Journeys and points of departure 27 January 2008

I am going to carry on exploring further essays on immigration contained in the Penguin collection - 'From here to there'. They span over seventy years of movement between a vast array of places and the UK .It represents the authentic voice of ordinary people rather than data or research filtered through the eyes of academics and statisticians.

Already I am struck by the notion of difference coming through the contributions in the book. Difference as experienced by the new arrivals , through their colour, accent and climate, but also a deeper sense of separateness created by the attitudes and reactions of others.

The other constant theme or question is 'where is home?'

Questions of identity and culture are centre stage. Even 50 years later- after an adult lifetime in the UK - for one man from Antigua these issues recur. He seems comfortable to say home is where his children and grandchildren are, i.e. in the UK, but he still has a sense of longing for where he came from as a teenage boy.