I was thinking today about the populist fear of immigrants and the number of people who have voted to deport or otherwise exile millions of people, in particular under the fear of “they’re taking our jobs”.1 And imagining the response, “I bet you wouldn’t even want their jobs”.
But my thoughts had gone simultaneously to agricultural workers (where do they think their food comes from?) and to researchers and scholars. And while it’s pretty safe to suggest to people that they wouldn’t want to work migrant wages to harvest food all day long, the same challenge about higher education is just rude, and possibly inaccurate, and I rejected it as too insulting. Maybe it would be better to ask first instead of presuming. And so my brain came up with, “In what field?”
Which works nicely either way.
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1 Leaving alone the fact that the right has categorized them all as invaders and criminals, which has its own entirely separate trains of thought.