SPACES AND EXCHANGES

«  SPACES AND EXCHANGES »

I would like to talk about the notion «  Spaces and exchange ». In order to illustrate this notion, I have chosen some topic. My presentationwill fall into 2 parts. Fisrt of all, I'll focus on the immigration toward America and besides I'll analyse the phenomenon of « Gap Year ».

This notion deals with the geographical and symbolic areas that all societies occupy and the interactions between men and different societies. Our world is built on the exploration and conquest of news spaces. The different cultural, economic, sociological and language interactions have shaped and characterised our modern-day world.

Immigration

The idea of the American dream is older than the USA itself – it dates back to the 1600s, when people began to have hopes for what was a new and largely unexplored continent to European immigrants. People dreamt of owning land and establishing a prosperous business and hoped that this would make them happier. People immigraated to America for various reasons, religious persecutions, political and economic difficulties. In America people came from many different countries. There was 3 waves :

1st wave XVII : 1600 pilgrims immigrated to America ( religion persecution, rejected hierarchy imposed by pope, protest in religion, and King)

2nd wave : 1619 forced immigration black peoplebrought from Africa to America ( slavery )

3th wave : 1820- 1960 ( Europeans + others countries

Fled : difficult economic situation

Talking about immigration in the USA is particularly relevant regarding the topic of space and exchanges since immigration definitely involves the idea of space as immigrants are moving across countries: they leave their home land to get a new start in America. Thus, it also involves exchange: immigrants come with their own share of cultural background that gets melt into a whole new lifestyle in their arrival country: the interaction between these two different ways of living defines multi-cultural exchange .

The second document is about a song that I have chosen, it's name «American land » written and interpreted by Bruce Springsteen.

This song deals with the topic of immigration, it describes the american land for immigrants, because, America represents a New Eldorado, it is a rich land, we can notice this through Bruce's Song « American Land », « Gold comes rushing out the rivers straight into your hands

Gap Year

A gap year is a period of time (from several weeks to a year or more) when students break from formal education to do something else such as gain work ex...

The expression "gap year" so familiar to British students, is not used in north America because no tradition has developed in the US, or Canada of high school graduates taking a year off before proceeding to college. But European traditions have habit of crossing the Atlantic. Tony Wheeler, publisher of the Lonely Planet quidebook series, wrote recently that " even America, a blank year or two on your

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