Tag migrants
My husband and I both came to Australia as teenagers and we joke about how the only time we feel like we belong somewhere is when we fly over an ocean, because although we belong in two worlds – Zimbabwe and Australia, we also feel we don’t belong to either. My last visit to Zimbabwe,
I was already a bit of a rebel in East Germany when I was young, but I became a bigger rebel later after the wall came down, and I went to study in Berlin. That’s where I met my ex-husband, an Australian musician in a band. I didn’t speak much English in those days and
My family is originally from Afghanistan, but when the Taliban took over, they started the genocide of the Hazara people there. Unfortunately, we are very easy to identify because we have distinctive facial features so it wasn’t safe for us to live there anymore. As a result, just before I was born, my family fled
I had a baby daughter in my 30s, but it didn’t work out with the dad so I suddenly found myself a single parent. Luckily, I had a lot of support. At that time, I was living at home with my younger sister, my mum and my aunt, so my daughter ended up having two
8 years ago, I was feeling depressed because my pet had died, and a friend introduced me to an online game to take my mind off things. My first session, I’m ashamed to say, was 12 hours long. I actually spent an hour just creating my character! Then I became part of a guild, which
The area where I grew up in Perth wasn’t very multicultural, and when we arrived from Singapore in the mid-70s, I think it was the Asians’ turn to get bullied. Within the first few weeks we got a letter in the letterbox saying, ‘You dirty Asians, why don’t you fuck off.’ I remember my parents
I failed my English exams in my fourth year of my Finance degree in Colombia. At that time, I had a cousin living in Darwin who suggested I come here to learn English, so I said, ‘Alright. Why not?’ It was very hard for me at the beginning. Sometimes I felt homesick. Still, after 2
When I was 19, I had a boyfriend who rode a motorcycle and through him I fell in love with riding. And then I had one of those terrible weeks where I lost the house, the dog, and the boyfriend in a break up and I was in this moment of absolute devastation. One day,
My husband and I got married and seven days later we landed in Sydney. Neither of us knew a soul and it was such an adventure. He fell in love with Australia as soon as we arrived and wanted to stay here forever. But I was thinking to myself, ‘What have I done?’ In Mexico,
I come from a fairly privileged background in Pakistan, as both my parents had white collar jobs. We weren’t really rich though. Whenever we asked for something luxurious, the answer was ‘no’. But they were always prepared to invest whatever it took in our education, as they prioritised that above all else. So after I