Let’s Celebrate Immigrant Characters

In Western countries, December is the month of holidays. When I think about winter holidays, I think about movement—people driving across county lines to visit family, religious historical figures migrating to make change, new holidays moving into public consciousness—so I thought I would talk about writing immigrant characters.

As I wrote this article, I realized that this topic is much too long for a single blog post, so this will be the first of a three-part series. Right now, we’ll talk about how to make research your friend instead of an enemy, and how to use it to begin crafting immigrant characters.

Believe it or not, immigration is a universal human experience. If you look up any nation’s history, you’ll find trade routes, border disputes, religious/cultural persecutions, and people moving into cities or out into farm land to take advantage of resources. Groups combine, break apart, and yes, unfortunately, get consumed by conquerors.

What all this means is that learning to write immigrant characters will give all of us an extra tool in our craft toolbox. Whether you’re writing an historical novel, a speculative fiction story, or a tale set in contemporary times, movement and change is a constant. Internalizing this will help you craft more dynamic characters.

Note: The tips here are primarily focused on immigration to the U.S., but you can adapt these tips to write immigrant characters in any setting.

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Research as a Decision-Making Tool

Research is a loaded term in Western society. Typically, we think of research in the academic sense: I have a thesis to support and I need to do a whole bunch of reading to find evidence for it, or, conversely, I need to do a whole bunch of reading on a topic before I can even think about forming an opinion. For fiction writers, this mentality makes research daunting, if not near impossible, especially when you’re trying to learn about someone’s else’s culture.

I propose a new way of thinking: research as a decision making tool.

In an

earlier post,

I wrote about the power of choice, and how making conscious choices allows you to more easily undo those choices if it doesn’t fit the story. Conscious choices also helps you avoid falling into stereotype traps. When it comes to writing immigrant characters, knowing what pieces of information you need keeps research from becoming overwhelming. In each of the steps below, I’ll give you the questions to ask. It’s vital, however, that you make a solid choice about your immigrant characters before moving to the next as the questions build upon each other.

Step 1: Pin down the basic details for your immigrant characters

Which country are your immigrant characters, or their ancestors, coming from?

And which country are they immigrating to?

Asking these two questions might seem pointst—after all, why would you try to write immigrant characters without knowing which country they come from?—but there’s a subconscious bias we must look out for. In our modern global society, we think of the world in regions—the European Union, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Latin America—and this creates the illusion that the countries in these regions are the same. But Pakistan is very different from India; Morocco is very different Ghana; and immigration to the United States is different from immigration to Canada.

To avoid conflating countries and their countries, make sure you choose specifically what country your immigrant characters come from and which country they move to.

You can even go more specific with your choices by pinpointing the state/province your immigrant characters move between. Just like no American would mistake a Texan for a New Yorker, other countries have culturally differences between provinces that can help make your characters unique.

Some things to help get you thinking:

Climate/geography: Even the smallest countries have variations in their landscape and weather patterns. Do you need your immigrant characters to come from mountains? Desert? Farmland? Are they used to the cold, the rain, dry heat?

Bordering countries: Every country outside Canada and the U.S. has multiple bordering countries and these bordering countries affects culture. Do you want your Italian immigrant characters to be closer to Greece, or France, or the Mediterranean sea and subsequently Africa? Are your British immigrant characters more French or Welsh or Scottish?

The choice is yours!

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Step 2: Research immigration patterns

Immigration tends to occur in waves. This does not mean there aren’t people moving between countries during the slow periods; what it does mean is that each wave of immigration creates very different lived experiences for its people.

In the last step, you pinned down the locations your immigrant characters travel between. Here, you choose the time period. Was it your character’s grandparents who immigrated? Great-grandparents? Themselves? Or a combination (perhaps the great-grandparents on one side immigrated, but your character’s father came over right before getting married).

If these choices feel overwhelming to you, you don’t have to consider all of them. The beauty of fiction writing is that you can choose whatever feels right to you.

Step 3: Why did your immigrant characters move?

Do you remember eighth grade social studies where we learned about immigration and push/pull factors? Well, it’s time to put them to practical use. If you don’t remember, here’s a quick recap:

People immigrate for very specific reasons. They don’t just decide out of nowhere to up and leave their home for an unknown destination. The reasons they immigrate can be put into two general categories:

Push factors: something in their home country/region makes it difficult to stay. Examples can include war, poverty, famine, political strife, or much more personal reasons like job insecurity or family problems.

Pull factors: something in the destination country makes it enticing to move there. Some examples would be business ventures, job opportunities, acceptance of your religion or way of life, better education, etc.

(Note that these examples are pretty U.S.-centric. I would love to hear any others you come up with.)

A helpful place to start for researching immigration to the U.S. is

ancestory.com.

The site gives breaks down immigration patterns both by century (i.e., immigration in the nineteenth century) as well as by country.

Deciding which year your immigrant characters’ family moved and the reasons they moved will help you flesh out their life experiences. A family fleeing war will have very different priorities and values than a family who moved seeking better job prospects.

In part two, we’ll dive deeper into cultural factors that shape your immigrant characters.

Let me know in the comments if you found this helpful and what you discovered doing these steps.