My name is Nora Hussein I would like to
provide a slightly different account on the topics of refuge, belonging and
integration, as I believe the issues are very closely linked.
I am a second generation British Somali
female, currently living in London.
My father first came to the UK
in the early sixties as a migrant worker and was later joined by my mother in
the early seventies. I consider myself to be British born and bred, and yet I
have a strong affinity and link to my ‘home' country Somalia: a country that I have only
visited for barely two weeks in my entire thirty years - a country, which ever since I have been old
enough to comprehend, has been embroiled in turmoil and civil war. And yet when
I was there in 1999, although amenities were very basic, and life in general on
a completely different par to what I was accustomed to, I encountered a strange
sense of belonging.
