03 Apr Our guilty conscience Draft
I’m writing a shorthand package on immigrant children and how their parents put a lot of pressure on them do very well in life, because some of these parents come from nothing and want their children to achieve the absolute best. I’m an immigrant myself and come from an immigrant family, so I know exactly how it feels to have a lot of pressure put on you. I want to share my story and that of hundreds of other young migrants.
My piece is aimed at an audience between 16 and 30. If they weren’t reading my feature, they would be reading Refinery29, Buzzfeed or VICE. I will be presenting my work on the shorthand website. It will include text with interviews, an exclusive survey, infographic, photos and a short video with a mother explaining what was like moving to a different country to try and give her daughter a better life.
In order to build an informed picture for my readers I have done in-depth research on this issue, such as how many immigrants there are in the country and how many children from immigrant families do go to higher education.
1.Research
I started my research by looking into “immigrant’s children mental health due to pressure” but there wasn’t much on it, so I decided to create something for it.
I looked at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-december-2019/summary-of-latest-statistics to see the statistics of how many immigrants there are in the UK. This gave me a proper insight into the immigration in the UK. I also looked at how many immigrants come to study in the UK since we have a lot of international students, I found this data here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-december-2019/why-do-people-come-to-the-uk-to-study. Whilst on those pages I also came across the ‘Migrant journey: 2018 report’ which shows you how many visas were issued from 2013 to 2018, a 5 year period. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/803754/migrant-journey-report2018.pdf
Another very good source that I found highlighted this quote “Like native youths whose parents have no college experience and others from low-income backgrounds, many immigrants and their children face significant barriers to enrolling and succeeding in postsecondary education. Their difficulties are frequently compounded by inadequate information about college opportunities and how to access them, cultural differences, citizenship issues, language barriers, and, too frequently, discrimination.” Although this is from an American article, this still adds emphasis to my project. This quote draws attention to the fact that a lot of immigrant’s face difficulties, meaning the parents want their children to succeeded so that they do not face the same challenges. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ920372.pdf
I also found articles that said “Children of immigrants are more likely to get a university degree than those with British parents” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/children-of-immigrants-are-more-likely-to-get-a-university-degree-than-those-with-british-parents-a7308836.html
This article was very good because it also gives you data, I did try to find the raw data to also use it, but I was unable to find the data. “Children of immigrants are more likely to get a university degree than those with British parents, according to a global education report.”
“The research found that, unlike most countries, third level education in England and Northern Ireland was more common among those with an immigrant background than among those without an immigrant background.”
When I read these two quotes it made me wonder, do these immigrant children really want to go into higher education or are they being pressured into going by their parents. I then related it back to me, since my mum really wanted me to go university but some of my British friends parents didn’t really mind what they were doing.
There are another couple of similar articles to the Independent one:
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2018/july/immigrants-education.html
I have also done my own survey and research; I created a survey and 100 people have filled it out.
This is my survey and all the questions that were asked on it.
I will add the link to my account below so the whole survey is available to be viewed with the responses.
Login: anandademorais26@gmail.com
Password: shorthandproject123
https://admin.typeform.com/accounts/01E4RY4QTA6HRSX7S3930PRTKX/workspaces/nCJ42b
This survey has shown me different opinions, but more than half the people who answered it, were in fact pressured into going into university. This relates back to my project. I had a lot of different answers on this survey and I have put all my data into an infographic. It was also very fun to create this survey and also produce the infographic.
I found a real cool article on Buzzfeed, which also talks about “The Burden Of Being A First-Generation Immigrant”. This article goes into detail about how hard it is being a first-generation immigrant, which I really understood since I am one as well. It also helped me realised other people do care about this topic and would want to read more of it. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicoledennisbenn/the-good-immigrant-nicole-dennis-benn
This is the list of sources I have found and looked at but not all of them are going to be used. The ones are going to be used I have mentioned above.
2.Sources
I have done a lot of research into this project; I have found eight people to interview and two expert interviews as well. I will be leading these interviews in the coming weeks.
My interviewees:
Angela Rodrigues – I will be speaking to her face to face
Thais Ribeiro – thais.ribeiro201@gmail.com
Pavel Lisovskip – lisovskip@gmail.com
Dounia Gaio – douniagaio@gmail.com
Mohammed Barre – Mohamedbarre21@gmail.com
Amira Elshemi – foreveramira600@gmail.com
Tomasz Rosik- tomaszrosik12341@gmail.com
Daisy Barnett – daisyalicebarnett@hotmail.com
My expert interviewees:
Vanessa Hughe – vhugh001@gold.ac.uk
Nando Sigano – n.sigona@bham.ac.uk
I will be sending them each an individual email with questions written especially for them. I separated my interviewees into groups:
- How hard it was to move across the world for her daughter – I will be interviewing Angela for this section.
- Mental health and religion – I will be interviewing Amira and Thais for this section.
- Education and how it affected their family – I will be interviewing Dounia and Pavel for this section.
- University and the pressure they had to follow their siblings’ footsteps – I will be interviewing Mohammed for this section.
- Speaking about how they didn’t have any pressure put on because their dad had pressure from his parents – I will be interviewing Daisy and her father for this section.
- My expert interview I will be asking if they think that immigrant children feel a lot of pressure to do well and if it affects their mental health. – I will be interviewing Nando and Vanessa for this section.
I also did a mini interview series on Instagram and I got a few replies, but I decided to go with these three girls, Rebecca, Zaynep and Sofia. They gave me a mini interview to go into one of my slides on shorthand.
3.Content
I have already written my intro, I have conducted half of an interview with Pavel which I will be finishing in the coming weeks and it’ll go into a lot more depth, I have also done three mini interviews, I have produced a survey that got 100 replies from the public, from this survey I then created an infographic with three bar charts and four pie charts.
I have also embedded pictures into 8 pages, three of the images I’m using will be changed they are there so I know I need to add imagery. I have edited some of these pictures to fit my house style, so they’re in polaroid style pictures. I also created the front page, with the quotes from people who answered my survey around the title of my piece “Our guilty conscience”.
These are the polaroid pictures I have used for my house style; these are for my story and my Angela’s story. I decided to use these because they give a more homely look and feel.
All the notes I have made along the way, with all my contacts and everything I have to do.
These are the three pictures I have decide to use on three of my shorthand pages, I chose these pictures because they match the theme of the topic but they do not match my house style therefore I will be changing them, so I am only temporarily using them.
The infographic I created from the survey I conducted; 100 people did this survey. I kept to the house style of pastel colours with my info graphic and the front cover for my shorthand, I did three and picked the best one to go on the front. I picked the one that matched the house style the best, which was the more pastel colours.
4.Style
This here is my Shorthand where I’m creating all of this, a lot of it has already been put on here.
https://preview.shorthand.com/ka2YH94Hmc9ncWDR
I decided to try and make the layout really sleek and easy to follow, I added transitions to my slides to make my shorthand more interactive since I’m not having any video and I also added a bit of colour to it too. I wanted to have sort of a homely kick to it, so when it came to my pictures, I decided to do them all polaroid style, so they look really retro and vintage. The house style went for was more of pastel colours, I knew I wanted to add colour to make it stand out, but I didn’t want it to be too much. My infographic also follows my house style.
I am now going to continue working on the interviews and try to get them all done by the end of the month. I will start by contacting the expert interviews via email and then send the young adults their questions since they all said they would like to be interviewed. I will also be interviewing Angela face to face and she will be telling me her story, about how she travelled across the world to give her daughter a better life since she didn’t have much growing up.
I will then add my articles and my data into the shorthand, the articles that I have deemed suitable, which are the ones I have chosen above in 2.Sources. These will go into their own page on my shorthand alongside the expert interview. I will follow this a conclusion to the whole project.
