Is this England? That's the question Naseraldeen asked to the first police officer he met in Dover, after having crossed the Channel Tunnel hidden under a truck. I met Naseraldeen last June in Ventimiglia, where he was stranded on the rocks of the Italian seaside, a few steps far from the border with France; at that time, the border was sealed by French riot police, no migrant could cross. This 26 years old young men had left Sudan a couple of months before, since - belonging to an ethnic group from Darfur - he was object of discrimination on the labor market. He eventually made it to enter in France, he reached Paris, then Calais, where he attempted to cross the Channel for two months. The UK Home Office has now provided him a decent accommodation in a two-storeys red bricks house in Blackburn, Lancashire, an hour by train north of Manchester, where he is waiting for his asylum request to be accepted and finally begin a new life.
The article is written by Marianne Meunier for the daily French newspaper La Croix.