Hello to my fellow Art Studies students! As this is my first blog post I will give a quick introduction of myself so you know my background somewhat. I was born in France as my parents moved there in their twenties for work purposes (which ended up being permanent), and I was born there along with my two younger brothers. I moved to Canada, where my parents were originally from, about ten years into my life. I am not telling you this information for no reason, it does tie in with my topic of this post: globalization. This may be one of the more common topics for our first posts, but I did find one of the points discussed during our joint lecture interesting as I felt it related to me (and could relate to some of you), and I just wanted to share it.
Someone in our joint lecture brought up the idea of losing our nationality with the rise of globalization, and ethnicity will be a thing of the past. I immediately thought of my own family, as I am a French and Canadian citizen, as to say I have a dual nationality. My parents were both born in Canada, but their parents have different roots. North America is often referr
ed to as a melting pot, because of the mass immigration that has been ongoing since basically its discovery, and the assimilation of all cultures into one. This flow towards the “new world” that once was is now a two-way road, as modern North American students are finding opportunities in Europe, and international students choose to study in North America. Professor Dilley spoke to us about the increased fluidity that allows people to move all around to world with ease. This is the direct tie to losing our roots. Our family trees will branch off so far with future generations being born all over the world, that our original roots will be lost and it will be a question of citizenship as opposed to ethnicity. I identify myself as a French and Canadian citizen, yet my roots do not extend to either of these countries. I don’t feel as if I am a completely “Canadian” or “French”, as I am just a citizen with no ancestry rooted into these countries.
With a university as diverse as this one, I am sure many of you can relate to this. I think nationality will no longer be something as important, but just a characteristic. I would expect this to fully develop in many generations from now, so for the time being we can cherish this thing that we value. I chose this topic because I thought it was interesting, as well as it related to me, our whole CAP stream of Global Citizenship, and maybe some of you individually. So until next time, I am Ryan Bednar, and I am logging off, or ‘blogging’ off.
P.S. Sorry about that pun.