13 May INTEGRATION IN A SERIES OF 20
INTEGRATION IN A SERIES OF 20
- Group of kids in Asmara (Eritrea). Those kids are from the neighbourhood my dad was raised into and when they saw me carrying a camera they asked me to photograph them. I obviously had their parents permissions. Despite living in poor conditions they still smile and play and don’t bother too much questioning their living even when they can tell the difference from the other kids who come there on holiday. On the left of the photo you can see my three cousins who, like me, live in Europe and therefore are evidently dressed more “smartly”.
2) I met Abysara in Milan in 2015, at the time she was just 14 years old. She was the niece of a family friend whose sister decided to immigrate from Sudan to reach with Europe with her daughter Abysara and her eldest son Samuel. Abysara was in Italy for almost two years before her and her family definitely moved to Switzerland where according to a European plan they were assigned with a new “life”. During her time in Italy I saw her growing into a happy young woman: she put on weight, was smiling all the time, she “developed”, she started to love futile thing to such as accessories like rings, earring, headbands, etc. But mostly she was curios about life and was happy to discover it because it felt like she had missed out on many things.
3) This is a photo of my father I took in Italy. My dad always took me and my siblings to parks and natural reserves, when he had the time to, because he always told us how lucky he was to grow up in a non-globalised environment and didn’t want us to just be city kids. The contact with nature is something he misses living in a big city like Milan, and he often says that despite growing up having nothing, him and the other kids had everything. Not having phones, tvs, shops, toys, etc meant they played outdoors, in a safe bubble because crimes like kidnapping or abuse were not common at the time, with homemade toys having sunset as their curfew.
So now he still tries to keep himself active and close to the nature, even though when he does he now wears his Nike cap, Adidas tracksuit, nice trainers and his Apple watch.
4) Here in London I met so many people with many different backgrounds. Amongst them there’s Idil a second generation British Somali girl who I interviewed for my dissertation project and often compared herself to her mother who migrated from Somalia. Therefore I’ve decided to meet her and you can see her in the photo above with a former school mate in her country. Khadra is from a rural town and in fact as you can see there’s pretty much just sand from dessert behind her and she is only wearing flip flops type of sandals while holding her dress up. This photo was taken a few weeks before her journey to reach the UK began. Now, 25 years later, Khadra lives in London with her family formed of her, her husband and their 5 children. Khadra now looks very different to her younger self as now she’s put on weight, wears a khimar to cover everything but her face.
5) Khadra (on the left) in London, a few years later after leaving Somalia with some friends and relatives who had previously moved into the country. As you can see she already started to put on some weight, started to wear accessories and a hint of makeup, but she also converted to Islam so you can see her wearing a headscarf.
6) Hussein is a Nigerian man who first migrated to Holland where he fell in love with a German girl and so eventually moved with her to Germany. The couple then got married and had kids, but a few years later they decided to move back to Nigeria but eventually they moved one last time to the UK in London, where they have lived for the past 15 years. In the photo above Hussein was in Germany but it had only been a few years since he migrated from Nigeria so he’s still wearing his traditional clothes from back home whilst enjoying a canned Fanta. He explained me how back in Nigeria they only had drinks like Fanta bottled in glass bottles so he found cans very cool, and also more frizzier and sugary. In fact all our drinks in Europe, America, etc are more processed compared to the ones available in Africa and contains higher levels of sugar.
7) Hussein never gave up on his culture and after moving to Europe he started hanging around a Nigerian community centre where he sometimes performed like in the photo above.
8) This is what Hussein looked like shortly after fleeing Nigeria. He’s in Holland and a lot slimmer than the previous images, he also had more hair and looks more happy as he explained to me the first few months were just filled with pure happiness for him. “Coming to a new country were I wasn’t fearing for my life and I had so many things to learn and see was very overwhelming and gave me hope for the future so I just couldn’t stop smiling”, says Hussein when I make him notice that.
9) Hussein in Germany with his wife, his brother and two friends. Whilst living in Germany Hussein started to get closer to the western culture and because he had also fell in love with a Caucasian woman he said he had to change some of his habits. In the photo above you can see him wearing a shirt for example with “those cool patterns” like he says, that were trending at the time. He also managed to get his brother ( far right) to join him too from Nigeria and started to mix both the German and Nigerian culture to balance his life with his wife and life with his friends from the Nigerian community.
10) Hussein is not the only migrant who started an interracial family. I also met Freweiny (third from right) an Eritrean lady who married a Bulgarian man. In the photo above her oldest daughter is cutting some cake in celebration of her birthday. Her daughter Vania has a Bulgarian name and surname and is much more lighter than her mother so Freweiny told me how over the years she had been asked so many times if she really was her mother and although it was quite upsetting at first she said she empowered her three children to love both their cultures and never be ash ashamed of them. Freweiny has been a single mother for many years as her husband passed when the kids were still very young but despite that she takes them to Bulgaria every year and still stay close to his family like her own. “It was very important for me that my kids could feel Bulgarian as much as I could have made them feel Eritrean, so I always pushed to speak all three languages at home and we go Bulgaria every year even twice a year if we can”. Freweiny in fact has lived in London for almost 30 years and looks back at her journey from Eritrean with a bit of bittiness. “I left my home in Eritrea with the hope of a better life and when I first got in Europe I was confused and alone, but I soon met Milen and he felt like home. My family said I had been become Caucasian too, that I was too westernised like I had forgotten where I came from, but I didn’t, I never did. It was painful at first, but then Milen accepted to follow me to London because that’s where I wanted to go and soon we were already a family of four so my family understood they were wrong and became very happy and supportive in the end.”
11) In the photo above is Milkana, Freweiny’s younger daughter during the annual celebrations of Eritrea’s independence. She is wearing zuria, traditional Eritrean clothing, and Freweiny says she looks even whiter than Vania so as a child people almost accused of culture appropriation when styling her hair or dressing her up as an Eritrean girl. Freweiny still faces racism when heading back to Bulgaria because what people see is a black African lady speaking their language but once they all moved to London she says she integrated so well they haven’t faced any of those issues as much anymore.
12) Yorsalem was 11 years old when her family decided to migrate to London from Eritrea. Although she is practically English and now goes to university she still refuses to say she’s British and believes she will eventually move back to Eritrea. She still feels very attached to her homeland and you can see her in the photo above for the celebration of Eritean’s independence not only wearing zuria but also wearing traditional jewellery called werky and styled her hair like women do in Asmara in a hairstyle called albasso.
I took this photo of her and then told her how although she wanted to look as much Eritrean as possible she really looked European to me. She was quite shocked when I said that but as soon as I pointed out at how nice and expensive her zuria looked, the amount of make up she was wearing, or even they way the makeup was applied and the products used she immediately realised maybe I was right.
13) In the photo above is my little cousin Hiyab on the same day of celebrations. Once again even a 5 year old girl wearing an Eritrean dress looks more European to me. If we just compare this photo to the first one we can see how all kids are smiling but Hyab smiles is different because she is clearly looking at the camera in a playful moment almost as she was posing. Her dress is very nice and clean and her hair had obviously been blown out
14) This photo was taken in London, in my friend’s Goncagul bedroom the day of her engagement party with Ozan who migrated from Turkey when he was 15. He is one of the many millions of minor who migrate on their own. Because of his young age he integrated pretty quickly and after finishing college he started working in the business market so he’s now well settled in the society. However he never let go of his culture as after all he was practically raise in Turkey and is now in fact getting married with my Turkish friend Gonca. He decided to have a very traditional party and wants to be clear about wanting to a raise family with turkish culture and even though he’s in London.
15) I took this photo in Milan in an Ethiopian community centre. The two ladies above left Ethiopia around the same time almost 15 years ago and can sort of represent the point of this project. They are both wearing makeup like makeup is worn in Europe, they had their eyebrows done, they’re wearing their hair in an afro and with extension and finally wearing jeans with a tight top and a kind of see through shirt. If I hadn’t said they were in Europe I doubt anyone could have imagined this photo to be taken in Ethiopia were women don’t exactly accentuate their figures or don’t get their eyebrows done, but this happens when migrants integrate and adapt to their new life so not all immigrants necessarily have to look like traditionalist, sad people.
16) Two ladies on the same day in Milan wearing more traditional clothing.
17) This photo was taken in an Eritrean church in London during the celebrations of the Eritrean thanksgiving. You can see a couple having their photo taken as they said to me it’s rare nowadays for them to dress like that anymore because they always dress like everyone else in London but use these festivities to take advantage of that and dust their traditional clothes out of the wardrobe and have a family photo taken.
18) Photo taken on the same day of the church’s choir. Sometimes as seen before can be small details to give out details on where is someone from, for example shoes, hair, makeup, jewellery, glasses, etc.
19) Again from the Ethiopian community centre where a group of ladies help handing out food and drinks to some refugees who recently arrived in Milan.
20) I took this photo in 2017 when me and some people from my church went to the borders to give out some clothing and first necessity to refugees who just arrived to the UK. In the photo above is Meareg, who also came from Eritrea many years ago, who was in charge of our “expedition” collecting a certificate of funds we received from a charity that helped us in our mission.
NAME OF CHOSEN COMPETITION/AWARD:
Youth Journalism International (category- photography, news photo)
I’m applying for the photography news photo category. I will tell a story through photos and the story I’d represent would be migration and integration. Those who have already been integrated with the new culture will dress differently, style their hair differently compared to those who just arrived and will probably have different expressions too as they would probably pose and smile whilst the others will probably be serious and more natural.
Therefore I would present a series of portraits and my audience will probably be an older audience who would understand the sensitivity of the series and the story behind the portraits. My story would represent the importance of photojournalism and news photo because I would narrate migration and integration in a more visual way a reader could connect better than article. Images can often empathise a story better than words.
Short feature:
Life after integration
Into the lives of those who’ve migrated to reach Europe.
Integration rhymes with immigration but most of the times we seem to forget that one follows the other. In the general culture a migrant is often associated with the classic image of a slim body, dirty clothes, and more but in reality that image only refers to migrants or refugees who have just managed to get to the new country of destination and therefore shouldn’t be confused with all immigrants. We use words like difference and diversity to describe a society, not giving justice to that description by omitting the sense of integration.
“I teach my kids about traditions of our homeland but sometimes they don’t take me seriously because I might be wearing jeans and a branded top” says for example Freweiny, an Eritrean lady who migrated to London and has become westernised ever since. Although it sounds very hard to move to a foreign country as a grown up, immigrants can integrate well over the course of the years and become not just part of the society but they also become like that society. Superficial things like clothing, alimentation, hairstyles, etc can tell a lot about an individual and that’s why it’s quite common to be able to identify who’s been in the country for long or not, but also when well integrated migrants dress in their traditional clothing you can still tell whether they live in Europe or in their homeland. “Even when I go back to Nigeria to visit my family people look at me like I’m a tourist and not one of them because I look European or because they hear me talking English on the phone with my kids” says Hussein, a Nigerian man who migrated to London where he lives with his family.
People like Freweiny and Hussein are just an example of London’s well integrated migrants who despite being part of the society are also part of of the migrants community.
