Moving Through Deaf Worlds

Moving Through Deaf Worlds

[introductory music]

Voice 1: What makes us human?

Voice 2: A very beautiful day.

Voice 3: Little termite farm.

Voice 4: Things that create wonder.

Voice 5: Social media.

Voice 6: Forced migration.

Voice 1: What makes us human?

Voice 7: Stone tools.

Voice 8: A hydropower dam.

Voice 9: Pintura indígena.

Voice 10: Earthquakes and volcanoes.

Voice 11: Coming in from Mars.

Voice 12: The first cyborg.

Voice 1: Let’s find out. SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human.

Eshe Lewis: When a deaf Jordanian moves to Japan, what are his experiences living in a new place? What opportunities and challenges does he face? In this episode, I speak with Tim Loh, an anthropologist who studies the politics of deafness and disability in the Middle East.

Timothy Y. Loh: I did my interview in sign, which I’ll talk a little bit about later. But the quotes you’ll be hearing in this episode were made in sign, and I then translated them into English, and then they were read aloud by my friend Omar.

Eshe: Hi there. Do you want to introduce yourself?

Tim: Yeah, for sure. My name is Timothy Loh, and I am a Ph.D. candidate in history, anthropology, science, technology, and society—HASTS for short—at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eshe: OK. What kind of research do you do?

Tim: So the research I’m doing for my dissertation, which I’m completing right now, is about different kinds of assistive technologies for deaf people in Jordan, and that includes both medical rehabilitative devices, like cochlear implants, as well as nonmedical devices, such as sign language mobile applications.

Eshe: OK. That sounds really interesting. But that’s not what this episode is about, right?

Tim: No. I decided to do this episode instead about the story of deaf migration, although, of course, assistive technologies also play a role in that story, which I will talk about later as well.

Eshe: And why did you want to talk about this?

Tim: I wanted to talk about this because I think that the story of deaf migration is a really interesting one. I think it goes against a lot of stereotypes that lots of people have about deaf people being kind of stagnant, nonagentive in some ways. But I think that stories of deaf migration and mobility go against these stereotypes. Through these stories, we see that deaf people have agency and make a lot of decisions, despite the structural barriers that they face.

And there’s also really been a lot of recent research about this; a lot of it has been deaf-led as well, which I think is particularly meaningful. There’s a big project called “MobileDeaf” at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, and they just concluded this project in which they produced a ton of articles and a bunch of short films about deaf migrants. I think they looked at deaf people who move for love or for marriage, deaf people who move for work, deaf people who are in situations of forced migration as well as deaf people as tourists.

Eshe: So from what I know, you are going to be focusing on a particular person. Why do you want to focus this story on Ala’?

Tim: Ala’ is a really interesting person. We’ve known each other for many years. I met him on my first-ever visit to Jordan in 2014. At that time, I went to a deaf school, and he was in 11th grade, and I was a sophomore in college, kind of dipping my toes into anthropological research for the first time. And so we’ve stayed friends, and it’s been really interesting to see his journey over the years.

I really wanted to focus on the story of a deaf migrant from Jordan, or from the broader Middle East, and what could be unique about that experience. In some ways, it’s not that common for a deaf Jordanian to move to somewhere like Japan, where Ala’ is living now. The deaf people in Jordan who I know often move to places like Dubai or other parts of the United Arab Emirates or the U.S., and it was interesting that Ala’ decided to move to Japan.

And in some ways, I saw my own journey reflected in his as well, in that there are not many people who look like me in Jordan. I’m Singaporean of Chinese descent. I was born and raised in Southeast Asia, and then my dissertation research takes place in Jordan and the Middle East, and that’s pretty unusual. So, in some ways, I think I was especially interested in Ala’s story because of that.

Ala’ now lives in Japan with his wife. She is also deaf, and her family is deaf as well, and they live right outside of Tokyo. And two years ago, I went to Osaka for a conference on sign language research, and I extended that trip, ended up spending a little bit of time in Tokyo, and actually stayed with his family. So I think that was really fun and meaningful for that reason.

Eshe: Well, that’s so cool. So did Ala’ move for love?

Tim: Yeah, he moved in some ways because of his wife. And so he did move for love. But that was only part of the reason; it wasn’t the whole reason. So here’s Ala’ talking about his experience:

Ala’ Al-Husni (Voice-Over): One of the reasons was love, but it was not just that. It was love as well as good accessibility. I found it an easy place to live and so on. So it was for all those reasons taken together that I decided to move. If there was good work and good accessibility in Jordan, I would want to move back there and bring my wife with me as well.

Tim: I think, as he was telling me, for Ala’, the accessibility part of his journey was really key. Japanese companies are more used to hiring disabled people than companies elsewhere, especially in Jordan. And there are financial incentives for them to do so. For example, they get tax breaks from the government. But what he also appreciated is that they tend not to hire just one person; they hire a cluster of disabled employees.

And in some ways, I think that makes it pretty different from the American context. For example, with the Americans with Disabilities Act, it’s a little bit more focused on individuals with disabilities. In Japan, it seems like there are also laws that protect disabled employees, which makes it difficult to fire them. And what Ala’ saw, which was in contrast to what he was seeing in Jordan, is that disabled employees in Jordanian companies tend to be a bit more isolated. So, for example, it might be one deaf person or one disabled person working in a company where everyone else is able-bodied or hearing. He also found that deaf employees tend to be pigeonholed into certain kinds of professions: carpentry, tailoring, car repair, deaf education, and things of that nature.

Eshe: Can you tell me why that might be? Why those jobs in particular?

Tim: I think there’s certainly stereotypes about deaf people’s suitability for certain kinds of labor, and, especially, in some ways, menial labor. I think we see that in carpentry, tailoring, car repair, and those kinds of jobs. Deaf education, I guess, is a little bit of an exception, in that the assumption there is that because someone is deaf they will be able to teach deaf students in a better way.

But what was interesting in some ways is that in my own research for my dissertation, I visited a number of the public deaf schools and the two private schools for deaf people in Jordan. And even in those places, I didn’t see that many deaf people working as teachers. They would be working, for example, in other parts of the school. But not many of them were given full teaching positions.

Eshe: OK. Can you tell me more about Ala’s journey?

Tim: Ala’s journey is a little bit convoluted, I guess. We met in 2014, when I was doing some research at a deaf school. He finished that high school and realized that university options for himself were a little bit limited. So, for example, if he wanted to study something for which interpreters would be available, I think the two options he had were either sports or special education. And he wasn’t really interested in either of those things. And if he wanted to study other subjects, such as IT, there would not be interpreters available.

He thought about going overseas to pursue further education, and he was certainly prioritizing places that he thought he would have good accessibility. And so he thought about the U.S. and found that it was a place that had good access because of the ADA but that it was a really expensive place to go. And, sort of by coincidence, there was a Japanese person who came to Jordan. This Japanese person, who was hearing, wanted to make an app for sign language translation and so was on a bit of an information-gathering trip to various deaf communities in different places. And so he got into contact with Ala’s father, who runs a deaf association—Ala’s father is also deaf—and so this Japanese man encouraged Ala’ to consider Japan.

And Ala’ looked into it and saw that university fees were cheaper in Japan, and they also tend to include room and board. And then he found out from the Japanese university that he had to know Japanese in order to attend. So he started learning Japanese at a language center in Amman, and he studied it for about six months in Jordan; he eventually got his certificate—that was in in 2016—and so he went to Japan and began studying at this university.

But he decided to leave after about three or four months. He found it really tough, I guess, because it was certainly a very different cultural context, and there were actually no interpreters in this university course that he was studying. The other deaf people in the class who were with him had cochlear implants, so the course was primarily delivered through spoken language. And so he decided to leave after three or four months, but he kept in touch with this hearing Japanese person who recruited him to join a project that he was working on in Japan.

So Ala’, for a period of time, was working on this project and would fly back and forth between the two countries, between Japan and Jordan. And during that time, he met his now-wife while volunteering as an interpreter for an international deaf sporting competition. And he and his wife kept in contact and chatted for about a year before deciding to get married—that was in 2019. Since then, Ala’ has been settled in Japan, and he recently began a new job in business leadership and works remotely from home.

Eshe: We’ll hear more from Tim after the break.

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Eshe: Can you explain what a cochlear implant is?

Tim: The cochlear implant is a medical device, which is implanted via surgery, and it provides electronic access to sound. It comprises two components: an internal component, which is put into the person’s head during the surgical procedure, and an external processor, which has a magnet.

So when you put on the cochlear implant, the sound gets channeled through the external processor and goes to the brain. It was a technology that was invented in the 1980s or so. The cochlear implant is now a medical device that has spread transnationally: Up to 80 percent of deaf children in so-called developed countries get a cochlear implant.

Eshe: OK. Thank you. So back to Ala’s story. What did he have to learn when he moved to Japan?

Tim: So it was such a different context that I think, certainly, there were a lot of different things he had to learn when he moved there. And he had to learn not only how to manage his own affairs but also specific skills, like Japanese for example. So on the one hand, he learned to be more independent and to sort things out on his own. For example, he would have to go to the bank and sort out his own banking situation when he was there.

He also had to learn how to fill out government forms and things like that. And to do that, he leveraged new technologies that have become available in the last couple of years. For example, he had a translation app on his phone, so when he went to the bank, the person would speak into this translation app, and then it would automatically translate into written English or written Arabic.

So those technologies really helped ease his journey. But, of course, one of the things he had to learn when he moved there was the language. And so he had to learn Japanese. As mentioned before, he had spent about six months learning it in Jordan, but he had to continue that process. He learned Japanese primarily from his emails at work, for example, and from texting back and forth with people.

And it was a really a kind of sink-or-swim situation. And he actually told me, “If you move here, you would pick it up, too,” which I thought was kind of funny. I think Japanese for him is still pretty hard, but it’s really essential. He’s still learning it. He now rates himself “upper intermediate” and told me that he’s better at reading than at writing. But, of course, [because of] his situation being a deaf person, he also had to learn Japanese Sign Language. And he learned that primarily from interacting with other deaf people. He describes it here in his own words:

Ala’ (Voice-Over): When I moved here to Japan and started meeting deaf people, sometimes there would be miscommunications between us, and so I would have to clarify what I meant—that’s how I learned signs. I never studied Japanese Sign Language formally. It was just through “translating” between languages and socializing with deaf Japanese people. And, of course, when I met my wife, I learned even more because we interacted and video-called every day. My Japanese Sign Language really developed from there. I think learning it wasn’t through studying it. There’s something innate in deaf people; it’s easy for us to pick up signs from other people, and you learn and develop your sign that way.

Eshe: Something that’s coming up for me when I think about the difference between English and Japanese is that I think about two languages that are built on different systems, and so for someone who’s a native English speaker, there can be quite a learning curve when it comes to learning to write characters or making different sounds that have nothing to do with any of the sounds that we might have, right? So I’m wondering, in terms of sign language differences between Jordan and Japan, what was that process like?

Tim: I think this question is really interesting. And Ala’ describes that a little bit in this section as well:

Ala’ (Voice-Over): For hearing people to learn a new language, it takes a lot of practice and a lot of time, and it’s hard for them to pick up. But sign language is different because it’s visual and uses gestures, too, so that visual communication is possible. But does speaking have that visual element? It’s impossible. Maybe moving is easier for us than for hearing people.

Tim: And this question is making me think about the actual experience of doing the interview with Ala’, which took place in a combination of Jordanian Sign Language, American Sign Language, and International Sign—which I would not really describe as a language but more as a series of communication strategies, which draws upon gestures, for example, or the more iconic nature of sign languages.

And it’s borne out of this desire to communicate. And so when we’re trying to communicate with each other, we try to match each other, and we stop to clarify if necessary. For example, the sign for PAUSE in American Sign Language is two linked fingers pulling up. But the Jordanian sign for PAUSE looks like the pause button on a television. And so, when you’re communicating with someone who doesn’t share a sign language with you, sometimes you might try different kinds of signs or different kinds of gestures to get your meaning across.

And then you also adopt signs from each other. There’s been some really interesting research in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics in the last couple of years on the kinds of communication strategies that deaf people who don’t share a sign language use to communicate with each other. Mara Green, for example, talks about linguistic commensuration arising from a shared desire to communicate in international deaf spaces. And Erin Moriarty and Annelies Kusters have discussed “calibrating” as a kind of moral process, where two users of a language try to calibrate to each other in order to make that communication happen. And communication, I think, also happens via friends. So for SAPIENS Magazine, a deaf friend, Rachel Kolb, and I have written about a strategy in which you try to communicate with someone else through a friend in situations where you might not share a sign language.

Eshe: I’m wondering about Ala’s community. Can you describe what it’s like in Japan and maybe talk a bit about how he built the community that he’s part of now?

Tim: As Ala’ describes it, building community among deaf people tends to be a little bit easier because the deaf community is pretty small. So, for example, if you meet one deaf person, they will connect you to other deaf people, who will then connect you to other deaf people, and so on. And there are really different social formations in deaf worlds versus hearing worlds. And I use this word “worlds” pretty deliberately, drawing from Heidegger and thinking about how people really inhabit different kinds of worlds. And so here is Ala’ describing this process of making his community:

Ala’ (Voice-Over): When I first moved here, I only knew one hearing person and no deaf people. Then I met this older deaf woman. We got to chatting, and she told me that she had another deaf friend somewhere else in Japan and even gave me their number. I asked her if it [would be] OK if I called them or reached out to them. So I did and told them, “I’m from Jordan, and I just moved here.” We met up, and they brought me to a theater event for deaf people.

It was so easy; like, 100 deaf people showed up there. I met a bunch of people, and we started going out, getting coffee together, and so on. My community grew and grew from there. This is harder for hearing people, I feel. It takes time to meet people and make connections, but for deaf people, meeting each other is easy. I think this is true the world over.

Tim: I think that Ala’s recounting of building his community is really interesting. And so I asked him if this is a kind of “Deaf Gain.” So Deaf Gain is a concept from two professors at Gallaudet University, Joseph Murray and Dirksen Bauman, and essentially in Deaf Gain, they discuss deafness as a benefit rather than a deficit, and it’s really focused on thinking about what deafness can teach us about ways of being in the world.

So there are some examples of this. A simple one is me and my deaf friends often joke—especially those who wear cochlear implants—that when we go to sleep at night, if it’s really noisy, I might have trouble getting to sleep. But then if a deaf person takes off their cochlear implant—or, just in general, a deaf person who doesn’t have a very high level of hearing—they’re going to sleep right through the night. So that’s a simple example.

But, of course, Deaf Gain operates at a higher level as well. There’s been a lot of research on sign languages, not only in linguistics but also in education, neuroscience, and psychology, which has taught us a lot about the world, about the nature of language; for example, beyond modality. That is, beyond whether or not a language is written, signed, or spoken. And so I asked Ala’ if this was a kind of Deaf Gain, and yes, for him, it is a kind of gain. But it’s also hard to be a deaf person in a world built for hearing people.

Eshe: Are there any particular hardships that he talked about? What challenges did he face during this move?

Tim: In some ways, he had to move. He decided to move because of what he saw as better job opportunities abroad. And if there were the same kinds of opportunities in Jordan that he has in Japan—the same level of access, for example—he might not have moved. So one of the things he talked about was going to Japan and being surprised to see that there were disabled people working in companies like Microsoft and Google.

It was really tough for him to make that decision in the first place. He chose to give up his family—this sense of familiarity with where he grew up, his stake in his father’s business, his friends—to go by himself to Japan. And right when he moved, which was in about 2020, COVID struck, and so he spent about nine months looking for work. So he and his wife have discussed moving to Jordan for a year or two, but ultimately he believes that work opportunities for deaf people are better in Japan than in Jordan. And so, for that reason, he and his wife have decided to stay for the time being.

I think for Ala’ there are also issues that come up because he is Arab. He told me that some people treat him with suspicion because of their own stereotypes of the Middle East. For example, someone asked him if he has guns in his house, and he was very confused by this question: Why would he have guns in the house? And he has also gotten questions about suicide bombings, and he’s like, “I don’t know anything about that.” And there are also other misunderstandings. For example, people telling him that, “Oh, yeah, is it true that Arab culture is very close minded?” And so he has struggled with some of these encounters. But certainly there’s a range of views. It depends on the person he meets. And there are people, of course, who have changed their minds about Middle Eastern people after meeting him.

But for the most part, I think he feels that discrimination is less in Japan than elsewhere. And in some ways, in the deaf community, the fact that he is deaf is more important than any other kind of identity marker. And so when we were discussing this, he used the signs DEAF SAME. And this is a concept that has also come up in the anthropological literature on deaf identity and deaf communities. Michele Friedner, for example, calls this a kind of “deaf similitude.” And Ala’ has experienced that as well, where him being deaf ends up being more important than any other kind of identity that he might adhere to.

He also appreciates that he hasn’t faced any kind of religious discrimination. Elsewhere, people might get treated badly because they’re Muslim, but he doesn’t really feel that way at all in Japan, where religion, it seems, is a more private thing. The issue for him is that there just aren’t that many Muslims in Japan. For example, he might be the only one fasting during Ramadan. For the Eid celebration, he doesn’t get any days off. The closest mosque to his house is an hour away. But, in general, he feels really safe there, and that’s what he appreciates.

Eshe: So you’ve touched on a few here, but I’m wondering if there were any really big cultural differences or changes that he had to face; perhaps, a different kind of cultural dilemma or surprise [laughs]? Something he was not expecting or didn’t foresee when he moved there.

Tim: Certainly there were a lot of cultural differences he had to get used to, and during our interview, one of the words he kept finger-spelling was “manner”—M-A-N-N-E-R—which I understood to refer to a kind of etiquette or the importance of knowing how to behave in culturally appropriate ways in particular situations.

He talked about work etiquette, for example: the importance of punctuality and ordered processes at work, which he found pretty different from his experiences in Jordanian spaces. And he told me, “I made a lot of mistakes and I got corrected for those and then through that had to learn the right etiquette.”

But what was interesting is that when I asked him if he experienced any surprises when he moved, he couldn’t really think of any on the spot. As mentioned, he’s been there for five years, so he’s pretty used to everything in his immediate surroundings now, although he did tell me about the fact that apparently at some Japanese companies the employees will do calisthenics together in the morning, which I think that he probably found pretty interesting at first.

But what’s even more interesting is that now when he goes back to Jordan, he’s finding surprises there—it’s kind of a reverse culture shock. So here he is describing what kinds of things he now finds surprising in Jordan:

Ala’ (Voice-Over): I find that now when I go back to Jordan, there are surprises there; for example, how people greet each other. When you meet someone, you pull them into a hug, give them a kiss on both cheeks. And this is not just for your friends or your best friends but even for strangers as well. So that was surprising.

And another example is when it’s late at night—11 p.m., let’s say—some friends would come over to my house. And I was surprised. That’s wrong! Japan is different. When it hits 6, 7, 8 p.m., everyone leaves and goes home. And so that was something that surprised me. I’ve gotten used to it here in Japan, since I’ve been here for five years. So when I go back to Jordan, there are surprises.

Eshe: So is he happy that he moved? Does he have any regrets about taking that pretty big step?

Tim: I asked him this question, and he told me it was a really hard one, and he found it difficult to explain to me. I think, for the most part, yes. I think that he does believe that living in Japan has given him more opportunities as a deaf person; again, because of the work opportunities that are available there, the protection from the law, and things like that. But he has mixed feelings about it, for sure:

Ala’ (Voice-Over): I feel both ways about it. It’s hard to explain. On the one hand, this, and on the other hand, that. I feel kind of like a divided person. I think, ideally, I would spend six months there and six months here and go back and forth between the two.

Eshe: OK. Well, so what about you, Tim? Do you have any big takeaways from your conversation with Ala’? Is there anything that surprised you, that you came away with that’s new or interesting?

Tim: That’s a great question. Well, first of all, I really appreciated getting to hear his story. And I’ve seen bits and pieces of his journey, but we’ve been in and out of touch over the years. So to be able to have the opportunity to sit down with him and ask him to tell me his story from beginning to end, I really appreciated that.

And I’m very grateful to him for that opportunity and to be so willing to share his story with me and now with the world. And certainly I think that what the story of deaf migration tells us is kind of a trope, I guess, in some ways. But deaf people are similar to hearing people but very different from hearing people at the same time.

We live in a world that’s increasingly globalizing, and migration in some ways is now more the norm than staying put in one place. And I hope that there will be listeners out there who listen to this story and see themselves reflected in Ala’s story in one way or another. And I hope that they will find his reasons for moving understandable and in some ways relatable as well.

You know, I also decided to move, to see what else there was out there. At the same time, Ala’s journey is also a unique one. It’s unique to him. But the kinds of challenges that deaf people may face are not always the same ones that hearing people might. What I think is really valuable about Ala’s story is that he also shows how being deaf helped him in particular ways, right? You know, it really facilitated his ability to learn another language; he was able to build a strong community that he feels supported by in Japan, which I think that he is grateful for as well.

Eshe: OK, Tim. Thank you so much for talking with me.

[music]

This episode was hosted by me, Eshe Lewis, featuring reporting by Tim Loh. Tim is a Singaporean anthropologist completing his dissertation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the doctoral program in history, anthropology, science, technology, and society. Thank you to Ala’ Al-Husni for contributing to this episode and to Omar Sabbagh for providing the voice-overs for Ala’s quotes.

SAPIENS is produced by House of Pod. Cat Jaffee and Dennis Funk are our producers and program teachers. Dennis is also our audio editor and sound designer. Christine Weeber is our copy editor. Our executive producers are Cat Jaffee and Chip Colwell. This episode is part of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship program, which provides in-depth training for anthropologists in the craft of science communication and public scholarship.

SAPIENS is an editorially independent podcast funded this season by the John Templeton Foundation with the support of the University of Chicago Press and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library. Please visit SAPIENS.org to check out the additional resources in the show notes and to see all our great stories about everything human. I’m Eshe Lewis. Thank you for listening.