Daniel first noticed it when his friends started talking about the holidays they’d been on. It got worse when the school he was at began taking its pupils on trips abroad. Unlike his friends, Daniel, who is 13-years old, doesn’t have a passport, so even if his family could afford to go abroad, he wouldn’t be able to join them. Unlike his friends, Daniel isn’t a British citizen, even though he was born here and has never been anywhere else in his life.
“Because he isn’t a citizen he feels like an outsider”, says his father Femi (names have been changed), who came to this country from Nigeria almost 15 years ago, “there are discussions he can’t be involved in”.
Daniel is not an immigrant. He was born in the UK and because he has spent more than ten years in Britain he has the right to go through the registration process and become a British citizen. He loves playing football and his father says he likes the school he goes to in Wigan, where they live. That he isn’t already a British citizen is surprising to many.
