A living archive for migration stories
What We Leave We Carry is a podcast series from WritersMosaic magazine that tells the true-life stories of migration to the UK. It delves into hidden and diverse communities across the country, exploring richly rewarding stories. Colin Grant, director of WritersMosaic and the author of books such as Bageye at the Wheel, Homecoming and I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be, speaks to journalist Ella Sinclair about complicating ‘the dominant picture that we have of Britain’ and challenging pervasive anti-immigration rhetoric.
Tell us about What We Leave We Carry?
What We Leave We Carry is a phrase that explores what people bring with them, as well as what they leave behind, when they migrate to another country. It also considers what people bring with them, both physically and emotionally.
Often stories of migration are depicted in a negative fashion, and I wanted to posit the idea that, actually, in Britain, we are to some degree a nation of migrants. There’s a huge population of migrants and their descendants in this country, and they are part of the very fabric of our society.
So, with this series, I wanted to complicate the dominant picture that we have of Britain, particularly after Brexit, where we seem to expel this idea that we (Britain) are welcome to foreigners.
The podcast series is in some ways a continuation of a previous oral history project that I conducted for my book, Homecoming, which is the story of migration to Britain from the Caribbean, focused on the years after the arrival of the Empire Windrush. In effect, the series looks at the ways in which this Caribbean migration prefaced a mass migration of people to this country from the 1940s onwards – exploring stories of people coming from all over the world to Britain.
Exploring why, for instance, there are many, many migrants from Yemen in South Shields, and why there are 4,000 Koreans in New Malden. What We Leave We Carry is telling the story of Britain through these shifts in populations throughout the country.
What was the inspiration behind the title of the series?
‘What We Leave We Carry’ is a phrase that comes from a poem by a Caribbean poet called John La Rose. It speaks to the emotional cost of migration: the loss, as well as the ways people find comfort when they live in a different country.
When I spoke to people from Serbia, one of the key things that I heard people bring to Britain is their manual coffee grinder, which reminds them of home. What We Leave We Carry is the idea that – wherever you go – you bring yourself with you, not just your physical self, but your emotional self too.
‘What We Leave We Carry is a counter-narrative’
Does this kind of storytelling have power to challenge anti-immigration rhetoric?
Yes, I think the project is a challenge to some of the negative narratives that have sprung up with regards to immigration. One of the real motivations for the project was to reflect on what happened to the people directly affected by the Windrush scandal, where British citizens of Caribbean origin were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants by the Home Office. Some of these people were packed off back to the Caribbean.
The scandal was fuelled by anti-immigration rhetoric, a rhetoric which can only be challenged when you have a counter-narrative. What We Leave We Carry is a counter-narrative. If it’s heard and listened to, I believe that it can change the way that people think about people coming to live in this country. In a landscape where collective, larger stories of migration often become blunted and pathologised, our project humanises these stories, providing a chance to meet an individual face, to hear an individual story.
You have described What We Leave We Carry as complicating ‘the very nature of what we consider British’. Can you elaborate on this?
What is it to be British? Who gets the right to say, ‘I am British’? My parents came from Jamaica, and quite often would say that they were British. I was born here, and I say that I’m English. Sometimes when you’re abroad, even sometimes when you’re here, people doubt the veracity of these assertions.
One of the questions that we ask the people in this series is about how they begin to feel British. It’s a very complicated and sometimes painful thing to consider whether they feel they can answer to being British, or whether they hold on to some vestige of being from another country. Often, people have a kind of double consciousness, where they are both British and also from the country from which they departed.
‘People have been very excited to hear their stories of migration told by themselves in a way which is sympathetic’
The podcast tells stories of migration as spoken by individuals in their own words. Why is it important to you to document their accounts in this way?
The richest stories come from the sounds and the words of the people themselves. One of the most exciting and dynamic aspects of the podcast is the language people use to describe their own lives. The language is sometimes quirky – it may even be a kind of creole, patois or dialect – but this adds to the very fabric of our culture.
All the people who have been conducting the conversations – they’re conversations rather than interviews – were being led by what people say, rather than dictating stories that we want to hear. Quite often, people miss out on the nuance of what’s been said, because they don’t understand the sound, or the way in which things are spoken.
These ways of telling stories may not speak to a standard notion of what it is to be British, or a standard way in which you speak English.
What does the future hold for What We Leave We Carry?
The future is very bright for What We Leave We Carry; the book of the same title will be published by Jonathan Cape in 2026. I think people have been very excited to hear their stories of migration told by themselves in a way which is sympathetic and empathetic to them.
I think they will share these stories with others, creating a ripple effect. More and more people will listen to these stories, and might even want their own to be included. What We Leave We Carry is a living archive which I hope will grow, and grow, and grow, and never cease.
Ella Sinclair is a freelance writer, researcher and communications professional who focuses on race, history, politics and social justice. She has previously written for the Guardian, gal-dem and Cosmopolitan, among others.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Runnymede Trust.
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