On Moving Countries...

and how I decide to pack up and leave

‘How do you do it,’ a friend asked once, after I mused that I had lived in five different cities in less than ten years. ‘How do you just pick up, move, and start all over again?’

From one of my early months in London. It was so cold. I hadn’t discovered thermals. But I had discovered the Colombia Flower Market…

I often like to joke that when I moved to London, I did what my parents had done two decades before: packed up my life into two suitcases, squinted at my savings and booked a one way ticket to a new life.

In early 90s Brisbane, my parents were welcomed by the sweet Australian family my mother had been writing to a pen pal for years. In late 2010s London, I was welcomed by an Uber and a slightly befuddled Airbnb host (who it later turned out, was the husband of a now dear friend!).

I had done much the same thing when I moved to Perth, as a 22 year old, Melbourne a few years later, and Paris, for an artists residency during a pandemic. Each move had seemed straightforward, easy, made without much chagrin or deliberation. But my friend’s question gave me pause. Why did I find it so easy to pick up and leave?

from my first weekend in Perth… 2014 Yassmin - almost a decade ago!

I began this piece hoping the answer would reveal itself as wrote, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether the question of how is the question I am interested in at all.

Of course, there are the practical aspects to moving. Do you speak the language? How similar are the cultures, and how welcoming are they to new arrivals? How difficult is the system to navigate? How confident are you in being able to set your life up relatively smoothly? Moving between Perth and Melbourne was almost friction-less in comparison to moving between the London and Paris, but of course this was made much easier by the plethora of available information online about moving to France. Moving to big, Western metropolitan cities is one thing. Moving to somewhere off the ‘beaten track’ - Algiers, Kinshasa, Tashkent - that’s a whole other ball game, and not one I have tackled. Why?

My friend’s question revealed something about my own motivations. I have rarely traveled solely for adventure, simply to satisfy my curiosity or to experience something new. I have almost always traveled - and moved - for opportunity, for work, for ‘a better life’, placing me squarely in the rotten wicker basket of ‘economic migrant’ according to various right-wing governments of the 21st century. (They hate us, but also their economies wouldn’t work without us, so……...psych!)

Ultimately, when I move, I’m not thinking ‘will I make friends’, ‘will there be halal food’, ‘will I like it?’.

I’m thinking ‘will I be safe’, ‘will I be employable’, ‘will I have a future?’.

from my first WEEK in London. the shop I was in no longer exists.

But real talk? I can’t always pick up and move.

For some people, the world is their oyster. For others, it’s a series of visa applications, embassy appointments, and no. Less oyster, more raw prawn¹.

In the end, part of why I left Paris was because I wasn’t allowed to stay. They rejected my visa because I refused to take the hijab off for my photo.

My widely reported on expulsion from the United States was also visa related, and although there are various narratives in the press (US visa officials had one story, my personal account of the experience is completely different), the outcome was the same. I could not enter the US on a visitor’s visa again, and if I argued, I would be banned.

More recently, I put the brakes on another move due to the UK visa requirements I remain subject to. The Home Office strikes again!

And friends, I am one of the lucky ones! Alhamdulilah, I have an understanding of the system, access to lawyers, and most importantly, an Australian passport! While being born in Sudan has made my life and most visa applications more difficult, if my parents hadn’t made that audacious journey to a small city thousands of miles away and stayed there until we were granted citizenship, you can bet your bottom dollar I would not be here, writing this substack to an audience of thousands, publishing in English. My cousins can barely get a visa to Egypt, let alone to the Schengen area. A visa to the UK? Forget about it. In this hostile environment? You’re dreaming!²

I share my visa woes and border obsessions not to complain, but rather as a reminder to myself, and to all of us, about the embedded and structural inequalities of our world. Borders, borders, borders. How much violence has been inflicted in the name of borders? At the site of borders? As a result of borders?

I share this to remind myself to not be uncharitable with those who have multiple ‘powerful’ citizenships, who move through spaces without fear of persecution for their bodies or beliefs or place of birth. It is easy to be resentful, indeed I think it is often understandable, but how does it help? My anger is with the structure, not the individual.

That said, I share this also as a reminder to all of us to be cognizant of the privileges we enjoy when it comes to movement, and to encourage us all to be mindful of what we take for granted. We have been swimming in such disgusting rhetoric on those of us who ‘move’ for years. But it’s not a far away, removed issue. I am the ‘migrant problem’. I am part of the ‘farcical’ politicians talk about. This toxicity might not be directly poisoning you, but it is responsible for the ‘slow deaths’ of places and people you love.

it’s pretty grim that I did not have to google hard at all to find a headline of this ilk.

Let’s interrupt these logics, wherever we can. Let’s ask critical questions of those who flippantly problematise migration, let’s question our own assumptions, let’s remember that borders are human-made constructs that exist to uphold historical imperial and colonial power dynamics.

Why do I move? Because I want to remind myself I am alive.

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Recommendations

I have an eclectic mix for you this week, things that have caught my eye or made me think.

1. Look to the mainstream to explain the rise of the far right

A fab piece in The Conversation on the mainstreaming of the far-right by press. Made me mad, in the best way.

What is less obvious and yet just as damaging is the hyped coverage of the threat. The resurgence of reactionary politics is entirely predictable and has been traced for a long time. Yet every victory or rise is analysed as new and unexpected rather than part of a longer, wider process in which we are all implicated.

2. Climate Trace

This is a super cool, brand spanking new database that was published about a week ago during COP. It is “an inventory of unprecedented granularity that pinpoints nearly every major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions around the world and provides independently produced estimates of how much each emits.”

What does that mean? An interactive map of all the major greenhouse gas emitters in the world. You can type in your local area, country, region, and check out where emissions come from…

3. Amaliah Book Club

Two in one recommendation here! Book and event. If you’re in London, come join my final Amaliah Book Club of the year. The book? Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows…

PS - Catch up with my appearance on Monocle on Saturday talking the week’s art and culture news!

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Thank you, as always for reading and supporting my work. Big shout out to all my paid subscribers - as always, I am eternally grateful. As a freelancer of almost a decade, income from this newsletter makes the world of difference, and every little bit counts.

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See you next week inshallah,

Yassmin

1. Did that pun work? Did it??? I laughed when I wrote it, okay.

2. Turns out I just write about the same themes over and over, as evidenced by this piece on ‘picking one’s poison’ when it comes to where we live…