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Sydney is almost 11,000 miles from my house and NYC is 3,000 miles from my house.
I consider NYC to be far, far away and probably the furthest I will sit on a plane which basically means that I will probably not visit Aussie for a long, long time. Australia is just too far away to have a good link with them.
Colonization isn't always the cruel, oppressive mechanism that rhetoricians and 'intellectuals' have been imposing on the world discourse for the last century. For the most part, British colonization of say Asia was pretty much just an economic exchange that vastly improved the infrastructure and material well-being of the areas colonized, including Hong Kong and Singapore which are now the richest places in the world. It's basically just a more materially-developed society entering into a symbiosis with one with inexpensive labor and materials; it has nothing to do with race or cultural superiority. While some colonizers and their policies were indeed cruel, most of the time it was fairly benign. The racism that British-trained lawyers like Gandhi felt was, in my opinion, more a personal issue that he harbored rather than a true threat to India. Essentially what he ended up doing, according to some, by demanding the immediate withdrawal of the British infrastructure, was cause a huge ethnic rift in the country that is now the most dangerous and hostile place in the world, with untold ethnic violence for decades, no end in sight. It's no wonder then that more practical-minded South Asians would prefer to move to the UK or elsewhere in the Commonwealth, and enjoy the stability those countries offer.
Colonizers came from many different cultures and actions ranged from taking control of trade outposts, wiping out populations deliberately, and treating the local people as savages and inducing psychological traumas on them to control them.
These are documented facts, not intellectual interpretations.
Some of the most violent were the Dutch and the Belgians. It was disgusting what they did to the locals. Truly evil.
To be quite honest with you most British people would talk about Australia and about visiting it etc but we would be more aware of America and would travel there more often so it is to be expected.
I rarely see Australians.
I don't see this as a surprise.
Australia is a small country on the other side of the world, of course you would be more aware of the USA. I fail to see the relevance of the post anyway, the thread asked about movement between former colonies to the colonizer not the other way round.
I've visited the country that started to colonize my birthplace, and no, I don't think I would move there. And if generally talking, I don't want to move to Lapland either.
Except for people in the entertainment industry, France is not seen as a migration destination in Quebec. It's more the other way around - people from France tend to migrate to Quebec a lot more these days.
According to figures I could find the number of people from Quebec in France (France has eight times our population) is less than 20,000. Depending on who you talk to the number of people from France in Quebec is between 150,000 and 200,000. In Montreal alone there are about 100,000 people born in France living there.
That said, France does retain a bit of a motherland mystique among quite a few people in Quebec, especially in the chattering classes. But it's more seen as a place to visit (fairly frequently it is true) or perhaps to study for a short time, than a place to move to permanently.
Even among the Quebec artists who have become stars in France, very few of them have moved there permanently.
I'm curious--is the large number of people from France in Quebec a fairly recent phenomenon? Does there seemed to have been an uptick since the recession?
Colonization isn't always the cruel, oppressive mechanism that rhetoricians and 'intellectuals' have been imposing on the world discourse for the last century.
That is correct. The UK and France gave a lot to the world.
I'm curious--is the large number of people from France in Quebec a fairly recent phenomenon? Does there seemed to have been an uptick since the recession?
It has been steadily growing over the past 10-20 years and picked up considerably very recently. Especially with young people as their unemployment rate in France is about double that of young people in Quebec.
Colonization isn't always the cruel, oppressive mechanism that rhetoricians and 'intellectuals' have been imposing on the world discourse for the last century. For the most part, British colonization of say Asia was pretty much just an economic exchange that vastly improved the infrastructure and material well-being of the areas colonized, including Hong Kong and Singapore which are now the richest places in the world. It's basically just a more materially-developed society entering into a symbiosis with one with inexpensive labor and materials; it has nothing to do with race or cultural superiority. While some colonizers and their policies were indeed cruel, most of the time it was fairly benign. The racism that British-trained lawyers like Gandhi felt was, in my opinion, more a personal issue that he harbored rather than a true threat to India. Essentially what he ended up doing, according to some, by demanding the immediate withdrawal of the British infrastructure, was cause a huge ethnic rift in the country that is now the most dangerous and hostile place in the world, with untold ethnic violence for decades, no end in sight. It's no wonder then that more practical-minded South Asians would prefer to move to the UK or elsewhere in the Commonwealth, and enjoy the stability those countries offer.
Think about this. If colonialism wasn't so bad, why did the colonised nations of the world almost UNANIMOUSLY elect to free themselves of colonial rule? If race wasn't involved what do you call all the discourse about "the white man's burden"?
It seems to be most popular in Commonwealth countries followed closely by France. Portugal has a lot of Africans from its former colonies, and there are a significant number of Latin Americans in Spain, as well.
What is interesting to me is that where I grew up in New York was a microcosm of the UKs western hemisphere colonies, Jamaicans, Bermudans, Bahamians, BVI, Trinis, and a lot of Indians from Guyana and the above countries, as well. Finally, Africans mainly from Kenya and Tanzania. My neighborhood was like Little Brixton.
I found it offensive how the immigration officer thought I was so desperate to want to move to the gloomy, passive aggressive UK from my already more sunshine developed country home (US).
I was happy to leave the UK, when entering France. The immigration officer said Bonjour and happily stamp my passport and did not thoroughly interrogate me like a criminal. Hell, it took about 30 seconds for him to approve me entering.
Despite the UK and France being part of the EU, the UK rejected the Schnengen Agreement on open borders so require immigration control even from the EU. So France and the rest of the EU reciprocated toward the Brits and Irish.
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