Image: Refugees Welcome demonstration, London, 2015. Ilias Bartolini/Flickr, Creative Commons.
‘London’ means many things to many people. It signals a governance problem to its administrators, a honey pot to its financiers, an open prison to its destitute. But to a lot of the world’s refugees, on dusty tracks, in camps and overcrowded boats en route from war, London is a destination, and its meaning is – hope. Hope of a renewed life, of re-homing, career chances, restoration of love after loss. Many, when they hire a people smuggler, tell him ‘take me to London’. But, as several stories in my book Looking to London make clear, handing over the cash is no guarantee that you will be taken to the destination of your choice. One of the women who told me her tale found herself first in Havana, not Heathrow.
