Troubled Waters
Can following in the footsteps of a refugee change the minds of those who are anti-immigration? A new C4 series plans to find out
Channel 4
- Robin Parker
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It’s a provocative premise: take a group of people with outspoken views on immigration, get them to witness the reality of life in the danger zones of Somalia and Syria, then take them on a month-long journey following a refugee’s perilous route through Africa, the Middle East and Europe into the UK.
Go Back to Where You Came From, a new Channel 4 reality series, does just this. The participants are first exposed to life in the war-torn towns – sometimes in armoured cars – that migrants have fled from. They then trek through deserts, navigate perilous border crossings, visit overcrowded refugee camps and burnt-out homes, before finally being crammed into a dinghy from Calais to Dover.
Among the participants are a chef, a haulage business owner and a provocative blogger, with most coming from communities in the UK in which immigration has had an impact. Some views on display will be unpalatable to many, but executive producer Emma Young believes the six travellers represent the full spectrum of attitudes towards this hot-button issue.
“We weren’t out to judge anyone,” she says. “We wanted to take people who represent voices up and down the UK to these places to see for themselves, and meet the people on whom they’ve had these views. It was key to make sure that on the journeys, all the anti- and pro-arguments were addressed.”
This format began life in Australia in 2011, with the first series – in which participants lived in a refugee camp and experienced immigration raids – hailed as groundbreaking.
Versions have since been made in Germany and Belgium, and it has been shown in the US. But it has taken years to come to the UK, where producers say they were determined to head off concerns about making entertainment out of often tragic circumstances in the show, which has been criticised by some refugee charities.
A group of migrants crossing the English Channel on a crowded dinghy.
Young travelled on the Somalian leg. A suicide bomb attack on Mogadishu’s Lido Beach claimed 32 lives just weeks after the group filmed there. They also visited a Syrian café following a recent attack. “It’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of security when you’re travelling in armoured vehicles,” she admits, “but often we were only allowed out of the cars for 20 to 40 minutes. You just don’t know when something might happen.”
In Syria, the participants staying in a local family’s home are woken from their beds and urgently whisked away to safety when a security alert is raised. Yet it was in Calais, where the participants prepared to face their final leg, that Young felt most vulnerable. “It felt lawless, people were telling us about gang violence, issues with smugglers. With different groups of refugees almost fighting each other, it really felt very Lord of the Flies.”
Bushra Shaik, a British Muslim, took part to counter what she sees as a widespread “dehumanising” of immigrants. She describes Boris Johnson comparing burka-wearing women to “letterboxes” as “degrading, rude, wrong and unfunny”. She adds, “I don’t want my children to be the target of such hateful conversation.”
She describes the trip as “relentless” and “very frightening” and says she returned to the UK feeling guilty at how ungrateful she had been for her comfortable life. “People don’t get to choose where they’re born. I want my kids to understand that people are taking these journeys because they have to do whatever they can to protect their families and give them the best opportunities.”
Chloe Dobbs, who’s an advocate of tighter immigration controls, says the experience opened her eyes to the role of foreign aid, and what she sees as the government’s neglect in freeing Syria from Isis without giving them sufficient support to rebuild the country. “I no longer blame immigrants for coming here – I blame governments, officials and everyone who’s turned a blind eye,” she says.
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For Young, these responses demonstrate the value of the series. The Australian version has been studied in schools there – would Young like to see it on the UK curriculum? “I’d like to see it shown in schools – bar the swearing, perhaps! – because it’s about how people communicate. We’re all victims of living in our own echo chambers.”
Authors
Robin Parker
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