My latest audiobook was this 2015 publication, written by Sunjeev Sahota, and impeccably read by Sartaj Garewal.

I really can't say enough good things about it.

The story revolves around three Indian men, Tochi, Avtar, and Randeep, who travel to the UK (with varying degrees of legality) to look for work, and a British-born Sikh woman, Narinder, who -- after learning of the death of an acquaintance in a people-smuggling trip gone tragically wrong -- tries to help Randeep through a set-up marriage.

In one sense, I learnt nothing new. Having done academic work on migration for many years, I had a pretty good idea of what the life of undocumented migrants is like.

But there's nothing like the power of a well-told story, and these characters just leap out of your headphones.



Life revolves around working (often more than one job at a time, and often it's back-breaking or stomach-churning labour), or looking for work (because their employers are either fly-by-nights who get busted, or abusers who have to be escaped from). The precariousness of their lives is palpable. It's literally a hand-to-mouth existence, as they struggle to cover their own meagre living expenses while sending money back home to pay their families' debts and bills, and attempting to save for the future.

And the struggle becomes violent at times. This is not a sweet, rosy portrayal of workers' solidarity and brotherly love. There's not enough work to go round, and -- as this review puts it -- they are constantly "fighting for scraps". Tochi is perhaps in the worst situation. His caste made him a victim of violence back home, and marks him out as an object of constant suspicion among his fellow-national co-workers in the UK. But the others, too, have to be ever ready to defend themselves and their hard-earned money against extortioners and competitors of all stripes. Sometimes there's just nothing they can do to keep at bay the various powerful figures who dominate their lives. 



As you hear about the young men's working hours, diet, and constricted lifestyle, you think: "They're young, but they're killing themselves." And the toll on their mental health can only be guessed at. The unrelenting unpredictability of their lives, in which their vulnerability constantly demands vigilance, and fans fear; the lack of rest and fun and comfort; the dismal, unhomely surroundings -- all this must leave its mark.

At the end, they're all still alive. But along the way, they have variously shed their faith, dreams, health, and vivacity. At the end, Tochi actually seems the most complete, Avtar the most broken. Narinder, it seems, will never get over Tochi, just as Randeep will never get over Narinder.



Sahota (who grew up in the UK, his grandfather having moved there in 1962) has an excellent turn of phrase, and his writing is always fresh and compelling. He does indeed come across as "acutely intelligent and unpretentious", neither pitying his characters nor hero-worshipping them. And despite the essential tragedy that lies at the book's heart -- the lack of opportunities that leaves too many people with too few choices -- the story has its moments of humour (such as when the boys decide to get into the stolen chicken business, undeterred by their lack of clear ideas about what to do with chicken carcasses).

Like all the best novels, this one makes you ask yourself, "What would I do in these circumstances?" They had so very few alternatives...



And they are so not alone...

Last year, 39 Vietnamese migrants died of asphyxiation while being shipped across the Channel to the UK. This report came shortly afterwards, and the migrants' dilemma is summed up very clearly by lecturer Dang Hoang Giang: "These immigrants know the difficulties waiting ahead, and leaving Vietnam is not just to earn money, but also to build a better future for them, their family in Vietnam, and their children."

The same sentiments are expressed in this moving documentary, which marks the first anniversary of those migrants' death.

In just the same way, Senegalese remittances "help to diversify and substantially increase household incomes, allowing families to invest in education or housing. They also protect people from instability, ill-functioning markets, failing state policies and a lack of state-provided social security."

Closer to home, children take huge risks to journey to Malaysia, driven out of their homeland by an array of insurmountable dangers.

In face of all this courage, all this anguish, publics in receiving countries need to be challenged and enabled to develop a more rounded and compassionate way of viewing migrants.

Books like Sahota's are precious contributions towards this goal.