Hi! 👋 I just came across your post from a boost, I hope you won’t mind the unsolicited take from a stranger 🙂
I instantly interpreted your question as “How to be welcome in a new community”, how to integrate a community as an immigrant. I’ve been asking myself those questions as I recently moved across Europe, back to the community where I grew up after 15+ years away. I have the ancestry, I have way more than that, and yet I must work to integrate that community again.
Ancestry still matters to some, unfortunately. It can make integration and life much harder for someone who just looks different from the old natives in that community. In that way, sharing ancestry can give you a head start.
Language, dialect, accent, vocabulary, phrases, common cultural references also play a big role in integration. They’re also why one may feel unwelcome just because their accent is a little different.
None of that is enough though. At the end of the day, I’d say your actions are what really matter.
Do you learn the language with the locals (no, Duolingo doesn’t count)? Do you join local associations, volunteer at events? Do you attend local events, markets, celebrations? Do you get to know folks in your neighborhood, offer your help, ask for help?
As an introvert, I find all the above hard. It’s draining, and not something I really look forward to. I force myself though, and I must admit my efforts have almost always been rewarded. Yet I still feel like an outsider at times.
My wife, who moved with me, had a much harder challenge. She doesn’t have the ancestry, nor the language, the accent, or all the cultural references. Everything is that much harder for her. Yet she managed to integrate our local community much faster than me, because she made more effort to show up, to be social, to show interest in people and their lives. If you were to ask here, she’d tell you she still very much feels like an outsider. But that’s all because of that baggage she didn’t have at the start. The community actually accepted her already. Objectively, she’s better integrated than me, they accepted her more than they’ve accepted me.