lack of resources to venture in their local countries, in search for better standards of living, to evade disasters and many other harsh conditions. Warsan Shire's poem "Home" emphasizes that no one will leave home unless they have to leave. She refers to the harsh conditions that may force an individual to move away from his or her home as "A mouth of a shark." With reference to Warsan Shire's poem 'home' this paper contains an explanation of conditions that may force an individual to migrate from their habitual residence and the problems that they face while in their new habitats.

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Political instability in an individual's habitual residence may force the person to move away from home (Collyer 11). This political instability leads to insecurity in their homeland that may have caused panic and risk of losing lives. In countries where there is political instability, there may be violence and inhabitants of a country may start fighting and killing each other due to the political differences. In her poem, Shire provides a description of such a situation when she states "The boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body when home won't let you stay" (7-8). Through this words, she provides an explanation that an individual can leave where he belongs when fellow country people have turned up against the individual. This forces the immigrant to move to a more secure place that has some aspect of political stability.

Terror attacks in a country may force an individual to move away from where he belongs to a foreign country with the hopes that where the individual immigrates is more secure (Triulzi 46). All individuals always seek to settle in a safer place where there is no risk of being attacked by terrorists, this forces immigrants to move away from their countries to countries that are safer. In this case, 'a mouth of a shark' is the terror attacks that are at the homeland of the immigrant which have forced the individual to leave with the whole family. As stated in Shire's poem, "No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land" (21-23). Through this explanation in the poem, the immigrant always wants safety for the whole family and that's why the individual migrates to a safer country with the whole family.

Some immigrants are usually forced to move out of their original habitats due to unavoidable natural disasters and calamities such as earthquakes, hunger, tornados and many other disasters that cause death and destruction of property (Shire 140). This is one of the greatest reasons as for one to leave home as most of these natural disasters are unavoidable, the immigrants have to move to the countries that are not affected. In her poem that describes the harsh conditions that force individuals to move away from their homes, Shire states, "No one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages" (24-26). Through this words, it is evident that a person cannot risk life staying home where there are high chances of losing lives whereas they can migrate to areas that are not disaster-prone.

Poor economic status in their homes forces immigrants to migrate from their home countries to more developed countries with the hope of improving their living standards. Underdeveloped countries face economic challenges that result in high tax and low salaries which lead to low living standards and this makes the inhabitants migrate to developed countries that offer more salaries (Shire 145). Due to the experience of the earlier immigrants who migrated so as to improve their living standards, the other individuals are also motivated to also leave their home countries so as to earn more salary and improve their livelihoods. As stated in the poem, "You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well" (3-4) .this clearly depicts that some of the immigrants are usually influenced by the migration of their fellow citizens. They thus also migrate hoping that they will be successful like the earlier immigrants.

Apart from the harsh conditions that force individuals to leave their home countries, some immigrants also face tough conditions during their journeys to the foreign countries (Portes 36). During their long travels, some may even die of hunger and fatigue but they usually prefer going through all these than staying in their home countries 'mouth of a shark'. In the poem, Shire describes the tough conditions that immigrants go through in the statement, "No one spends days and nights feeding on newspaper unless the miles traveled means something more than the journey" (25-27). Through her description, it is clear that the immigrants' journey is usually tough but worth sacrificing for.

Despite the fact that these immigrants have escaped these difficult situations in their home countries, they are usually not welcomed in the countries that they migrate into. Some of the countries claim that they affect their economic status by taking the jobs that would have been taken by their inhabitants (Collyer 6). The inhabitants thus treat the immigrants harshly and in some cases, they force them to go back to their home countries without even considering the problems that made them leave their homes. At times the immigrants are usually denied jobs even if they qualify for them just because they are not from that country. Shire's poem states "Go home blacks, refugees, dirty immigrants asylum seekers, sucking our country dry...they messed up their country and now they want to mess ours up" (47-54). She uses these words to describe the treatments that the immigrants get while in their new habitats.

A person could migrate to a foreign country just to escape the harsh conditions that threatened the individual's livelihood in their habitual residence. Throughout her poem, Shire based on the theme of immigration as she states the harsh conditions that force an individual to migrate to another country, the hardships that the individual faces in the journey to another country and the lifestyle of the individual in the new country.

Works Cited

Collyer, Michael. "Narrating Europe's migration and refugee 'crisis'." Human geography: a new radical journal (2016): 1-12. Document.

Portes, Alejandro. "Economic sociology and the sociology of immigration: a conceptual overview." The economic sociology of immigration (1995): 1-41. Document.

Shire, Warsan. "House Body Fire Poetry Talking about Home (from the deportation center)." NEUE RUNDSCHAU (2017): 139-146. Document.

Triulzi, Alessandro. Long journeys. African Migrants on the Road. London: Brill Press, 2013. Book.