Migration was never far from the national agenda although, it must be said, it had been quite a while since Malta experienced two weeks of news dominated by the issue – first with the Aquarius situation and, earlier this week, with that of the Lifeline.
We knew that, after a lull of two or more years, incidents such as the ones we had this month were bound to happen after the change of government in Italy, which brought in a different political mindset and did away with whatever arrangement had been agreed to by MatteoRenzi and Joseph Muscat.
But, as we all know, migration is not a new phenomenon. It has been with us for centuries, as people moved from one village to another, one country to another, and one continent to another in search of a better future.
One only has to look at the line-ups of the World Cup participating nations to get a deeper understanding of how, for many years, families have uprooted themselves from the place they were born and raised and took great risks in an attempt to improve their situation. Many succeeded.
Just to give a few examples, Germany, surprisingly eliminated from the competition so early, played one match with two black central defenders, and had in their 23-man squad a number of other players whose origins are not German.
Sweden and Denmark also have black players in their fold, and even hosts Russia have one player whose surname is clearly not one that is easily found in Moscow.
Switzerland is another nation which has so many players who were born and raised elsewhere, and the incident in which two of their players celebrated by forming their arms in what is generally considered to be an eagle – which is the symbol of Albania – goes a long way to explain how migration has permeated into the sport world.
Malta is not at the World Cup, but over the last two decades or so we have had black players in our fold, while every effort has been made to find players of Maltese origin who had never set foot in Malta and probably never spoke the language, and yet still play in the red jersey simply because their Maltese grandfather emigrated to somewhere else many years ago.
One tends to perceive migration as something bad, something which is undesired and that it will upset the status quo. But, if one were to look closely, there are many stories of people who changed countries and built their own success. These include the many footballers who, thanks to their skills, were given the chance to make a name for themselves.
The thing is, it is easier to accept someone who has talent, or something to offer, or someone with money, than someone unknown, probably with a different skin colour, and coming off a boat after spending days at sea.
That is human nature.
But, in all this, one must remember that everyone deserves a chance.
from The Malta Independent https://ift.tt/2z6CRqH
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