Radio Free Brighton

I have been told that I should write about me, as I will be present­ing the radio pro­gramme, A migrant’s voice.

But at moments like this, I would prefer not to have to even men­tion my name. As I believe that I am one of the many who are fight­ing for migrant’s rights and after all, I am just doing what I think every single human being in the planet should be doing: to sup­port each other and to fight together for hav­ing a more dig­nify and a more respect­ful live.

Ok. Here it goes. …

My name is Assump­ció and I am a migrant in the UK. As a migrant I feel that it is import­ant to have a voice and to be heard about what hap­pens to us when we move around the planet.  And to be able to explain about the many injustices we suf­fer when politi­cians and oth­ers “believe to have power over us” and they decide what they think it is the best for us and how.

My back­ground is a bit con­fus­ing.  From both sides, I have lots of rel­at­ives who left their home­land to live in other parts of the planet for some time. For example, my great grand­mother went to Argen­tina. Another untie got mar­ried with a Ger­man cit­izen and also left the place where she grow up. I heard as a child that from my father side we were from the Basque Coun­try. And how my grand­father and my father went through a Civil War and how they man­aged to sur­vive under such dif­fi­cult times. I heard too how my grand­fath­ers from my father side left their home­land for mov­ing to Cata­lonia. And how my mother and her mother left Cata­lonia to live with my auntie who got mar­ried with the Ger­man guy.

As a child I heard all these stor­ies and oth­ers such as the story of my mother, who “flir­ted” with an Amer­ican guy and, how she regret­ted not to fol­low him to New York and to visit the Big City. On the other hand, it was strange/weird as a child to hear about how my father and his broth­ers grow up dur­ing a war, how my par­ents lived under a fas­cist régime and how an uncle that I never met, died in exile in France and he left a wife and a son I have never met neither.

I was fas­cin­ated by all these stor­ies. I dreamed about trav­el­ling, about speak­ing other lan­guages, meet­ing people from dif­fer­ent coun­tries but I was also hor­ri­fied, by nation­al­ism. I used to spend hours look­ing at the win­dow in my par­ents’ bed­room and ques­tion­ing myself who was say­ing the clouds were French, Span­ish, Catalan. At that time I felt that some­thing in my child­hood was not right.

I believe that what it is more remark­able and made me who I am, it is the fact I was born under a fas­cist régime. As a child, I was not able to under­stand much what was hap­pen­ing. But I remembered that it was trau­matic and dif­fi­cult. I had prob­lems to com­pre­hend why at home I was speak­ing a lan­guage that my mother always told us to be proud of but at school they were for­cing us to speak another. On top of that, it was hor­rendous to see the teacher hit­ting me some­times because I could not speak prop­erly the lan­guage of the fas­cist régime. These teach­ers never ques­tioned me if at home I was speak­ing another lan­guage and that’s why I had so many dif­fi­culties to speak Span­ish well. It was also hard to suf­fer racism and dis­crim­in­a­tion because at home I had Catalan as a mother tongue.  I hated it to see how people with author­ity such as the teach­ers, police, etc felt “so power­ful over me” and they were treated me as a second-class cit­izen and some­times with bru­tal­ity. I remembered often rebelling against their orders and how they were treat­ing me.

Now I am bit older and I have not changed a bit. I am still the rebel­li­ous child who is an ideal­ist and believes that we need to stand up for our val­ues and fight for our right to be treated with respect and dig­nity.  I do this by cam­paign­ing and by my work as a volun­teer in dif­fer­ent organ­iz­a­tions that sup­port migrants in the UK.

As my rel­at­ives, I have moved a bit around. I have lived in four coun­tries (in one of them: I was not even hav­ing “papers” in two occa­sions (many, many years ago) and I have learned to speak other lan­guages. I am spe­cial­ized in teach­ing lan­guages to adults and have been to 15 or 16 coun­tries. And I hope to travel to many more.

I have just fin­ished a MLitt in Mod­ern Lan­guage Teach­ing and my thesis was about ESOL pro­vi­sion for asylum seekers and refugees in Eng­land: a case study in Brighton and Hove.

Last but not least,

I believe that every single human being should have the right for free­dom of move­ment and the right to stay as the planet belong to all.  What is more, to sup­port each other and fight together for the struggle of the migrants and for hav­ing a respect­ful and dig­nify live for all of us.

For the free­dom of move­ment and for the right to stay for all

A.