【🇸🇪スウェーデン日記】#12: Another me

I don’t know how other people ‘think’ - by saying 'other' I mean all people but me - but my way of thinking is to establish someone in my head and keep talking to them. Usually that person speaks Japanese, but occasionally they speaks English too - and this is the case for today. It is simply because I’m in an English environment (to be precise it’s Swedish and English but Im not arrogant enough to count the language i don’t understand even a word to MY environment) and almost all the input happens in English temporarily. I’ve been the kind of person who literally hates people pretending to be able to speak in English by suddenly starts using English in their own social media or whatever, but it seems it’s high time for me to give up with the idea - I should have done that way earlier though.

What makes our - between imaginary me and me myself - conversation heated is the content of the final assignment for the summer school. I might have mentioned in other entries, while I don’t mind repeating myself either, that the summer school seems to be threefold. A, it talks about migration and integration from the public administration study perspective. B. It considers methodology in social science - in this sense, the course is pretty critical against the conventional knowledge and shows the professor is obsessed with the art based research method. C, it encourages us (through the assignment) to think about migration and integration from our perspective. It could be argued as a part of the ABR (stands for art-based research), but it has an important connotation for me.

The thing is, I myself am recognised as a migrant. Classification could be whatever, but academically, I’m voluntary (meaning not forced, not a refugee), study migrant. With the expectation of 4 or 5 years to live in the UK, it feels like a right description for me - and sometimes does not. One of the popular perspectives on study migrants in the UK higher education is the BAME attainment gap - there are a bunch of research showing that students coming from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnicity background (thus BAME) tends to gain lower grades than home students. Several pieces of research argue that the level of social and academic integration of BAME students impact on (or does not determine) the attainment. Now, my question is, does the fact that I come from BAME background on dictionary definition mean anything on my academic achievement at university? Or, if I took the same class conveyed in Japanese in a university in Tokyo, which would never happen, could I get any better score on exams? Furthermore, what does it mean to be ‘socially integrated’?

I do understand there are so much pressing issues on integration, especially the issues surrounding the forced migrations on the earth, but the question keeps me wondering about the existing study and BAME students - does that matter?

This is the topic I have been wondering since I encountered the research reports on BAME when I first came to the UK, and it still quietly smouldering in my mind. Yeah, the level of English could matter in the attainment, especially in disciplines such as social science or humanities which uses language to express what you achieved, rather than mere numbers or artwork, but being part of the society could help you to get First from university? At the same time, I know that after my starting to work in Japanese restaurant, I found myself feeling much easier in the UK, especially holiday season - during the first year during the holiday season, I had no one to speak to (partly because it was the hight of Covid, partly I barely had friends in university) or nowhere to go, while now during each holiday I have somewhere to go, gain kind of self-confidence (or feel a sense of inferiority in comparison to colleagues, in either way there is a connection to the society) and money to live on - which lessens anxiety during the university life.

Are all these self-reflections matter when someone studies the integration of migrants? Here, I live in a dilemma between me as a person wishing to look at the world from social scientist's perspective, and me as a 22 year-old-girl, who was only 19 (I can confidently say only 19) when I came to the UK to study. It evokes strange emotions, as when you try to study something from a social scientific way, there is a fact outside of you, is hard to reach, while in this case, one of the cases is exactly inside of your cognition. It is a strange experience. It is.

Anyways, what I have to do is read (as usual) on BAME attainment gap and its relation to social integration, and consider how I would understand my experience - what I always say is studying abroad is difficult, not only because it is abroad, but at the same time early-20s seems to be always difficult for everyone, who is establishing their identity. It should be normal to suffer in life - right? - and it’s not only because I study internationally. Then, how could I understand integration properly? First of all, is it a problem of integration?

One of the things I became to be confident about during university life is, I'm the best person who knows about myself. It turned successful when I was going through the Japanese-style job-hunting process, which asks predominantly about your personal background and motivation. So, I do believe this is a good chance to get to know my orientation in social science, even if it might not be the best practice in terms of the course aim - I believe it fits in though.  

The important thing is, the reason I started writing this NOTE - rather longer and more personal pieces of writing than Twitter and Facebook - is I needed the place to externalise my conversation counterpart. In other words, I needed somewhere to store what I am concerned when falling into the rabbit hall, so that I can come back whenever I wish to and resume thinking, rather than sacrificing all other aspects of life. And now, it is playing its perfect role to clear my head up. It seems to be.

PS
One of the pressing issues I have right now is, I’m increasingly feeling like I’d like to do my master’s study in Sweden. It doesn’t come from nowhere - the University of Stockholm has the exact professor in the area I want to pursue. However, two problems arise - a. Master in international relations at Stockholm is offered by the faculty of Economic history and international relations, which makes the course heavily lean on economics and development, and b. It is a two-year course. The fact that the master's course is offered by the university which hosts the professor I'm interested in could not be enough reason to spend two extra and expensive years in Sweden. However, when I look at other master courses in Sweden, including Lund and Gothenburg, there are courses which I might want to attend. Now, the question is, to what extent should I extend the criteria for the master application? In which country? How many years?

Staying in a country for a month is enough to see the good aspect of the area, while not the negative. However, knowing the country has a positive aspect is enough to persuade you afterwards, when you face any difficulty in the country - it should be - as you know that the country is good in some aspect - Should I apply to Sweden as well? I do know what I want to study, but I don’t know where. Where?