What study abroad means to me

 

So I’m a fifth-year undergrad, and I did it solely in order to participate in USC’s yearlong study abroad program in Santiago, Chile. I had put these plans aside during my junior year because I thought James Franco was going to springboard my career into Hollywood or whatever, and then again in my senior year to do a thesis project I cared a lot about. But study abroad had to happen for me because, let’s be real, when in my life will I have funding to enroll in top-ranked South American universities ever again?

My parents migrated to another continent in their early 20’s too — except theirs involved hopping onto a fishing boat in the middle of the night and through several refugee camps until they ended up in Los Angeles, where they’ve remained for the last few decades.

I don’t see my traveling as anything remotely similar to what my parents went through during their migration. Theirs didn’t have the financial and institutional backing of a private university. They didn’t migrate with the explicit intention of bettering the lives of their unborn children (as is apparently the only acceptable story for “deserving” immigrants to the United States), since they were then still kids themselves. They did it to survive.

So yes, I have the privilege of traveling for more than survival and while study abroad programs can be a way to “see the world,” it cannot truly be seen without the context of Western colonization, imperialism, multi-national corporations, and transnational capitalist economic policies. We have to think critically about our place in that continuing legacy no matter where we go. So I’m constantly torn between possibly contributing to neo-colonialism by simply traveling as a Westerner and acknowledging that travel in this already globalized world is necessary in order for one to critically, intentionally and actively work to counteract these kinds of global oppression.

And besides, I really wanted to actually learn how to speak Spanish.