Lena Vasiljeva/Flickr. CC (by-nc)
London is a city of migration and this is not only because the person you walk past in the street, or who is standing at the bus stop, has journeyed here from somewhere else. It is much more than both this and the superficial idea that the capital has breached a particular threshold, or measure, of cultural diversity. The language of ‘diversity’ – be it in academic circles or economic city branding or political slogans – renders the experiences we are concerned with in this book into a succession of surface clichés or flat travesties. Rather, we argue, migrant experiences – if you really listen to them – tell us something defining about the global co-ordinates and historical composition of the city itself. In the biographies of the lives described in this book the traces can be found of the relationship between London and the wider world, historically, economically and politically. We have not only tried to portray London through the eyes and ears of young migrants, we contend that their story – migrant’s stories – are themselves London’s story.
Vlad, who came to Britain from Albania as a child refugee and crossed the channel smuggled underneath a lorry, watched the reporting of the ‘migration crisis’ during the summer of 2015 with dismay. Sitting in a pub in Barking he commented: “I am not very happy with the way the media treats refugees because I can promise you one thing, if all these refugees… if you sent all the foreigners ‘back home’ London would be a graveyard because there are so many refugees and foreigners which keep London moving forward. And when I hear it on the news say ‘oh refugees this and foreigners that’ I think ‘you bloody bastards’. I am sorry to say [it] but that’s how I feel because all these people here have struggled for many years.”
