Seven Things an Immigrant Journey Can Teach Us About Belonging
- 16 hours ago
- 6 min read
Joseph Arabi is an author, storyteller, and founder of Fiklyn Press, an independent publishing house dedicated to cross-cultural narratives. He is the author of Roots Across Borders, Fikayo Saves the Playground, and the novel The Callin Divide.
What happens after the suitcase is unpacked and the excitement of arrival fades? Joseph Arabi’s memoir, Roots Across Borders, explores the less visible side of migration, rebuilding a career, learning unfamiliar systems, raising a family, and discovering that belonging is not simply something we find, but something we build.
What does starting again really involve?
Immigration is often discussed through statistics, visas, and policy, but behind every number is a person making decisions about work, housing, family, identity, and the future. Roots Across Borders brings those questions into everyday life, the workplace, supermarket, school gate, public transport, and family home. Its central message is simple, crossing a border can mean having to prove yourself again, even when your skills and experience are real.
1. Your qualifications may not travel as easily as you do
A skilled immigrant can arrive with education, professional experience, and ambition, yet still face rejection or uncertainty. Starting again may mean rebuilding professional credibility and learning how a new labour market works. The lesson is not to mistake an early setback for a final verdict on your ability.
Your experience may be real. Your ambition may be real. Your ability may be real, but when you cross a border, you may still have to prove yourself all over again. That is one of the hidden costs of starting again.
2. Knowing the language does not mean knowing the system
Everyday English can feel very different from the language of forms, regulations, applications, and official correspondence. Banking, healthcare, housing, and employment can introduce unfamiliar processes and acronyms. Learning the system becomes part of the migration journey, and patience becomes as important as determination.
One missed instruction can become another delay. One misunderstanding can become another expense. One rejection can become another blow to confidence. That is where Roots Across Borders becomes particularly compelling.
It takes the immigration conversation away from the abstract and brings it into the kitchen, the supermarket, the workplace, the school gate, the bus, the train station, and the family living room.
The book's stated focus is the experience of a skilled immigrant worker and his family navigating post Brexit, post COVID Britain, exploring resilience, cultural adaptation, family bonds, career stability, and the search for belonging.
It is, in other words, a story about immigration, but it is also a story about being human.
3. Small expenses can carry big emotions
Some of the most powerful immigrant stories are not found in dramatic events. They are found in supermarkets, at checkout counters, on buses, in conversations, and in the quiet calculations people make in their heads.
Can we afford this? What does that cost in the currency I know? Am I spending too much? What will this mean for the family budget?
The memoir captures this emotional side of migration particularly well. The adjustment to British currency and living costs becomes more than an economic exercise. It becomes psychological.
The book explores what it calls “Conversion Fever”, the instinctive habit of mentally converting British prices into the currency of one's home country. Suddenly, a seemingly ordinary purchase can become an emotional event. A meal is no longer simply a meal. It becomes a calculation. A supermarket bill becomes a reminder that everything has changed. Slowly, the immigrant has to learn a new financial reality.
This is one of the book's strengths, it finds the extraordinary inside the ordinary.
4. The biggest barriers are not always visible
An accent, surname, foreign qualification, lack of local experience, or unfamiliarity with workplace culture can create friction. The book avoids reducing every difficulty to discrimination, recognising that bureaucracy, economics, culture, perception, and unfamiliarity can overlap. The immigrant experience can contain both disappointment and opportunity.
Roots Across Borders does not suggest that every difficulty is caused by discrimination. Instead, it presents a more complicated picture in which bureaucracy, culture, economics, unfamiliarity, and perception can combine to make integration difficult.
That distinction matters because the immigrant experience cannot always be reduced to victimhood, nor can it honestly be reduced to triumph. It is often somewhere between the two.
There are disappointments. There are opportunities. There are people who help and people who misunderstand. There are moments of loneliness and moments of profound connection. There are days when simply getting through the day feels like an achievement.
5. Community can turn survival into belonging
Neighbours, colleagues, mentors, friends, charities, and fellow immigrants can make an enormous difference. A recommendation, an explanation of a form, or simply hearing “I have been through this too” can restore confidence. Networking, volunteering, and mentorship also create a powerful shift, the person who once needed help can eventually become someone who helps others.
The book describes community as a source of practical and emotional support, particularly when navigating employment, healthcare, and cultural barriers.
There is something profoundly universal about that. Most people, regardless of where they were born, understand what it feels like to need somebody.
The person who explains the form. The colleague who recommends you for an opportunity. The neighbour who checks on you. The friend who says, “I have been through this too.” For an immigrant, those seemingly small acts can become enormous.
They say, you are not alone.
6. Children often become bridges between worlds
Migration changes the whole family. Children may adapt quickly to a new culture while continuing to encounter their parents’ traditions and expectations at home. Rather than seeing identity as a choice between two worlds, Roots Across Borders suggests that different parts of identity can coexist and even enrich one another.
That idea gives the book relevance to anyone who has ever felt caught between cultures, generations, or expectations.
7. Belonging is built through ordinary moments
Perhaps the deepest lesson is that belonging rarely arrives in one dramatic moment. It grows through conversations, friendships, work, community, family routines, and shared experiences. A Christmas trip, a new friendship, or simply realising that you are creating memories in your new country can mark a quiet turning point, the place that once felt unfamiliar begins to feel like home.
Then there are the moments when life stops being about paperwork, applications, money, or uncertainty, and becomes simply life.
In one of the memoir's later chapters, the family takes a Christmas trip to Glasgow. After the relentless rhythm of work, school runs, deadlines, and everyday responsibilities, they decide they need to pause.
They board the train. They arrive in Glasgow. There are Christmas lights, markets, music, laughter, food, children discovering new things, a Ferris wheel, and the River Clyde. There is also an elderly couple, kind strangers who offer to take a family photograph.
It is a beautiful reminder that the immigrant story is not supposed to remain a story of struggle forever. There must also be room for joy, discovery, ordinary family memories, and the moment when you look around and realise, we are actually living here now.
The journey is not simply about arriving
Roots Across Borders ultimately moves beyond the question of immigration and towards a universal question, "What does it take to belong?" The answer is neither complete assimilation nor permanent separation from the past. It is the ability to carry your roots while growing in new soil, to question your own assumptions, to contribute to your community, and to remain open to change.
Roots Across Borders does not read like an indictment of Britain. Nor does it present Britain as a perfect destination where every dream comes true. Instead, it occupies the much more interesting territory between those extremes.
Britain can be difficult. Britain can be welcoming. Systems can be frustrating. People can be kind. Cultural differences can create tension, but they can also create learning.
The immigrant can feel like an outsider. The same immigrant can eventually discover belonging.
That complexity is precisely what makes the story relevant to readers from different races, religions, nationalities, and social backgrounds.
You do not have to agree with every political argument surrounding immigration to recognise the humanity of an immigrant family. You do not have to have migrated yourself to understand sacrifice. You certainly do not need to share the author's background to understand the desire to give your children a better future.
A story worth continuing
In an era when immigration can become an abstract political argument, personal stories restore the human dimension. Joseph Arabi’s memoir invites readers to look beyond labels and recognise the hopes, pressures, sacrifices, and contributions behind the word “immigrant”.
Discover Roots Across Borders and explore the human story behind starting again.
Read more from Joseph Arabi
Joseph Arabi, Author & Founder of Fiklyn Press
As an author and the founder of Fiklyn Press, Joseph Arabi writes to explore how shared human experiences can heal cultural and emotional divides. His published works range from deeply personal non-fiction capturing the immigrant family journey to inspiring children's books and contemporary fiction. With a craft honed through formal creative writing studies at Teesside University, Joseph combines personal experience with compelling storytelling to spark meaningful conversations. Explore his author profile to discover his books, articles, and latest literary projects.
