The immigrant who breaks the mold

There is a kind of immigrant who makes people profoundly uncomfortable. Not only the system, but also a significant portion of immigrants themselves. But before I tell you which kind, I want to explain how I arrived here.

Lately I have been deeply interested in studying interculturality through my own experience living between two countries. I reached these topics partly because my therapist recommended them, and partly because I needed to understand something I had been feeling without being able to name. And in the books I found theories that helped me understand myself and, above all, understand my community. Sometimes you need someone else to put into words what you have been carrying in your body for years.

Now we can begin. The immigrant I am talking about is the one who, even while belonging to communities that have historically been stigmatized and excluded, the system cannot classify within the collective imagination or the established stereotype. I am not talking about the one who flaunts his achievements or looks down on others. Nor the one who believes his country or culture is better than his neighbor’s. I am talking about the one who has cultural capital, the one who usually has academic training, the one who in the eyes of legality should be accepted without question.

But it does not always work that way.

Many times his presence is more uncomfortable than that of those whom the system feels free to stigmatize and persecute. And that happens because he breaks the stereotype. And a broken stereotype is a threat to those who need it intact.

This is where Young Yun Kim and her book Becoming Intercultural appear. Kim develops a concept that shook me completely: host conformity pressure. The theory describes the pressure that the receiving environment exerts on the immigrant who stands out, pushing them to occupy the place the system assigned to them. That place down there. That “your light bothers me.” And when that immigrant refuses to occupy the sub-place reserved for them, the pressure does not disappear. It increases.

But there is a crueler layer.

It is the one that appears when the pressure does not come from the system, but from other immigrants. From those who see in the one who breaks the mold the reflection of something that feels distant. And here I want to be careful, because it is delicate terrain: neither of them is responsible for the inequities of the system. But both are responsible for how they handle the emotions that arise from their privileges or disadvantages. And it happens often. I am sure many of you have witnessed how brilliant people prefer to hide their achievements so they do not make others uncomfortable or so they are not attacked.

This is especially common in our Latin community, because the imaginary built around us is extremely rigid. And that rigidity is particularly useful to certain sectors of the system.

An educated, confident, competitive Latino who does not lower his gaze does not fit the imaginary. And what does not fit generates hostility. Not because he has done something wrong, but because he exists in a way many are not used to seeing or dealing with.

And it is precisely here that Kim offers a way out. Intercultural adaptation does not mean adapting to the place the system assigns you. It means building an identity that transcends the categories others need to impose on you. It is not about shrinking your light so it fits the mold. It is about refusing to let the mold define the size of your light.

Because in the end, being uncomfortable is not always a problem you need to solve. Sometimes being uncomfortable is simply proof that you are existing outside the script others wrote for you.