BBC Radio 4 2016-05-17

BBC Radio 4 2016-05-17

Yesterday for its World on the Move day, the BBC broadcast a series of conversations about migration and return. It made me think of my own journey to the UK. When my parents came here, they like many of their generation never really discussed their plans with us and for me the vague sense of a return to Pakistan lingered for several years. When it finally dawned on me that we weren’t going back, I remember feeling a profound sense of sadness. This wasn’t because I remembered much about Karachi but I wondered as a child how any other country could ever became home. For years I would look up at an aeroplane and think that planes always took you away from places, that these long journeys were not about finding new destinations but about leaving behind those we love.

But Britain did become my home so decades later I was puzzled when a major Scottish gallery invited me and my family to be photographed for an exhibition. The exhibition was celebrating the lives of people of Indo –Pakistani heritage and despite feeling very honoured, I also felt uneasy at the thought that I was in some ways linked to a migration story – I didn’t see myself as a migrant because that implied movement. I was British and the UK was my only real home.

It seems to me that you cannot think of migration without thinking of home. Home and return are powerful words. Whether voluntary or an act of desperation, movement always means a rupture of sorts.

This is why the kind of hospitality we give to others can never simply be about offering food and shelter – it’s also about creating a sense of home and normality even if it’s temporary. As human beings our physical needs are primary but they’re never enough - we want to feel secure, cared for and despite entering as a stranger we don’t want to remain a stranger. A sense of home is fundamental to our sense of well-being. Giving hospitality is not without risk but the scriptural commandments in both the Qur’an and the Bible, to give hospitality to the vulnerable makes hospitality a duty not an act of charity.

Today we focus on the migration issue in terms of a crisis of borders and resources. But in all the political complexity, the real story is that of each individual’s hopes and fears. Leaving your country can have long term emotional and psychological consequences even if you’re lucky enough to build a new life elsewhere. Despite the gratitude felt by so many to have reached safe shores, others will continue to feel displaced until they have a chance to return one day, to rebuild and breathe new hope into what we see as war ravaged lands and yet for them has always remained home.