The project explores the lives of a wide-ranging group of immigrant mothers in post-millennial, recession-age London, challenging statistics and common perceptions about migration and motherhood.
Migrant Mother London explores a historic transformation happening in the UK and London. In the last few decades, a country that has traditionally been an exporter of people has seen a surge of immigration. Three million people have come to the country since 2001. In the last few years, as much as 37 per cent of Londoners were foreign-born.
Migrants are drawn here by promises of freedom and prosperity, but the UK is struggling to provide opportunities and security for newcomers. Battered by the global financial crisis, the country has seen a growing anxiety about immigrants. They are blamed for taxing resources and stealing jobs; tabloids print alarmist stories about the ‘migrant baby boom’; groups like the English Defense League spread anti-Muslim rhetoric. The government, meanwhile, continue to introduce stricter immigration caps and visa controls.
In this climate, migrants are often thought of as a group, as a collective threat or source of sympathy. The reality, however, is that they are too multifaceted to be called a group, and that no statistics can convey the complexities of their experiences. In this project I photograph individuals in their everyday lives in order to gain insight into what migration means in post-millenial London.
The focus on mothers is inspired by Dorothea Lange’s 1936 photograph, ‘Migrant Mother’. But rather than one iconic image that speaks for a population, these documentary portraits show a variety of backgrounds and perspectives: Daniela, from Sicily, who was drawn to London’s youth culture in the eighties; Suzi, an Arab-Christian Palestinian who came from Jerusalem during the first Intifada; Wafwa, who left Cairo shortly before the Arab Spring to follow her husband to a freer country; Sri, from Jakarta, who left her own husband and children to live with the royal family of Brunei as a nanny and housekeeper; Rhodah, from Tanzania, who found herself homeless and alone in the city at eighteen, and survived to become a married mother of three.