Watching and listening

It is difficult moving to a new place without constantly comparing it to your previous home. We moved from a rapidly gentrifying, but still largely deprived inner-city borough to an outer-city estate. As much as I hate gentrification, I would also be the first to admit that I like using my laptop in nice coffee shops that sell delicious cake, independent cinemas and micro-breweries. I like being with a range of different people from various ethnic backgrounds. I enjoy spending time getting to know people from different religious traditions. Tower Hamlets has a multitude of multi-everything… Havering, well, not so much. But I am trying to listen and learn without judging. I am trying to listen to people’s fear of difference and anxiety around losing work opportunities, places in school and homes for their children to “foreigners”. I am also seeking to build friendship with those who might experience racism and xenophobia. I want to be a person of peace and welcome in this place that frequently seems unwelcoming to outsiders or people who are “not from around here”. I feel different here, because I don’t feel like I fit with the predominant culture. In Tower Hamlets there was loads of different-ness and my own difference was irrelevant. But I feel like an outsider here, like I can’t fit in. (To my shame, sometimes I feel like I don’t want to fit in here.) It is a challenging place, but it helps me to think about how other “outsiders” might feel. I want to be able to understand difference and welcome from both sides – how people feel when they perceive that their way of life is being threatened, or changing, and what it is like for new people to move into an area where they will experience life as outsiders and newcomers.

I heard Hsiao Hung Pai talking on the radio the other day about her book “Angry White People” (https://bookshop.theguardian.com/catalog/product/view/id/368551/)  which is coming out soon, and I was fascinated by her insights and experience of listening to marginalised white working-class people. “Delving deep into the day-to-day of the most marginalised section of the white working-class, Pai uncovers that their ideologies are not an aberration in modern British society, quite the contrary, not only are they very much a part of it, but they are constantly reproduced, rejuvenated and mainstreamed by the media and powers that be.”

I think that listening to people, on all sides of the discussion about migration and welcome in marginalised communities in the UK is imperative.