I believe my story was birthed out of necessity.
Necessity in the sense that I twisted my ankle as I was working on my initial story idea and had a nasty ligament tear- sentencing me to eternal bedrest (or so it felt like).
I was forced to scrap my story, as a mattress-bound, immobile journalist, my options were running low.
It was then that the UK, to everyone’s shock and awe, announced a ban on master’s students bringing in their dependents.
As an international student myself, albeit one that travelled here without a family, I was in disbelief.
The disbelief stemmed from a feeling of vulnerability, one that reminded me that every one of our stays here are at the whims and fancies of bureaucrats in cities far away from us.
Growing up in the Middle East, I was familiar with this level of indifference shown to the immigrant/expat (words and their silly implications) population. There was always a certain level of uncertainty that pockmarked most of my family’s lives- the feeling that at any moment, our status’ as residents can expire.
However, I could not believe that the UK had stooped to the same level. I assumed creating fear and uncertainity amongst a mostly black and brown population was a relic of its colonial past.
I delved deeper into the statistics, eagerly consuming the numbers that defined and categoriesed us into ‘non-EU’, ‘immigrant’, ‘student’, ‘dependent’.
For the popular imagination of this country, these words represented the villains- the sources of all their cost-of-living and unemployment woes.
However I believed it was important to assign names and faces to those statistics, show them that every one of those numbers represented hopes, ambitions and dreams of a better life.
Indian students, unsurprisingly, were the chart-topping block-buster superstars of this show- coming out on top in almost every demographic and statistic possible.
As an Indian student myself, I believed this would be my forte, and quite honestly would be the area where I would be able to lend my personal insight.
The statitics were what initially caught my attention and therefore I knew that the statistics were what I needed to feature on my social media video. I did not imagine myself ever becoming a numbers gal but the sheer scale of people that migrated in search of something better fascinated me.
All I hoped to do with this story was to evoke a bit of empathy, and possibly show that we aren’t the ones you should be pointing your metaphorical guns at.
