Am I Gozitan? What does that mean?

Damien Spiteri & Ryan Mercieca
Malta
Am I Gozitan? What does that mean? An exploration of the
identities of Gozitan young people who have lived abroad
The study will focus on the perspectives of Gozitan young people who have a dual
citizenship and who lived both in Malta and in the US. It will analyse how they
negotiate their identity as Gozitans, particularly since, as EU citizens, they can live and
work in different parts of the EU. The study will be focused on people in their 20s and
30s who have lived in both the US and Malta, and will also explore if/how they see
accessing different countries as influencing their future life plans.
Gozo as home. The life-plans of Gozitan young people with dual US citizenship
When addressing a convention which is aimed at Maltese people living abroad, it is
inevitable that we expect that the experiences of different categories of people to
feature. There are those who have lived abroad and only come to Malta sparsely,
seeing themselves as having left Malta permenantly. Others would be those who live
abroad and come to Malta every so often, and yet, somehow, identify more with
being Maltese than with their host country. Yet others are those who have lived
abroad for some time, returned to Malta, and, particularly because they live here, see
themselves as Maltese.
While I am sure that these categories are not set in stone, and there may be people
who identify with perhaps more than one category simultaneously, I am going to
focus my address on the experiences of young people who fall into the third
category, who however, see themselves more as Gozitans than Maltese, even though,
whe outside of Malta and asked where they come from, usually they refer to
CMLA 2015 – Damien Spiteri and Ryan Mercieca (Malta): Am I Gozitan? What does that mean? An
exploration of the identities of Gozitan young people who have lived abroad
themselves as Maltese rather than Gozitan. Before I start, however, I would like to
give a brief history about where this paper originates from. It is the work of two
authors. There is Dr. Damian Spiteri, who is from Malta, and who like many other
Maltese, says that he says Gozo as a holiday place, associating it, with, in his younger
days, such experiences as going to parties at La Grotta in Xlendi and then going, with
other Maltese friends for pastizzi in the morning in ir-Rabat, and in today's days, with
occassional weekend visits with his family, and retreats with Fr Paul Chetcuti of the
Society of Jesus, at Manresa Retreat House, at Munxar. And then, there is myself, who
is Gozitan, who has many childhood experiences in Gozo, who has attended school
and sixth form in Gozo, whose roots are essentially Gozitan, and even when at
University, commuted regularly between the islands, since, like many other Gozitans,
I see Gozo as home.
Prof. Godfrey Baldacchino (2007, p. 165) who has studied islands describes them "as
a contradiction between openness and closure, between roots and routes, which
islanders must continually negotiate." Let us focus on these two contradictions.
Let us start off by reflecting about Gozo's openness or about Gozo as an open space.
One can ask how many Gozitan islanders travel elsewhere are then return - bringing
back outside experiences and practises with them. Perhaps, one may not go that far,
and think of the social sites that can lead to the creation and/or enhancement of
relationships with people in lands afar. As a matter of fact, one of the participants
had said that, in today's day and age, if one is to go into facebook, it is as if one has
gone to the village square and met up with friends so as to socialise and have a drink
[illum il-ġurnata, tidħol fil-facebook, qisek tmur il-pjazza, tieħu drink). Does this make
Gozo open? Now let us look at things the other way round and think of Gozo as a
closed space. One can ask is there such a thing as a Gozitan identity. If so, how does
it come about, If one were to ask, for instance, what the Maltese think about the
Gozitans, would one be closer at arriving to an answer to such a question?
Let us now move onto the second contradiction, the one about the roots. This relates
to where one is coming from. Now, let us change subject for a while, and, talk about
the routes. These are the means through which one travels in order to reach one's
many evolving destinations in life. Very often roots and routes travel hand in hand, in
psycholoanalytic theory, for instance, we learn that through the route of marriage, we
often end up finding a partner that reminds us of someone or something in our
roots. Can we say the same thing applies in the case of people who move out of
Gozo and live in the US, but yet want to bring up their children here, and leave the
US, with its promise of plentiful opportunities, for this small island. Of course, one
CMLA 2015 – Damien Spiteri and Ryan Mercieca (Malta): Am I Gozitan? What does that mean? An
exploration of the identities of Gozitan young people who have lived abroad
must also ask what happens in the case of emigrants who want to return to their
native home land but are unable to for a host of reasons, including a desire not to
interrupt their children’s' schooling, or other social or familial commitments. What
feelings do they experience?
Dr. Baldacchino discusses very powerful and emotion centered contradictions. I have
decided to focus on them since they feature prominently in the narratives of a group
of young people who Dr. Spiteri and I interviewed, so as to address the convention
on Maltese living abroad with updated data about the impact, particularly on an
emotional level, that migration has on people. The study which Dr. Spiteri and I
carried out was focused on ten interviewees who I knew. The study is thereby not
based on a representative sample and the insights that it generates cannot be
generalized to a larger population. However, the study contributes to our
understanding of transitions from the perspective of young people who have lived
for some time in the US and come back. It has to be pointed out further that these
young people had no say in either going or coming, they simply did what their
parents did. Their parents took them to the US when emigrating there. Their parents
brought them with them on eventually relocating to Gozo.
All the interviewees are in their late teens and early 20s, and most attend the
University of Malta. When in the USA, most lived in New York. They stayed there for
periods ranging from three months to five years. All had been taken there by their
relatives, and in each case, their relatives had decided to return. While, as can be
resonably expected, those who went for shorter time periods do not believe that the
period that they spent in the USA was influential, others who spent some of their
primary or secondary school years there believed that the USA had an influence on
them, and said that had they not succeed in getting into the University of Malta, they
would have pursued a college education in the USA. However, even amongst these
young people, there were differences. Some went and came back without revisiting
Gozo when they were gone. Others revisited from time to time, and recall fondly
memories of having meals with their cousins in Gozo at the grandmother's home,
hence we are talking of family roots within the broad overall context of the routes
that they were taking. Some, particularly those who went abroad for relatively
shorter periods, went with a clear intent of returning to Gozo, eventually, even
though one of the participants noted that his parents had cut the period of time
short, on encountering previously unforseen employment problems in the US.
Another of the participants, who had lived in the US, described having been told of
his parents' desire to return to Gozo as something that came completely out of the
CMLA 2015 – Damien Spiteri and Ryan Mercieca (Malta): Am I Gozitan? What does that mean? An
exploration of the identities of Gozitan young people who have lived abroad
blue, it was a complete shock to him (niftakar li kien xokk kbir għalija, meta kienu
qaluli li ser immorru noqgħodu Għawdex għal dejjem).
The contradiction between routes and roots can be expressed in different ways. Two
of the participants said that their parents had blocks of flats in Gozo. One said that
his parents had built a block of flats in Astoria, in New York, something that they
have held onto, even though they are now living in Gozo, as it serves as a source of
income, since they rent them out, and thereby benefit from their rental income.
Another of the participants said that he knew someone, who likewise also had a
block of flats in New York, who had sold it, prior to returning to Gozo, saying that he
did not want to have ties with immovables outside of Gozo. It is almost as if some
people believe in a total attachment to their roots, an almost here or there mentality,
as if owning flats in the US precludes them from being Gozitan, or if not that,
somehow interferes with the way they perceive themselves as Gozitans. Others do
not see owning property abroad as distancing themselves from being Gozitan.
A further curious contradiction related to the pastizzi shop in Astoria. This is the shop
that makes and sells traditional Maltese cheese and peas cakes, or as they are called
"pastizzi'. It is run by people who were of Maltese origins. However, only one of the
participants said that he bought pastizzi from there. Does this mean that pastizzi are
not associated with Gozitan roots? However, and I say this in a light-hearted vein,
when we were preparing the paper which I am presenting to you now, Dr. Spiteri
reminisced, how, in his younger days, he used to come up to Gozo with groups of
friends for some weekends, generally to go to parties at Grotta. After partying away
till the early hours of the morning, before going with his friends to their flat to get
some sleep, normally they would buy pastizzi from Rabat. Does this mean that they
identify more with their Maltese roots when they come 'abroad' to Gozo than do the
Gozitans in New York, or does it mean that the pasitizzi of ir-Rabat (which is my
home town) are so particularly good, that it makes it worth the while for the Maltese
to drive up to ir-Rabat to have them? I will not answer this question as if I do, I might
be accused of being presumptuous.
At the root of all ethnographic studies is a burning desire of people to learn about
people by learning from them. It is an attempt to provide an accurate account of how
people perceive and live reality. The role of the researcher is not passive, however,
since researchers need to be enabled to attune themselves to the meanings behind
the participants’ social behaviour in their culture (Fetterman, 2010). This implies that,
for instance, to the Gozitans, the Gozo boat is not simply a means of travel, as it is to
many Maltese, but rather, it is a space in which people can meet up and also get lifts
CMLA 2015 – Damien Spiteri and Ryan Mercieca (Malta): Am I Gozitan? What does that mean? An
exploration of the identities of Gozitan young people who have lived abroad
from others. Likewise, to young people of school age who have returned from the
US, and have started attending school in Gozo, the school does not simply serve as a
place where they will learn and socialise with other children and their teachers, but
also a place which will contribute to their eventually losing their American English
accent one for one which is not so heavily pronounced.
One of the participants said that even though he had lived in the USA for around
three years, to him, today, it was as if he never left (qisni qatt ma tlaqt). On exploring
with him why this was so, he explained, that even in New York, in his case, in
Manhattan, when at home, he spoke in Maltese, and thereby, he never stopped
identifying with the island. He always believed that, someday, he would return here.
What is clear is that, like the other participants, he developed his inclinations and
interests over time, and was subject to various ‘complex interactional, intellectual and
situated processes that constitute learning’ (Ball et al., 2000: 9) including learning
how he was both as an American and as a Gozitan. Having said this, there appears to
be consensus among the participants that the US serves as a form of safety valve, if
ever they feel unhappy in Gozo, Malta or Europe, and want to leave, they can. This is
in virtue of their all having a dual citizenship. What these young people are saying is
that their dual citizneship ties their roots to further possible routes, as it offers them
reassurance that they have more than way 'out', should they come to ever need it.
Damien Spiteri & Ryan Mercieca
Malta
CMLA 2015 – Damien Spiteri and Ryan Mercieca (Malta): Am I Gozitan? What does that mean? An
exploration of the identities of Gozitan young people who have lived abroad
References
Baldacchino, Islands as Novelty Sites, The Geographical Review 97(2), 165-174.
Ball SJ, Maguire M and Macrae S (2000) Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-16:
New Youth, New Economies in the Global City. London and New York: Routledge
Falmer
Fetterman DM (2010) Ethnography Step by Step. Third edition. Sage Publications,
Thousand Oaks CA.
CMLA 2015 – Damien Spiteri and Ryan Mercieca (Malta): Am I Gozitan? What does that mean? An
exploration of the identities of Gozitan young people who have lived abroad