Outcasts United: Chapter 2

Chapter two of Outcasts United is about a woman named Beatrice Ziaty and her family. The chapter helps build background for players on the Fugees soccer team. In this case, Beatrice's two sons Jeremiah and Mandela, became members of the Fugees. This is the story of how they became refugees. This chapter contains two concepts that we will study more in depth later this year. The first is migration found in chapter 3 and the other is ethnicity; the topic of chapter 7. 

Migration involves the movement of people. They could be coming (immigration) or going (emigration). If the migration is inter-national, then people are both going (leaving their home country) and coming (entering another country). Whenever people leave a place there are said to be push factors that motivate them to leave. These push factors could be economic, environmental or cultural. In the case of  Beatrice Ziaty, her move was a cultural push. Is was cultural because it was a cultural factor that led to her move. Cultural factors include race, ethnicity, religion and language. As stated in Outcasts United, Beatrice and her husband were members of the Krahn tribe. The Krahn, while just four percent of the population of Liberia, gained power and privilege when Samuel Doe led a revolution that killed Liberia's president. As usually happens in corrupt governments, the ruling class favors certain groups of people. When Doe favored members of his own tribe, those who belonged to the majority Gio and Mano tribes became more and more upset. When Charles Taylor overthrew Doe, he sought to channel people's frustration into seeking revenge against members of the Krahn tribe. This is tactic unites people and gives them someone to blame for the problems of the country. It also removes competition by making the unpopular tribe into a scapegoat. This happened to the Jews in Germany, the Muslims on the Balkan Peninsula and many, many more instances. It is particularly severe, however, on the continent of Africa. It is one of the biggest reasons why Africa is the poorest, least developed continent in the world. I will explain why ethnicity is such a big problem in future blog posts.


Cultural push factors are not the only factors that can make someone a refugee. A refugee can also be pushed out of a place because of environmental factors such as in Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake/tsunami in Japan or any other natural disaster. Economic push factors are not, however, considered to be the kinds of push factors that lead to forced migration. When someone leaves a place, they might have hundreds of places they could go but they can obviously choose only one. The factors that bring a person or people to a specific place are called pull factors. Pull factors are the same as push factors: economic, cultural and environmental. Beatrice ended up in the United States primarily because of cultural pull factors. There are laws the govern immigration into the United States. The U.S. gives preference to people who already have family in the U.S. and people who also possess valuable knowledge and skills. A small percentage of immigrants gain entrance into the U.S. by having the named pulled randomly from the names of all people in a country that want to come to the U.S. Last, anyone who can get to the United States and prove they are a refugee (they were forced from their home by cultural or environmental factors) is admitted into the United States. 
For people in countries that are relatively close to the United States, this is still difficult but, as in the case of Cuba (cultural push) or Haiti (environmental push/earthquake), it can still be done even by someone who is really poor. Since refugees are almost always poor, they don't have the means to get to the United States. So how do refugees like Beatrice get to the United States and end up in a place like Clarkston, Georgia? That is the subject of the next blog post.