University of Northampton - International Students

I thought it would be interesting to see how the University of Northampton markets itself internationally because I am here as an international student myself. Before coming here on this exchange program I wouldn’t have chosen England as my first country of choice to study abroad. Now that I am here and have experienced it I think that the University of Northampton has excelled in making me feel welcome and I have enjoyed every bit of being here.

The University of Northampton welcomes over 1,000 international students from more than 100 different countries every year.  They have regional offices located in China, North and South India and Pakistan to provide local advice and make applying to study here as easy as possible. They also offer personal meetings at various places around the world. A representative from the International Office travels to these countries to help promote the university and answer any questions the students may have. The university offers English classes for students who may still need to improve their language skills. Alternatively, they also offer The International Foundation Program, which prepares international students to attend university in the UK who do not meet the minimum skills required to attend a full program. There are scholarships available from the University of Northampton International Scholarship Scheme, which can cover up to 25% of tuition costs.

The hall of residence that I live in here is composed of all international students, including myself. I share my flat with women from Africa, India, Bhutan and Vietnam. Most of them are here doing their masters and I asked a few of them why they have chosen to come to the University of Northampton.

Some of the reasons expressed are as follows:

·      She wanted to come to the UK or the USA because all of the literature for her masters program comes from western countries. She wanted to live in a western country so that she could experience it while she went to school and so she could go back to India with western knowledge. She chose to come to the this university because it was less expensive than going to the university in the USA that she was also accepted into.

·      The University of Northampton was recommended to her from someone in her field of work. They said the program that was offered here was exactly what she needed to take and was very applicable to her undergraduate degree.

·      She wanted to come to a country where her opinion could be voiced. At the University of Northampton she is allowed to express her opinions and question what she is learning. Cost was also a deciding factor.

It was really interesting to talk to these women and hear about their backgrounds and what brought them here. Some of the women have families at home and are very established in their careers. This shows how important education is to these women who come mostly from developing countries. The fact that they have to leave their lives and their families at home to go to a university where they feel they can get a better education seems unfortunate but hey all seem very happy here and have adjusted well.

In our flat there is always good food cooking from all over the world. For me, these women have made me feel more at home than anything the university has to offer because of their kindness. The time all of us spend in the kitchen talking and learning about food and other aspects from our home countries has been very interesting and applicable to my own studies here on this Diaspora program. Because of where I live here on campus I feel that I got more out of this experience because I was exposed to so many other cultures and not just the English culture.

Brick Lane

“[The South Asian Diaspora] is defined by its ability to recreate a culture in diverse locations” (Agnew, 2005 p 4) Brick Lane in London, otherwise called ‘Banglatown,’ is a representation of this re-creation of culture both in the city and in Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane. Brick Lane explores Nazneen’s experience as a Bangladeshi immigrant in London. She went sent there to marry Channu through an arranged marriage and they eventually have two children.  She corresponds with her sister Hasina, whom still lives in Bangladesh, through letters where she writes of her experiences in her new country and her longing for home. From this the reader is privy to an insiders view on her representation and interpretation of what it is like to experience living in a diasporic community.

At the beginning of the novel Nazneen longs for home and frequently day dreams of her childhood. Vijay Agnew explains:

Diaspora can, thus, denote a transnational sense of self and community and create an understanding of ethnicity and ethnic bonds that transcends the borders and boundaries of nation states. Yet, the individual living in the diaspora experiences a dynamic tension everyday between living ‘here’ and remembering ‘there’; between memories of place and origin and entanglements with places of residence, and between the metaphorical and the physical home”

                                                                                                             Agnew (2005 p 4)

Because she is holding onto the past this creates tension but as the novel evolves she begins to gain independence and confidence to assimilate into English society.

Avtar Brah (1996) believes “’Home’ is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination” but on the other hand “‘home’ is also the lived experience of a locality” (p 192). Nazneen learns to call England her home after many years of her ‘lived experiences’.  She meets a woman named Razia who whos influence helps influence Nazneen’s independence. She gets her a job working from home as a seamstress; work is not something her husband, Channu, believes is acceptable for a Bangladeshi woman. From meeting Karim, her employer who brings her clothing to sew at home, she breaks away from tradition and they begin a love affair. He is a devout Muslim and an activist in a group called the Bengal Tigers. 

In Brtiain, where ‘hybridity is not allowed,’ racism has provided the impetus for some diasporic individuals to maintain ties with their homelands and has encouraged them to express their quintessential selves that are rooted in their ethnicities.        
                                                                                                       Jussawalla (1997 p 30)

His wardrobe changes throughout the novel just as his values seem to.   He changes from a t-shirt and jeans to traditional clothing and a beard.

This transformation is to reinforce his beliefs, not only to himself, but to others who have developed a hatred towards Muslims because of the 9/11 attacks in New York.  His Muslim values seem to become increasingly stronger because of this and he feels the need to embody the ethnicity he is trying to defend.

Chanu, Nazneen’s husband, also unknowingly contributes to her independence and drives her into assimilation because of his unwillingness to do so himself.  He struggles with work and is always going after a new promotion. He feels that it’s a “tragedy…when you expect to be so-called integrated. But you will never get the same treatment. Never” (Ali, 2008 p 202). “He says that if he painted his skin pink and white then there would be no problem” (Ali, 2008 p 53).  Chanu doesn’t feel accepted into the host society and in his case “the question of home, therefore, is intrinsically linked with the way in which processes of inclusion or exclusion operate [and] are subjectively experienced under given circumstances. It is centrally about our political and personal struggles over the social regulation of ‘belonging’” (Brah, 1996 p 192). He is not accepted by the host society and therefore has a more difficult time assimilating into English society.

Nazneen and Channu’s children, Bibi and Shahanna, experience “the tensions between the old and new homes [that] create the problem of divided allegiances that the two generations experience differently” (Radhakrishnan, 2003 p 123). Most of these issues surround Shahanna and Chanu; Shahanna has reached an age where she isn’t as impressionable and has established beliefs of her own. She corrects her father’s English and wants her lip pierced. In an argument with her father she says “I didn’t ask to be born here” (Ali, 2008 p 299). Agnew (2005) believes “identities are socially constructed, contingent on time, place and social context, and therefore fluid and unstable” (p12) Shahanna’s identity was socially constructed in England because she was born there; she has chosen to integrate into society and reject her families origin.  This fluid identity in diaspora causes tensions between the older immigrant generation and the later generations born in diaspora (Radhakrishnan, 2003). In the end of the novel when Shahanna finds out Chanu plans to move their family back to Bangladesh she refuses to go and runs away. She takes this bold step as a last resort to show her parents that England is her home.

Because Nazneen realizes, alongside Shahanna, that England is her home too, she tells Chanu the children and her are going to stay in England. She feels it is their home now and Shahanna would never be happy in Bangladesh. When she tells him they aren’t going she says, “I can’t go with you” (Ali 2008 p 402) and he replies with, “I can’t stay” (Ali 2008 p 402).  The use of “can’t” in this context show how strongly they both feel about where their home really is after their long journey.

By the end of the novel Nazneen has demonstrated that she really can do anything in England. She realizes the opportunities here that she maybe never would have had at home. In corresponding with her sister she realizes how lucky she now is to be in a country where she can turn on the hob instead of making a fire for the oven, has a flushing toilet and two sinks (Ali 2008 p 58) Most of all she has accepted her identity as a Bengali women living in England and no longer spends her days longing for home.

 Works Cited 

Agnew, Vijay, ed, 2005. Diaspora, Memory + Identity: A search for home. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated.

Ali, Monica, 2008. Brick Lane. New York: Scribner.

Brah, A., 1996. Cartographies of Diaspora. London: Routledge.

Jussawalla, Feroza. 1997. South Asian Diaspora Writers in Britain: ‘Home’ vs. ‘Hybridity’. In Ideas of Home: Literature of Asian Migration, ed. Geoffrey Kain,. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Radhakrishnan, R., 2003. “Ethnicity in an Age of Diaspora.” Theorizing Diaspora. Ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur. Oxford: Blackwell, p119-131

Chicken Tikka Massala

Before I arrived in England I thought I had a pretty good idea of what the food was going to be like; traditional English pub food: bangers and mash, fish and chips, Sunday roast dinner. I knew that England was a very multicultural place and expected to see curry and kabab shops, just like home. My first experience at the local pub across the street from the university was a little different than I expected. Instead of getting the fish and chip meal that I had craved all day I was taunted with the choice of having a full Indian meal. I love ethnic food, but I also love plain old fish and chips. I ordered something called Chicken Tikka Massala, which is something that I had never tried back at home in Canada. It was such a good dinner! It wasn’t until a few days later that I found out it wasn’t a real Indian dish it was in fact “now a true British national dish, not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influence. Chicken Tikka is an Indian dish. The Massala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy” (Cook, 2001) Robin Cook, who was the foreign secretary of England, said this during a public speech. 

After this realization I began to notice “Tikka” everywhere I shopped and ate. Burger King has a Massala Burger and Greggs has a Chicken Tikka pastie. In the grocery store there is a larger selection of Indian-type sauces than there is of tomato sauce. Chicken Tikka is a traditional Bangladeshi dish and is made by cooking the chicken in a tandoor. It is said that Massala was invented when someone asked for it to come with gravy while ordering it in a restaurant. The cook invented a sauce made from tomato soup, cream and spices instead of serving the gravy (ANON, 2011). The dish was a compromise between two traditions and it speaks a lot to how England is today: a compromise. Its history with many different countries has brought an ethnic variety that is even more diverse than what I have experienced in Canada. Chicken Tikka Massala is just one simple example of how different cultures can blend and interact to become something better.

Cook, Robin. 2001. Robin Cooks Chicken Tikka Massala Speech. [Online] Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/apr/19/race.britishidentity [Accessed March 25th 2011]

ANON., 2011. Where does Chicken Tikka Massala Come From? [Online] Available at

http://factoidz.com/where-does-chicken-tikka-masala-come-from/

[Accessed March 25^th 2011]