“Nations depend on rules – fair rules. Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not, but either way, they give shape to our values … Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”

Yet framing immigration as the root of Britain’s social divide misses the mark. Research published in May 2025 by More in Common reveals that 44% of Britons feel like “strangers in their own country,” while 50% report feeling “disconnected from society.”

It is apparent then that Britain’s isolation crisis is real, but it is driven by technology, austerity, and inequality, not immigration.

The Decline of Third Spaces and the Rise of Technology

Modern life increasingly prioritises independence and, by extension, isolation. Bus rides now mean headphones and screens, not conversations with those around you. The world has seemingly shrunk to fit into the palm of our hands. This alienation from our neighbours has ostensibly been expedited by the decline of once-common third spaces: libraries, pubs, and community centres.

Austerity policies have gutted these spaces. Since 2010, nearly 800 libraries have closed and local council funding was slashed by 50%. Between 2018 and 2023, 46 London community spaces vanished. Even pubs, which were seemingly ubiquitous in the United Kingdom, disappeared at a rate of six per week in 2023, according to the British Pub and Beer Association.

As physical spaces dwindle, online ones come in to fill the gap. These online spaces, however, don’t offer the same tangible community that third spaces once provided us. Researches have shown that passive use of social media is linked to higher rates of loneliness.

It seems loneliness has crept its way into the lives of many and little is being done politically to confront this epidemic.

The Campaign to End Loneliness found that 50% of UK adults reported loneliness in 2022. More in Common’s focus groups cite social media replacing face-to-face interactions and the disappearance of physical gathering spaces as primary culprits.

If this tells us anything, it’s that isolation isn’t imported; it’s engineered by policy choices and the deliberate neglect of communal infrastructure.

Integration Rhetoric and the Class Divide

According to Starmer, “when people come to our country, they should also commit to integration.” This call for immigrants to “commit to integration” ignores a fundamental truth; immigration is, by definition, an act of integration. To migrate is to adapt to new languages, customs, and institutions and if we want immigrants to integrate, we cannot isolate them from traditionally British spaces.

One of the key indicators of integration according to the UK public and migrants themselves is English language abilities. The Migration Observation published a 2021 study that found 90% of migrants self-reported speaking English well, with over half speaking it as their main language. In fact, usage of English as a main language grows in tandem with years spent in the UK, emphasising how exposure to British spaces is important for integration.

Starmer’s demand also reveals a disconnect as it assumes immigrants resist integration assimilation when barriers like housing segregation, wage disparities, and bureaucratic hurdles might actually be limiting their ability to fully participate.

Ironically, public libraries offer programmes that help immigrants navigate daily life, learn English, and integrate more smoothly, yet austerity has decimated these very resources. If the goal is integration, why dismantle public institutions that facilitate such integration?

The focus on immigrant integration distracts from another cause of Britain’s divides: class.

While politicians frame “social cohesion” as a matter of culture clash, research has proven that financial insecurity is the strongest predictor of alienation. More in Common found that 67% of struggling Britons feel like strangers in their own country, compared to just 37% of financially comfortable citizens.

This is not anecdotal. The Community Life Survey reports that 81% of Britons believe their local area is cohesive across ethnic and cultural lines, which is evidence that Britain’s real divide might not be cultural. But when 74% of the same population believes the system “serves the rich,” a new divide is revealed.

I wonder how we can be a “nation that walks forward together” when so much of that nation, whether immigrant or working-class Briton, feel as if they are systematically being left behind.

Immigrant integration isn’t the problem, it’s the pretext. By fixating on immigration, politicians evade harder questions about wealth disparity and who truly benefits from a fractured society.

The Path Forward

If Britain truly wants to avoid becoming an “island of strangers,” the solution isn’t simply shutting the door to immigrants, it’s more investment in the spaces and systems that bind communities together. This means properly funding libraries and youth centres, and ensuring corporations pay their fair share to sustain local services.

The loneliness crisis will not be solved by scapegoating newcomers, but by rebuilding a society where everyone, regardless of birthplace or bank balance, has the means to connect. A fragmented society is a policy choice, not an immigrant import. The real risk is not strangers, it is refusing to know them.

Resources

PM remarks at Immigration White Paper press conference: 12 May 2025

Social Cohesion: A Snapshot

Britain has Closed Almost 800 Libraries

How have English Councils’ Funding and Spending Changed? 2010 to 2024

London Sees Annual Drop in Community Spaces with Brent Hit Hardest

Six Pubs a Week Shutting Their Doors for Good

Facts and Statistics About Loneliness

English Language Use and Proficiency of Migrants in the UK

New Walled Order: How Barriers to Basic Services Turn Migration into a Humanitarian Crisis

How Public Libraries Help Immigrants Adjust to Life in a New Country: A Review of the Literature

Community Life Survey 2023/24: Neighbourhood and Community

Birmingham City Council Signs Off 'devastating' Cuts

Anna Varela is a writer raised between Belize and the United States. Now based in England, she holds a degree in English Literature from the University of Bristol. Connect with her on Substack or Instagram @annasliterature

Abrazo tells the story of a pregnant Central American woman who collapses in the desert, only to be discovered by an unlikely savior: a conservative North American woman. The two women could not be more different—politically, culturally, ideologically—but their encounter forces them both to confront their assumptions and their shared humanity.

When I wrote Abrazo, I believed the scenario was plausible. I had done the research, spoken to migrants, and followed the headlines. But reading that article was still a gut punch. It made the story real. Not just emotionally resonant, real. I had set out to write a fictional story, but reality had already written it, in harsher terms than I could have ever captured.

I am a migrant myself. I was born in Paris to Colombian parents, raised across Italy and Colombia, and now split my time between Los Angeles and Florence. Even though I grew up in different countries, I’ve always felt like a Latina at heart. Both of my parents are Colombian, and I spent my entire adolescence in Bogotá. That period shaped me deeply—my identity, my culture, my roots.

When I moved to the United States in my twenties, I arrived expecting the life of a Latina immigrant. In New York, I felt embraced. It was a beautiful melting pot of cultures and languages, a city where being an immigrant didn’t make you different; it made you part of something. Later, I moved to Los Angeles and found another beautiful community, this time of artists. But two decades later, the landscape has changed. America doesn’t feel as welcoming anymore.

Today, being an immigrant can feel like something to hide, not celebrate. For many, it’s become a source of fear. We are too divided. And that’s exactly why I felt the need to tell a story like Abrazo, to show Latinos as they truly are: kind, hard-working, warm, and deeply empathetic. Not statistics or stereotypes. Human beings.

With Abrazo, I wanted to tell a story where compassion doesn’t come from who you expect, and where no one is reduced to a label.

Norma, the conservative woman in the film, isn’t a villain. She’s a human being with her own struggles. Her daughter has gone missing after participating in the January 6th riots, and she’s caring for a bedridden husband who can’t even feed himself. She’s already overwhelmed and now finds herself faced with another problem: Luz, a woman she sees at first as an “illegal immigrant.”

But Luz has her own problems too. She’s eight months pregnant, dehydrated, and has been walking for days in the desert. Soon, Norma’s empathy breaks through her fear and judgment. She begins to see Luz not as a burden or a threat, but as something much simpler and much deeper: another human being. A mother. A daughter. Someone who cares.

I designed both Norma and Luz with care and without judgment. They each have their own truths, their own beliefs, and their own pain. Neither one is right or wrong. They’re just two people, caught in a moment where the only thing they truly have is each other.

In the end, Abrazo is about two women who, against all odds, find a sliver of common ground. They are not enemies. They are just human; two mothers, two strangers, doing the best they can with the circumstances life has handed them. It’s the grace they show each other, despite their differences, that allows them to survive. And maybe that’s something we could stand to see a little more of in the world right now.

Film has that power to bypass the rational mind and go straight to the heart. That’s why I make movies. Not just to entertain, but to shift something inside the viewer. To make them uncomfortable, and then make them care.

We are living through a global migration crisis. Climate change, conflict, and economic instability are pushing people across borders in search of survival. But the debate around migration often lacks the most essential ingredient: humanity. My goal as a filmmaker is to reintroduce that. Not with slogans or speeches, but with characters, dilemmas, and unexpected moments of grace.

In telling the story of Abrazo, I wasn’t just trying to reflect the world; I was trying to imagine a better one. One where compassion can cross even the most fortified borders.

Because sometimes, the most radical act is simply to embrace.

Paola Baldion is a Colombian-born filmmaker based between Los Angeles and Italy, whose work explores themes of immigration, identity, and human connection.

My tormentor cocked her blonde head and examined me thoughtfully. “OK.” She finally pronounced. “Where?”

My mouth dropped open. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. At all.

The night before, I had called my cousin. Of course I did. We had come to America in 1979 when I was eight years old. My family had no English, $300 to our name, and hardly any clothes. But my aunt, uncle and ten-year old cousin had been here for two years. And my cousin’s English was superb. She quickly became our interpreter. If we needed a bureaucratic form filled out, our names spelled, a doctor’s appointment made, a letter written, or a million other things we asked her for help.

It wasn’t just English my cousin had picked up. She knew which gum was good and which was gross, how to dress, which shows to watch, and how to make Jiffy Popcorn. If she didn’t know something about America, it probably was not worth knowing.

Which is why, when kids at school started making my life a living misery, I turned to her.

Tearfully, I explained that a clique of girls had only one hobby: picking on me. They would gather around me every day saying things and laughing when I didn’t understand. Judging by the kids’ body language, I was sure they swore. Often. I was convinced that if I knew how to curse as well as they did, they would leave me alone. Could my cousin teach me? Could she give me a curse of my very own? If I swore at them, they would ease up a little. Could my cousin teach me?

There was silence on the other end.

“Could you teach me a swear word,” I again prompted the family’s English Oracle after what seemed an oddly protracted silence.

Another pause. Finally, I heard her say “Fack.” I duly repeated this term but apparently, I wasn’t pronouncing it correctly. I needed to practice. So, ignoring my parents who kept coming into the kitchen to make sure I was not monopolizing our sole rotary telephone frivolously, I repeated the word again and again. My parents, satisfied that I was learning English, left me alone to my studies. Finally, after about ten minutes of strenuous effort, my cousin gave my diction the nod of approval.

But a mere fuck was not enough. I also had to say “you.” At first, I was relieved. I could pronounce “you.” Surely, I would not need to practice that. My cousin thought not. She had heard kids in school say these two words and knew they had to be delivered quickly, confidently, and assertively. And, to make things a bit harder, both words had to be stressed the same way. If I didn’t say it properly or if I thought too long about it, it wouldn’t work. I had to practice some more. It took me another five minutes of hard work to get the phrase just so. But finally, I got it.

That night I fantasized about the inevitable confrontation the next day. The pack of girls would descend on me, mocking as they always did. They would deploy their arsenal of swear words, thinking I couldn’t understand them. Imagining I had no retort. But this time, I would be ready with my own curse. I would utter it, swiftly and confidently. It would stop them in their tracks. I would fool them into thinking I had understood them. And that would scare them.

For if I could understand them, I could report them to the teachers patrolling the playground. And why wouldn’t I? What did I have to lose? They would look over their shoulders, making sure the authorities were not in evidence. And then they would decide that taunting me was not worth it. They would leave me alone. At least for a while. Those two little words I spent so long learning that night would save me a lifetime of torment.

It would play out exactly as it did in the many stories my cousin and I read since we were five years old.

That morning, when I got up to go to school, I was ready to face them. I was ready for anything.

And so, when their leader approached me, her jeans Fonz-style and her hair immaculately permed, I declared “Fuck you!” as confidently as I could. And then, stood there, mouth slightly agape, when rather than cowering, my blonde tormentor asked… but what had she asked, exactly?

That night I called my cousin once more and told her my story. She listened quietly. So quietly, in fact, that I asked her if she was still there. She was. So, I posed a question that, in retrospect, I probably should have asked at the outset. “What does ‘fuck you’ mean?”

Another silence. Longer this time.

“Do you know what it means?”

“No,” she responded. “But I know it’s a swear word. And that is all you asked for.”

Today, Inna Tysoe is a wife and pug-Mom who has mastered English well enough to meet and marry a Brit. When she’s not writing, she does medical coding and works on her neighborhood’s newsletter. Some of her work can be found here.

A number of reports and conversations about these changes wrongly conflate these reforms with asylum policies. In truth, the measures in the white paper set out reforms to legal migration, affecting skilled workers, like care professionals and international graduates, not asylum seekers or irregular migrants. This is clearly spelt out in the fifth page of the 82-page document. It is important to clarify which groups of immigrants are being discussed because public sentiments, whether justified or not, should be grounded in accuracy. Conflating distinct immigration categories leads to confusion, misplaced anger, and an unproductive debate. Without clear distinctions, public discourse risks misrepresenting who these policies actually affect and why.

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In this context, the launch of our new podcast, is especially relevant. This first episode touches on a critical misunderstanding that has resurfaced in public discussions: the false assumption that regular migrants such as students and skilled workers, receive public funds or free access to services.

A Nigerian Immigrant’s Story: Studying, Working, and Settling in the UK

In the debut episode, a Nigerian woman shares her personal story of moving to the UK as an international student, and later settling in Aberdeen, Scotland. Her reflections reveal the emotional and financial costs of immigration under the current UK visa system, including what she had to leave behind and what it took to bring her family over. She also goes into why it was a necessary move for her.

Her story puts a human face to increasing settlement barriers for non-EU migrants. She sheds light on the real experiences behind policy headlines, which is an essential perspective as the UK redefines what regular migration looks like. She shared an interesting encounter with a colleague:

“She told me we came to their country to take their education and take free things from them… The average person doesn’t know how expensive it is for an international student to study in the UK. I told her I paid £14,500 for my education, three months’ rent in advance, two months' deposit, health insurance and visa fees. It cost my family of three £5,000 just for visa and insurance. She didn’t understand what I was talking about. She felt I had come to reap where I didn’t sow. I basically pay for the air I breathe in the UK… I’m not entitled to any public funds”.

In a climate where policy is often discussed in abstract terms, The Immigrant Gaze Podcast offers first-hand stories that highlight what’s really at stake for individuals living through these changes.

Stories and Small Chops

This season of the podcast was recorded live during the "Stories and Small Chops" event in Aberdeen, hosted in collaboration with The Chop Life Gang. New episodes will be released weekly, covering a range of interesting experiences from the perspective of women who have moved to the United Kingdom in the last five years.

You can listen to The Immigrant Gaze podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

اقرأ بالعربية

In 2006, an Iraqi family went on vacation to Syria to visit relatives from Europe. While they were there, news broke that the chaos in Iraq was escalating—sectarian violence and insecurity had increased. The family made a difficult decision: 22-year-old Nawras and her 15-year-old brother, Mustafa, would stay behind in Damascus, while the rest of the family returned to Iraq. Nawras, once a sheltered daughter who barely knew how to navigate the streets on her own, suddenly became the primary guardian to her teenage brother in an unfamiliar country. Now, eighteen years later, the siblings look back on those challenging years and reflect on how the experience reshaped their lives.

‘We Were Spoilt’

Safety and privilege marked Nawras and Mustafa’s childhood. They were insulated from the harshness of life in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital. Their mother is a professor of microbiology at the University of Baghdad. Their father worked as a veterinarian, with a leadership role in the country's Ministry of Agriculture. "We were spoilt," Nawras admits with a wistful smile. "I had a driver take me to school because it was too dangerous to go alone. I didn’t even know how to cross the street by myself."

Mustafa’s memories of childhood take him back to the Seventh of July settlement. He recalls that Japanese engineers had built the neighbourhood. It was a place where children played in the streets and neighbours looked out for one another. His eyes light up when he mentions Christina, a neighbour. She fed him sandwiches after school while he waited for his parents to return from work. "I was an energetic kid, and I got into a lot of trouble," he says, grinning. 

Despite food shortages and threats of US invasion, the family was stable. Their parents could provide for them. They also had an extended family outside Iraq that was keen on supporting them wherever there was a need. “We didn’t know anything about the impoverished people or the wealthy ones. We were in the middle, and we were comfortable there,” Nawras reflects. When Mustafa was in third grade, the family moved to Baghdad, where they lived until the war.

The Colourful Skyline

In March 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq. This forced Nawras and Mustafa's family to flee Baghdad. The family had been trying to get international passports. They wanted to be able to leave the country if it became necessary. But March 2003 and the events of that month came too soon. They could not leave the country, but they could not remain in Baghdad either. Nawras mentioned that her father did not want to leave their home, but the Iraqi army advised him to do so. An American base had been stationed behind the house. They were warned it would be unwise to stay there. Moreover, being the capital, Baghdad was going to be targeted for the attacks. So, they moved around to different places. One of those places was in Baqubah, about thirty miles from Baghdad. They lived there for a couple of weeks. Nawras said a kind Iraqi-Palestinian man hosted them and took in many displaced families at that time.

Mustafa recalled, “we were about nine families in that farmhouse. The games made it fun for the kids, and we enjoyed staying up late into the night. Playing around with other children until 11 pm allowed me more freedom than I was used to. But the guy who owned the farm had a dad who was quite old. Noisy children from nine families making noise was not ideal for his necessary rest. I think that was why they started turning the lights off around 10 pm. It did not work; we were playing in the moonlight all the same." Their parents—like others who had fled from Baghdad—tried to find rays of stability and safety. But Mustafa remembers when they were at a relative’s home, which was not so far from an airport that got bombed. “The ground of the house was shaking; glasses collapsed. Everybody was holding each other to protect each other," Mustafa narrated. He also remembers that, when America invaded, people feared chemical weapons might be used. He explained, “our house had two floors. We had a room where my brother and I lived. We started putting up sheets and metal to isolate it from the rest of the house. We were not to allow any dust into the room. Our parents did great work to protect us. I don’t remember seeing my mom or dad scared. I don’t think they had time for that. They were busy looking for ways to protect us.’

Nawras, then a university student, felt the weight of the situation more acutely. "For the most part, the war sounded distant," she said, "but we could see it in the skyline. The bombs would light up the horizon like fireworks."

Some months after the invasion, Nawras resumed her studies. It came at a great emotional cost. Nawras said, "Life after the war was harder than life before the war." By 'the war', she meant the first set of invasions and bombs. Saddam Hussein had gone into hiding. Although universities resumed, the country had become unruly due to the absence of a government in power. Various violent sects had come into Iraq. Reports from archives at that time say leaving home was like rolling dice. There was a fair chance of not getting home safe. “There was a day when I got stuck for three or four hours on my way home from school. It would take 15 minutes on most occasions," Nawras recounts. “My parents tried to call me, but the signal was bad. It had been cut off.” By 2006, when Nawras was finishing up at the university, there was more fear. Young girls were being kidnapped and killed by rival sects. Some theories claimed it was due to their uncovered hair. At other times, there were other excuses for the violence. Nawras remembers some heated, sobering talks with her father. He did not support forcing women to cover their hair but he begged her to wear a headscarf he had bought. It would increase her chances of a safe return home.

When she finished her final exams in 2006, her family decided to go on a vacation to Syria. Mustafa says he does not remember the family going on any other real vacation. They were a family of five children, so short of staying overnight at an aunt or uncle’s house or taking long drives to see different places within a day, this was their first vacation. Their relatives in Europe were going to visit, and Syria was a safer place for them to meet. They learned of new violence and increased sectarian profiling while on vacation. People were stopped and asked if they were Shia or Sunni Muslims. This had never caused issues in Iraqi culture before. It had become a weapon in the hands of foreign extremists who were using loopholes created by the war to settle into the country. The family made a tough decision: the two people whose education would not be affected by a change of location would remain in Syria. In Mustafa’s words, “my parents were so particular about education. They didn't want me to lose any year. So they decided that my sister and I would stay back.”

In the years that followed, Nawras found a strength she never knew she had. It would shape both her and Mustafa's lives forever.

‘She was an overachiever. I was lazy’

Before starting their lives in Syria, their mother had arranged everything money could buy—a home, school for Mustafa, and enough funds to live decently. Nawras still vividly remembers the morning of the first school day. "I woke up and saw Mustafa still in bed. I was shocked. 'Mustafa, please wake up! You have to go to school!' It made me crazy," she recalls. Nawras, now a computer engineer, was always a high achiever, the type to cry over a 93% score. Her brother's laid-back attitude towards school was incomprehensible to her. It wasn't just school though—this contrast reflected their differing personalities.

"I was very organised. Everything had to be clean and arranged before I could study or work," Nawras explains. "Mustafa was the opposite. His socks were everywhere in our flat. Everywhere."

"It was hard for her," Mustafa reflects. "I wasn't an adventurous teenager, but I was lazy in school. She suffered with me during my final year. I needed private lessons, and I couldn't manage my time. She showed me how to be disciplined."

Tensions sometimes boiled over, and Mustafa recalls one argument. "She was cooking, and we were arguing because I wasn't helping with chores. I yelled at her, and she threw a pen at the wall, splitting it in half. Thank God it didn't hit me." Nawras laughs about this memory but adds, "I wasn't a traditional girl in Iraq. My older brother cleaned and washed dishes, sometimes even more than me. That's how our father raised us. So when Mustafa didn't help, it frustrated me."

They remember their parents' involvement differently. For Mustafa, he recalls how his mother gave him a talking to every now and again, but also how it was not always easy to reach them on the phone. It was hard to make calls. They needed to go to specific places to get good reception, and it was quite expensive to call another country. "My mom visited us every three to six months, carrying with her all the food that we loved, made with her hands. I remember that each time she came and we had to say goodbye, it was hard for me. We didn't know if we were going to see her again because the highway between Syria and Iraq was dangerous. There were thieves who would stop people and rob them. Sometimes, they would kill them. The male travellers were the most affected, but we were still scared for my mom."

Nawras, however, felt torn. "My mom wanted me to treat him as the baby of the family. But I was trying to instil discipline in him," she says. "My mom would scold me, 'this is your brother; you have to take care of him'". With each complaint to their parents, Nawras was being threatened with a return to Iraq. But for her, that wasn't a viable option. Iraq had become too dangerous for boys, who wouldn't stay indoors like girls. Sending Mustafa back simply wasn't an option. She was not particularly excited to go back either.

Nawras says that after some time it dawned on her that she had never seen a teenage boy grow up. "I was in my early twenties, trying to figure out a teenage boy's mind with no real model to follow," she admits. Their other brother was five years older than her, and she had always only looked up to him. She knew next to nothing about the troubles he got involved in, if any, or how their parents disciplined him. What she does remember is that he—being the first son of the house—got a more stern upbringing than the lastborn she was stuck with. To figure out how to live with and raise her brother to become a responsible person, Nawras says she turned to books and the advice of friends.

She had made friends in Syria, gotten a job, and built a healthy social circle around her. This circle became a safe place to seek advice on how to manage her brother. Books opened her up to both his world and her own challenges. After some time, she figured out a way to make things work, starting with the realisation that she was pretty much on her own as far as raising him was concerned. She accepted that although her parents provided financial support, the emotional burden was hers alone. She embraced the role.

Books and friends' advice became crucial tools for Nawras. They helped her with the unfamiliar task of raising Mustafa. They offered her insights into how to balance the strict discipline she valued with the warmth and patience he needed.

They both remember the night Nawras locked him out for coming home late. "In our family, no one stays out late—girls or boys. We had to be home by 10 p.m." Mustafa says. When he strolled in at 11, Nawras refused to open the door for another two or three hours. "When she opened the door, she warned me not to do it again. It was my last time acting like that," he continues. "There was once when I told her I was going to study, and she caught me with my girlfriend on the same bus. We were going to the same place. So I was hiding beside my girlfriend. Scared."

Nawras says the books she had read encouraged her to think about how to make herself and Mustafa as whole as possible. It is for such reasons that she pretended not to have seen him in the bus with this girlfriend that day. She had moved from focusing solely on school discipline to helping Mustafa build confidence. She enrolled both of them in a gym, realising that Syria offered opportunities that Iraq, torn by war, never could. "No one at war has time for healthy living," she says. The gym became part of their routine, a way to build both discipline and self-esteem.

"We built a system and routine that worked for us. We had the gym, school, work, and ourselves. With social lives, of course. Mustafa went from being the person who would not touch the toilet to the best toilet washer there is." Nawras says with a chuckle. But he was more than that, he had become her closest friend.

Mustafa's recollections are mostly uplifting and gleeful. Even his memories of war time are mostly about the way he played with his new friends and he speaks of his sister's strict methods with so much gratitude. Perhaps it is for that reason that his most difficult memory of the time he lived with his sister is all the more precious. He had come home and saw Nawras crying over a breakup and was desperate to make the pain go away. He tells it this way: "we had not had the conversation about it, but I knew what was happening. She was so hurt and I did not know what to do. I was fifteen. I knocked on our neighbours' door and told them that my sister was crying". Nawras remembers that experience as well. She had been in a relationship while they were in Iraq, and with her and the boyfriend moving to different countries, they had to break up. It was her first love lost, a painful one. She had buried herself under the weight of duty and now her first love in the sands of war. The only family member who experienced that with her was Mustafa. They experienced many more highs and lows together and walked through it as a team, as people who mostly had just each other.

Looking back, Mustafa realises the weight of the responsibility Nawras carried. "People didn't judge me; they judged her. They called her from work if I was late to school or if I misbehaved. She was the parent." He adds, "She taught me a lot—how to be disciplined, how to clean, and how to ask for help when I need it."

Being a Woman in Iraq | Being an Iraqi Man around the World

Five years after settling into their lives in Syria, the civil war broke out, forcing Nawras and Mustafa to return to Iraq. When we think of moving countries, we often focus on the struggle to plant new roots in unfamiliar places, but resettling in one's homeland brings its own set of challenges. Resettling after a war poses unique challenges; when that war has opened up the door to extremists impacting culture and lifestyle, it takes the ante some notches higher.

Nawras and Mustafa had left Iraq as children under their parents' care. At 22, even though Nawras was technically an adult, she had been shielded from many of the harsher realities of Iraqi society. Syria was a relatively open society, where single women could work, rent homes, and live independently without facing the constant scrutiny and constraints of a patriarchal culture. So returning to Iraq, which Nawras finds quite patriarchal, has posed quite a struggle.

The prevalent culture in Iraq considers it inappropriate for women—especially single women—to live alone. Nawras quickly realised that she couldn't even put herself forward as the person renting an apartment. To secure housing, she had to use her brother's name, as single women often face negative attitudes and struggle to navigate the social, cultural, and economic systems without the protection of a male relative. For her, it wasn't just a geographical shift; it has been like stepping into a guardianship as an adult.

Nawras shares that she has always been particular about freedom and autonomy as a woman. Her dreams have always involved work after her education. This was different from the norm for the average Iraqi girl. Many young women her age wanted to marry right after school. But Nawras wanted something more. She had grown up with ambitious parents and watched her mother build a career for herself. Her mother worked throughout their childhood. Nawras always wanted something similar, and she wanted to do life with the right person, not the available one. Having left home right out of school, she had an enabling society to live as she wished in Syria.

Upon their return to Iraq, Nawras found that she had to take a back seat. For six years, she had learnt to manage renting houses, bills, visas, permits, and repairs. She did that because she was the adult. Even when her brother became an adult too, there was no need to change. In Iraq, however, she was forced to give that up. At first, it was to Mustafa who had to step up to it to protect her. But with his absence, the other men in her family have assumed that space. These men do not know enough about who she has become after six years of navigating life as an adult woman. It is an adjustment she is still making, over ten years after they returned, and one she says she may never fully accept, nor does she want to.

Soon after settling in Erbil, Iraq, Mustafa left for Malaysia for his undergraduate studies. His journey has since taken him across Southeast Asia and Central Europe, but he carries the lessons he learned during those formative years with his sister. In this post-Saddam-Bush war era, there are various ways to speak on the effects of the war—broken systems, displaced families, lives lost, years of unrest, and more. But one of the measures that should dominate cultural conversations is the reputation that it has given the country and the burden that it places on the people who come from there. In one of the schools he attended, the name of which he chose to withhold, Mustafa shared an experience of a professor who seemed particularly irritated by his presence in the class. The lecturer made it clear that he was uncomfortable for fear that he could have a bomb strapped on. Mustafa's response? An A in that course. Committing to excellence is something he picked up when he lived with his sister, and as often as it serves him, he uses it. He made a point to mention that he also met beautiful people on his journey—like the American lecturers he met when he schooled in Iraq after their return. One of them made him learn English, and even if the professor has passed on, that seed they sowed came in handy for him when he moved to Malaysia.

This past summer, Mustafa hosted his entire family in Poland, where he now lives. For him, it was a dream come true, a reminder of how far he had come from that teenage boy who threw his socks around. For Nawras, it was a time of immense pride, seeing the man her brother had become and reflecting on the role she played in his journey. She was happy to spend time with the person who had seen her at her best and worst.

Nawras says her decision to return to Iraq is one she wishes she did not make. She looks forward to being in a society that allows women to hold more power and express themselves. I asked Mustafa about where home is for him. "Home…that's a big word. My roots will always be in Baghdad. It will never change. If you divide my heart in pieces, the right half would go to Baghdad, and the left half would go to Poland and Malaysia. And maybe it will be a lady someday."

But what sets Annu apart is her extensive experience with relocating, which gives her a unique insight into what it means to start over in a new place. Scotland is her fifth country of residence and the fourth one she’s attempted to call home. She turns 25 one month after arriving and is determined to make this the place she settles.

Nearly two years after we first met during that postgraduate study, I sat down with Annu to reflect on her journey and her time in Scotland.

“I’m Zaynab, I go by Annu. I’m from the Middle East. My parents are from the Middle East”, she said, when I asked her to introduce herself. This distinction between where she is from and where her parents are from would be repeated at least twice during our one-hour conversation, and understandably so.

Annu was born in Jordan, one year after her parents left their home country of Iraq due to political unrest.

At the time, the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict was ongoing, and the western international community had its eyes on Iraq’s President, Saddam Hussein. In 1996, there was a coup d’état attempt, and the events in subsequent years made Iraq a difficult place to return to. In 1997, Annu was born in Jordan to parents and a brother who were determined to give her a life befitting of a loved child, far from the unrest in Iraq. In Jordan, Annu grew up in a stable environment, speaking Arabic as she would have in Iraq, learning with the same syllabus, with little to no disruption to her sense of self and identity. She knew she was not from Jordan, but it did not matter much. Ten years in, her father took a job in Beijing, China. There, she was enrolled in a Saudi Arabian school. As she recounts it, “my dad thought, ‘let her go to the environment she’s used to. Later, I will suggest she move to an international school with a different language, different syllabus, and different everything.’ But when he eventually asked me, I said no because I had already made friends in that school.”

Their time in China was brief, and after three years, the family moved again—this time to Malaysia, where Annu's brother was studying. They stayed for 11 years, and Malaysia became the place where Annu came of age, completing her undergraduate degree.

Reflecting on her eventful life, Annu remarks, “People have always said, ‘your life is so interesting.’ They assume my dad is a diplomat, but he has never worked in an embassy. Things just happened that way.”

Understandably, through all these experiences, Annu developed a high level of adaptability, which she admits has been both a strength and a source of complex emotional responses. For one, she now speaks three languages—Arabic, Turkish, and English. She did not speak English until Grade 6, when she moved to Malaysia. Prior to that, she only spoke and learned in Arabic. Unlike her experience in China, her father wanted her to integrate into Malaysian society as soon as possible, and decided not to enrol her in a school that used the Arabic syllabus she was accustomed to. She said it was easy to learn English in Malaysia because Malaysians speak English frequently. In a different scenario, Annu learned the Turkish language by watching TV series. As a teenager, she watched two to three episodes of different weekly Turkish series. Although they were subtitled in Arabic, she managed to pick up the language, so much so that when she moved to Turkey, she could understand conversations but had to learn how to speak the language.

Friendship has always been crucial to Annu. “I can’t imagine not making friends. I would hate it. I’d hate school, hate going out,” she said. Over the years, she devised a method: first, seek out people from her own culture, then expand to locals once she’s more settled. This strategy served her well when she moved to Scotland.

“It’s easier to make friends from your own culture because you share the same experiences. It feels like home,” Annu explains. For her, this meant seeking out fellow Middle Easterners, a task eased by the region's high rate of displacement. "Moving is normal for people from the Middle East," she adds, noting the many migrants from conflict zones like Iraq and Syria. “Locals might not understand the details of what we go through, but having friends who do - friends from similar backgrounds - fills that gap and allows me to be a good friend to everyone,” she says.

The frustrating part, Annu says, has been the angst that comes from living with visa restrictions. “The whole experience would have been nicer if I didn’t have to see my parents struggling so much for us to stay in those countries.” For Annu, those sacrifices by her parents created an added burden and pressure to succeed.

According to The Henley Passport Index (2024), Iraq’s passport is ranked third from last, only ahead of Syria and Afghanistan. It allows visa-free entrance into just 31 countries, while Singapore, with the top-ranking passport, allows visa-free travel to 195 countries. “It’s so hard for us to pick and choose where to live without having to think of the reason you’ll give or the money you’ll pay. For me, the question is why. People from other countries could do the same thing you think I’m capable of, but they get an easy pass,” Annu said with palpable and relatable irritation. Over the years, Iraq’s visa has become weaker due to the lingering effects of wars, religious conflict, and political unrest, but Annu believes that people need to think more about how the country is today, rather than clinging to events that happened over a decade ago. “There is no war in Iraq. The government is bad, but the people and culture are good. It is a normal place. It is not at war.”

When I asked about home, what it means to her, and her relationship with Iraq, it was hard for her to give a straightforward answer, and it felt almost wrong for me to expect one. “Growing up, I always had that question in my head—where is home?’ she said. “Where is my actual country? I can’t just say Iraq is my country. I don’t feel I am Iraqi. Yes, my passport says that; my parents are from there, but I don’t know. I’ve never experienced what people in Iraq experience. I don’t have history there. I don’t know the streets. I don’t know the people. I don’t know anything. I always said I was Jordanian because I was born there, but also, did I grow up there? No, I didn’t. I grew up in Malaysia. But can I say I’m Malaysian? I became an adult in Malaysia. I started there at eleven and left when I was 22. When we went to Turkey, I felt that because my parents are stable there, because my parents want to stay there, I should call it home. But also, it has been two years in Scotland. These days, when I go to Turkey, I think, ‘I want to go back home.’ Where is home? It is in Scotland now because this is where I am making myself into the person that I want to be. But is it actually my home? The question is always there. I know what you’re asking—where do I want to ground myself? That’s why I moved to the UK.”

Moving to Scotland was very deliberate for Annu. Her father had suggested that she do it in Turkey, but she wanted more than just a postgraduate certificate; she wants to find stability in a place that she can grow to love. She chose the UK, and Scotland specifically, because she felt it would offer a safer, more peaceful life for a young woman who is figuring out life on her own. “That is what we grew up hearing—that it is a place where they take in immigrants.”, she explained. "You can study here, get a certification, and you can help the country with your experience. The reward they give you in return for how much you spend here, how much you give the country, is citizenship or a long-term visa. You feel like you get rewarded for the effort and struggle of being an immigrant in this place, and that’s why I immediately thought of the UK. Why not? Even when I think of having my own house, this place is good and stable for me. 

Listening to Annu speak, the cosmopolitan ideal of global interconnectedness and cross-cultural understanding comes to mind. Perhaps we are moving towards a world where people like her aren’t defined by homes that feel alien to them. And maybe we’re already living in a version of that world—one she believes in and navigates by its evolving rules.

After her Master’s programme ended in 2023, she enrolled in a Ph.D. programme at the same school. There has been quite a bit of growth from the 25-year-old woman who ventured out into the poetic and historically significant city of Stirling. This city, located at the meeting point of Scotland’s Highlands and Lowlands, is near where the pivotal Battle of Bannockburn was fought in Scotland’s struggle for independence. Much like the Scots of the 14th century, Annu fights her own battles. However, her opponents are not English cavalry, but rather the systems, mindsets, and structures that seek to define her world in terms she neither agrees with nor wishes to submit to.

One of Annu’s ongoing challenges is her need for constant reassurance, a feeling she traces back to the instability in her life. “Even when something good happens, there’s always the fear it could be taken away, or I could be taken away," she explains. "I know it’s a trauma response, but I’m glad I’ve recognized it.” While there is the advantage of being able to adapt to new things, she is concerned about how hard it is for her to get attached to things and people, and how easy it is for her to leave people and relationships that she has built. It is a muscle that has been trained, without much willful input from her. “I’ve made so many friends who are no longer in my life. It’s sad, but it’s easy for me,” she reflects. “When I do have people in my life, I feel like they need reassurance too, because I keep wondering, ‘Am I going to leave them, or are they going to leave me?’ It never feels like it will last.”

The one constant in Annu’s life has been her family, the only people who have moved with her across the world. “I used to FaceTime with my parents all the time," she recalls, "but once you settle in, they get used to you being okay on your own.” She believes moving would have been easier if she had done it earlier in life. “Most people move away for university at eighteen," she observes. "But I was twenty-five. If I’d done it sooner, it would have been so much easier. When you’re younger, mistakes feel more acceptable. The responsibility is heavier when you’re older."

Still, Annu has used all of her life experience to forge a path in Scotland, where she hopes to define "home" not just for herself, but for the future she envisions. “I wasn’t thinking about me; I was thinking about my children. If I ever have children, I don’t want them to experience what I went through. I don’t want them to move from country to country. If they’re born here, this will be their home. That’s it. They’re not going anywhere.”

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When Sophia and her husband decided to leave Nigeria, they considered other countries, but Canada stood out. “It felt more family-oriented than the others, and that meant a lot to me," she explained. "Families here really prioritise spending time together, like having dinner and enjoying the small moments. That attention to family life kept us drawn to Canada. I wanted to give my children the chance to experience a happy, close-knit family environment.”

In late 2020, Nigeria saw a wave of protests against police brutality, culminating in an incident where army officers killed and injured civilians—a tragedy now known by some as the Lekki Massacre, which occurred at the heart of the nationwide demonstrations. By the end of the following year, Sophia and her husband were on their way to Canada.

“I Had My Plans”

In Nigeria, Sophia and her husband ran a production company that created commercials and music videos for well-known brands. Before that, she worked in various roles in television, giving her solid media expertise as she relocated to Canada.

She explained, “I had my plans. I was going to jump right in, join the workforce, and start living the Canadian dream. But as a mother, no one prepares you for the reality of not finding a day care spot for your child. As soon as we moved, we started searching for day care, but that marked the beginning of my worst nightmare as an immigrant mother. The first day care I enrolled my son in sent him back after a week. Their reason? He was ‘too energetic and too active.’”

Sophia’s son was three years old when they moved to Canada. He had reached his milestones early and impressively. For instance, he barely crawled—just a few days before his first birthday, at a party, he stood up and started walking. He also learned his ABCs early and mastered them quickly. When he started school, he was a bright, active child with no complaints about his behaviour or social interactions.

‘Do you like me, Mommy?’

When her son started at the first day care, Sophia had just secured her first job, which allowed her to work from home. It was an ideal setup since she still had her toddler daughter and was also juggling her studies. But when her son was rejected, Sophia had no choice but to quit her job—it was impossible to manage two kids at home while working. This forced her to begin the day care search again. It was a challenge they faced three times, and the impact on their lives was significant.

The effects were multifaceted. According to Sophia, her son started crying when he was told he couldn’t return to the day care. At the next day care, he was rejected after one month, with the staff claiming he had flipped a desk, among other issues. “I had no way of knowing what really happened in that day care, but it was clear they were mistreating him,” Sophia recalled. “The words they used to describe my son, the narratives they created, were just... heartbreaking.” A sombre Sophia explained that her son, who was sensitive and perceptive, began to regress after being sent away from the second day care. “He stopped talking as much and became afraid of white children when he saw them at the park—he would avoid them. I don’t know what happened there, but he showed all the signs of trauma. He wasn’t the same boy we brought here. He would wake up screaming at night and barely slept.” With her son back at home and acting differently, Sophia had to resign from her second job and once again started searching for day care.

She also noticed that her son had become increasingly concerned with people’s approval, constantly seeking reassurance in ways he hadn’t before. “He would always ask, ‘Do you like me, Mommy? Does Aunty like me?’” she said. When her daughter finally secured a day care spot, it had a profound effect on him. Every morning, as his sister left for school, he would cry, and Sophia would often cry with him.

‘Shame’

To adjust her expectations, Sophia began searching for short-term jobs. After her son was admitted into another day care, she managed to secure a position at the mall. “On his first day, I was still signing in at the mall when I got a call—they told us to come pick him up. They wouldn’t take him anymore. It had only been three hours since we dropped him off that morning. That was the moment that broke me completely,” Sophia shared. “I gave up. I stopped applying for jobs. I became a sad, angry, regretful woman, and turned my focus to just taking care of my kids. I saw parts of myself I never want to see again. I felt guilty for wanting to work when my child was going through something I couldn’t understand. I’d tell myself I was a useless mother. At the same time, I did as much as I could to teach him how to act when we stepped outside, and I started homeschooling. I changed our diet, and just threw everything that I had at it”.

It wasn’t just the fact that Sophia could no longer work; it was the fear that her son might not be accepted into any school. More crucially, the repeated rejections were visibly affecting her son and their family dynamic. “I gave up on my parenting skills,” Sophia admitted. “I felt like I didn’t know my own child. I began to see him as the problem, like this wasn’t my son anymore, like something was wrong with him. Emotionally, our family started to unravel. We stopped going out with him—we were hiding, shrinking. If I took him to the store, I was always terrified he’d do something wrong. The rejection and the words from the day care centres just filled me with fear.”

Desperate to figure out how to help her son get better prepared for school, Sophia saw a paediatrician. After an initial assessment, she was told that there was a possibility he might be on the lower end of the autism spectrum. Behavioural therapy was recommended. “I’d had this child for three years and we’d never been to the hospital except for routine check-ups. He was born healthy and perfect. I came here to give him a better life, not to complicate things for him,” she said.

Coming from a culture that doesn’t handle difference or special needs well, she admitted she dealt with shame. Fearful of her family’s reaction, she kept the paediatrician's comments and much of her struggle to herself, which only worsened her mental health. At the same time, she was aware that giving up would mean letting her children down, so she did the best she could to manage her emotions.

‘Mummy, I like it’

During this time, Sophia was actively trying to find new spaces for her son to socialise. Being a person of faith, she decided to visit local churches. Within a 12-month period, she attended at least 12 churches before finding the one she now calls home. When asked if her difficulty in settling into other churches had anything to do with race or cultural differences, she explained, “I wasn’t looking for a black church. I was looking for a community for my son—somewhere no one would tell me there was something wrong with him, where I wouldn’t feel anxious, and where I wouldn’t be constantly checking the door, worried a teacher would come and ask me to take him away.”

Curious about what made this church different, I asked Sophia why she chose to stay. “At the end of the service, my son said to me, ‘Mummy, I like it,’” she recalled. Through tears, she added, “from that day, every morning when he woke up, he stopped crying about not going to school and started asking when he could see his friends. He finally felt at home.”

‘Until You Build or Join a Community, It’s a Lonely Life’

Throughout our conversation, I wondered why Sophia hadn’t mentioned any support from the Nigerian community in her province. As a Nigerian immigrant myself, I know that Nigerian—or at least African—religious and cultural groups can be found even in the most remote places. These communities are often formed around the shared experience of navigating life as immigrants. Surprisingly, Sophia didn’t know the Nigerian community existed.

During her first year in New Brunswick, Sophia’s only real communication was with her two children, her husband, and friends back home. She hadn’t known about the Nigerian community until she joined her faith group. The day after her first visit, one of the Nigerian women came to see her. “I remember just leaning into her and crying,” Sophia recalled. The relief was immediate, but so was the regret for not finding them sooner. Once she connected with the community, she quickly learned that her struggles with her son weren’t unique. Other mothers shared similar experiences. “If I had known there were people to talk to—people who understood—I wouldn’t have felt so alone,” Sophia said. “They told me how I could have advocated for my son, and I realised I didn’t even know I could do that. Sometimes I still relapse and fall back into the mindset that first year put me in. I wish I never had to go through it, especially alone.”

Finding people to connect with—whether to hang out, shop together, or simply share experiences—brought enough light into Sophia’s life that she finally found the courage to pick herself back up.

On a random day, during a family outing, her son picked up a piece of paper, read the words in English, then flipped it over and read the French text aloud. At that point, Sophia hadn’t taught him to read yet, and she doesn’t speak French. It brought her to tears. “This was the moment it hit me that nothing was wrong with my son,” she said. “I started gaining my confidence back. I told myself that this was just a process and what he needed was a chance to settle in.”  

“There’s Just a Gap in Understanding”

As harrowing as the experience was, Sophia doesn’t place the blame on any one party. “I really don’t blame anybody. Nobody asked me to pull my son out of school in Nigeria and bring him 6,000 miles away. It’s my responsibility to advocate for my children, to tell people what they need to know about them, instead of just accepting everything they say to me,” she said.

Sophia also expressed how parents often underestimate the impact of immigration on children. She likened the process to replanting an orange tree in a new spot: “It will go through a season of withering, and it may seem like it’s dying, but it will come back. You have to create the right environment for that. Just like adults, children deserve the chance to grow into this new life.”

Since her experience isn’t unique, she believes that the day care centres could benefit from greater awareness about how to support recently immigrated children.

Looking back, Sophia wishes she had started preparing her son for the transition earlier, while they were still in Nigeria. “I would have made changes around food and routine, like some parents do,” she explained.

Now, Sophia dedicates some of her time to helping others who are planning to move abroad, offering advice on how to ease the transition.

Finding the Right Fit

Forty-eight hours before starting her new job, Sophia was still desperately searching for a sitter for her son. With her awakened sense of optimism, she had re-entered the job market and secured a role she loved at a media organisation. But with only hours left until her first day, she faced the possibility of losing yet another opportunity. She even drafted an email to her new employers, requesting to postpone her start date by a month. Just before sending the email, a Canadian woman who had seen her post on Facebook reached out and offered to babysit her son.

“It was the riskiest thing I’ve ever done in this country,” Sophia said. “We went to her house on Saturday, met her, agreed on a price, and by Monday, we dropped my son off. She is the reason I’ve been able to keep and enjoy my job. She takes him on out to socialise and learn, and combining that with the behavioural therapy he’s getting has made such a difference. I’ve watched my son grow more confident. He’s becoming the child I knew in Nigeria, just an older, better version. He started kindergarten and he is doing well.”

As Sophia reflects on her journey as a mother, she says she’s learning to accept the different versions of herself that have emerged through these challenges. She’s proud of her resilience and her ability to rise, like a phoenix, from adversity. “I went from a struggling, ashamed mother to just another immigrant next door who’s thriving,” she said. “Through this experience, I’ve seen two sides of myself—the dark and the light—and I’m grateful the light always breaks through.”

On Omae’s first day in the United Kingdom, he says he was "grossly uninformed" and could have been stranded. He thought that it would be possible to get a hotel in the town where his university was upon arrival. He had come in on a Commonwealth Shared Scholarship and the funding organisations had briefed him and his colleagues about the culture of the United Kingdom and its people. For his travel, he had even been given a train ticket to get from the train station in Edinburgh to Stirling, where his school is located. But Omae says a lapse in judgement and research on his part almost left him high and dry in central Scotland’s dreich weather.

He landed around 4 p.m., excited about the prospect of having his open mind filled with the highs and lows of international business and what that would mean for his grand plan for the study. He had taken a connecting flight from Turkey, and while on the plane, there had been some type of argument involving drunk passengers, which made the alighting process—typically requiring patience and a truckload of tolerance—harder than usual, with people stuck in the same spot for some time, and then in a bit of a rush to get off. While this was happening, he spotted an older gentleman who was blocked from getting out into the aisle due to the ceaseless flow of irritated and predictably impatient passengers. Omae stepped in front of the other passengers and urged the man to move forward. It was a small gesture, and Omae thought any young person would do the same for an older man.

After he alighted, Omae, who did not yet have access to the internet—because he was yet to get a SIM card—wanted to know where the train station was. He asked the only familiar face he saw—the man from the plane—who asked a few questions and told Omae to go ahead with his immigration checks and meet him on the other side after he had been granted entry into the country. As it turned out, the man, like Omae, was on his way to Stirling and invited Omae to ride with him and his wife instead of taking the train.

On their way, they had a bit of a chat, and the couple realised that Omae’s plan for accommodation was to walk into a hotel in the small city of Stirling and book a room for the night. This was in late September of 2022, when the University of Stirling, like many universities in the United Kingdom, was starting a new session. Many students were coming from different parts of the world, most of whom the school would not be able to accommodate due to a lack of space. That was something Omae did not realise, but his kind chauffeurs did. They invited him for tea —which Omae thought meant a cup of tea instead of dinner—and then offered an en suite room in their home with his own access and privacy. Omae was offered a space to spend the weekend with them instead of at the hotel, which he clearly would have had a hard time finding, and leave for his school-assigned accommodation when it opened up two nights later.

"They just told me, in case you need anything or you are feeling hungry, the kitchen is there. You can come and prepare what you want. I was like, yeah? Me cooking in your kitchen? I thought I'm a guest. So they were like, 'yeah, you can just come prepare anything you want. This is the food. So in case you need to eat or anything, just come, prepare anything you need.'"

"I came out later and ate some fruit, just to be sure that I could get anything. Then I went back, stayed up there. The next day, Omae’s host took him on a tour of Stirling and the neighbouring villages. Later that day, he informed Omae that he would be travelling on a work tour and that his wife would be available to help him settle in.

She took Omae shopping and showed him which shops to buy from in times of austerity and which for times of prosperity—essentially the difference between Lidl/Aldi - with its low prices - and Waitrose with its premium shopping experience.

On the day his hostel opened, he was driven to his university hostel by the lady and her child, and they helped him set up the room. It’s the type of thing his family and close friends would do for him if he were back home in Kenya. That was the kindness that welcomed Omae to the United Kingdom, to Scotland. It’s a first impression that leaves one assured of the quality of people one might encounter on your new adventure—a gesture of hospitality that is, perhaps, rare, especially in the UK.

Omae had spent some time working in Kenya as an Investment Analyst and had started a postgraduate degree, which he had to defer to take up the scholarship opportunity at the University of Stirling. For him, his motivation for choosing to leave Kenya for the United Kingdom was simple and straightforward. As he puts it, "We want to do business with people all over the world. The best way we are going to do these things as peers is we sit down, study their system, help them understand our system, and then we get to share our ideas. In my view, education is one way to study that. I understand how things work in Kenya, and I did my master's here. I'm doing my PhD here. The UK attracts people from all over the world. So when I was doing my master's, I met persons from over 50 countries. If I want to speak to somebody in Iraq right now, if I want to speak to somebody in Nigeria or South Africa right now, I can pick up my phone and call them. And I don't even need an introduction because we are buddies now. And that is what we need for business."

Omae intends to return to Kenya to work on making business more productive and efficient. He has his eyes on the stock market there. Apart from the fact that Kenya is home and where his heart is, Omae said "Kenya is still a growing country. There are a lot of opportunities. The environment there is welcoming."

Coincidentally, this interview was conducted while youths in Kenya were protesting against bad governance. The protest began with a single goal of getting the government to back down from a Finance Bill that would have raised taxes and put the already struggling masses under more financial stress. What should have been a peaceful protest turned violent when armed government agents used tear gas and stun grenades on protesters. In a couple of weeks, young Kenyans were able to get the government to throw out the Finance Bill and get the president to dissolve his cabinet. In many African countries, protests against poor and tone-deaf leadership have become fairly common, with Nigeria and Uganda following a few weeks later.

Emphasising his passion for his country, and his thoughts on the protest, Omae said "if  you ever got into my head right now, you would know that 99% of my thoughts are in Kenya. My mind is there, my heart is there, my blood is there. I left my entire family there. I'm doing my investments there. What you are seeing in Kenya is an activity motivated by people who are informed, people who can fetch information for themselves. We don't need to wait to be told about the constitution over the weekend by some analyst. We can read the constitution. What is happening in Kenya is motivated by young people who have information, who have skills, who have resources, who have time, but who don't have an opportunity to implement all these things. If we get suffocated from all angles, then how do we exist? If the pressure from the inside increases, then we have to break the whole shell and start something new." While he acknowledges that issues like nepotism and subpar governance are challenges his home country faces, Omae does not see them as reasons to leave for good—not for him, at least.

As he puts it, "the UK is just a normal society like ours. They have poor people. They have people who are going without food. They have people who are going without clothing. So it means it is not a unicorn. It's not a perfect society. So as much as there are things that outperform us, there are things where we are equally at par. We just need to know where we are and how we can get to the next level."

In some ways, Kenya has shown signs of a commitment to growth and does have the indices necessary for one to assume that it may be on its way up. According to the World Bank, the country’s GDP improved from 4.9% in 2022 to 5.6% in 2023. It also witnessed a reduction in the poverty rate, with its agricultural sector showing resilience as it recovered better than expected after two years of drought. While it's not outperforming most countries in the world. It's doing better than many of its regional peers and some developing nations. However, there are concerns that economic growth may slow down in the coming year due to various challenges, including global economic conditions and domestic factors.

In order to facilitate the change he wants to see, Omae has not only dedicated himself to studying investment analysis across cultures, but he is also working to effect positive change by building a continent-wide network of young Africans. He is holding the door open to international academic opportunities for fellow young people, hoping that they too will remain committed to change—whether in their countries of origin or the countries they migrate to. For him, it's about increasing the number of people who can interpret and implement positive change, thereby creating a society equipped to optimise opportunities.

Omae graduated with first-class honours in his undergraduate degree and earned a distinction in his master's, even being awarded the Walter Scott Global Investment Management Prize. Through his interactions with peers, he has noticed that his status as a high achiever often leads people to believe that the opportunities he has received are unattainable for them. "People think they can't mimic my way of doing things. So the best thing I can do to convince them that it is possible is to share other people’s stories."

Omae started The Management Diary, an online space where he shares scholarship opportunities and the stories of individuals who have taken advantage of such opportunities in the past.

"I have featured someone with a second class lower division who got a lot of scholarships. You don't need to be the top student in your master's program to get a scholarship, but you won’t believe me if I tell you that because we both know I was. So I need to tell you about somebody who didn't get a first class, yet got a scholarship, and how they did it."

So far, Omae says The Management Diary has helped three people secure fully funded PhD programs, with many more in the pipeline, including some who have already started their master's programs. This is accomplished by providing resources for their applications, reviewing these applications with them, and guiding them as they work to secure scholarships. He hopes that it will make a significant difference for people who are looking to have international experience and exposure but have little resources for it. In his words  "I will help this one guy today; tomorrow this guy will help another two people. And we will have a whole network of people helping each other."

On being an immigrant and how he navigates spaces in his current country of residence, Omae said, “If (Aliko) Dangote or the late (Chris) Kirubi wanted to live anywhere in the UK, Europe, or any developed country, they could. And you wouldn't hear them being called immigrants even for a single day. You would hear, ‘businessman Dangote will be in London today,’ right? You have to show your value. You have to earn respect. You have to be known for what you're doing, and you will be recognized by that badge. I am a researcher, so I should be addressed as such as long as I have created value and contributed something as a researcher.” This assertive stance gave him the courage to apply for the scholarship that he is currently on.

“The PhD I applied for is a funded one, and the funding criteria read, ‘This is an opportunity for UK students. And under exceptional circumstances, we can consider international students up to a maximum of 30% of the scholarships.’ You see, I only read that line ‘under exceptional circumstances’ and sat down and started writing my application. And here I am. So it shows you that we are no lesser than anybody else. If they really meant what they said, then yeah, you have your answer. It was an exceptional thing, and it is what it is.”

In what can be described as a passionate speech, Omae began to talk about how important it is for immigrants to appreciate themselves.
“We are also coming from good places, really good places. And we are happy about those places. It is good we are here, but we are happy about where we come from, and we respect where we come from.

In my PhD lab, we don't have any nationality represented by more than one person. We come from different countries. And when we discuss, it’s clear that the ability, intelligence, interest, and perspective that people have is more important than where they come from. If a person is smart, that person is smart, irrespective of where they're coming from. And the opposite also holds true. Every society has a fair distribution of different types of people.

We can't use one lens or one metric to gauge. Some people usually think speaking English is a measure of intelligence. I came here and realised some people can only speak English. I was so disappointed because, for us, English is one of several languages. I can speak four other languages. For me, it's normal.”

Omae firmly believes that the future of our countries rests in the hands of many immigrants. To shape that future, it's essential for immigrants to acquire the knowledge, connections, and resources available to them. To achieve this, they must first recognize and embrace their own value.

It is Omae’s hope that people can both give and take value from the places they go for school, work, or play. Part of it includes learning about other cultures as he has—one example being the invaluable experience of getting good jollof by having a Ghanaian and a Nigerian defend their country’s turf in the ever-relevant jollof war and volunteering as a judge when they battle it out. He is learning to understand the Scottish accent and why it is different, why the UK has hot and cold taps, the culture of the different countries represented in his PhD cohort and how all of that and more can be applied in the business world where he hopes to flourish. It’s a big world, Omae believes, and it’s lucky enough to have you in it, so explore, learn, and give back.

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