On (im)migrant weekends

First things first: terminology. When I write academically, I like to use the word "migrant." Particularly when I write about voluntary mobility. The word stresses movement over direction and allows to reflect on the state of in-betweenness; between and betwixt the home and the host, that migration implies. 

Yet I don't think of myself as a migrant. Here, in the host country, I am an immigrant. From the perspective of home, I have emigrated.  

The direction implied in the prefix is always more evident at weekends in the host country. In John Updike's Couples, one of the characters experiences "the chronic sadness of late Sunday afternoon." Hers is not an immigrant sadness, though: it refers to the weekend's inevitable finality and the looming dreariness of Monday. However, for an immigrant,  the "chronic sadness" implied in the capitalist rhythm of life has an additional dimension. 

The working week is exempt from such sadness. On days filled with work, there is no time to reflect. Work requires a steady rhythm. Disruptive emotions distract us from productivity and reduce motivation to get up, do the work, go to sleep and repeat. 

Weekends are different. As the working week comes to a halt, space opens for unproductive thinking and the distraction of feelings. This space is often filled with the familiar (in both literal and metaphorical sense of the word): a get-together with siblings, Sunday lunch with parents, catching up with old friends. 

For immigrants, especially if they do not have a family of their own, filling the weekend space with the familiar is often unavailable. The space has to be filled with something else, but often a small opening still remains. This is where chronic sadness creeps in: nostalgia for the familiar, the pesky "I should have...," and the nagging "what if...?" 

Immigration, perhaps more than other life decisions, generates such unproductive questions. Yet, as the mind knows they would interfere with the rhythm of workweek, it patiently waits for the weekend to ask them again. 

The good news is that in time the chronic sadness dies down a bit and the pesky questions reverberate less strongly. It never disappears, though. It is chronic, after all. A persistent side-effect of moving away from the familiar.