Photography: Carolina Henriques

JOURNEY

At first I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to come to such a big city as London. Switzerland is quite small, cities are quite small and sort of a bit more accessible, so that was a bit challenging in the beginning sort of navigating that and navigating friendships or people — everyone lives in a different corner of the city and you never get to meet up.

So I think coming here to study was a really good decision because you kind of automatically make friends with people you study with. And I’ve always found that British people and Swiss people share a lot in terms of, kind of like culture and the way that we talk. And sort of a culture of, you know, self deprecation, and the kind of humour is very similar. So I find it quite easy to sort of fit in and in that sense. So that was definitely an easier thing to do than I had expected.

BELONGING

I think it is also to do with the fact that I now feel less at home back home than I do here. So, kind of perhaps, when I go back and visit my family, I do feel like they’re always asking me: “Do you know where you are going? Do you know which tram you have to take?” And like “yes I’ve lived here for like 30 years, I do know.”

And I think it’s to do with what makes you feel at home, I think it’s the friendships that you manage to make or keep, so I think that has been a really important aspect for me.

I've been really lucky, I think that I have been able to find good friends here and establish relationships. And I think, for me, it is the travelling that I do and the work that I do in Turkey. I'm going to come back here. I think that also in a way kind of like contributes to the sort of feeling that I've established a home here and I go somewhere else for work.

IDENTITY

I would describe myself as an immigrant or a migrant, but since it’s not really that recent, I think my migrant experience obviously, that was, like 10-12 years ago, when I first came here, but I would definitely describe myself as an immigrant still, probably always will, I think.

There was a lot of moving around in my family, my father grew up in Spain, and then he moved to Switzerland, with quite difficult circumstances, under the Franco regime, and then moved away from that. On my mom’s side, also, there’s some moving around across Europe. So that’s kind of like family identity, in a way. So, I quite identify with not just being from one particular place.

I think decision makers need to see migrants as people and it definitely feels like that is not the case anymore. Regardless of where people are coming from, there's definitely a really strong shift in language about people, and obviously, more so by people from outside of Europe than I think from European countries, or well, okay, that's not entirely true, Central and Western Europe. I think Eastern Europeans or southeastern Europeans are also treated really badly by the current government. It’s sort of this idea that we're not people and that we're only here to take your jobs, take your women, whatever it is, take your benefits.