presenting alternative positions on migrationwww.migrantvoice.org

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migrant voice reporter

How migrants will vote in next year’s Scottish referen-dum on independence, and the impact of the vote on

migrants, has hardly been discussed - but there are signs of controversy to come.

The Scottish National Party is one of the few nationalist parties in the world to favour immigration, because of the country’s small population of 5.3 million and low birthrate, while the Government in London is committed to a severe

reduction in immigration.A Yes vote for independence could lead to a clash over the

issue.Michael Moore, the Coalition Government’s Scottish

Secretary, recently raised the issue when he said that keeping an open border between an independent Scotland and the remainder of the UK would be “completely at odds” with the Nationalists’ suggestions for greater immigration.

Scottish independence – the migrant factor

14 Migrant MPsGuess who’s in the House

36 Racism in the stadiumKick It Out welcomes a difficult year

continued on page 5 continued on page 2

nazek ramadan director, migrant voice

A shocking and extraordinary telephone conversation

with two kidnapped hostages in Egypt’s Sinai desert has given me evidence of what the UN has called “one of the most unreported humanitarian crises in the world”.

Thousands of refugees from Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan are captured by criminal gangs and held for ransom. They are subject to appalling brutality. About 4,000 of 7,000 victims have died in the last four years, according to some estimates.

The kidnappers use Sinai because swathes of it have become lawless since the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty stipulated that only limited numbers of Egyptian forces can go there.

In an effort to learn more about these atrocities and to help draw them to public attention, I contacted an Eritrean activist who has been trying to help victims.

She and I managed to talk to a kidnapper, Abdallah (A), on the phone. In the slightly shortened transcription of the conversation (full version at www.migrantvoice.org) the activist is indicated by M and N is for Nazek:A: I swear by God … that I am losing money on them.M: Please … give me a bit more time. I have a lady who wants to help. Can you speak with her? …

Kidnapped, imprisoned, beaten, raped: The Sinai hostages

What would you take?… if you had one minute to flee your home, the Un refugee agency asked celebrities. these are some of their replies.

Jon Snow, news anchor: “This picture of my daughters”

gillian anderson, actor: “My brother’s Buddhist prayer beads”

khaled Hosseini, author: “This watch was given to me by my father when I was 13 and it’s my most prized possession because it represents the oldest surviving relic of my childhood”

romola garai, actor: “This old biscuit tin which has some of my most treasured letters and momentos in it”

david tennant, actor: “A photograph of my family”

more celebrity responses at http://pinterest.com/refugees/the-most-important-thing-celebrities/

You can take part in this campaign by pinning a picture of yourself with your your most important thing at http://pinterest.com/refugees/the-most-important-thing/ © UnHcr

8 Keeping in touchFrom aerograms to Tweets

2013

Ruling on ‘offensive’ Home Office campaign promised within weeks

Kidnapped, imprisoned, beaten, raped: The Sinai hostages

2 3www.migrantvoice.org www.migrantvoice.org

Hilary Clarke

T he Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) will rule in the next couple of months on the Home Office’s controver-sial advertising campaign aimed at en-

couraging voluntary repatriation by undocumented migrant workers.

The pilot scheme in several of London’s most multi-ethnic boroughs used vans carrying advertisements telling people to go home or face arrest.

The campaign was accompanied by random ‘stop and search’ patrols by UK Border Police at underground stations in the selected boroughs targeted at suspected undocumented migrants.

“The Government and the ASA have agreed not to comment until the ruling which should be in October or November,” said an Advertising Authority spokesman.

The advertising watchdog inquiry was sparked by dozens of complaints from the public.

The offensive language used in the campaign’s uncompromising “Go Home” message also led to allegations of racism from Liberal Democrat politicians who are part of the coalition government.

Rights groups such as Amnesty International, Liberty, and Freedom from Torture came down heavily against the campaign, which they said created a climate of fear.

“The heavy-handed ‘stop and search’ activity outside London tube stations harks back to a period before the Lawrence inquiry and raises questions about racial profiling in immigration control,” the charities said, in a reference to the investigation into police handling of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993.

David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, which covers one of the boroughs targeted in the campaign, wrote to Home Secretary Theresa May protesting that the van posed a threat to “the cohesion and integrity of our society as a whole.

“The sight of these vans driving round London will

Welcome to Migrant VoiceWelcome to the new issue of Migrant Voice,

the newspaper that presents an alternative position on migration.

This year migration has been high on the news agenda. Whether used by politicians to attack one another, or to appease voters through tough rhetoric and even tougher policies, migration is again presented as a burden on the country and its overstretched resources. Migrants seem to have become the poster boys of bad government policies.

We want to change that. In this issue, we show you the other side of the

story. We celebrate the successes of migrants and the

contribution they make to life in the UK whether

through business, culture or cuisine. And we look at the policies that affect them, such as family migration rules, access to the NHS and the living wage.

You will get to know a little about the Latin Americans in south London, the Poles in Birmingham and the Roma in Glasgow.

We do not shy away from sharing the harrowing experiences of two inspirational women, Efat and Gealass, from Iran and Iraq respectively, now settled in the UK and actively campaigning to improve the lives of others.

Out of the Sinai desert we reveal the horrors of the growing, brutal trade in African migrants. We talk to a 14-year-old boy – kidnapped nine months

ago and regularly tortured - still today held in captivity and pleading for the world to help free him.

Closer to home, we find out how migrants feel about an independent Scotland. We have delved into the number of migrants in the house – the House of Commons that is. And we challenge you to take the citizenship test.

There’s more on many of these stories at www.migrantvoice.org.

We also want to hear your thoughts. If you would like to make comments or suggestions, please email info@migrantvoice.org

Nazek ramadan editor-in-Chief

follow us @MigrantVoiceUKlike us on facebook Migrant Voice

A: Arabic only.M: … Speak with her. We need to raise the money, we need her to help…A: $15,000 by Thursday.M: Please … give me more time to raise the money. …A: When will you pay? Friday?M No – please – we need until Monday.A: OK …The money must arrive in Israel by noon on Monday. I am doing this as a favour.At this point I joined the conversation:N: Hello, Good afternoon. Who am I talking to?A: AbdallahN: Hello Abdallah. Mona told me about the situation. Can I check with you what is happening. What is the situation and what is required?A: What is required is the money. You pay the money and they go free...N: Can you tell me about the boys. Are they OK?N: Then the phone went dead

Later I managed to talk to 24-year-old Nasir Abdul Fadel. He was kidnapped in Sudan and taken to Sinai, where he has been held for six months.

Nasir said that there was one other person with him in the house where he was a prisoner and ten others in houses around them. “We cannot survive here. We get one meal a day: a loaf of bread and a glass of water. I cannot eat food; I cannot open my mouth because of my wounds. My body is in a very bad condition. “We have only until Monday to pay $15,000 otherwise … they will beat [us] until [we] die. They say if they get the money they will release us to either Cairo or Israel. Half the people who were kidnapped here before were sent to Cairo and half were killed. Five people died here and seven were freed. “There were eight people in the house when I arrived from Sudan; 25 of us came together but I cannot see them any more...“They [kidnappers] say to us regularly that we have to get the money – and then they rape and beat us. They sometimes rape us with a bottle as well.“We are in a very bad condition. We can’t survive like this for more than two weeks. We have lots of injuries from the beating. If we stay here we will die. Please help us...”

In another conversation, 14-year-old Haftoum told me he was seized nine months ago with his 15-year-old cousin, who has since died from torture.

At first Haftoum didn’t want to talk. He said he had been beaten so badly that he is in severe pain.

He has not had a single bath since his kidnapping. He cannot go to the toilet on his own: he has to be carried there. Haftoum

said that he has a hole in his backside; the kidnappers are using him for sex and they insert bottles into his rectum; his injuries are infected and covered with insects; he has never been given medication. “I can’t eat. We get bread and salt, not good food. If you do not help me in 2-3 days, I will die. I want to go to the doctor, my body is all damaged. I can’t sleep; I can’t sit down ...”

He has only one contact, a friend of his mother who is in Israel. She is the only one who is in touch with him. He said they were about 20 minutes by car from Israel.“I am scared to die. It is too much. I cannot handle it. It is too long till Monday. I need to get free from this place… Can you get for me money?” he pleaded tearfully.

As this newspaper went to press, the boys were still in captivity. We heard relatives were still trying to raise the money and negotiations with the kidnappers were continuing.

Feven Hadera, founder of the UK-based African Women Empowerment Information Centre, who has visited refugee camps in Ethiopia and met freed hostages and heard their stories, said that she is kept awake at night worrying about the victims.

“But the problem is, people have to stop paying kidnappers or they won’t stop seizing people.”

It’s an impossible choice, she added.

• Amnesty International reported in April: “Many people held captive in Sinai have been subjected to extreme violence and brutality while waiting for ransoms to be paid by families. Including beatings with metal chains, sticks and whips; burning with cigarette butts or heated rubber and metal objects; suspension from the ceiling; pouring gasoline over the body and setting it on fire … being urinated on and having finger nails pulled out. Rape of men and women, and other forms of sexual violence have been frequently reported.”

editor-in-ChiefNazek Ramadan

editorDaniel Nelson

Contributing editorRenata Rubnikowicz

editorial ManagerAnne Stoltenberg

DesignerChing Li Chew

With thanks to all the volunteer journalists, photographers, contributors and Migrant Voice staff, network members and trustees who took part in the production of the paper.

Thank you to the Barrow Cadbury Trust, The City Bridge Trust, the European Integration Fund and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust for supporting the work of Migrant Voice. Thank you to the Open Society Institute for supporting our work, and in particular for funding towards the production of the paper.

MV is a migrant-led organisation with a vision of an equitable society where migrants are recognised for their contribution, embraced as valuable members of our community, and their voices equally heard.

Printed at the Guardian Print Centre, Rick Roberts Way, London E15 2GN and the Guardian Print Centre, Longbridge Road, Manchester M17 1SL

Migrant Voice is the newspaper of the registered Charity No 1142963 and the not-for-profit company 7154151 ‘Migrant Voice’. Published by and © Migrant Voice 2013. Please seek permission before reproducing any of our articles or photographs.

laura PaDoaN

One million Syrian children – around half of the country’s refugees – have now been forced to

flee their homeland. Children make up half of all refugees from the

conflict, the vast majority of them under the age of 11. Inside Syria, 7,000 children are believed to have been killed during the three-year conflict and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that a further two million are displaced inside the country.

These children risk becoming Syria’s lost generation. In March I met 12-year-old Ali in Jordan’s Za’atari

refugee camp. With a mischievous smile, freckles and baseball cap, he would have seemed at home in any London street.

“You’re from England? Arsenal! Arsenal!” he chanted, as he offered me candyfloss and showed me photos on his phone.

But only two weeks before, his younger brother had been killed by shelling, and rolling up his trousers, he showed me the scars on his legs from a sniper attack.

‘All we want is freedom,’ he told me. ‘But now we are too scared to go home.’

Despite providing shelter and safety from immediate danger, a refugee camp is no place to spend a childhood. Dislocation from home is traumatic for anyone, but being far from home with big gaps in schooling can leave children particularly vulnerable to exploitation from forced labour, military recruitment, early marriage or trafficking.

The UN has called for almost £2 billion to address

the acute needs of refugees until December, but only 38 per cent has been received.

Only a political solution can end the suffering. Until then, families must be free to leave Syria safely. Borders must remain open and Syrians in need of refuge in the UK and elsewhere in Europe should be offered protection – a crucial first step towards restoring hope and rebuilding a future for the children of Syria.

Saving Syria’s lost generation

The Liberty Van hits the streets of London as the civil rights organisation’s response to the ‘Go Home’ vans that it said “were sowing division across London “. Liberty said “Driving a National Front-style slogan around ethnically diverse areas – and ignoring their legal duty to counter discrimination and foster good relations – is as un-British as it is unlawful.” Photo: Liberty

only succeed in creating division in a city famed for its diversity.

“The aggressive nature of this ill-thought campaign will only lead to further barriers between local people and the authorities.”

After the barrage of criticism, the £10,000 pilot scheme was halted after a week in July.

And in the wake of a legal challenge, solicitors Deighton Pierce Glynn said that the Home Office had agreed never to run adverts telling migrants to go home again without consulting local authorities and community groups and that it would give “due regard” to the effect a such a campaign

on the communities living in the affected areas.

There were also complaints of “racial” profiling by UK Border Police as questions were raised as to why only people of colour were being targeted.

Moreover, critics claimed the advertising campaign, which carried a number for undocumented migrants to text and “give themselves up” in return for a ticket home was ineffectual.

In his letter to May, Lammy asked the government how many people texted the number provided and how many of these replies came from illegal migrants.

continued from page 1

read the full story at www.migrantvoice.org

A ‘lucky’ 13-year-old who managed to flee from the kidnappers. Feven Hadera helped him get to a refugee camp in Ethiopia

An International Rescue Committee report said children in Syria had been exposed to unthinkable violence and nearly every child will speak about seeing family members attacked and killed. It said there are widespread accounts of children being directly targeted.

Bulgaria and Romania: no need to panic

4 5www.migrantvoice.org www.migrantvoice.org

Mrs T Mushaka, a migrant who has lived in Scotland for 13 years and has a British passport, speaks for the confusion of many when she says, “In an independent Scotland, would I have to apply for a new Scottish passport? Will I still have freedom of movement in the four nations that make us the United Kingdom without a need to show my passport? Would I have to go through border controls to visit my friends and family in England or Wales? Would they visit me in Scotland without the need to carry their passports? All this unnecessary hassle is why I still prefer to stay in the Union.”

It’s a complicated matter, dependent on the outcome of the referendum, and the reactions of both the Scottish and British Governments.

Migration organisations are concerned that there is not enough debate on this and other issues that will affect the country’s newest citizens.

The lack of debate has concealed a range of problems, including the dilemma for migrants who have acquired a British passport and may face the question of whether to transfer allegiance to an independent Scotland.

“The independence debate is relevant to migrants and their participation is crucial, but my major concern is the level of apathy towards the independence debate issue among minority ethnic communities,” says Chinaka Odum, a pro-independence migrant activist originally from Nigeria.

“There are so many issues involved that will affect them directly, so it is vitally important that they get informed,” he says.

Scotland has a much smaller foreign-born migrant population than England: 3.8 per cent compared to 9.3 per cent. Less than a quarter of immigrants to the UK since 2007 have taken up residence north of the border, and they tend to be from European Union or Asian countries, with few Afro-Carribbeans.

SNP stalwart Houmza Yusaf is a symbol of the party’s stance: Scotland’s 27-year-old External Relations Minister is the son of

migrants from Kenya and Pakistan.The Labour Party, however, is largely

against independence and the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Anas Sarwar, also of Pakistani parentage, is emerging as a strong voice in the No camp.

Pat Elsmie, director of the organisation Migrants Rights Scotland, says the issue is how to encourage people to involve themselves in the debate, with few migrants fully engaged:

“We find they are more concerned with getting on with their lives here, going about their work and business quietly.’’

She says that none of the political parties are seriously considering “why migrants matter or how we could be affected by the vote.”

However, migrants are gradually organising themselves on both sides of the battle-line.

Facebook groups are popping up with names such as New Scots for Independence.

On the pro-union side, Muslims for Labour is seen as a strong voice against independence.

Odum admits his Nigerian neighbour is firmly against independence. But he believes that many migrants will vote for independence because of the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in England.

“Given the anti-migrant rhetoric of the current UK Tory-led Westminster government, I am inclined to believe that migrants will campaign, debate, register and vote in droves because the debate in Scotland is entirely different. It is much less harsh than in England,” says Odum.

However, Jenny Marra, a Labour member of the Scottish Parliament, believes that migrants will be more secure if Scotland remains part of the UK.

“My great grandfather in Lochee, Dundee, found common cause with the jute workers of Lanarkshire and Lancashire as he fought to improve the working conditions in the

mills across Scotland and England,” she told Migrant Voice.

“Our social progress has always been inspired and bolstered by working hand in hand with our brothers and sisters in other parts of these islands.

“Is it better that our migration policy is consistent across the whole geography of these islands? I believe it’s what people believe to be sensible and right.”

Dr Ima Jackson of Glasgow Caledonian University and the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network, says the November migration White Paper “will provide clearer guidance of intent of the SNP Government. Even more important will be the rhetoric, the tone, the view of itself as a country and how it seeks to be seen by others that will determine Scotland’s future approach to migration and migrants.”

But Graham Campbell, vice-convenor of Glasgow’s African and Caribbean Network, says the UK government’s proposal for a referendum on EU membership could have a much stronger impact on migrants than the Scottish independence vote.

“Prime Minister David Cameron is threatening an in-out referendum on European Union membership which has serious consequences for EU migrants who are currently being scapegoated for things they have not caused - from an overburdened National Health Service leading to poor health care to a shortage of social housing, low wages, unemployment and cuts in benefits and welfare services, which they more often than not do not claim,” he says.

‘’If Scotland remains within the UK, anti-migrant, anti-EU parties like the UK Independence Party and the British National Party will continue to set the agenda and force Conservatives and Labour into a bidding war on who can implement even more unfriendly racist UK immigration policies,” he argues.

Don Flynn

T here is no reason why Britain should be tying itself up in fits of anxiety over the prospect of the arrival of

Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. Yes, on 1 January temporary restrictions

on access to the labour markets as wage-earning, direct employees for nationals of those two countries will come to an end across all the countries of the European Economic Area.

Bulgarians and Romanians have had the right to enter and live in the UK since the two countries joined the European Union in 2007. They have been able to enter without visas, and have been free to work as agricultural labourers and to establish themselves in business or provide services as self-employed people. Many have also come to study at British colleges and universities.

A certain number have come to work in specific skilled jobs which the Home Office categorises as national priorities.

The Office of National Statistics believes there are around 90,000 people from these two countries living in the UK at present, of whom about 21,000 are engaged in farm work at minimum wage levels.

Surveys suggest that Bulgarians and Romanians in Britain are over-qualified for the work they are doing and will welcome the opportunity that will come in January to move into jobs that match their skills and qualifications.

And yes, they may well be joined by compatriots who have migrated to countries such as Italy and Spain since the 2007 accession but who reckon they will have a better chance of finding employment in the UK.

Nevertheless, tabloid scare stories about

“floods” of new migrants making claims on public benefits and services are unlikely to be proved correct. The evidence of previous movements of people after the liberalisation of controls – most notably the arrival of people from eight eastern European countries after they joined the EU in 2004 – is that the vast majority of newcomers quickly find their way into the labour market and play a valuable role in promoting local prosperity.

Yes, issues arise when groups of people come to a new country and it would be wise for planning bodies in cities and regions to anticipate the need for decent standards of accommodation as well as for provision of assistance to help people in their new lives.

Their integration into our communities will be greatly eased if we greet them as friends from the onset, and let them know they are welcome here.

The EU referendum could have a much stronger impact.”

Newcomers quickly find their way into the labour market and play a valuable role in promoting local prosperity.”

Scottish Parliament, Holyrood. Photo: Mogens Engelund

THE RoMa FRoM BulgaRia wHo lovES anD HElPS BRiTain

‘lESS anTi-iMMigRaTion SEnTiMEnT’

ognyian Stanchev, a 36-year-old Bulgarian, has lived in Britain for six years and sees himself as a European national.“I love living here,” he says, and adds: “Of course, I like Bulgaria, too, and one day I will go back there because it is my home.”

Conversely, he likes the many European nationals living in Bulgaria. They include Britons who have bought property there as well as businesses.

“This is nice,” he says. “This is free movement - exchanging experiences - diversity and equality.”

An economics graduate and qualified teacher, he is currently completing a master’s degree in public administration.

He came to the UK to study health and social care. His first placement in the course was at a care home in Exeter, where he worked for 14 months. He has also worked as a housing support officer and now as a support officer for young people.

“I am happy with my job,” explains Ognyian, who is from a Roma background. “I can help young people to move on in life.” He is involved with a number of local voluntary activities.

He came to the UK in search of better opportunities “and to have a different experience in a different country.

“I like the diversity of this country. Here you can be yourself and nobody can judge you or discriminate against you because of your ethnicity. I have many friends from all over the world.”

He loves London parks and enjoys visiting the South Bank, the House of Commons and old church buildings across the country.

In response to negative media coverage of immigration to the UK, Ognyian points out: “There are many people like me who are educated and can contribute to this country and they need a chance to prove themselves. Many of the people such as cleaners and construction workers are highly educated: why not give them a chance to contribute?”

And on other Bulgarian migrants, he says, “They are very hard working people. Sometimes they start working at 4am and don’t finish until 7pm, including weekends. All they want is a better life for their families. They are open, hospitable and friendly people.”

There is some evidence from the policies implemented by Scottish governments in the last 10 years that there is less anti-immigrant sentiment than in England, says Dr Ima Jackson of Glasgow Caledonian University and the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network.

These policies include no detention of children, efforts to promote fair access to education and healthcare, and the “One Scotland” equality for all campaign.

“How these policy decisions materialise and ‘feel’ for the general migrants’ experience of working and living is largely undocumented,” she adds cautiously. “In a broad sense further down the line if Scotland were to vote for independence there is potential for routes to migration to become different in Scotland than in other parts of the UK.”

continued from page 1

Scottish independence - migrants get organised

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Couples separated by marriage

6 7www.migrantvoice.org www.migrantvoice.org

Idil Akinci offers a paeon of praise to one of London’s main arteries that was a muddy track for its first 500 years and is still regarded by many as a grubby, polluted eyesore.

I moved to London from working in Dubai to return to my passion: studying sociology. I chose London for its

diversity - a global village at the heart of Europe. What better place to study multicultur-alism, I thought.

My initial days were a disappointment. I was living in a homogenous part of the city, in East Finchley, far from the centre. I couldn’t see the diversity for which I was primed. Then I moved to Holloway Road.

As soon as I viewed my apartment on an estate, I made up my mind to live here. The curry smell from next door, the soca music played by youngsters downstairs, kids from every corner of the world playing in a small schoolyard, overwhelmed me with joy.

It wasn’t the prettiest neighbourhood or the safest, but it was vibrant and charismatic. When I tell other Londoners, they are shocked, finding it difficult to understand why one could love living in Holloway so much.

It’s the ironic nature of Holloway Road that makes it so unique for me: it has the community feeling of a little town, despite its location in the heart of London. It accommodates over 300 languages and hundreds of ethnicities, enabling intimate interactions between its inhabitants.

Coming from Turkey, where diversity tends to be denied, let alone appreciated, Holloway is almost utopia. Walking from home to the tube station, I am intoxicated by the colours, music, food and people of far-off countries I may never get to visit. A truly global village.

Yet the diversity looks effortless. An Indian-owned pound shop is close to a mosque used by Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities which happens to be near the Buddhist meditation information centre and is also close to a church. The Ghanaian restaurant on the corner is complemented by Chinese and Turkish restaurants to he

right and left. The Caribbean barber is close to a Korean natural medicine shop.

The uniqueness doesn’t come solely from the inevitably multicultural inner-city character of London but from the way people of the world manage to negotiate space in harmony. In which other cosmopolitan capital can you expect to establish personal relationships with the area in which you live to the extent that your Turkish

bakery greets you every morning with your name and a goodie fresh from the oven, or your Sri Lankan fruit shop with a smile and whenever you shop there he gives a little extra of something that has just come in to the store.

When Holi celebrations are taking place, you also see your neighbour making his way to Friday prayers and others on their way to a Sunday mass in church. West African tunes mix with Punjabi tracks on the street, kebab smells mingle with fufu from the Nigerian restaurant next door. It is perhaps not an uncommon scene for Londoners, but for sure it is for me and lots of other visitors.

The easiness of living in diversity challenges current suggestions of a

retreat from multiculturalism. At a time when discussions are taking place on whether European societies have reached their supposed maximum levels of diversity, places like Holloway prove it the other way. It is the diversity which made London so unique among European capitals. If all the elements of a global village I have mentioned were removed, would you be as eager to live in London? Or would you rather prefer living in “voluntarily” segregated communities that you see in European cities like Paris, Berlin and Rotterdam?

Holloway represents everything I had imagined about London: the imperfection of urban life, the hustle and bustle, living with difference in an unisolated manner, the ethnic fusion. It gives me the hope and promise that living with difference is not a problem but a celebration of our particularities.

European policymakers and urban sociologists have a lot to observe and learn in Holloway Road.

One for the road

My entire life has been consumed by this law.”

Veronica Ferreri

C hristine is talking on the phone. She is happy and tense. Happy because she is talking to her husband in Da-mascus. Tense because there have

been six explosions today in the Syrian capital.Christine is a 32-year-old British PhD student

from Leeds who applied for a visa for her Syrian husband, Ziad, in April. They met and married while she was studying Arabic in Syria.

She fulfils all the new legal financial requirements for bringing in a spouse and has the support of an MP who took up her case with the Home Office and the minister responsible for immigration. Despite all this, her application has been rejected.

On a technicality, the UK Border Agency did not accept the document provided by her bank to prove her financial status, but it didn’t ask her for other evidence. Christine is furious.

She blames a shift in the political climate of immigration.

A new immigration law had been introduced, she argues, but it is not the changes in financial requirements that are significant: “What changed is the political attitude. I feel that any tiny inconsistency in the application becomes an excuse to reject it entirely, instead of assessing it in an objective way.”

Many commentators have said that the law discriminates against vulnerable people, especially women, mothers, and young people, who find it almost impossible to sponsor a non-

European Union partner because their partner’s salary is not high enough to meet the law’s requirements.

Laura, a 25-year-old veterinary scientist in Edinburgh, is also struggling to sponsor her husband, Muhammed, who has a business management degree and lives and works in Egypt. When the government introduced an English-language requirement, 28-year-old Mohamed sat and passed the test. They were thrilled, thinking they had overcome the final hurdle – only to find the requirements had been changed yet again.

“My salary is £18,100, which in Scotland is at the upper end of those with similar qualifications or experiences. The income level that I must fulfil is £18,600. So I had to take on a second job in Pizza Hut. But I don’t get paid for time-off in my part-time job. If I am off sick or for any other reason the six months for calculating income starts again,” she explains.

The law also affects refugees, given certain categories of status which do not allow or entitle them to family reunification. They are particularly struggling because, not having been allowed to work while waiting for their status, they now find it hard to reach the level of income required.

For example, David, a Georgian artist in his 50s, has been in the UK since 2001. He cannot bring his wife and nine-year-old son here because his salary is less than the regulations require, though is confident that it would have been enough to support his family.

The money barrier is not the only problem that Christine, Laura and David share. All of them, and

many others, are in an emotional limbo. Laura’s first years of marriage were shadowed

by the constant fear that despite her efforts, “it is not enough to fulfil the UKBA’s constant changing of rules”.

David sees his son’s life through Skype, and emphasises that “nobody can substitute the role of a father.”

Christine is tormented by the impossibility of helping her husband in Damascus, even though he lives in a war zone “where his life has been in danger more than once”.

If her next application is rejected, she will consider moving to Lebanon, although security there has also deteriorated. In addition, “it would mean suspending my studies and paying back the funding I received, which is unaffordable”.

If the visa is rejected, “there will be 10 or 11 months of appeal process during which Damascus might be destroyed and I wouldn’t see him again”.

Such uncertainty and hardship puts pressure on relationships with spouses and children, and often affects health.

Laura cannot stop worrying, suffers from insomnia and takes anti-depressants.

“I don’t have a social life and have missed several important family occasions like birthdays, weddings and funerals because I have to work so much,” she says.

Christine, Laura and David feel their lives are on hold. “How can I describe what it is to live separated from my family?” asks David.

“How can I explain it in English? Even in Georgian I cannot describe how I feel.”

Stories of Holloway Road at www.storiesofhollowayroad.com/stories-home

Laura and Muhammed and (right) Christine and Ziad.

Guy Taylor

Last year Home Secretary Theresa May laid rules on family immigration before

Parliament in an obscure procedure and wreaked havoc on thousands of people’s lives.

UK spouses with non-EU partners were expected to be earning £18,600 before they could ‘sponsor’ their other half for a visa to join them in the UK, rising to £22,400 to also bring one child, and £2,400 for each further child.

This prevents 47% of the UK working population from sponsoring a foreign partner according to the Migration Observatory.

Research at Middlesex University shows that this rule discriminates against the young, the old, women, ethnic minorities, disabled people and those living outside London and the south-east.

Because of the almost secretive way the rules were implemented, many families were caught out suddenly.

Andy, married to a Chinese national having previously worked in China, was living with his wife and two sons in the UK. She was here on a temporary visa as they wanted time to see how she and the boys would adapt to life in the UK. She returned to China for an extended holiday to apply for a spouse visa and visit family members. The rules were changed during her time in China and she was separated from her husband and sons for more than a year.

Izzy and Phil, an Anglo-Australian couple with three children, moved from Australia to be close to Izzy’s terminally ill mother. Although Izzy’s income is enough to satisfy the requirement, the Home Office is threatening to deport Phil to Australia because the couple has failed to prove their sustained relationship.

People affected by the rules are usually taking one or a combination of three courses of action:

• campaigning against the rules alongside thousands of other similarly affected

• filing court cases against the restrictions, with a partial success being won in July when Justice Blake ruled that the “interference in family life is disproportionate and unlawful”.

• taking the European Route – whereby couples move to another European Union country and work for a minimum of 13 weeks and then enter the UK as European citizens, who have no nonsensical rules barring them from living with whom they choose in their country of origin.

For British people, to have to jump through such hoops to bring their rights in line with other EU citizens in the UK, the question has to be asked: What is the Home Office trying to achieve by splitting up families?

As Izzy, who faces her husband’s deportation puts it, “The British immigration system is failing the British people”.

Immigration restrictions are not just a problem for immigrants.

New rules wreak havoc

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Not so long ago iIl-literate migrants had to go to a friend or profes-

sional letter-writer. The result tended to be formal and impersonal, because it’s not easy – and sometimes not safe – to express your feel-ings and divulge your secrets via a third party. Most people are too inhibited and cautious even to try.

And for literate senders and receivers there’s the problem of time-lapse. An elderly man consulted about this article recalled dashing off angry letters, or writing when he was feeling low and weeks later being puzzled by a return letter anxiously inquiring about his illness: he had long forgotten about the bad day that provoked his original letter.

A well-written letter, on the other hand, would kindle love and affection and be a valued keepsake.

A cack-handed journalist friend, Daniel, also remembers the problems he experienced with “blueys”, those deliberately flimsy aerograms on which you wrote and which, when folded along two dotted lines, were transformed into an envelope. Handy, except that he was so worried about them

Most migrants yearn to maintain contact with their families, friends and homelands. But how they do so depends on the changing technologies at their disposal.

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coming unstuck that he would over-glue them to the point at

which the paste would ooze out, making

swathes of the letter unreadable.

Louise remembers how letters from her

mother contained recipes for food, wedding invitations and notices of funerals - “and she always included accounts of what was eaten at these celebrations or funerals.” Her fondest memory is of letters containing autumn leaves collected by her mother while walking in the woods in Michigan.

Phones were transformative, but were fixed to the spot, cumbersome, expensive and often engaged. Internationally, calls often needed an operator who had to be asked to dial the number and then periodically cajoled, if not bribed, to actually make the call.

Connection established, the operator might accidentally cut you off. Frequently there was a time-lag and an echo on the line that made conversation stilted, with silences as each party waited for the other to speak.

Phones were, in a word, frustrating. And scarce. For many people, keeping in touch meant calling the only phone in the district or a nearby shop and asking whoever answered to send a message to your parents to come to the phone in two hours, when you would try again.

Louise remembers the awkwardness: “Telephone calls were very important, but very expensive and so they were spent repeatedly saying ‘Louise is on the ‘phone.

Hurry, hurry’ or ‘Can you

hear me? Can you hear me?’“By this time, the three-

minute call was over. We hurriedly said ‘I love you.’ We didn’t ‘phone again for months.”

Her parents also taped music and news from the radio and TV.

Now Louise’s own daughter is studying abroad: “We communicate by telephone because they are now less expensive and by Skype. Skype means that I can find out all the odd things my mother worried about: if my daughter is eating enough, if she is ill. So becoming a mother and Skype have changed my life.”

For some, cassette tapes were also transformative.

In Lebanon, remembers Nazek, whenever someone announced they were going abroad, they would be asked to deliver a tape. Requests were never turned down.

“Almost everyone who travelled carried tapes to different families they did not know,” she recalls. “Each tape was accompanied by a note giving the name and telephone number of its recipient so they could be contacted and asked to collect the precious package. A letter introducing the tape acted as the equivalent of an email to an attachment.

“News would

reach you that someone was travelling

on a certain day and you would work out how long you had to make your tape. The tape would stay in the tape recorder until the day of delivery to the carrier and

the whole family would be informed that a tape

was being prepared so they could plan to make time to

speak on it. Each family member visiting your home would record a message. Even neighbours,

friends and friends of friends would feel obliged to leave a message saying something, anything!”

During the Lebanon war, hundreds of thousands of tapes were flying in and out of the country.

“I would listen to the tape my sisters sent me from Beirut several times a day,” remembers Nazek. “It was not always important what they said. Hearing their voices and their laughter was my assurance. No letters or words could replace their voices. I still have some of those tapes.”

Sara recalls how, in another Arab country, a friend told her that her new husband sent her very personal taped messages. She left one of the tapes in the car cassette player. It was stolen and copied and became a huge hit!

Tapes – later followed by Super8 films - were finally immortalised in a documentary, I Is For

India, made by the daughter of an Indian doctor who migrated to England in 1965. She based the film on the home movies and reel-to-reel tape recordings he sent home.

As the family grows up and the temporary sojourn in England turns to years, Dr Yash Pal Suri talks longingly of keeping in touch and of meeting up again, about the family’s decision to stay on, and about the way the natives wilfully mispronounce his name.

Years later, the divided family divides again, as eldest daughter decides to make a fresh start in Australia. The pain of the Suris’ sadness is again captured on camera,

and the poignancy reaches breaking point when Dr Suri’s films and tapes are replaced by a jerky computer link between UK and Australia and daughter admits her new job is not working out well.

Through all these technological developments, of course, there were photographs.

The memories of one Iranian in Britain sum up the experience of millions:

“When I graduated I had two photos taken to send to my parents. Shortly after they received the photos my father, who did not usually demonstrate emotions, wrote me a moving letter saying that those were the most beautiful photos he had ever seen.

“Himself a migrant, he had worked since the age of 14 supporting a family with no chance of getting education, paying for my education by sheer hard work. To him, this was the fruit of his labour.

“Years later, after I had lost my father, I was able to go home. I went into my parents’ bedroom and saw the very same photos on their bedside tables. Now each time I look at them it all comes rushing back to me.”

Today it’s easier. Shayna, an American living in Canada, talks to people “back home” many times a day, by text, email and phone, sometimes for at least an hour. She Skypes a lot, but also still sends cards to friends.

The ease of communication is contagious.

“I moved away from my mother at the age of nine so I have years of experience communicating,” she says. ”About five years ago, my mom surprised me because at the age of

59 she taught herself to text – she started texting me non-stop! She has become a text addict.”

And though new technology seems to have spread to every corner of the globe, Ernest says that “People from back home in Cameroon don’t really use internet as over here, and I remember when my family saw me on the screen for the first time since I had travelled. Some of them could not believe their eyes: they were shouting and screaming loudly, calling my name to see if it was really me.”

Finally, a word of caution from Sara, who remembers the inconvenience of going to a poste restante office to see if anyone had written, and of making sure the postal clerk affixed the stamp to your letter rather than pocketing the money. She is not in favour of returning to the days when you had to wait weeks to hear from someone you loved - but counsels: “If you are using email, smartphone or Skype it’s possible you never leave your world - or computer - behind and you engage less with the new world around you.”

With input from Sahar Ehsas

We hurriedly said ‘I love you’.”

She has become a text addict.”

From professional letter-writers to text addicts: how migrants stay in touch

Photo: GaorganizerPhoto: Kladcat

Photo: Hamacardo

Photo: Nancy Jones

Photo: RedKnight7

Photo: Felix O

Cyrus Todiwala and Tony Singh want to spice up your life

Face2Face with diversity

Widiane Moussa

F ancy coating your roast chicken with nutmeg? Spicing up your shepherd’s pie with some lively ginger or sprinkling some star

anise into your apple and rhubarb crumble? There are two men who certainly do.

Their mission is to sneak some spice into traditional British food. They’ve braved cumin and coriander in the Hibs football fans’ half-time meat pies; they’ve prepped biker’s chip-shop fish in a spicy marinade in Hastings and they’ve dropped chili and coriander into the beloved Full English in a greasy spoon.

Friends and chefs Cyrus Todiwala and Tony Singh have even dared to challenge the taste buds of the Women’s Institute at a National Trust afternoon tea. Who do they think they are?

Todiwala emigrated to the UK from Bombay 20 years ago while Singh is a fourth-generation Scottish Sikh.

“Spices enhance our favourite British dishes,” says Todiwala, who was chosen to cook the Queen’s jubilee dinner. “We’re like missionaries converting Britain to using spices.”

He and Singh travelled the length and breadth of the country in the BBC series The Incredible Spice Men to show how spices can make traditional meals even tastier.

“Don’t be afraid,” says Singh. “’Spicy’ doesn’t mean ‘hot’. Spices are subtle, sweet, pungent and the easiest way to make everyday food sensational.”

Scottish-born and brought up in a traditional Sikh family, he tells how when his grandfather arrived from the Punjab 100 years ago he chose to live in Edinburgh because he was told the streets were paved

with gold and the rivers ran with whisky. “My mum was born in Glasgow and was

taught domestic science at school, so one day we’d have something traditionally Indian for our dinner and the next day have a local Scottish dish,” he told Migrant Voice.

“But we never ate fast food like chicken nuggets or kievs like our friends did. My favourite meal my mother made was salmon with spices - a dish I always make now.”

Singh recalls how other kids at school would say “eww what’s that horrible smell” when he opened his lunchbox. “It was the smell of spices that other kids weren’t familiar with that people now consider a wonderful aroma.

“Back then our mum cooked lunch while we were eating breakfast and we would smell of the food she made, which kids would comment on - but the hassle you got back then has today gone.”

Singh and Todiwala want to pass on tips from the cultures that help make British

society what it is today. Suggestions include adding turmeric,

cumin, coriander and chili to fish and chips; rubbing cardamom on to roast lamb; adding chili and coriander to cheese on toast; spreading honey and ginger on roast chicken; and popping cardamom and orange in bread and butter pudding.

Singh says of this style of cooking: “It’s falling in love again with old familiar favourites that have been taken for granted and got left behind like wallflowers at a dance. When you taste the recipes I hope you’ll fall in love with our spiced-up classics.”

Todiwala confesses he now takes spices home to India when he visits from the UK as the quality of produce on the market here is so high.

Singh agrees: “Countries export the best spices and it gets sent back!”

When Todiwala came to the UK to run a restaurant in 1991 as a fluent English speaker “the strangest thing I found was not the food.

“It was that I presumed everyone in Britain would speak English but they didn’t. That was actually my first battle.

“The staff I had didn’t speak more than 20 words of English, which made it hard to run a restaurant.”

But culinary differences quickly became a bigger cause for concern.

“I saw that even though the food had Indian names, they were not the dishes I knew or recognised. I began to think, was I misled about my own recipes? And I questioned my own cooking. I thought how can the UK be wrong? I had thought everything about Britain was perfect!”

More than 20 years on Todiwala is upbeat: “Britain has been brilliant. If you want to succeed somewhere, you can succeed here.”

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‘Spicy’ doesn’t mean ‘hot’. Spices are subtle, sweet, pungent and the easiest way to make everyday food sensational.”

Spice men Todiwala and Singh Photo: BBC/Alchemy TV/Woodland Books Ltd

Tony’s apple crumble with star anise

serves 6for the crumble topping300g (10½oz) plain flour200g (7oz) brown sugar200g (7oz) unsalted butter, cubed and softened to room temperature, plus extra for greasingpinch of saltfor the filling75g (3oz) unsalted butter1 kg (2lb 4oz) eating apples (such as russet or cox), peeled, cored and chopped into large chunks150g (5oz) caster sugar5 star anise1 cinnamon stickto serve (optional)crème fraîche

pomegranate seedspomegranate syrup

1 Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6. To make the crumble topping, put the flour and brown sugar in a large bowl and mix well. Taking a few cubes of butter at a time, rub them into the flour mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs.

2 Sprinkle the mixture onto a baking sheet in a thin layer, using two sheets if necessary. Bake in the preheated oven for 5 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Remove from the oven and break with a fork, then return to the oven and repeat the

process a couple of times, until you have a lovely crunchy biscuit topping. Set aside; if continuing to cook the apple crumble immediately, do not turn the oven off.

3 To make the filling, heat a wide, shallow, heavy-bottomed pan and melt the butter until it foams. Add the apples, sugar, star anise and cinnamon, and cook, stirring frequently, until the sugar has dissolved and the apple is soft at the edges. Remove the cinnamon and the star anise, and add a little more sugar if you like.

4 To assemble, butter a medium-sized ovenproof dish. Spoon the fruit

mixture into the bottom, then sprinkle the crumble mixture on top. Ensure the oven is preheated to 200°C/400°F/gas 6, and bake for 20 minutes until the crumble is browned and the fruit mixture bubbling. Leave to cool slightly.

5 To serve, put some crème fraîche into a small bowl and mix in some pomegranate seeds. Drizzle with a little pomegranate syrup and serve alongside the crumble.

extracted from The Incredible Spice Men by Cyrus Todiwala and Tony singh (BBC Books £20) Photography by Haarala Hamilton

Peckham Peace Wall Peckham was one of the most affected places in the 2011 London riots, and it was sad to see what happened to my local high street. But soon after the riots a wooden board covering a broken shop window was covered with post-it notes with people’s messages about their love for Peckham. I wrote my message too. It was the moment the community was built again and it made me feel part of it. The messages have been digitally hand-traced and have become a permanent wall on Peckham Square - Mariko Hayashi

cheese bread With coffee Once a symbol of the first republic of Brazil (1889 -1930) due to alternation in power between farmers of coffee plantations from Sao Paulo and cheese producers from Minas Gerais. Nowadays this meal is a symbol of homesickness for Brazilian immigrants - Ricardo Zagotto

Woman dancing A woman dancing during the opening of the London Olympics. For me this is a picture that makes me feel the beauty and peacefulness of the people there: to me they are saying we are here to be part of this society - Mulugeta Fikadu

homeEmily Dickinson: “Where thou art, that is home” - Patricia ng’ang’a

the hands of a migrant Women’s cooking ProjectEach person shown comes from a different country (Serbia, Bangladesh, Algeria) and each pair of hands works on a different stage of the cooking process, working as a team to make delicious food which is shared by everyone - sky Herington

haWaianas and the beautyThe flip flops that reached the world are now fashionable in Europe, but were once a symbol of poverty in Brazil - simone Pereira

cultural oxford streetHope for harmony - the mixture of people walking together gives me hope that one day people can be together and the world can be united without discrimination and division of culture and religion. This picture gives me hope for the next generation. Unity and equality is the only way we can live in peace. We are all human and bleed the same colour - Mulugeta Fikadu

Migrant Voice’s Face2Face project provided an opportunity for participating amateur photographers to illustrate their experiences of community, migration and cultural diversity in Britain. They came from many countries around the world including Brazil, Britain, Congo, Costa Rica, Cuba, Georgia, Japan, Kenya and Palestine.

More photos and information on the artists can be found on mvf2f.tumblr.com

• The Face2Face Project is cofinanced by the eu through the european integration Fund

We want to know what you think about the paper: tell us at info@migrantvoice.org like us on facebook Migrant Voice

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mary sakho

O ne million ‘Life in the United King-dom’ citizenship tests have been taken since its launch in 2005. It must be passed by migrants seeking

permanent residency status and British citizen-ship.

The test takes 45 minutes and has 24 questions. At least 18 must be answered correctly for a pass.

The information is contained in a handbook that has about 3,000 facts to be memorised.

These include the House of Commons phone number, the height of the London Eye in feet and inches, and the year that Sake Dean Mahomet eloped to Ireland. More practical information, such as how to register with a GP, or ask for an ambulance, has been removed.

Applicants need to memorise 278 historical dates, 34 website addresses and several brief excerpts of poetry.

The test has sparked major controversy. Dr Thom Brooks, academic at Durham University and migrant from the US, is one of its most vocal opponents. He branded the test “unfit for purpose” and like “a bad pub quiz”.

He says that the ‘correct’ answers to several questions when he sat the test in 2009 were untrue. This included the number of MPs in the Commons, which has since been removed from the handbook provided to applicants. Despite this, applicants are still required to know the number of elected representatives in the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly.

Applicants must memorise the number for the tax self-assessment helpline but not 999. Gender imbalances are also rife: the chapter on British history lists the dates of birth for about 30 men but only four women. No women artists, scientists or inventors are mentioned.

Brooks has advised a public consultation to improve the test: “Any such consultation must include engagement with people like me – immigrants to Britain who have sat the test. It is shocking that no public effort has been made to consult with those who have sat the test and become British citizens.”

Lord Roberts, vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration, said: “I am delighted to echo Brooks’ call that the test, which is both impractical and irrelevant, be reformed.

“Surely future Britons should better understand how to participate in daily life, instead of knowing by rote which Emperor invaded Britain in AD 43?”

Dr Jairo Lugo-Ocando, a Sheffield University journalism studies lecturer originally from Venezuela, is similarly outraged.

“I remember when I took the test myself and was asked to say where Santa was born,”

he recalls. “Really? I mean, in the USA at least the test is about the constitution, which is the contract between the citizens and the state. In our case, the citizenship test is beyond the absurd and mainly reflects the xenophobic nature of those managing the British state.

“Take, for example, the fact that you can take the test in Gaelic and Welsh but not in Urdu or Hindi, when the fact remains that it is more likely that due to existing diaspora we get an immigrant from Asia than from Argentinian Patagonia.

“But of course, the truth is that this test has never been about integration, but exclusion. In it, language and local knowledge is used to exclude the black, the Muslims, the old women and those who the white-male dominated British establishment think won’t fit in their world view of a pure white Christian England that calls itself Britain.”

Lugo-Ocando, who passed the test in 2011, says “There is much talk about making procedures more tough without any thought about how they might be more fair.”

There have been three versions of the test and he believes the latest is the most flawed.

“It is unfit for purpose: it contains a confusing array of facts, is highly impractical and it is gender imbalanced.

“What we require is a national debate about what we want, if anything, from this test.”

The director of Migrant Voice, Nazek Ramadan, is also unhappy, “How does knowledge about medieval stained glass and Monty Python make you a better citizen?” she asks.

“You cannot assess how British a person has become by answering the questions in this test. This test does not ensure an understanding of your obligations and rights as a citizen of the UK nor does it guarantee any sense of belonging.

“What helps citizens-to-be to integrate are acceptance and the opportunity to engage in the various areas of life without barriers, prejudice and discrimination.

They want to become citizens in “today’s Britain; in its current structures, institutions, culture and way of life,” she said.

“Why not ask people to tell in their own words why they want to become citizens of this country; what they know and what they like about it and to explain why they now consider it their home.”

Some applicants say they are happy with the test. Jean Richard, for example, says he spent about two months studying and attempting mock tests and still remembered the answers a few months later – though he also says that a lot of the information was not very useful.

Others find the process more difficult. Naima spent six months studying and found it hard to memorise so many dates and figures. She says that she knows people who are deterred from applying for permanent residency because the test is so daunting.

Putting citizenship to the test13

What makes you British? and What question should be on the ‘life in the UK’ citizenship test? Niki anastasopoulou asked passers-by

DaviD Whitter• My education and my birth

• I don’t know what questions make a person British, I just know that I am English. Understanding the parliamentary system: I think that’s very important - a question like ‘Do you understand what parliamentary democracy is?’

heNrietta Bell• Oh gosh! I have no idea. I was born in this country.

• Who is the prime minister?

mohammaD latif khaN• I have a British passport. It’s very good that British people have a heart for poor people. It is not every country that is peaceful, as it is here.

• The test is a good thing. This government looks after old people and children. In India and Pakistan you have to pay for medicine. Everybody should know about society here

aNNa Cassar• My passport does because I wasn’t born in this country, but I have been here since I was six, so I would say a majority of myself is culturally British. I think an enjoyment of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue on Radio 4 and enjoying and understanding the jokes is a sign that I am signed up to British culture.

• The more dry and historical questions are not relevant but societal questions would be relevant, like the role of women in society; how women fought for and won the vote; and what’s the difference between our country and other countries. Questions that make people think about their roles and responsibilities within our society as well as their rights - responsibility to vote, for instance – and responsibilities regarding other minorities.

arielle saglio• Being involved in the whole kinda society. Probably drinking tea and eating scones and shopping.

• Why do you want to come here? What do you know about the Queen?

toNy WhiteheaD• If you chose to identify yourself as British culturally that should be sufficient. If you chose to make this place your home and identify yourself as belonging here, then you are British.

• Some of those silly questions about battles and glorious events are totally unnecessary. But I think the way politics works in this country, the significant events that form society, such as universal suffrage and the abolition of slavery, are the sort of questions that could be asked; and perhaps some questions about popular culture. If you want to be British you should know about Coronation Street - that would be a more fair understanding of modern British life than when was the battle of Hastings.

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1 mary the daughter of henry viii was a devout Catholic and persecuted Protestants, she became known asa Catholic Maryb Scary Maryc Bloody Maryd Killer Mary

2 Julius Caesar led a roman invasion of Britain in 55 BC but this was unsuccessful and for nearly ______ years Britain remained separate from the roman empirea 50b100c 200d 300

3 When was the first Union flag created?a 1506b 1556c 1606d 1656

4 henry viii was most famous for(Choose any 2 answers)a breaking away from the Church of Romeb bringing peace in the UKc marrying six timesd his great skills of arte writing poems for the nation

5 When did the first farmers arrive in Britain?a 3,000 years agob 4,000 years agoc 5,000 years agod 6,000 years ago

6 a civil war was fought between the supporters of two families:(Choose any 2 answers)a The House of Commonsb The House of Lancasterc The House of Lordsd The House of York

7 When did civil war begin between the king Charles i and Parliament?a 1625b 1632c 1642d 1678

8. Who led the invasion of england in 1066?a The Duke of Normandyb Harold, the Saxon king of Englandc King Kenneth MacAlpind King Alfred the Great

9 People of the iron age sometimes defended sites calleda Hill fortsb Hill barrowsc Round barrowsd Skara Brae

10 Who led the group of scientists who were the first to ‘split the atom’?a Ernst ChainbErnest Rutherfordc Robert Walpoled Howard Florey

11 in the 2009 Citizenship survey, ______ of people said that they had no religiona 21%b 23%c 25%d 27%

12 What do seamus heaney, sir William golding and harold Pinter have in common?a They have all been awarded the Nobel Prize for literatureb They are all famous British singersc They were part of the first British expedition to the North Poled They have all been Prime Minister

13 the roman army left Britain in aD ______ to defend other parts of the roman empire and never returneda 110b 210c 310d 410

14 What is the Battle of agincourt?a The battle where the Scottish defeated the Englishb A decisive battle that allowed Romans to invade Englandc The most famous battle of the War of the Rosesd The most famous battle of the Hundred Years War

15 the symbol of the house of tudor wasa a red roseb a white rosec a red rose with a white rose inside it as a sign that the Houses of York and Lancaster were now allies

16 the london eye is situated on the southern bank of the river a Tyburnb Walbrookc Thamesd Fleet

17What kind of bird do people usually eat on Christmas Day?a Duckb Chickenc Turkeyd Ostrich

18the grand National is a horse raceTrueFalse

19 how many members does jury have in scotland?a 12b 14c 15d 18

20 Christmas pudding is made from suet, dried fruit and spicesTrueFalse

21 one of the tribal leaders who fought against the romans was Boudicca, the queen of the iceni in what is nowa northern Englandb eastern Englandc western Englandd southern England

22 forcing another person to marry isa allowed in the UKb a criminal offencec only allowed if they are cousins

23 the 40 days before easter are known asa Easter holidayb Lentc Santadayd Winter holiday

24 When did women achieve voting equality with men?a 1935b 1929c 1928d 1924

25Who appoints life Peers?a The Queenb The Prime Ministerc The Archbishop of Canterburyd None of these

26you must pay road tax for your car and display the tax disc on the windscreen, which shows that the tax has been paida Yes, this is correctb No, if you buy the road tax online then you don’t have to display it on the windscreen

27 sometimes even radio, television, and newspapers try to fool people with fake stories and jokesTrueFalse

28 all terrorist groups try to radicalise and recruit people to their causeTrueFalse

29 a fundamental principle of British life is participating in your communityTrueFalse

30 one of the most important responsibilities of all residents in the Uk isa to know and obey the lawb find illegal immigrantsc secretly buy drugsd pay under the table to the poor people so they get more money 31 if you think someone is trying to persuade you to join an extremist or terrorist cause, you shoulda notify your local police forceb tell them that I will inform policec leave the countryd move to another city

32 What does an mP do?a Meets other MPs to talk about the good old daysb Represents constituents, helps create new laws and scrutinise and comment on what government is doingc Helps people with personal problems and makes sure all the taxes are collectedd Stays at home and writes new laws 33 a lot of people carve lanterns out of ______ and put a candle inside of them during halloween a Melons b Pineapples c Coconuts d Pumpkins

34Pubs are usually open during the day from a 8.00am b 9.00am c 10.00am d 11.00am

35 What is the correct order of the National Days? a St George’s Day, St David’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, St Andrew’s Day b St David’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, St George’s Day, St Andrew’s Day c St Patrick’s Day, St David’s Day, St Andrew’s Day, St George’s Day d St David’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, St Andrew’s Day, St George’s Day

36in which year did married women get the right to divorce their husband?a 1837b 1857c 1875d 1882

Vox pop

How much do you know about Britain?‘Knowing about Coronation Street would be a fairer question than the date of the Battle of Hastings’

answers to citizenship quiz: 1c. Bloody Mary; 2 b. 100; 3 c. 1606; 4 c. marrying six times, a. breaking away from the Church of Rome; 5 d. 6,000 years ago; 6 b. The House of Lancaster, d. The House of York; 7 c.1642; 8 a. The Duke of Normandy; 9 a. Hill forts;10 b. Ernest Rutherford; 11a. 21%;12 a. They have all been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature; 13 d. 410; 14 d. The most famous battle of the Hundred Years War; 15 c. a red rose with a white rose inside it as a sign that the Houses of York and Lancaster were now allies; 16 c. Thames; 17 c. Turkey; 18 True; 19 c. 15; 20 True; 21 b. eastern England; 22 b. a criminal offence; 23 b. Lent; 24 c. 1928; 25 a. The Queen; 26 a. Yes, this is correct; 27 True; 28 True; 29 True; 30 a. to know and obey the law; 31 a. notify your local police force; 32 b. Represents constituents, helps create new laws and scrutinise and comment on what government is doing; 33 d. Pumpkins; 34 d. 11.00am; 35 b. St David’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, St George’s Day, St Andrew’s Day; 36 b. 1857

“The Life in the United Kingdom Test” is a test for individuals seeking naturalisation as a citizen or “Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK”. Here are questions from a mock test page designed to make you ready for the exam.

We want to know what you think about the paper: tell us at info@migrantvoice.org

Four MPs talk about the role their migrant background has played in their political careers, and about what it means to them as a migrant or the child of a migrant to play a leading part in the democratic processes of this country. Emily Spence investigates diversity in the House.

Moving House: migrants in Parliament

RushanaRa ali

Born: Bangladesh, 1975Migrated to UK: 1982Party: LabourConstituency: Bethnal Green and Bow

One of six children, Ali was the first of her family to go to university, studying at Oxford before going onto assist Oona King, former MP for Bethnal Green and Bow and herself the daughter of migrant parents. She is the first UK MP of Bangladeshi origin and is one of the first female Muslim MPs. Ali is now Shadow Minister for International Development and has done a lot to encourage the UK government to support Bangladesh in issues around climate change and poverty.

In an interview during the election campaign in 2010, Ali noted that her constituency is ‘incredibly diverse with a great rich tradition and history….[where there have been] many, many waves of migration alongside a settled white population - white working families who’ve been here for a long time and they also have a very proud history…As a constituency MP, my duty of responsibility will be to the whole community, and to everybody from different backgrounds.

“We bring a perspective as Bengalis, just as women in Parliament bring a perspective as women, and it’s richer as an institution to have diversity.”

shailesh VaRa

Born: Uganda, 1960 to Hindu Indian parentsMigrated to UK: 1964Party: ConservativeConstituency: North Cambridgeshire

Vara was four when his family migrated to the UK. They arrived in Britain in the early ‘60s, “at a time when racial prejudice was commonplace. It was not unusual to see bed and breakfast places with signs that said that non-white people were not welcome. “For my parents the idea that one day their son would be an MP, and a Conservative one at that, too,

was simply not on the radar.

“But Britain has come a long way since then and it is an enormous privilege for me to be an MP. It is important to remember that whilst I may have an ethnic background, I am elected to serve everyone, regardless of his or her background. For example, my two Private Members’ Bills, on breast cancer screening and the right to self-defence in the home, have universal applicability.”

ed Miliband

Born: UK, 1969 to a Belgian/Polish father and Polish motherParty: Labour Constituency: Doncaster North

The opposition leader’s mother is a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. She was a human rights campaigner and member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in its early days. His father was a Belgian-born Marxist academic of Polish Jewish origin who fled to England during the Second World War.

Miliband makes no secret of his background, but rather has been known to use it to his political advantage.

In a speech to the Labour Conference in October 2012 he said, ‘My conviction is rooted in my family’s story, a story that starts 1,000 miles from here, because the Milibands haven’t sat under the same oak tree for the last 500 years. Both of my parents came to Britain as immigrants, Jewish refugees from the Nazis. I know I would not be standing on this stage today without the compassion and tolerance of our great country, Great Britain.”

Gisela stuaRt

Born: Bavaria, Germany, 1955 to a German father and a Czechoslovakian motherMigrated to UK: 1973Party: LabourConstituency: Birmingham Edgbaston

“I don’t feel like a migrant,” Stuart says. “I made a choice and that was it.”

London was “the place to be” when she came to the UK from southern Germany as a teenager: “I arrived in England in January 1973, I had a suitcase, the offer of a job and hardly spoke any English at all. I entered politics without any connections and no-one owed me any favours.

“It was the Labour Party which was open enough to offer me the chance to be a candidate. The announcement that I would run in 1994 produced a press release from the Conservatives which said they ‘hoped I’d enjoy my brief stay in England’. I’ve not forgotten that.”

Stuart has been Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston since 1994. “Britain is a much more open country than people realise. Birmingham welcomed me with open arms. I’m proud of that”

Her nationality has proved both a drawback and a comparative advantage in her political career. Stuart’s German background was deemed controversial by some when she was elected to office in former PM Neville Chamberlain’s former constituency, which had been a Conservative seat for over 70 years.

“I use it as an example talking to sixth formers,” she says. “The Cold War for them is ancient history,

so I try and tell them that the world can change. This is my imaginary conversation with Neville Chamberlain. But don’t worry, it’s all peaceful and democratic!

“If we are meant to represent the people, then people from different backgrounds have to be there. We still have some way to go, but then I think that the youngest Birmingham MP is Shabana Mahmood – and I smile.”

Diane Abbott in 1987 just after she won the count and became the first Black woman to be elected to the House of Commons. Photo: Hilary Clarke

In the 19th century the struggle for diversity in the Houses of Parliament was

largely about religious representation.Daniel O’Connell was elected Member

for County Clare in Ireland in 1828, but was unable to take his seat until the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed the following year.

Nineteen years later Lionel de Rothschild became the first practising Jew to sit in the Commons.

He refused to take the traditional Christian oath of allegiance. He was elected five times but it was not until the House changed its rules and allowed him to swear on the Old Testament that he finally took his seat.

The first MP of colour was probably David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, who was of mixed European and Indian descent. In 1841 he was elected as a Radical-Liberal to the seat of Sudbury, in Suffolk but was kicked out a year later amid allegations of bribery.

Dadabhai Naoroji, born near Mumbai in 1825, a partner in the first Indian firm established in Britain, was elected Liberal MP for Finsbury Central in London from 1892 to 1895. Naoroji was a critic of British rule in India.

Prominent pro-British Indians decided to put up their own candidate, Mancherjee Bhownaggree, who represented the London seat of Bethnal Green North-East from 1895 to 1905 and was a Conservative.

Shapurji Saklatvala, a Parsi also from Mumbai represented London’s Battersea North constituency for Labour from 1922 to 1923 and as a Communist from 1924 to 1929.

There were no other minority ethnic MPs until 1987 when Labour’s sweeping victory also brought to the House of Commons: Diane Abbott (Hackney North & Stoke Newington), daughter of Jamaican immigrants; Paul Boateng (Brent South), who is of mixed Ghanaian and Scottish descent; Bernie Grant (Tottenham), who was born in Guyana; and Keith Vaz (Leicester East) who was born in Yemen to Goan-Indian parents. Abbott was the first black woman MP.

‘D iverse’ is not the first word that springs to mind when thinking

about Parliament, where white, middle-aged, middle- or upper-class men predominate.

But times are changing.The 2010 election saw a record intake of

non-white MPs, bringing the total sitting on the green leather seats of the Commons to 28, compared with 15 after the previous election - though this number would have to be 91 to reflect the composition of the population.

Labour’s Yasmin Qureshi, was the first woman to be elected who was born in Pakistan, and Rushnara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, was the first MP to be born in Bangladesh.

Labour’s Chi Onwurah, whose father is Nigerian and who spent her childhood there, is the first African woman to win a parliamentary seat, in Newcastle Central. Priti Patel became the Tories’ first Asian female MP, winning Witham in Essex to become one of 19 Asian MPs.

The Liberal Democrats continue have no non-white MPs.

There are also a number of white MPs who hail from elsewhere, such as Daniel Kawczynski, a Conservative who was born in Poland, or Labour’s Gisella Stewart, who is from Germany.

A quick check by Migrant Voice suggests that at least six per cent of current MPs are either migrants themselves or with migrant parents.

The percentage is still small. But the situation is improving.

Sir Robert Rogers, Clerk of the House and Chief Executive of the House of Commons, believes a more diverse parliament “would just look and feel a lot more normal.”

Rogers is championing the diversity cause in the House of Commons. He believes that the key to improving engagement is to “explain what parliament does, explain what it does for citizens, explain that it’s not a load of arcane rules carried out in a sort of fusty ecclesiastical building.” That’s necessary, he says, in order to deter the public from thinking ‘Ah, that’s for the fat cats, or that’s for people who’ve been to Eton and Oxford, and that’s not for me’”.

Rogers stresses the value of having a “wide range of perspectives, backgrounds,

personal orientations of every sort” in any institution because “if you have a more diverse workforce, it will be a better one.”

• Among initiatives to improve access to parliament and to encourage more participation by people from more diverse backgrounds is ParliREACH (the initials stand for Race, Ethnicity And Cultural Heritage), a grassroots workplace equality network at the House of Commons. It aims to promote ethnic and cultural diversity among MPs, and the staff of MPs and of the House.

The pioneersNew faces in the chamber

14 15www.migrantvoice.org www.migrantvoice.org

Another organisation helping to increase representation of minorities is Operation Black Vote (“Our work spans a number of areas including voter registration, lobbying politicians, mentoring schemes and political leadership programmes”).“It is very important to put people from minority backgrounds in a position to become ambassadors and go back and speak directly to people about how things work,” says Francine Fernandes, the organisation’s deputy director.“The typical politician simply doesn’t resonate as someone from our community.”

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UK: The home of human rights that locks people up indefinitely

NHS proposals could prove unhealthy

16 17www.migrantvoice.org www.migrantvoice.org

T he UK is unique in Europe in locking up migrants for years, without time limit, says Jerome Phelps, director of Detention

Action.“Asylum-seekers and migrants find

indefinite detention deeply traumatic, particularly where they have already experienced persecution or mental health problems,” says Phelps.

“They think of the UK as a home of human rights, yet find themselves locked up in detention centres that are identical to high-security prisons.”

Around 27,000 migrants were held in UK detention centres in 2011. Over half for less than two months but since there is no time limit on detention, some are held for much longer.

They are asylum-seekers whose claims are being processed or have been refused, and migrants who have overstayed their visas.

There has also been concern about overcrowding and poor conditions in detention centres.

Until recently, children were regularly detained along with their families. In May 2010, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg pledged to end the detention of all children in

O nce again, migrants’ entitle-ments to free healthcare serv-ices in the UK are under threat.

Following high-octane talk among ministers of the need to combat “health tourism”, the Government has issued a controversial set of healthcare reform proposals. If enacted, they will substantially change the relationship between many migrants living in the UK and the National Health Service.

Currently the rules affecting migrant entitlement to free NHS care differ between secondary care (including hospital care and specialist medical services) and primary care (for example, a GP surgery). Most migrants are entitled to access free secondary healthcare services only if they are considered to be “ordinarily resident” in the UK, meaning that they should be both lawfully present and settled in the UK.

Certain immediately necessary medical services, such as A&E care, antenatal care and treatment of a number of transmissible diseases, are exempt from the secondary healthcare charging regime, as are certain groups of migrants including European Economic Area nationals, asylum-seekers and refugees.

Primary care treatment is more readily accessible: GPs have the discretion to register any foreign nationals, including temporary and irregular migrants, for free care.

The Government wishes to change the rules in two main ways, which could prove highly detrimental for both migrants and wider communities.

Firstly, the intention is to introduce an additional charge for many migrants coming to the UK from outside the EU through a new “healthcare levy”, paid before they enter. This

could add thousands of pounds to the cost of a visa for students, family migrants and economic migrants.

The levy would supposedly contribute to the costs of their potential NHS care - regardless of the facts that many migrants already contribute to the costs of the NHS through their taxes and National Insurance contributions, and that many do not use the NHS while they are here.

Secondly, the Government plans to ensure that access to free GP services is no longer available for irregular migrants and some short-term migrants, particularly tourists and visitors.

There are widespread concerns among migrant organisations and healthcare groups about the implications of restricting access to primary care services, particularly for long-term residents with irregular status.

It is inevitable that some healthcare problems among these groups will go undiagnosed, potentially resulting in the spread of certain diseases and the worsening of treatable conditions.

In addition, a new document-checking system will need to be implemented in all GP surgeries in order to identify who will be charged for services, effectively requiring them to act as ad hoc immigration officials.

These changes are currently under consideration by the Government, and are likely to generate widespread opposition if introduced as part of a new Immigration Bill later this year.

They would drive yet another wedge between migrants and supposedly universal public services in the UK – and may further undermining the longer-term well-being and integration of many diverse communities.

The NHS is an example of how the integration of immigrants is positive

for Britain, according to a poll earlier this year, and nearly three-quarters of people who expressed a preference believe that the NHS would not survive in its current form without the work of doctors and nurses from abroad. Niki Anastasopoulou talks to one of those doctors.

Antonio moved from Italy to Britain three years ago when he was 32, full of hopes and dreams of building his career as a doctor.

He says his move was the culmination of several factors, including a lack of meritocracy in Italy and fewer opportunities to get the job he really wanted as a hospital

consultant. In addition, starting salaries in Italy were lower and there were fewer research opportunities.

Going abroad would mean facing new challenges, such as language, and different healthcare systems, cultures, patients and ways of prescribing.

All this, he says, added up to an enriching experience, professionally and personally.

Britain was also the only country where his fiancé, a foreigner but not from Italy, would be able to work.

Among the benefits of moving here, Antonio cites working with people from different nationalities: “In a multicultural environment most people will bring new skills, new ways of doing things, something

‘People bring new skills, new ways of working’

Ruth Grove-White, policy director of the Migrants’ Rights Network, sees trouble ahead in Government plans for healthcare.

DavE STaMP Project manager and immigration advisor at aSIRT(asylum support and immigration support team) in Birmingham

For migrants, April Fools’ Day this year was catastrophic rather than funny.

It marked the implementation of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO), which removed 96 per cent of all immigration work from the scope of legal aid.

The remaining 4 per cent – essentially asylum representation and assistance for some victims of domestic violence – will not be sufficient to sustain the existence of law firms specialising in legal aid-funded immigration law. Many offices are therefore likely to close down, or simply stop providing publicly funded help to migrants.

LASPO also abolished access to legal aid for people struggling to access welfare benefit payments. This occurred on the very day that the UK’s benefits system began to be subjected to a process of dramatic overhaul, with existing benefit payments transferred to the new “Universal Credit” system.

While many migrants are largely without recourse to public funds and consequently without access to welfare benefits, those

Migrants and legal aid: the battle is far from overbreaches its legal duties towards refused asylum-seekers, failing properly to apply the Immigration Rules where refused applicants request new evidence to be considered as a fresh asylum claim.

It is also clear that the Home Office’s decision-making processes are far from robust, and that case-workers are not always as well-informed as they might be. One Home Office refusal letter handed to me by a client, for example, referred to Lebanon as “a city in Palestine”.

In such instances, judicial review is the only route to justice. Yet if the proposed measures become law, even this final course of redress will be removed, leaving vulnerable individuals entirely at the mercy of unaccountable and poorly informed officials.

Sadly, the period in which responses to the consultation were invited has now ended. But the battle is far from over.

On 27 June a debate on the proposal in the House of Commons was followed by a debate on 11 July in the Lords. The impact is still not clear, but it is not too late to make your voice heard. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has opened an inquiry into the proposed changes. Deadline for submissions is 27 September.

that will make everybody happier. The working environment is like a boat which everybody feels a part of and therefore they feel more responsible if things go right or wrong.”

On the negatives side, he says that “equal opportunities” is just a phrase: “I can feel that, deep down, because I have not attended the same universities as they did, they think that my education is not as good as theirs.”

He feels that working in the NHS has improved his clinical work. He correctly re-diagnosed the conditions of several patients: “Seeing how well they got because of my different approach is definitely the greatest satisfaction.”

Colnbrook detention centre Photo: Detention Action

Isabel Ahammad trained in the Philippines and came to Britain as a nurse in 1971. She works as a nursing assistant. Photo: Louise Sweet

A dire situation looks to become worse.”

Working in the NHS has improved my clinical work.”

I’m staying at a designated address far away from my family in London. I have a curfew and other restrictions that make travel to see them impossible.

My family moved from Guadeloupe when I was really young. I grew up in east London and never dreamt that I’d find myself in this position. They moved me to Dover IRC (Immigration Removal Centre]. From there to Gatwick, Colnbrook, Harmondsworth, Morton Hall and finally to Middlesborough.

There are different rules at every place depending who’s running it, and you never quite know what’s going on. All you know is that you’re a small fish and you have no control over your life. That’s left to the UKBA [UK Border Agency].

You also know that if you’ve got money you can get by more easily. There’s corruption and uncertainty that you just have to deal with.

I managed to keep contact with my family over my 26 months in detention, but moving has made that really difficult, especially now I’m miles away from where they live. Why waste all this money and create this animosity? It’s sad. I’ve been living here for practically my whole life and suddenly I found myself in detention facing deportation to a country that I don’t even know.”

immigration centres by the following year. In December 2012, however, 31 children were being held, up from 17 the previous month.

At an average overall cost of £120 per bed per day, detention centres are expensive to maintain. Many billions of pounds are spent each year in the UK alone.

“The UK needs to change its approach, away from knee-jerk reliance on detention and towards engagement with migrants in the community,” says Phelps.

Vincent’s story: How can I be sent somewhere I don’t know?

“ I was detained from August 2010 until the beginning of November 2012.

When I was granted bail I thought the end of detention would mean the beginning of freedom, but I was wrong.

People held in EU detention facilities cannot be detained for more than 18 months. The upper limit varies between countries: 45 days in France and Poland, 18 months in Italy and Germany. The UK has no time limit.

granted leave to remain in the UK may well be eligible.

Already, many support agencies are dealing with families left in destitution following the unlawful withholding of welfare payments. The consequences of this can be fatal, as it was for Mrs E.G. and her infant son, who starved to death in Westminster having been recognised as refugees in need of protection.

There is now no legal possibility of challenging the Department of Work and Pensions for such unlawful practice.

This situation, dire as it is, looks set to become worse.

The Government’s consultation paper, Transforming Legal Aid: Delivering a more credible and efficient system, proposes more dramatic cuts to the system and –perhaps most disastrously for migrants – the introduction of a “residence test”.

This will remove the right to Legal Aid for people who cannot prove that they have been lawfully resident for 12 months. While asylum-seekers are excluded from the terms of the residence test, those who have been failed by the asylum system will be affected, as will recognised refugees and many other migrants.

This matters, not least because evidence suggests that the Home Office routinely

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Shelanu members at work Photo: © Craftspace

Joelle Barker, Zirak Hamad, Tara Jaff Photo: Sorin O. Rusu

Work inspired by experiences of migration.”

emma daker

W hen Birmingham’s £189 million library – a flagship project for the city’s redevel-opment and the largest pub-

lic cultural space in Europe – opens this year, a group of seven migrant and refugee women will be among the organisations taking part in the celebratory events.

They are members of Shelanu, Hebrew for ‘Belonging to us’, who meet once a week to design and make jewellery inspired by the city they now live in. Members range in ages from 30 to 72.

They will invite visitors to contribute to an artwork which over a week will reflect diverse experiences of migration to Birmingham.

The ties between the women’s countries of origin and Britain were underscored earlier this year when the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry commissioned them to create a jewellery range inspired by the museum’s collection. Its displays include a Peace and Reconciliation gallery focused on the experiences of the Blitz in the Second World War and an explanation of how the city has developed global links as a result of reconciliation work.

Nicola Gauld, curator of the Caught in the Crossfire exhibition in which the women’s work was displayed, says, “I was really excited about the range of jewellery” produced by Shelanu Collective for the exhibit.

“I was particularly interested to see that the makers had taken inspiration from John Piper’s painting of Coventry Cathedral, which he began the day after it was bombed during the Second World War. The fact that Shelanu works with refugee women, many of whom may have direct experience of conflict, makes this commission even more poignant.”

Another recent success was the development of a jewellery range, Migrating Birds, inspired by the women’s experiences of migrating to Birmingham.

It was created with the support of Rita Patel, a British Asian jeweller based in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter.

“We also show our work at craft fairs and people love it and are very interested in our story – the migration from different countries and our effort to build something new together,” says Kinneret, who had never made jewellery before she came to the UK from Israel four years ago.

Ruth, a migrant who has lived in UK since 1980, says, “The involvement with the different exhibitions I love so much because you meet people from everywhere. It makes me feel good and relaxed.”

Members’ work is sold collectively and all profits go back into the social enterprise.

“We work together as a team, and we have many activities outside and inside ... I am able to help others and share my knowledge,” explains Alice Nzeyimana from Burundi, who also had never previously made jewellery.

menjura; ‘New and special’ Photo: Tom Farnetti

Camilo Menjura won ‘musician of the year’ and ‘community worker of the year’ in the Latin-UK awards, or LUKAS, which celebrate the contribution of Britain’s Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese residents. He talks to Emily Spence.

“Mmmmm! Wow, what is this?”, Colom-bian musician Camilo Menjura recalls thinking the first time he tried a curry

in the UK. He feels the same mixture of exhilaration and bemusement when he hears the uniquely diverse sounds of London.

“Currently I am playing with a singer-songwriter from Sudan. We play traditional Sudanese music.”

He also plays with a singer-songwriter with Irish influences and in a jazz quartet with a Danish double-bass player.

“The fusion of these different types of music makes something new and special. London is a city where people go and share, experiment,” he says.

Menjura is from Bogota, where he worked as a maths teacher before moving to Britain. His favourite group, The King’s Singers, are British singers who perform a capella, without instruments. In Colombia, he dreamed of seeing them live. He arrived in 2006 knowing no-one, speaking virtually no English and with little idea of what to expect.

This year he won two Latin-UK awards. The shiny trophies sitting on his bedside table tell the story of how far he has come in seven years.

“It’s been a long journey,” he explains, “If you don’t have enough passion and you are not relentless then you can easily just give up.”

Working as a cleaner and a café barista for over two years, music wasn’t always his bread and butter. Yet “from the second day I moved here I met musicians. I met a Colombian guy, a harp player. Someone saw me playing. It’s about making contacts, and networks.”

For several years, Menjura has led music workshops in festivals and schools with different bands, teaching Colombian songs to large groups. Finally last year his dream of having his own choir came true. He was approached by the Colombian Embassy to establish a project reaching out to young Colombians in the UK, so he created the London-Colombian Choir.

Menjura persuaded the embassy that the choir should be open to all: “This is London, the city where people from everywhere come together: all this blending of cultural background creates the magic of the city. What is the problem with people joining our choir and singing our music?”

But his Colombian identity remains an important part of his music.

“It’s a big question, ‘What does it mean to be Colombian?’” he says. Colombia’s public image has suffered from its history of drug cartels and kidnappings and Menjura finds it frustrating when people make assumptions about Colombians based on these stereotypes.

“It’s hard for me to accept,” he confides. “Sometimes I don’t know if I want to slap the person or feel sorry for them for being so ignorant.”

Instead, by showing another side to Colombia through his music, he challenges stereotypes: “Through music I share my culture, my passion, I make people happy.”

The future carries uncertainty, for there’s no guarantee his visa will be renewed next time. But “sometimes I dream of having a big London community concert with people from everywhere playing the same thing. Having a project like that in England would be amazing.”

What of his original dream? Well, he has seen the King’s Singers live many times, he has got to know the group and has even run workshops with them.

Long journey to musical successMaking jewels for

Birmingham’s crown

by celebraTiNg saNcTuary birmiNgham

B irmingham’s Balsall Heath area is dancing to a new tune, thanks in part to refugee and migrant musicians.

Arts funding is being slashed in he West Midlands and many long-standing organisations are going to the wall, but new venues and collaborations are keeping creativity alive.

The Old Print Works in Birmingham’s Balsall Heath area, for example, is a vibrant haven for the arts, particularly for musicians from migrant communities.

Two organisations, Celebrating Sanctuary Birmingham and Muzikstan, put on regular nights that bring together diverse musicians, develop collaborations and introduce audiences to new music.

“There is a huge amount of talent in refugee communities,” says Sid Peacock, artistic director of Celebrating Sanctuary Birmingham, which supports musicians from refugee backgrounds.

“A lot of musicians find that they struggle to use their talents here. They don’t know the industry, they don’t have the connections and mainstream venues don’t know they exist.”

Celebrating Sanctuary tries to bridge that gap and help performers make a living out of their talent: “That is hard enough for artists who are born here, and it’s even more of a challenge for forced migrants.”

Audiences at these sessions and festivals can experience anything from Vietnamese theatre to Klezmer tunes, as well as unusual instruments, such as the kora and the tar.

Peacock also offers direct support to refugee musicians, and has initiated exciting cross-cultural collaborations – for example, between percussionist Joelle Barker and Hassan Salih Nour, a vocalist and musician born in Gabet in eastern Sudan.

Salih plays oud, bass, mandolin and tambour, the traditional instrument of northern Sudan, and is keen to perform with other musicians.

He lived in the Netherlands and Cairo and has now found his home in Birmingham, where he is recording.

He has teamed up with Barker, and they have played at Sudanese community events and more

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Hassan Salih Nour Photo: Karin van Woerden of LuneCat Films

mainstream performances.“I like playing with Joelle,” says Salih. “The

Sudanese rhythms are very difficult to pick up, but she is such an excellent percussionist she can do it. We work well together.”

But he is hungry for more. “When I lived in Holland, we had nights where if

you wanted to play and the stage was free you could do so. You would meet other musicians and play together. I would like to do that here: to find new people to play with, to develop my work, and perform more.”

Salih has also linked with Muzikstan, a community of performers founded by Kurdish refugee and musician Zirak Hamad.

Every other Thursday, Muzikstan play in Birmingham. They transform any space into a Bedouin-style camp which may host a jazz group or a classical quartet.

Hamad arrived in Birmingham from Iraq in 2002 with nothing except two English words, “yes” and “no”. He mainly used “yes”, and became a force in the city’s music scene, bringing people together and persuading them to contribute their time and energy.

He returned to Iraq earlier this year, but “he started something really exciting,” says Muzikstan’s Sophie Handy.

“Muzikstan is a free event. Donations are collected to support the musicians and people give generously. The performers get paid a fair fee and people give according to their means,” she adds.

“It’s working really well and we’re getting invitations to take Muzikstan on the road. It’s the fantastic crowd and help behind the scenes that makes Muzikstan what it is,” she says.

There are stirrings of more lasting and sustainable partnerships.

Isata Kanneh, originally from Sierra Leone, the director of Celebrating Sanctuary Birmingham, says, “We’ve been talking with Muzikstan. We want to create something that will bring artists and the community together to strengthen the regeneration that has started here and build the capacity of all the different communities in the area.

“It’s early days yet, and money is tight, but we’re confident that if it’s out there, we’ll find it.”

So Hassan Salih Nour may get his wish. He has certainly landed in the right place. The Old Print Works is an example of what can happen when different communities come together around a common interest.

No need to hide his paintings any more

20 21www.migrantvoice.org www.migrantvoice.org

O ne of Africa’s most significant artists, Ibrahim El-Salahi, has lived quietly in Oxford for 15 years.

After some difficult times in Sudan – including dismissal as Undersecretary in the Ministry of Culture and Information, and six months imprisonment without trial – he turned to the English landscape for new inspiration.

In his first spell in Britain, studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, he had found the Brits “a little cold to start with” but finally judged them “genuine, generous and very friendly … I love the sense of democracy, of order and discipline.”

Yet his connection to Sudan remains strong and he regularly returns to Sudanese landscapes, traditions and motifs in his work, as well as Arabic calligraphy and the theme of freedom – unsurprisingly, considering that during his wrongful imprisonment he continued drawing on scraps of paper, at personal risk, that he cut up and buried in separate pieces.

“I am Ibrahim, I am Sudanese, I am Arab, I am a citizen of the world”, he has said.

His art is both a private, inward exploration of himself and a universal message “for humans wherever they are”,

a message that proclaims “the oneness of all human beings”, in El-Salahi’s words. It is a call for self-understanding and understanding of others, a call for tolerance and an end to prejudice and war.

Nevertheless, recognition has been a struggle, both in Sudan, where he recalls his first show was totally ignored, and Europe.

This year, aged 83, full recognition came with Tate Modern’s first retrospective of an African artist, displaying 100 of his paintings from a half-century of work.

“To come in from the cold after all this time is a wonderful thing,” he said in an interview with The Guardian.

Veronica Ferreri

B ritain and Iraq are joined in popular percep-tion by war. But for Ghareeb Iskander the

connection is poetry.Born and educated in Iraq, he left “because I

couldn’t bear staying where there was no freedom”. His family were political opponents of Saddam Hussein’s government, which arrested his two brothers – “we lost them in Iraq’s mass graves”.

He focussed on writing, “but it was not easy to live and write under such a criminal regime.” Most of his eight books were published in Lebanon.

When he finally moved to London at the age of 36 “I felt in love with the city: theatres, galleries, poetry. London is the hearth of the world and it is not so far from the Middle East … you can find yourself as a writer.”

And he did. He felt an affinity because, he explains, modern Arabic poetry has been

Bridget anderson author of ‘Us and them: the dangerous politics of immigraion controls’

For decades policymakers and communi-ties have been talking about the impacts

of immigration on our lives: far less attention has been paid to the impact of immigration controls on citizens and on citizenship.

But immigration controls are increasingly a feature of daily life, no longer a matter that is left to the dark corners of detention centres, to be discussed between immigration officers, migrants and, if they are lucky, their legal representatives.

Controls feature in TV series, endlessly flaunted and debated in newspapers: we even had vans driving around areas of London warning migrants “In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest”.

Immigration enforcement is profoundly changing the nature of our communities.

Enforcement is increasingly sub-contracted to employers, public servants and carriers - that is, citizens themselves. Furthermore, the attempt to restrict migrants’ access to certain rights leaches into citizens’ access to those same rights.

For example, the currently proposed “residence test” for legal aid will disqualify anyone who is not able to prove they were a lawful UK resident at the time of their application, and had been a lawful resident at some point for a year or longer. This is clearly aimed at migrants, but will include British nationals who have been residing abroad.

Similarly, recent proposals that landlords should check the residence status of tenants to protect against “welfare tourists” will affect citizens, both as landlords and as tenants.

Such measures may be popular because they are seen as affecting “immigrants”, but because EU nationals must be treated equally with UK citizens, they must be cast in ways that mean they have the potential to affect UK citizens.

Too often migrants are imagined as in competition with citizens, for jobs, for school places, for hospital beds and for welfare benefits. This is a zero sum game which benefits nobody and means that anti-migrant sentiment is fostered rather than focussing on the root of the problem: the prevalence of low waged, insecure work, the lack of affordable housing and the deregulation of the private rented sector, lack of investment and contracting out of public services.

Working together whatever our citizenship and immigration status is more important than ever.

Anderson is professor of migration and citizenship and deputy director at COMPAS, a migration research organisation.

Immigration controls will come back to haunt us

The Iraqi refugee poet who got used to here/there

Ibrahim El-Salahi in front of Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams 1 1961-5 Installation images of Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist Photo: Tate Photography © Ibrahim El-Salahi

influenced by British poets such as T. S. Eliot. Iskander contributed to the link by translating several English-language poets into Arabic.

He also published his own book, Chariot of Illusions, with the help of Exiled Writers Ink, which provides a platform for artists living in exile in Britain and Europe generally.

The poems are about his experiences: “At the end of the day, we write as poets about our life, what we feel. This is why Chariot of Illusions was about exile, Iraq, what we suffered in Iraq, what we feel and hope”.

A section of his most recent book, Gilgamesh’s Snake, is about London and the chapter title, The Book of Silence, seems surprising for a noisy city. But Iskander explains: “London is crowded, we feel busy here, but as soon as you close your door, you can live your life as you wish”.

He says that “I still get lost in the city, which is good for a writer. Sometimes I feel I am neither in London nor in Baghdad. My state is a state of suspension. You are neither here, nor there. But you get used to here/there”.

From Gilgamesh’s Snake, The Book of Silence:Poem 7His heartOr just the losscan complete that anguishthat song;He passed the pain path alonehe passed the brookletThat he was crossingwaiting for a cloud that did not rain.Or the absenceWhich he calls a presenceCall it what you will:a lost existencea lifetime hanging like a pendulum of a broken clockcall it warOr call it shrapnelCall it what you wantthere’s nothing more difficultThan that false truth!

Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams 1 1961-5© Ibrahim El-Salahi

Jade Amoli-Jackson endured atrocities and deprivation before fleeing her country to seek safety in Britain. Incredibly, reports Tom Green, her spirit is uncrushed and her poetry inspires people all over the country.

Imagine your husband or wife is seized by soldiers and taken 300 miles to the capital.

You manage to find out where they are detained and you travel there only to learn they have been murdered.

To add cruel insult to appalling injury, you are forced to pay for the return of your partner’s headless body.

It gets worse. A new government comes to power, promising a return to law and order. But abuses continue, and your children are abducted.

For four months you search for them but then you, too, are abducted, along with others, some of whom are shot dead.

You endure two months of captivity, rape and hunger.How could anyone find the will to survive such an

onslaught? Jade Amoli-Jackson did. A soldier helped her escape and in 2001 she fled from

Uganda to Britain. She has never found her children: the Red Cross continues to look for them in Uganda.

Amazingly, Amoli-Jackson has become a poet and equally amazingly it is wit and warmth as well as emotion that characterises her work.

A psychotherapist with the organisation Freedom From Torture suggested that, as a former journalist, she join the organisation’s Write to Life group.

“It was the group, and a course at Morley College [which runs adult education courses in London] that introduced me to creative writing,” she recalls.

This year she published a collection of poems, Moving A Country, divided into four sections that all refugees will understand: Home, Flight, Arrival, Home.

“Writing makes me feel alive again, makes me feel human again. All those people who did whatever they wanted to finish all of us off – we have risen above what they did. We are fighters,” she told the e-zine, Words With Jam.

Starting with memories of her grandfather bluffing his way through conversations in English, a language he could neither speak not understand, in order to impress fellow villagers, the collection includes memories of Jade’s rural childhood where, unlike many girls at the time, she was able to attend school and learn English.

The poems also recount some of her traumatic experiences and how she helped others cross into Kenya, as well as the hope, despair, humiliation and relief she subsequently experienced.

“In one poem,” says Lucy Poescu, Amoli-Jackson’s mentor at the Write To Life group, “Jade recalls the abruptness of leaving Uganda, revealing how she ran out of the house without packing anything, ‘even my sanity’, and her sadness at how the country she once called home had become ‘a butcher’s den.’ “

Finally, the poems speak of her experience of a new home in London, with her alternately moving and humorous take on everyday life.

“I am always amazed by the clarity and poignancy of her writing,” says Poescu.

Amoli-Jackson is generous with her gratitude to those who have helped her along the way.

“However painful your journey is,” she says, “friends and colleagues can lift up your spirit and make you live again.”

She is a long-standing volunteer with the Refugee Council and performs her poems at events across the UK.

“Most of the refugee stories we read about in the media are negative,” points out Poescu. “This wonderful collection of Jade’s work directly challenges the negative press given asylum-seekers. Jade’s courage shines through her writing and pays testament to the strength of the human spirit.”

Moving A Country

Move the evergreen treesMeandering rivers Lakes and seasWild and domestic animalsBirds of all sizesPack them all upPlace in the suitcase of my brain

Leave behind the soldiersCovered in old sacksOr place them on the tip of My foot – then I’llKick them into the deep blue seaSo my head can’t rememberAnd my heart can’t bleedAnd the dark memoriesCan fade slowly away…

I ran out of the house Without packing anythingEven my sanityHow can a country I called homeBecome a butcher’s denAnd my bed a foreigner’s heaven!I walk through fireAnd find no water to coolMy burning heartOnly the distant memoriesFond memories of my youthAnd the good old days…

I search my head and heartBut the huge dark Memories planted in my brain remainI will treasure the good onesAnd loathe the bad ones!

‘They wanted to finish us off – we have risen above what they did. We are fighters’

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Heard the one about the migrant who came to Britain……?

To see the world as others see us

Think outside the box, advises bobble-hatted Badman

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Nouria Bah

S ome people in Britain moan about migrants, but without them they might have less to laugh about.

The British have a global reputation for being good at comedy. But the stand-up variety, live or on television, was once dominated by white males with a penchant for racist, sexist and homophobic jokes.

Over the past 20 years the comedy scene has become as diverse and vibrant as the country itself, with people from different backgrounds helping expand the range of the famous “British” sense of humour.

Professional footballer Charlie Williams, whose father was from Barbados, helped open the door for comedians from a diverse heritage in the late 1970s. He died in 2006.

Williams found his talent for comedy at school, where he said he could deal with racial prejudice by fighting or making people laugh. He chose the latter, saying: “I never liked soiling my clothes.”

Other British black comedians, such as Lenny Henry and Meera Syal took up the reigns from Williams.

Now it is becoming much easier, and Britain is all the richer, and funnier, for it.

“Starting out [as a comedian] was very hard back in the day especially,” says Patrick Monahan, 37, born in Iran of Iranian and Irish parents. “It was even harder if you were a woman of a certain ethnic background.”

And as Monahan says, social media such as Twitter mean that audiences have more of a voice in “policing” and criticising the material with which comedians of all backgrounds choose to entertain their audiences.

When Monahan began his career, he found that due to his last name, north-eastern British accent and looks, he was more likely to be accepted as British compared to other “ethnic” comedians.

Making comedy from his particular background helped him gain a following, but “I didn’t want to be typecast so I changed my material to other things that are going on in my life.”

People think you are a little biteccentric.”

Humza Arshad: Educating audiences. Photo: Badman Productions.

The mountains in Yangshuo.

Judith Vonberg talks to a man who migrated from China and a woman who migrated in the opposite direction

A t 14, Leon was sent by his parents from his home in Beijing to go to school in Bristol. Leon says he had

only a “very vague idea of where England was”, spoke no English and was unprepared for his new life.

For Leon, the West was a distant, unknown place with little relevance for everyday Chinese life. What he knew about the West was based on a few Hollywood blockbusters such as True Lies and Forrest Gump.

Sarah’s interest in China began as a young child when she read the story of Adeline Yen Mah, a girl growing up in 1940s Tianjin. Her mind was opened to a life “completely alien” to her own, and she continued to read about China and its people.

After leaving university, she travelled to Foshan, a small town in south-east China, to teach English. Despite her decade-long interest in all things Chinese, Sarah found herself unprepared for the reality of life in a place so different.

The shopping centres, tower blocks and fast food outlets found in every European town were there, too. Yet the language, culture and way of life felt alien and the “old school Chinese charm” she had read about was missing.

Leon, too, found life in Bristol difficult at first. Used to the formality and discipline of Chinese schools where exercise means marching around the school grounds, he found the boisterous atmosphere and obsession with rugby — a game he had never heard of — bewildering. He also

found himself challenging his schoolmates’ stereotypes. One evening, a group of boys started talking about how Chinese people eat dogs, unaware at first that Leon — who has never eaten dog — was sitting nearby. Amused, he turned and said with a serious face, “German shepherds I find a little too lean, but bulldog stew is great.” Embarrassed, the boys were silenced, until Leon started laughing and they realised he was joking.

Sarah and Leon began to settle into their new lives. Leon learned English and how to play rugby. Sarah learned Chinese and made friends with the locals, not easy to do in a society so wary of foreigners. Yet the Chinese also place a high importance on family life and Sarah often found herself confronted by local people concerned about her distance from her family.

“There’s my yoga partner, who invites me home for lunch and tells me off for not wearing enough layers and my favourite vendor, who fusses and forces fruit on me, in case I’m not getting my five a day. Then there’s the lady who comes and plonks her baby on my lap if I’m sitting on my own.”

Arriving young in a new country, Leon was accepted by most people he met. Now, 12 years on, he is surrounded by friends from England and abroad. Both Sarah and Leon speak of the difficulty of being apart from their family and, in Sarah’s case, of many friends as well. Learning the bureaucracy, culture and language of a different country can be bewildering. Mistakes are easy to make and offence is easily caused.

As Sarah said, “as a migrant you have to get used to people thinking you’re a little bit eccentric”.

Being a migrant is always difficult, but

Sarah and Leon agree that they would not trade the experience for anything. Leon has embraced English life: he studied at an English university and now lives and works in London. For him, England is his home. Experiencing the challenges and joys of moving to a new place, however, has given him a thirst for travel.

“One of the biggest benefits of living in different countries”, he says, “is learning about how other people see China, a perspective I would never have received otherwise.”

Sarah enjoys the unpredictability of living in new places: “I like being surprised by new things and situations where you can’t live according to a familiar script.”

She also speaks of the changes in herself as a result of migration: she has become “more tolerant, more accepting and better at knowing when to keep my mouth shut!”

Sarah: ‘I like being surprised’.

Jokers in the pack

Shazia Mirza, 35, daughter of Pakistani immigrants, biology teacher and comic dubbed the First British Muslim Woman comedian - but she doesn’t like labels.

omid Djalili, born in Britain to Iranian parents, has won awards for both comedy and acting. In films he usually represents a generic Middle East character, though he is in fact a follower of the Bahá’í faith.

Shappi Khorsandi, 40, the daughter of an Iranian poet and satirist. Her family were forced to flee from Iran to London after the

Islamic Revolution following the publication of her father’s satirical poem about the new regime.

Stephen Kehinde amos, 42, a British stand-up comedian of Nigerian background and a strong London identity.

Meera Syal, 52, undisputed Queen of British Asian comedy, who has an MBA and her picture in the National Portrait Gallery. She is the daughter of Indian immigrants and grew up the only Asian in a Midlands village.

Sanjeev Bhaskar, oBE, 49, British-Indian comedian and actor

who starred in the flagship BBC comedy series, Goodness Gracious Me. He is married to Meera Syal.

Lenny henry, the son of Jamaican immigrants, is a pioneer of mainstream black British comedy, loved as much for his Birmingham persona as his Jamaican/Black British one.

henning Wehn, 39, the self-styled German ambassador of British comedy, moved to the UK in 2002 to work in the marketing department of Wycombe Wanderers FC, until one evening he tried an “open mike” night and never looked back.

aNuM ahMED

B ritish Pakistani comedian Humza Arshad is best known for his YouTube video series ‘Diary of a

Badman’, which makes fun of the relationships of a young man and his family.

With his unique combination of rap, Urdu catchphrases and funny storylines, the south London star has generated a 35 million international viewing fan base in less than three years.

The 27-year-old draws his inspiration from his mixed cultural background to bring a spicy freshness to Britain’s comedy scene.

“My parents instilled Pakistani values in me from the very start as they wanted me to know and respect my motherland and my roots,” says Arshad.

What sets him apart from most other comedians is his desire to educate audiences about the highs and lows of being a British Muslim.

He has campaigned for the return of Shaker Aamer,

the last British citizen to be held in Guantanamo Bay, and has worked alongside the London police, delivering workshops to students on topical issues such as knife crime and gang violence.

But it is on the streets of Croydon, south London that Arshad is most appreciated, with fans pestering to meet ‘Badman’ and even adopting his signature bobble hat style.

His advice? “You should always think outside the box, never give up, and be yourself.”

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‘In reality, there aren’t that many differences’25

Latin Americans: no longer invisible, but not yet official

M ixed marriages in Britain have increased significantly in recent decades: almost 9 per cent of British marriages

now include a foreign-born spouse.Over a million Britons ticked the box

“mixed race” in the 2011 census, an increase of more than 50 per cent since 2001.

One in 10 children lives in a family with mixed or multiple heritage.

Though the figures are on the up, there is a long history of mixed marriages in the country. British-born people mixing with immigrant communities in London, Liverpool and South Shields in the 1920s and ’30s generated new communities with shared cultural traditions.

Recently, mixed race figures in the media - including Olympic heptathlon gold medallist Jessica Ennis, motor racing’s Lewis Hamilton and singer-songwriter Leona Lewis - have sparked fresh interest in the topic.

In 1986, when Jessica Ennis was born to a Jamaican father and English mother in Sheffield, 50 per cent of the public were against mixed marriages, according to a British Attitudes Survey. That figure now stands at 15 per cent.

Here is the story of just one of the many

bonds with both girls, and once saved the life of youngest daughter Carla when she fell into deep water on a family holiday. Basia just threw her coffee aside and leaped into the pool to save her.

“Things like that bond you really strong,” says Barbara, as David looks lovingly on.

Basia’s dad found it difficult to accept David as he hoped she would return to Poland. He also found it difficult to accept that David had children.

Because of the multicultural background of David’s family – and one of David’s dad’s best friends was Polish - it was easier for them to accept the relationship. David’s parents liked Barbara: they knew who she was as they worked together.

The families met when Barbara´s relatives visited Scotland. They speak fluent English, apart from her 75-year-old dad. David smiles as he tells me that on the phone they have the same conversation: “Yak she mash tata Krupa?” [How are you dad Krupa?] “Yaki mialesh dzyen?” [How’s your day been?]

Basia says, “My dad loves David because he always helps organise stuff at home. He’s repaired the washing machine, the lights in the house, fixed plugs, labelled the cables which had always confused my dad.”

When I ask how they are going to bring up their child David says in one breath: “He or she will be learning Polish and Scottish traditions, Polish and English languages. The way I’ve read about teaching a child is to differentiate it, so if Barbara is speaking in Polish and I’m speaking English the child will pick up both languages, and will associate me with English and Barbara with Polish. I will be learning Polish along with the child.”

They realise that because they live in Scotland the main language will be English, but they want to make sure that there’s enough Polish culture, enough spoken and written Polish, so that both sides of the upbringing are there.

“For me it’s important because of the family,” says David. “Barbara’s family will always be Polish. For me it’s a really good thing if our child can speak Polish when we go to Poland. It’s frustrating that I can’t communicate well with Barbara’s father.

“There’s times when we’re there and Barbara just needs to go out and I’m left with her father and I’m trying to communicate. It can be really complex when communication becomes hand signals and things like that, and I don’t want that complex situation for the child. I’d rather my child go to Poland and

thousands of couples for whom love trumped national or ethnic difference.

family values in a scottish-polish allianceWhat happens when a couple go for mix ‘n’match? Marzanna Antoniak finds out.

Barbara Krupa applied for an office job through an agency but didn´t realise that the work on offer was in a warehouse. She dressed up in high heels, white blouse and a mini and off she went to a cold factory hall. This is where she met David Laird, who became her boss – and partner.

Barbara, affectionately called Basia, is from Ruda Slaska, in southern Poland. David grew up in Coatbridge, east of Glasgow, with a Scottish father, an Irish grandmother and Italian grandfather. The couple live in a cosy house in Airdrie. Basia’s belly bounces occasionally as we talk. The baby is due in three weeks.

David already has two daughters, and “Barbara accepted them without issue, without question”. Basia has created strong

speak Polish.”Asked about cultural differences they first

talk about Christmas. Poles have the big dinner and open their presents on Christmas Eve. They say it’s good because they celebrate both days and give each other small presents on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

David says he wouldn’t dream of stopping Barbara having her traditions, her ways of doing things. “The same, Barbara wouldn’t try to change the way I do things. It will all have to be integrated into our relationship. I am an atheist but I go to the Church with Barbara when she wants to celebrate some important days. For any relationship to work people need to accept each other.”

David is accustomed to the Polish culture and says that in reality there aren’t that many differences.

He knows, for example, that it is perceived as unmannerly if a man in Poland doesn’t hold the door for a woman. But he says he was brought up with decent manners and it is normal for him anyway.

“I think your upbringing is down to your parents, behaviour is more personal than cultural. I don’t believe that Barbara is any different to a Scottish woman, or an English woman, or a French woman…”

The number of people in Britain from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries in the Americas has increased rapidly in the last decade. They are generally identified by nationality – Brazilian, Colombian and so on. Now, reports Rebecca Suner, some are campaigning to be treated as an ethnic group.

A year after the London borough of South-wark recognised Latin Americans as an

ethnic group, campaigners are still trying to convince other councils to follow suit.

Without recognition, say campaigners, local authorities cannot quantify – and help provide – the health, housing and education needs of the estimated 186,500 Latin Americans living in Britain, mainly in London.

Recognition, they say, would also enable local authorities to ensure the community enjoys equal opportunities.

One of the guiding spirits of the recognition movement was Claudio Chipana, who left his native Peru 24 years ago to attend a philosophy conference in London.

He learned of the challenges facing Latin American migrants, such as workplace discrimination, and in 2010 he co-founded the Latin American Recognition Campaign (LARC).

The countries of Latin America are varied, he admits, “but we all have similarities in our lives living abroad, that’s why we feel we are together.

“LARC has managed to attract a lot of support and attention,” says Chipana, and the Latin American community is increasingly known and enjoyed by the general public through music, food and culture.

“But it is still not visible to the authorities,” he adds.

Lucila Granada, coordinator of the Coalition of Latin Americans in the UK - formed after publication of a 2011 report about Latin Americans in the UK, No Longer Invisible – says, “If you don’t gain visibility you will have to deal with your problems alone.

“People pay their taxes. They live here. Many have citizenship. They are here to stay and raise their children but the authorities are just ignoring them.”

Latin Americans started emigrating to the UK in the 1970s. Many were refugees escaping the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and authoritarian regimes in Uruguay and Argentina.

A second wave arrived from the late ‘90s, mainly Colombians fleeing junta violence and Ecuadorians and Bolivians struggling with

political and economic instability. Today, Brazilians are thought to be the

most numerous Latin American nationality. And since the economic crisis in Europe, many Latin American immigrants who had settled in Spain or Portugal, their main European destinations, have re-located to the UK.

The No Longer Invisible report by Queen Mary University and the Latin American Women’s Group pointed out that 85 per cent of Latin Americans here are employed, and their take-up of benefits is much lower than the average Londoner. But almost half live in inadequate housing and 40 per cent have experienced workplace abuse and discrimination. They are also ten times more likely than the average worker to earn less than the national minimal wage.

Campaigners believe recognition will help tackle such problems. Pressure for recognition is targeted at London boroughs with a strong Latin

American presence such as Lambeth, Haringey, Islington and Hackney.

Two immediate battles are to preserve Latin American businesses in the £1.5 billion Elephant & Castle regeneration in south London (“It’s important to maintain its Latin-American character. Regeneration shouldn’t mean relegation,” says Chipana) and to avert the threat to turn the country’s largest Latin American market, El Pueblito Paisa outside London’s Seven Sisters station, into a shopping centre and luxury flats.

Meanwhile, Chipana orders two Postobon Manzanas at the counter of Los Colorados and salsa music plays as the owners of the

Tienda Latina chat in Spanish. It could be a weekend in Buenos Aires or Lima but it’s the Elephant & Castle shopping centre, where many Latin Americans congregate, living their lives and contributing to and learning from their adopted country.

The authorities are ignoring them.”

marisa aranda, simone pereira and cyro isolan

The last census put the number of Brazilians in England and Wales at 50,570. But research – or

guesstimates – by Brazilian associations has suggested the figure could be nearer 250,000. They are probably the largest group of Latin Americans in the country.

Many have come for work and better lives. To help them build a fairer society and encourage participation in their new British surroundings, the Brazilian community in London has created a Citizenship Council. An equally important aim is to provide a platform to tackle social and legal issues associated with immigration.

They are concentrated in London. In the Willesden Junction area, for example, a Brazilian community has boosted the local economy by opening a variety of shopping and trading businesses.

Marina is one of the many Brazilians who have made the UK their home. “I could not find a job in Brazil and I had always dreamed of living in another country.”

Despite facing a daunting uphill battle, Marina has changed her life – in eight years, she has built a family, learned the English language and secured a decent job.

But with the rise of Brazil’s economy and excitement around international events, such as the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympics, many Brazilians have decided to try their luck back home.

Brazil has itself become a hotspot for immigrants, particularly Haitians.

Brazilians on the move

Ticking the box

Ethnicity on census forms can be “races” (such as White, Asian, Black) or geographical (Indian, Pakistani, Chinese).

If Latin Americans are recognised as an ethnic group the census form will contain a ‘Latin-American’ box to tick.

For now, they have the option to write it in the ‘other’ box (for which LARC campaigned in 2011) – the space for self-definition of one’s ethnicity. ‘Arab’ was included as a category under the ‘other’ group for the first time in 2011.

La Bodeguita Restaurant in the Elephant and Castle shopping centre, which has many Latin American shops photo: Dena Arya

Beef taco photo: Kham Tran

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John Watkins Plaza, London School of Economics Photo: Nigel Cox

Two writers; women who faced persecution, imprisonment and torture because of their ideas; refugees who fled and told the world what was happening in their countries; two women willing to forgive their abusers; two human rights activists, both working in the UK to support others, both inspirational despite stories that would bring tears to a stone.

26 27www.migrantvoice.org www.migrantvoice.org

Two women, two inspirational survivors

High stakes in controversy over foreign studentsInternational students are at the centre of a huge controversy. They bring an estimated £8 billion a year to the economy, but the Government has pledged to cut immigration. Judith Vonberg examines the dilemma.

I nternational students are set to bear the brunt of the UK government’s plans to cut net migration into the country to

the “tens of thousands” by 2015. There is no cap on the number of visa

applications by students from outside the EU, and Prime Minister David Cameron has gone out of his way to make this point clear.

Yet if it is to meet its net migration target, the government will have to drastically reduce the number of young people coming to study.

Between June 2010 and June 2011, the number of international students entering the country totalled 242,000, or 40 per cent of the total number of official immigrants.

To reach the government’s net migration target, non-EU student numbers would need to be reduced by 87,000, according to the Migration Advisory Committee.

The mixed message seems to be having an effect. In the 2012 academic year 50,000 fewer international students opted to study in the UK than in 2011, raising alarm bells in the corridors and offices of the UK’s higher educational establishments.

Students from India, China and Brazil in particular are choosing to study elsewhere in the belief that the UK will not welcome them.

Calls for the government to rethink its policy have come from Universities UK, The National Union of Students (NUS), the Russell Group of elite UK universities, five parliamentary committees as well as leading business figures.

The financial stakes are high. Every year, international students contribute about £8 billion to the UK economy through tuition fees (ranging from £10,000 to £30,000 per year for international students) and off-campus spending, while receiving no loans or

benefits from the UK government. The annual net benefit to Sheffield’s

economy alone is £120 million. The benefit to London is £2.5bn a year.

The OECD, the rich countries organisation, estimates that around 25 per cent of international students stay in the UK after graduating. About 15 per cent stay permanently, according to a report by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR).

Those who stay continue to contribute by starting businesses, creating jobs and forging international business links. The impact to the economy of “losing so many young, highly qualified and motivated migrants ... would likely be very large”, says IPPR.

In a debate on international student visa policy in the House of Lords, Lord Wilson, Chancellor of Aberdeen University, pointed out the public relations benefits of taking in overseas students.

The British government’s approach is having the opposite effect. According to an NUS survey, 40 per cent of international students in the UK would not advise a friend or relative from their home country to come

to the UK to study. The fear is that the UK will lose its strong

position in the market for international students and its reputation for a university sector that is open to ideas and people from across the world.

“This is a fast growing market and if we want to win the global race we have to get serious about growing our market share,” said Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi.

As a result of the concerns, there is a strong argument from many MPs and student bodies for international students to be excluded from the UK’s net migration figures.

As Sarah Mulley, associate director at the IPPR, has said, the decline in the number of foreign students “comes at a considerable economic cost to the UK at a time when we can ill afford it.”

Campaigning for the right to study

Only a very small number of asylum-seekers in the UK see k access to higher

education, but those who do face impossible challenges.

Emma Williams, chief executive of Student Action for Refugees (STAR), says that “With no access to loans or bursaries, higher education has become a hopeless dream rather than a reality for the educationally high-achieving asylum-seeker.”

The law allows UK universities to charge asylum-seekers either home fees or international fees. Students across the national STAR network are lobbying universities to sign the Equal Access pledge calling for:

1. All those seeking refugee protection to be able to study as home students, and

2. Students seeking refugee protection to be recognised as having additional needs just like other vulnerable people and to be given the same access to additional support, such as bursaries.

The university sector will lose its reputation.”

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Jonatane’s story“I arrived in the UK as a teenager with my family. We had to flee the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) due to my father’s political activities.

While growing up in the DRC I witnessed many injustices. I dreamed about the rule of law and how it can protect the innocent and punish the guilty. That’s why I wanted to become a lawyer.

I was lucky to be offered a place to study law at the University of Kent, even though my claim for asylum had not yet been decided. However the university said that I had to pay international student fees. I could not afford this.

My solicitor said I should wait until a decision in my asylum case had been made and then go to university.

I had to wait.

It turned out that I had already been granted refugee status before the start of the academic year – I just didn’t know it. The Home Office told my solicitor about their decision only four months after they granted me asylum.

To my dismay the university insisted that I had been offered a place at international student rates even though I now had refugee status. It took me nearly nine months to convince them to let me pay home student fees.

I finally started my law degree in 2003 and paid the same fees as my UK course mates.

I have many good memories of my university days. I learned so much – about the law and beyond.

My degree also gave me a new perspective on my future: I decided that rather than becoming a barrister I wanted to pursue a career in international development and help those suffering from conflict, especially in my native continent Africa.

One of my favourite memories of university is attending my graduation ceremony and seeing how proud my father was of my achievements.

I have since obtained a masters degree in international law with international relations and have worked with a number of organisations in the UK and in South Africa. I am also now a British citizen.’

arrested at 14

E fat Mahbaz was arrested in Iran at the age of 14, along with her father. She was

interrogated for two days about what she had been reading and writing. She was threatened with imprisonment, like her brother, who was tortured in jail for two years.

After the 1979 revolution Efat met the man who was to become her husband, Shapoor, at a meeting of political activists. It was love at first sight, but the changing political climate forced them into hiding.

They were spotted and arrested in 1983, interrogated and tortured. Efat spent seven years behind bars, of which less than 10 minutes was spent in a trial without lawyers: Shapoor was executed after five years.

To survive her ordeal, she decided to write about the incredible brutality inflicted on political prisoners, some of whom were driven mad by the atrocities. Her memoir, Efat (Forget-me-not) tells of her life until her escape to Germany. She plans to have it translated into other languages, “so that the whole world can know why I am where I am”.

She completed her university education in Germany and moved to the UK to learn English, “because London is reflective of a more multi-cultural society”. Here she set up a branch of Mourning Mothers in the wake of the killing of many youngsters during a pro-democracy uprising in Iran.

“I wish my country would change one day and have some democracy - during my lifetime - my people deserve this,” she says. “I wish for the women in Iran to become stronger and equal. They all deserve this.”

Efat has now set up Sharzad, to support the rights and voices of deaf migrants. It has a particular emphasis on combatting domestic violence. She is an unofficial ambassador for the rights of Iranian women and political prisoners, speaking all over the world.

Now 55, her strength of character and spirit has enabled her to survive appalling acts of cruelty.

“I will forgive the people who tortured me if they say sorry”, because this would mean that the perpetrators had demonstrated a capacity for change – which is the key to a better world.

‘I can never forget’

Gealass Al Khalifa was a multilingual, musically talented writer, teacher and

mother of three in a part of Iraqi Kurdistan known for its roses, streams and waterfalls. Everything changed when her husband was arrested in 1983.

Her visits to Abu Ghraib prison – notorious even then – were distressing affairs: long, packed overnight bus journeys, where they would join the tens of thousands of families trudging the long muddy walk for a glimpse of husbands, brothers, fathers locked up by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Then the shocking sights:“If I could have all the pens and the books in

the world, I would have filled it with the stories of those inside the prison. It is a scene I can never erase from my mind.”

Prisoners with eyes pulled out, noses and ears cut off, arms misshapen as a result of being hung from the ceiling for prolonged periods.

Her husband died in prison.She was later arrested at her school,

blindfolded and handcuffed, pushed down the stairs to the underground interrogation room.

Her crime? Writing a children’s play without glorifying the name of Saddam Hussein.

She was permanently disabled by torture

but says she saw many even worse off, including children starved to death and women gang-raped by policemen in front of their husbands.

Gealass’ three children fled to the UK, and she followed in 2003, stuffed inside a jute sack stacked between fruit and vegetable boxes.

She reached Britain, her asylum application was refused because of Saddam Hussein’s overthrow and she endured years of homelessness and physical pain.

One day she gathered her strength, decided that there is more to life as long as she is free and can breathe, joined the Iraqi Kurdish Association, started volunteering and became a leading member of a project to fight for Kurdish women’s rights. Its pressure has helped changed laws in Kurdistan, including strong punishment for female genital mutilation, restrictions against the taking of second wives and the establishment of women’s refuges.

Now a British citizen, she spends seven days a week campaigning for a better world.

It’s inspiring but no surprise. As she says, “Since my early years I have been on a mission to search for the truth and justice in every corner of my house, the streets and the world around me. I try to find solutions for life’s difficulties.”

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beth crossland

T he Migrant and Refugee Woman of the Year Awards honour the inspirational leadership shown by new citizens and highlights

their stories of courage and success and how they give back to this country.

The inspiration for the awards came in 2011 when activist Zrinka Bralo won the prestigious Voices of Courage Award from the Women’s Refugee Commission in New York. Bralo says she was “literally speechless at the idea of being honoured and recognised as a refugee working to support other refugees”, and that it made her realise that “much of the good work done by refugee and migrant leaders goes largely unnoticed.”

At the 2013 awards ceremony actress Juliet Stevenson said:

“There are so many award ceremonies where those who already have are given more and those who are already acknowledged have even more fuss made of them. These awards are much, much more valuable than that, because they give prominence and they shine a light on those who get no attention at all for the incredible, inspiring work they are doing.”

This year’s winners:Remzije Sherifi: a Kosovan Glaswegian who began volunteering within days of arriving in Scotland in 1999 from a refugee camp, despite not speaking English and being seriously ill. She runs Maryhill Integration Network which supports migrants and Scottish people. Constance Nzeneu: a Cameroonian from Cardiff, a lawyer who fought for her right

to stay for three years and now leads Women Seeking Sanctuary Advocacy Group Wales.Cynthia Masiyiwa: a Zimbabwean Londoner who arrived aged 15 and grew up to become an organiser with Citizens UK and Active Horizons where she helped employ 60 young people during the Olympics. Tina Gharavi: a filmmaker and Geordie from Iran,

and director of the film I am Nasrine, a coming-

of-age story about two Iranian teenagers seeking sanctuary in the UK. Emina Hadziosmanovic: a Bosnian from Birmingham, who faced racism at school, but went on to do a PhD in clinical psychology and to train in new ways of helping traumatised refugees.Three journalists, Len Grant, Jackie Long and Zoe Williams, won the Speaking Together Media Awards for outstanding reporting of women and migration.

Awards that do more than give to those who already have

29

david hirst and sarah taal

A group of women asylum-seekers who knit hats, scarfs, and hot waterbottle covers is working

on an unusual order – 500 breasts.Birmingham health visitors pay the women, many

of them refugees, £5 a breast.“We use them to show how mothers can

breastfeed and how to express milk if necessary, a very useful self-help skill for all breastfeeding mothers, particularly if they have premature babies,” said a spokesperson for a Birmingham Healthcare Trust’s infant feeding team.

Why woollen breasts? They are cheaper than imported plastic versions.

“The breasts are produced in a variety of skin shades and sizes and are a fun teaching aid, helping staff start an open discussion about breastfeeding when meeting new mothers,” the spokesperson added.

The group includes knitters from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. Said one, “I enjoyed making them because they will be useful for new mothers and also cancer patients – we looked that up online.”

“It keeps me busy, it’s not healthy to have an idle mind, and it stops me thinking about the Home Office,” said another.

Meanwhile, other members of Birmingham’s Hope Housing knitting group continue making more conventional objects, which are sold at local events. Money raised goes back into the knitting project.

Knitted breasts to the rescue of mothers

Knitting group assembly line. Photo: David Hirst

Award winners, from left: Constance Nzeneu; Cynthia Masiyiwa; Jasminka Hadziosmanovic collecting the award on behalf of her daughter Emina Hadziosmanovic; Remzije Sherifi. Photo: Jason Wen, Spot of Bother.

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the Power of listening

‘not being able to work kills PeoPle’

Emina Hadziosmanovic was a child when she fled to the Uk in 1992 to escape the siege of her home town, sarajevo. she tells Nishit Morsawala that her degree enabled her to “finally understand why i was where i was, studying psychology, and what i wanted to do with it. i was motivated to help others achieve this understanding and to move forward with their own lives.”

Emina Hadziosmanovic grew up in an environment of war and trauma in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and as a result “always had a desire to understand why the war had happened and how humans can be capable of such despicable actions.

“I was exposed to the consequences of trauma on a daily basis — at home, in the Bosnian community, watching the television.”

Today in Britain she is deeply involved in helping other refugees from all over the world deal with their own traumas.

She is doing a PhD in clinical psychology at Nottingham University and is a successful author.

She also works with elderly and disabled refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina and helps younger members of the community get access to further education and employment.

“What I most value about my outreach activities is probably the power of just listening in the healing process for individuals traumatised by war and conflict,” she says. “I began to realise that through this process of talking, they were beginning to heal.”

As a result, she plans to set up a community organisation that offers a new treatment — Narrative Exposure Therapy — for traumatised refugees in the UK: “I believe it has immense therapeutic power.”

Now 26, Hadziosmanovic arrived in Britain as a four-year-old: “I remember thinking that people were all speaking a strange language … once I learnt English, I experienced some racism in the early years of primary school because of the way I spoke and where I was from.

“Many children at school and indeed their parents had not heard of Bosnia and the fact that we had escaped a war zone.”

Nevertheless, “The UK was very welcoming in the 1990s. The general public was somewhat more understanding and various organisations would invite us to celebrate Christmas or Easter with them or would take us out on trips. This was a very positive experience which no doubt helped us to assimilate.”

Though herself a living testimony to the huge potential of refugees and asylum-seekers, she is critical of current media coverage of these groups, which she says “has made the process of becoming a refugee to the UK even more difficult that 20 years ago.

“I feel that we were more accepted as refugees by the British Government and society than some individuals who seek asylum today. I feel sad that the racism I experienced as a young child is only increasing in our country now and people are less well accepted and integrated into this society,” says Hadziosmanovic, whose award-winning novel addressed her experience of exile and integration.

Remzije Sherifi arrived in glasgow in 1999 after being evacuated by the british army from a refugee camp in Macedonia. her whole family had been forced to leave kosovo where she had worked as a radio journalist. now 58, she is a writer, theatre producer, and migrants’ activist. she talks to Marzanna Antoniak

how has the situation of migrants changed since you arrived in this country?During my 14 years in Scotland I’ve seen changes in policy related to migrants, especially with regards to deportation and children. I’m proud that especially through the Scottish Refugee Policy Forum our members made a huge impact on the change of policy on children’s detention in Scotland and the UK. In 2010, the UK coalition government pledged to end child detention.

I’ve also noticed that the culture is much more rich and diverse now, which manifests itself, for example, in the variety of cuisine and the fashion on the streets. People are now more used to living among different cultures and therefore find it easier to accept each other.

These are very positive changes. Yet there are still very restrictive barriers for asylum-seekers, especially with regards to work and family reunion. The new conditions, if you want to bring your loved ones to the UK, are actually impossible to meet.

if you had the power to change anything, what would it be?I’d allow people to work. Not being able to work kills people, makes them parasites of society. I’ve experienced this personally in Kosovo in the ‘90s when, under the police state, my right to work was taken away. It was a reality I couldn’t bear. It was slowly killing me.

I’d make changes to the policy about family reunion. I’d make it easier for the families of migrants to join them in Scotland. People should be allowed to be together. Life in exile makes you hopelessly lonely. You can never be happy if your child or loved ones are left behind.

how does Maryhill integration network engage with people?It has published books, organised theatre productions, photo exhibitions, fashion shows, and local and national events in high profile venues. I believe art enables us to highlight the stories of people who fled their countries.

I didn’t speak any English when I arrived in this country, but I was able to volunteer using art as means of expression. Many of our service users have limited language skills, yet we try to create ways in which they can get involved.

what do migrants need?They need welcoming faces and hospitality. They need better understanding of why they are here, so people know that many of them were forced to leave their country.

what’s your opinion of the media portrayal of migrants?Bad stories sell better . I think migrants are especially targeted before elections because politicians try to gain votes by promising restrictions on immigrants and asylum-seekers. The media’s role is to present different perspectives, to highlight migrants’ contribution to the country.

Photo: Jason Wen, Spot of Bother.

Photo: Karen Gordon

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marcela adamova

F aced with prejudice, ignorance and discrimination, a group of 12 Roma in Glasgow have fought back – with brooms.

“Although some billboards supported by Scottish government say ‘Scotland welcomes migrant Workers’”, says a member of the group, “that‘s not the reality we are experiencing since we arrived in Glasgow.”

The group travelled from Slovakia and the Czech Republic after their countries joined the European Union. They established Romano Lav (Roma Voice), to learn from the 2,000 other Roma in the city’s multi-ethnic Govanhill area and to spread information about the Roma community.

They work mainly as labourers and face the issues that confront all migrants as well as discrimination and persecution because of their ethnicity: the Roma have been called “Europe’s most discriminated against minority”.

Even government institutions like Jobcentre Plus or Revenue and Customs regard them as trouble-makers who don’t want to integrate, they say.

“One of our aims in coming together is to challenge negative perceptions about the Roma community in Glasgow. We know that Roma have been perceived as coming to the UK to claim benefits and cheap housing and it is often said that we do not want to work or have any interest in the local environment. For many of us, the opposite is true.”

To challenge those perceptions, they hit upon a novel idea: an environmental clean-up.

Working with Oxfam and various community groups, they created the Clean-Green Team.

Ten Roma worked voluntarily for 12 weeks focusing on street-cleaning and tree-planting, litter-clearance and waste removal, and learning English to improve their chances of employment.

“We were basically cleaning the streets of Govanhill and planting trees in order to

Glasgow’s Roma sweep away prejudice31

renata rubnikowicz

The Polish Social and Cultural Association (POSK, its Polish

initials) in west London is buzzing. It’s open to all, including

non-Poles and non-members. A registered charity, it hosts a wealth of organisations and events. Next year it celebrates its half-century, but the annual membership is still £10, as it was when the building opened.

Some of the Poles you meet there are almost commuters, working in London but visiting Poland as often as budgets and budget airline schedules allow.

“The Polish Consulate uses our theatre box office to issue passports for children,” says Joanna Młudziska, the association’s chairperson. “Because I was brought up in the time of communism, I find it

quite odd that we now have this close relationship. Every time I go to the embassy for an event I think, hmmm, once I was here demonstrating. Things have really, really changed.”

The original aims were to maintain the Polish Library, set up in 1942 to preserve Polish culture from the Nazis, and bring all Polish-related organisations into one place.

“We’ve never had any funding – it’s very much Poles doing it for themselves,” says Młudziska.

Individuals bought a brick and organisations donated more. “It was a community effort, to the extent that young people like myself built the youth club and then ran it.” Now businesses rent offices in the building

The children’s theatre, where children act alongside professionals, has been running for more than

half a century. “I grew up with that and my children acted in it,” says Młudziska. “We’re always sold out.”

Weekends are particularly busy, with events in one of the halls, in the jazz café, the restaurant and the art gallery. The Polish University Abroad is based here, as is the Association of Polish Engineers.

“A huge variety of stuff goes on, and it’s open to the wider community so that we get inspiration and mixing. Which I think is brilliant,” she says.

“The challenge is to get people to carry on running the place. That’s going to be the tricky bit. Although we have a skeleton paid staff, the executive committee, people like myself, are all volunteers.”

But Młudziska is confident. “We’ve survived 50 years. I don’t see why we shouldn’t survive another 50.”

Remembering the community that helped build - and save - Britain

Poles do it for themselves

david Hirst

There has been much publicity about the 500,000 Poles who have come to work

in the UK since Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004.

But did you know that around 200,000 Poles came to Britain during and after the Second World War?

This “old wave” of migrants were Polish servicemen and their families. The families had spent a number of years in refugee camps abroad and in parts of the British Empire, including India, Palestine and Uganda. There were also a number of Polish orphans whose parents had died during the war either before or after active service in the army or airforce.

A recent exhibition, In war and peace, collected memories of Birmingham’s Poles, organised by volunteers from the Midlands Polish Community Association, highlighted the lives of individual Poles who settled in Birmingham after the war. It featured the life stories of individuals who had fought in Polish resistance units or who were deported to Siberia when Russian forces invaded eastern Poland. Some Poles had been forced into conscript labour by the Nazis in factories or in farms in Poland, Germany or occupied France.

The Yalta Conference agreement between

the Allied leaders (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) led to Poland losing 20 per cent of its territory to the Soviets. As a result of this displacement around 200,000 Poles came to the UK.

After the Yalta Conference Winston Churchill pledged: “In any event, His Majesty’s Government will never forget the debt they owe to Polish troops who have served them so valiantly, and for all those who have fought under our command, I earnestly hope that it may be possible to offer the citizenship and freedom of the British Empire if they so desire.”

Churchill lost the 1945 election and the successor Labour Government offered Poles incentives to return to Poland. Around 105,000 did so. However, many were unwilling to return to Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. Many Poles, alongside Jewish, Baltic and other peoples who were unable to return home, became “Displaced Persons” protected by the Polish Resettlement Act of 1947.

Many Poles who came to Birmingham were exiles from eastern Poland. They represented a cross-section of Polish society: professional people, workers, intellectuals, career army officers (including two Generals), professors, judges, teachers, doctors and dentists.

Despite their skills, many had to take unskilled work or retrain, which some found

difficult and demeaning. Because of fears of unemployment trade unions were often opposed to Polish workers taking British jobs.

Nevertheless, it was recorded that there were 7,000 Poles working in mines, foundries and factories in the Midlands.

According to the Birmingham Gazette in 1949 many Poles had a tough time as low-paid labourers because of the conditions imposed on them by agreements made by trade unions and employers. They were highly regarded as hard working but remained in danger of losing their jobs regardless of how long they had worked for the company.

A welfare officer quoted in the newspaper said, “We are building up a class of semi-slave labour. The trade unions that encouraged it should look beyond the present and call a halt to it. We talk of equal rights and fair play and here we are withholding those rights from the Poles.”

As the social and political climate evolved so did the lives of the Polish people living in Birmingham.

Despite their traumatic and difficult introduction to UK life, these exiles have quietly made significant contributions to economic and educational life of the Midlands. With thanks to Anna Cielecka–Gibson and The

Midlands Polish Community Association.

Photo: Richard Short

The clean up team (above) and getting down to the job (right) Photos: Oxfam Scotland

Syrena Theatre performance in the theatre. Photo: Syrena Theatre archives, Performance in the jazz café (right) Photo: Jazz Café archives.

Roma Piotrowska talks to the director of Polish Expats Association in Birmingham, who also has a full-time job, three degrees and has recently become a mother.

A licja Kaczmarek is driven by an urge to help people. Which is lucky, because as

soon as she finishes her day job in the health service she starts another.

The second job, running the Birmingham-based Polish Expats Association, fills her evenings: there are meetings and incessant phone calls with people wanting advice about employability, education and the legal system, and with others who want to collaborate with the association.

“I have always been interested in social work. I tried to do it in Poland but I just could not make ends meet. I did not want to become bitter, having to work for a minimum wage, like many of my friends.”

So she moved to Holland for a year and to Birmingham in 2004, the year Poles gained the right to live and work in the UK.

She made friends, studied, got a job, worked hard, determined to get the best out of her new life and give something back to her new community.

Kaczmarek’s charisma and persistence are key to the Polish Association’s survival, together with her fundraising skills which have generated finance for four projects - a community centre, a play group, English courses and an enterprise club.

She dreams of a Polish community in which Poles are not ashamed of their background and spend their free time with other communities.

She admits that many do not speak English and work long hours in low-skill jobs. But remember, she says, the community is as diverse as any other, and Poles come from all backgrounds in search of different goals – including the chance to experience life in another country, for a “gap year” or to enjoy the complete separation of church and state.

Meanwhile, her biggest dream is for her newborn son to sleep through a whole night.

Alicja Kaczmarek’s two dreams

We will never forget the debt to Polish troops.”

sweep up the prejudice against us.”They won a newspaper award for the best

clean-up campaign. Many Roma expressed pride “as it was the first time our work has been formally and publicly acknowledged.”

Said another group member: “Romano Lav gave me an opportunity to be heard and challenge the stereotypes about my community that I took for granted.”

Govanhill official David Zabiega reckons the volunteers put in 1,800 hours of work. Oxfam’s Jim Boyle considers the initiative worked so well that the Roma should be paid directly to run a similar but longer project from design to delivery.

Romano Lav is now sharing Roma culture with other Glaswegians through drama, photography, music and it is also running traditional dance classes, though so far have attracted only their own children.

“We hope that these and future activities will help us to break down barriers,” said a group member, “so Glasgow can become a warm home for all of us.”

“By moving to Scotland we had huge expectations that we have come to a country of freedom where people are treated equally. However, we soon realised that things here are not always nice and shiny,” said another group member.

“Nobody will stand up for us,” he says, except schools, which they praise for doing a good job in terms of integration, charities such as Oxfam or West of Scotland Equality Council – and, surprisingly, the Scottish media “which mostly tell positive and truthful stories about us.”

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The Savoy – where variety is the spice of life

32 33www.migrantvoice.org www.migrantvoice.org

DR Ima Jackson anD ERnEst YEYap

T he Savoy in Sauchiehall Street claims to be Glasgow’s oldest shopping centre – and it’s now also one of the

most cosmopolitan.Historically, it’s where old-style Scottish

folk go for anything from bread to pets, from a new bathroom to getting your phone unlocked.

But the traditional vendors have been joined by a range of small businesses run by recent migrants to Scotland. It’s a microcosm of a newly diverse Scotland, with Scots and migrants working hard together, doing business, and giving people what they want in a friendly, unpretentious atmosphere.

So alongside Campbell’s butchers, the oldest trader in the market, you can buy West African yams and sweet potatoes. As well as fish and chips there are wigs, creams and lotions you won’t see in Boots.

Four years ago, for example, Sine’s hair and beauty emporium became the first in the city to sell African and European hair extensions. Maquood Akhter moved his business to the Savoy from London after seeing potential in Glasgow.

Similarly, there’s a small hairweaving business, where Giselle says, “When I first came to Glasgow there was nowhere to have my hair done. I wanted to provide that, and now lots of people come.”

Then there’s Andy Cho from Hong Kong, who owns and runs China Wok: “Lots of Chinese students come here, from Glasgow Caledonian University and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and lots

Fish and chips, wigs, creams and lotions.”

of Spanish students who seem to really like the real Chinese food we provide. I have also noticed a lot of Africans in the last few years.

“Traditionally it was mostly old people here: not so many young people were coming, but now we are noticing that because we provide real Chinese food and not the European-style Chinese food we are getting more young people.”

Belinda Ndebele, working at Sine’s, has also “seen the clientele change over the years I’ve been here. It used to be all South Asian but now we get more Africans and Scottish and less Asians.”

In MacFarlanes, the cobbler which has been in the emporium for 12 years, Stuart also points to the increasing ethnic mix of the shops. He welcomes the newcomers because variety brings in new customers.

Stuart, who works with his father in the family business, is concerned by on-off proposals for an £80 million proposal to turn

Workers’ demo. photo: Erin Wolson

BEn mann

“We’re invisible in the workplace, we’re invisible

in society,” says Eduardo, a Colom-bian who has worked as a cleaner at companies across London for over 20 years.

He is not alone. There are no solid figures, but most estimates agree that at least 113,000 Latin Americans live in London, primarily Brazilians and Colombian.

Eduardo is the narrator of Invisible: London’s second class citizens, a short documentary about four Colombian cleaners who work at famous London locations, such as John Lewis and the Tower of London.

The film follows the stories of two workers badly abused by their managers, but also focuses on the many cleaners standing up for their rights and demanding a London Living Wage.

The main characters in the film came to London for economic and political reasons. Eduardo left Colombia to escape political repression, while the others moved after the economic crisis hit Spain.

Though many Latin Americans in London work as managers and on the boards of large companies, over half of all Latin American migrants work in jobs such as cleaning and security.

Invisible focuses on the murky world of cleaning subcontractors - firms hired by companies to carry out their cleaning services. There is a drive to increase “efficiency” in cutting costs, but the only way to do this is to cut workers’ pay and hours.

In reality this means cleaners working up to 18 hours a day in different locations, and with no job security, pensions, or sick pay. Discrimination, a lack of awareness of their rights and low pay are frequently problems. A shocking 40 per cent of all Latin Americans in London experience workplace abuse and discrimination.

Latin Americans in London have an employment rate of 85 per cent and only 1 in 6 claim state benefits, even when entitled to. These facts fly in the face of much of the media’s portrayal of migrants.

Whether migrant or British-born, many people are suffering. It is

just that migrants tend to be more vulnerable and more susceptible to being made scapegoats.

Unemployment is not the fault of migrants. An economic recession is not the result of migrants. Unjustly vilifying mothers and fathers who work up to 18 hours a day on very low wages to earn enough for their family deflects attention from the real culprits of unemployment and a severe recession: greedy companies driven to boost profits, reckless banks and weak politicians.

Invisible focuses on the brave characters standing up for their rights and campaigning for a London Living Wage. They are making gains too.

One success story is of Laura, a young Colombian who works as a cleaner at a south London hospital. She won the Living Wage there last year.

The treatment of people by large cleaning companies is an indictment on London as a whole, and when Eduardo and fellow cleaners stand up and demand fairer wages and working conditions, it is a fight every Londoner should be a part of.

JamIma Fagta

Many of the 300,000 Filipinos in Britain were invited to

work here as nurses, carers, physical therapists in the NHS. A significant number are domestic workers or in the hospitality industry.

We provide skills that the UK needs, primarily for families, the elderly, children and the sick.

It is also worth mentioning that we provide our service with lots of TLC, which makes people feel happy

and safe.But there is another aspect to

our activities: we are also making a major contribution to health, welfare and the eradication of poverty in The Philippines – combatting the problems that forced many of us to migrate in the first place. We were forced to work or live abroad to escape the poverty caused by the grabbing of our land and the extraction of our natural resources by richer countries.

Money sent home by Filipinos

abroad - worth $24 billion in 2012 - has been a major contributor to the economy. It is estimated to account for about 12 per cent of gross domestic product.

In 2000 the then government declared “The Year of Overseas Filipino Worker in the Recognition of the Determination and Supreme Self-Sacrifice of Overseas Filipino Workers.”

Jamima Fagta, a project worker with the Filipino organisation, Kanlungan

Out of sight, but not out of mind

Filipinos bring TLC to Britain

Maquood Akhter (below), and (right) Stuart the cobbler at MacFarlanes photos: Karen Gordon

Andy Cho: ‘More young people’

DR FathI JamIl

B ritain is believed to be home to the larg-est Somali community in Europe, with

the population estimated at 115,000 by the Office for National Statistics.

Seamen and merchants were the first Somali migrants in the 19th century and they were followed by the arrival of Somalis who stayed on here after serving in the Royal Navy in the Second World War. The country’s recent civil war provoked the third round of arrivals.

One example of the impact of this industrious community can be seen in and around Coventry Road in the Small Heath suburb of Birmingham, where women in traditional dress are noticeably prominent among the traders and business owners.

With the economy in the doldrums, business is tough, but Fatima says she is glad to be running her shop in the Somali Business Village, which was founded in 2004 by a Somali migrant.

Fatima fled the conflict of Somalia and lived as a refugee in Sweden for 15 years before moving to Britain because she believed there would be fewer obstacles here to running a business. Her daughter, Hawa, is studying English and linguistics at Wolverhampton University and hopes to become a teacher. She helps in the shop when she can.

Fatima enjoys talking to customers from different backgrounds who come to her shop, which sells perfume, carpets, duvets, Islamic apparel and household items Both she and her daughter say they are determined to make the best of their life and contribute to the country that has accepted them as citizens.

Another trader in the market, Sulayman, became a businessman to fulfil his ambition of becoming a “lifestyle entrepreneur”.

His parents were Caribbean migrants and he was born and bred in Britain.

You don’t have to be Somali to have a business in the Somali Business Village or to be a customer. Everyone is welcome.

Somali Brummies set up shop

the Savoy site into offices, a tower with a 221-room hotel and a new shopping centre.

It would be glitzy and modern – but a unique and traditional shopping experience would be lost.

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Muslim women soccer stars achieve their goalThere’s a lot to be said for

coming home to comfort and understanding

34 35www.migrantvoice.org www.migrantvoice.org

by all sports women

The kick-off whistle blows. Almost before anyone else can

move, the forward chips the ball over the heads of the opposing team and it sails into the net.

Goaaaaal! The opposition is stunned.

Spectators can scarcely believe it. Team-mates gather round to congratulate the striker.

Dr Samana Fazel’s goal was one of the highlights of the Women’s Islamic Games in Iran – even though her team lost.

But it was no fluke. Fazel has been playing football since her family moved from Kenya to Britain when she was just seven and she took up sports with a group at her local mosque.

Soccer rapidly became her game of choice. While studying dentistry she captained the university women’s dental team, with a 100 per cent victory record, and then played for her hospital team in London.

Now a dentist in Birmingham, Fazel is a trustee of the organisation All Sports Women (ASW) and is busy trying to get more women playing sport.

That first step is vital.“It’s getting them through the

door for the very first time that is

hard, and it’s daunting for them,” says 32-year-old Dr Aisha Ahmad, the British Pakistani who is the organisation’s founder and chief executive officer.

Women are often busy or uninterested in sport, she says – “but once they join they realise how much fun they can have.”

Ahmad gained a football coaching qualification in 2004 and began coaching local women and girls in Birmingham, welcoming everyone but with a special focus on ethnic minorities.

She admits that initially she had to overcome resistance from some Muslims, but says that “overall, the support has been fantastic”.

She emphasises that some women are under-represented in sport not because of their faith but as a result

of discrimination by ruling bodies – such as the International Football Federation’s ban on players wearing the hijab (head and chest veil).

There are now 80 members. Some had not played sports for 20 years: “We have watched them grow in ability and confidence and now they are eager to get involved and love the competitiveness of tournaments and friendly matches.”

Joy Fillingham is typical, in that she had never played sports before reading about the group from a flyer at the university where she lectures. She wanted to get fitter and meet a wider group of people, but was terrified that as soon as she tried to kick or throw a ball she would be ejected for lack of ability. However, she was quickly accepted by the group, enjoys playing football and has become a board member. She takes particular pleasure in bringing in members regardless of age or ability.

That suits the CEO. Ahmad is actively looking for volunteers and members, and plans to try attracting women from other communities, such as Sikhs and Christians, because dialogue between faiths is another of her aims.

And one of those new members may prove to be the woman footballer or netball player who scores a wonder goal.

I am White, British and middle-class. Britain is my home, where I fit in.

I recently returned from a year- long backpacker trip abroad, working in hotels where I felt like a migrant and out of place. I was in the unglamorous staff digs, with local staff, eating what I was given.

It was an adventure but I am really happy to be home.

At first the excitement was great, but after six months it was, above all, just tiring. Daily life was draining and it was a real effort to have the simplest of conversations, let alone laugh with a shared humour.

And the lack of comfort food! Those times when you need a ham and cheese sandwich, some pasta or a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Strange pickled curries served on supersoft rice Idli patties don’t quite cut it for breakfast. I craved proper

toast, butter and baked beans.London, Britain is my home and

though we complain about this and that I can see the goodness in the shadows: the bus driver who turns a blind eye when your Oyster beeps wrongly; the fellow passenger who helps when you look lost in front of a Tube map. Home is knowing when to talk, when to grin and when to make your own way.

In the last year I have been hopelessly lost, been surrounded by people speaking gibberish, eaten curry for breakfast, constantly been served tea without milk, made to pose stiffly in casual photos. I have missed fancy dress parties and simple silly fun. I have repeatedly been stared at and asked the same questions, constantly either stuck on the sidelines or thrown into the centre simply for my differences.

Apart from friends and family, it was the little things I missed. There is

a lot to be said for comfort, familiarity and understanding the world around you. My trip helped me develop greater empathy but I missed toast, just as many other Brits of diverse backgrounds miss their favourite comforts.

Bonnell enjoying a new culinary experience...

...and a new adventure.

nadezda antonova

Sport is a family affair for Elena Baltacha, Britain’s No1 women’s tennis player off and on for almost 10 years. Born in Ukraine, she moved with her family when her footballing father changed clubs: he played for Ipswich Town, St. Johnstone and Inverness, and Caledonian Thistle. Her mother was an Olympic athlete, and her brother played soccer for St. Mirren and Millwall.

Q Who influenced you to choose tennis? My mum. She bought a swing ball and a

tennis racket from our local supermarket, and that’s where it all started.

Being in sport herself, she noticed that although I was only five I had good coordination and quick responses. She gave me the opportunity to try different sports, including five-a-side football, majorettes, karate and self-defence classes.

Q What does tennis success depend on?Of course you need to have talent in

whatever sport you are doing, but you need to have great people around you, who will guide you down the right path. The other thing is also a lot of hard work at training and a very competitive spirit. You need the will to fight for every single point.

Q You have established an academy for girls who dream about tennis. What should be done to make tennis more popular in Britain?

Yes, I’m very proud of The Elena Baltacha Academy of Tennis, and everything it stands for. I have a brilliant team of people who run the academy. Nino Severino, the director, is doing an amazing job in bringing in lots of talented young girls. We have a specific way of coaching and all the girls work very, very hard, and just love it.

Tennis can be expensive and it’s about making it accessible to more people. The more people playing, the higher the level will be.

Q Does indoor training make it more difficult to play on outdoor courts?

Yes, the weather is not too good in the UK. Playing indoors is slightly easier as you don’t have to deal with any weather conditions but through experience you learn how to deal with wind, sun or whatever the weather might throw at you. Q How do you see the future of British women’s tennis?

It is looking positive, especially with some of the Elena Baltacha Academy of Tennis girls coming through in the future.

Q Do you see yourself as a migrant? My family moved to Britain when I was

five, I grew up here, my entire life has been established here too. I feel British, but I also remember my roots and am proud of them.

Britain’s on-off No.1 hopes to train a successor

sheida Firoozi

D efeating opponents, wining titles, participating in major

athletics events while passing exams and getting an engineering job is hard enough — and even more so when it’s all achieved despite cerebral palsy.

But though Mahdi Nezami has never been able to walk and is confined to a wheelchair, he has never regarded anything as impossible.

He studied in Iran in ordinary schools with no facilities for disabled students. His mother travelled to and from school several times a day to help him.

In Iran, he points out, there is inadequate government provision for people with disabilities, but families and friends care for and support each other; here, the government provide facilities and reasonable financial support, “but we are more isolated emotionally”.

He went on to study industrial engineering at the University of Tehran and after moving to Britain about 12 years ago got a master’s in IT networking at Roehampton University in London.

In Iran, he excelled in shotput and discus for more than ten years. He bagged 11 medals, but the highlights of his sporting career were the two golds and two bronzes he won at the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics. In the UK, after a difficult start when he had to live in temporary accommodation, he linked up with the British Paralympic Association and took part in a number of competitions, including European championships. He helped train British athletes at two Paralympics.

He is still making a big contribution, coaching youngsters at a club in Nottingham.

“It is my belief that I should fight and challenge myself to have a better life,” he says. “There is no disappointment. Life is full of energy, full of hope and full of colour.”

Paralympic powerhouse helps tomorrow’s stars

baltacha: hard work and competitivness

Harry Bonnell muses on the small annoyances of living abroad and the comfort of return.

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Sport

Despite controversies over John Terry’s did-he-say-it-or-did-he-not racist remark, Luis Suárez’s non-hand-shake with Patrice Evra and Jason Roberts’ criticism of the Kick It Out campaign, the anti-racist organisa-tion’s chairman says last season wasn’t an annus horribilis but a landmark year. Daniel Nelson reports.

Lord Ouseley: ‘Players are more confident’.Photo: Kick It Out.

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A breakthrough in the fight against racism in soccer has been heralded by Lord Herman Ouseley,

the chair of the anti-racism Kick It Out organisation.

Last season was marked by a number of incidents, including a boycott of Kick It Out’s shirts campaign by several top-level players including Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand and Reading’s Jason Roberts.

Along with the protracted controversy over John Terry’s alleged racist epithet toward Anton Ferdinand and the ever-controversial Luis Suárez’s avoidance of a handshake with Patrice Evra, some might consider it a bad year.

But Ouseley is bullish.“It’s a breakthrough year rather

than a difficult year because getting players to come up front and complain has been a huge part of the problem,” he told Migrant Voice.

“In the past, when I approached black players who had been abused, and I had been at matches where

the black players and black fans like myself had been abused, I’d say to them, ‘We need to do something about it’, and they’d say, ‘No, I’ve got to keep my head down and concentrate on my football, I can’t rock the boat – leave it alone.’

“For years, that was the situation. If I complained to the authorities they’d reply ‘You would complain – that’s the nature of your organisation. But we’ve heard nothing from the players – no official complaints.’”

Ouseley compares players’ reticence with the situation in the country 30 years ago when ordinary people were being racially harassed on the streets and in their homes, being firebombed and with excrement pushed through their letter-box. As in football, people didn’t want to complain for fear that it would make it worse for themselves.

Now, says Ouseley, that’s changed.“For the first time, in the middle of

last season, someone walked off the pitch” after complaining twice about abuse from the crowd – an action Ouseley cites not as evidence that racism is getting worse but proof that

players are becoming more confident.So when Roberts and other players

said they felt that not enough was being done “it was a defining moment because players were saying, ‘No, we’re not going to put up with it any more. Enough hasn’t been done.’”

The more you speak out the more the authorities have to respond, he notes, “because the players are powerful. I’ve been saying that for years: ‘Hey, you guys, you are so powerful that if you down tools one day, football stops.’”

Kick It Out’s activities have been expanded to fighting homophobia and sexism, but Ouseley is adamant that racism continues to be the organisation’s “over-riding priority”.

Two key issues are the dearth of black managers and of top-flight Asian players.

On managers, the long-time equality campaigner says the issue “is part of the problem that exists within Western societies where discrimination is continuing”.

The stereotypes and prejudice that barred the way for black players was

finally overcome by their performance on the pitch: with management it’s harder to break the barrier: “It still takes a while to convince chairmen of clubs that a black manager is going to be a successful manager.

“We are trying to build a cohort of coaches with all the qualifications. Once they have the experience and the opportunity to demonstrate their competence and be successful, others will follow,” says Ouseley.

One of the barriers, he says, is that coaching is “very cliquy”.

Club chairmen bring in the sort of manager they know. The managers bring in their own coaching and technical staff with whom they are used to working. In both cases the people tend to be white males.

“So you try to do is open it up and get a greater cohort of qualified coaches so ultimately they get the experience to move up. That’s what we are seeing now - but on a slow basis.”

Similarly, “a massive number of Asians play football” but it’s taking time to get Asian role models at the top of the professional pyramid.

Kick It Out chief hails soccer ‘breakthrough’