“I thought, in simple terms, that I could carry the meaning of my personal relationships across the Irish Sea and receive a welcome party the second I mentioned my heritage, just like I had whenever I’d met Irish immigrants.”

Since spending time in Ireland, the beauty and importance of migration have become even more apparent to me than ever before.

As a writer whose work couldn’t be more steeped in the immigrant experience, from talking about my own heritage to interrogating the lasting effects of hostile border policies in my debut novel Soon Come, I didn’t think that was possible. But sitting down to think about it, I’m starting to see why. It’s the first time that I had become, not just through heritage, an immigrant myself.

Albeit an incredibly privileged one with a British passport, a British accent, and a British-Caribbean upbringing, I have found myself occupying a strange space where relocating, even just an hour’s flight away, had begun to chip away at my childhood understanding of identity.

As Irish identity itself continues to undergo a similar metamorphosis, I’m intrigued as to what it’ll look like when that merging of cultures becomes even more apparent.

My neighbours and I may not have lived in a utopia. We may not even get on all the time. But if those bonds are anything to go by, it’s that learning from and leaning on one another will only make us stronger.

Read the full article here.