What does a life cost, and why do we stay?
Soraya Mohamedi · Employment Area Coordinator, Ubuntu Canarias · 12 min read · Published 2 November 2026
The story of those who migrate. One life, one journey, too many borders.
I want to tell this story from the inside. Not from figures, statistics, political speeches or the pictures of small boats we see on the news. I want to tell it from the skin of the person who leaves: what they feel, what they lose, what they fear, and what nobody ever asks them.
Because migrating does not begin when a person crosses a border. It begins much earlier. Sometimes it begins with a goodbye that is never said out loud, with a room left behind, with a mother trying to smile so she won’t cry, with children who are promised you will be back soon.
It begins when staying starts to hurt more than leaving.
Because nobody leaves everything they know without a reason. Nobody leaves behind their family, their language, their customs, their memories and their history unless something pushes them to.
Sometimes I don’t leave because I want to see other places. I leave because I can no longer find a place where I can live.
Before I set off, I have already lost many things. I have lost the peace of knowing what will happen to me tomorrow. I have lost opportunities, safety, plans and, sometimes, even the ability to imagine a future.
Maybe I have lost someone in a war, on a crossing, to an illness I could not treat, or simply in the time that passes while I try to survive.
And even so, leaving is not easy.
What do I feel as I prepare to go? How do you explain the pain of leaving the people you love? How do you fit a whole life into a suitcase? What do I do with the memories that don’t fit?
I leave with fear, but also with hope. With uncertainty, but with the need to believe that something different might exist on the other side.
Some goodbyes last for years. Some families wait. Some children grow up far from their parents, some mothers grow old without hugging their children again, and some couples try to keep their relationship alive through a screen.
I take with me who I am, and everything I may never be able to return to.
The journey
The journey is not always a road or a sea crossing. It is a chain of decisions, dangers, waiting and giving things up.
Sometimes I depend on people I don’t know, on routes I don’t control, on promises that can turn into lies.
I go through cold, hunger and exhaustion. I may suffer violence, abuse, exploitation and the fear of dying.
Maybe I have crossed deserts, borders, mountains or seas. Maybe I have had to hide, walk for days, hand over my savings or trust my life to someone whose name I barely know.
Maybe I have seen other people die. Maybe I lost someone along the way. Maybe I still wake up at night remembering what happened.
And during the journey there is one question that never leaves me:
Will I make it?
If I make it, that does not mean the journey is over. Sometimes it is only the start of another way of surviving.
Arriving
I arrive in a place where I don’t know the streets, where words have different sounds and where I often don’t understand what people are saying to me.
I have to learn how to get around, how to ask, how to find my way, how to find a roof over my head, and how a society I am not yet part of works.
They ask me for documents I don’t have. They talk about appointments I can’t get. They demand procedures I don’t understand.
I need to register at the town hall, a work permit, a bank account, an address, an administrative identity that lets me exist in the eyes of the institutions.
I have to learn the language, understand the rules, find resources and discover where I can ask for help.
And while I try to sort it all out, life goes on.
I am hungry. I am cold. I need to sleep. I need to work. I need to send money to those who stayed behind waiting for something from me.
I have not reached the end of my road. I have reached the start of a life I don’t yet know how to build.
Having no papers. Being invisible
What do I feel when I walk down the street afraid that someone will ask for my papers?
What do I feel when I look for work and my legal situation closes doors before anyone even knows what I can do?
What do I feel when I can’t sign a contract, when I can’t easily rent a home, when I depend on others for needs I used to meet on my own?
What do I feel when my legal status seems to define my whole identity?
I walk among people, but sometimes I feel that nobody sees me.
I am here, I breathe here, I suffer here, I dream here. And yet it seems I still have no right to take up a place.
I have skills, knowledge, experience, a profession, a story. But often nobody gets as far as asking me what I can do, because first they need to know what documents I have.
Having no papers does not erase my humanity, my abilities or my rights.
But it can turn my daily life into a chain of waiting, obstacles and fear.
The way others look at me
And then I hear:
“Go back to your country.”
What do I feel when you say that to me?
Maybe you don’t know that my country is still inside me. That I dream of its smells, its food, its streets, its voices and its sunsets. That there are nights when I would give anything to sit at my family’s table again.
I don’t need you to remind me where I come from. I haven’t forgotten it for a single day.
What do I feel when you call me an invader?
I don’t feel like an invader. I feel like a person who had to leave home to try to build a life.
I haven’t come to take your place, to take away your identity or to erase your history. I have come with my own, with my abilities, my contradictions, my needs and my dreams.
What do I feel when you accuse me of living off your taxes, of receiving benefits I have never had or have barely been able to use?
I wonder what image you have of me.
I wonder if you have ever thought that I have also worked, that I have also paid, that I have also waited for a chance, that I have also spent sleepless nights wondering how I will make it to the end of the month.
I am not a benefit. I am not a handout. I am not a figure in a budget.
I am a person.
What do I feel when you look at me with suspicion, when you assume intentions I don’t have, when you judge me by my appearance, my accent, my religion, my nationality or the colour of my skin?
What do I feel when I have to prove I am an honest person before anyone even knows me?
I don’t want to be suspected because of where I come from. I don’t want my existence to be seen as a threat.
I want the chance to be known for who I am and for what I do.
Loneliness and longing
There are days when I feel strong and others when I can barely hold myself together.
I miss my mother. My children. My brothers and sisters. My friends.
I miss speaking without having to translate my thoughts, getting a joke without effort, recognising places, knowing where I am without looking at a map.
I miss being someone people know.
Here I have to explain who I am, where I come from, what I do, why I am here. Sometimes I feel my story always begins with a justification.
I wonder who I am when nobody knows my name. Who I am when you look at me like a stranger, like someone dangerous, like someone who doesn’t belong here.
Do I stop being a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a professional, a student, a worker or a friend because I crossed a border?
Do I lose my dignity because my papers are not in order?
I also have memories that make me smile. I also have songs that take me home, flavours that bring back my childhood and words that only make sense in my language.
Not everything I left behind is suffering. I also left love, joy, culture, knowledge, friendships and a life that deserves to be remembered.
The pain that runs through generations
There is something about migration that doesn’t always appear in the stories: the pain of those who arrived and of those born afterwards.
Because sometimes the story doesn’t end with those who packed their bags, crossed borders and left their land behind. It continues in their children and grandchildren.
In those who grew up hearing other names for their origin, learning to live with differences, sensing looks that questioned whether they belonged, even when that place was also their home.
There are fathers and mothers who could not cry. Not because they felt no pain, but because they could not afford to stop.
They had to work, feed the children, learn another language, adapt, hold on. They had to survive.
And there were tears never shed, words never spoken, humiliations kept in silence and homesickness that never found a place to rest.
Sometimes it is the children who begin to ask why their parents had to put up with so much. And it is the grandchildren who cry for what their grandparents could not cry for.
Why did I have to feel different?
Why did my family have to prove so many times that it deserved respect?
Why could someone look at us with suspicion before knowing us?
What happens to a person who grows up feeling they have to justify their existence?
What happens when a family learns to keep quiet to avoid conflict, to keep its head down to carry on, to hide a part of itself to be accepted?
The feeling of not belonging can run through generations.
You can have a home, study, work, build a family and still feel that part of you is seen as foreign.
Migration also leaves these invisible marks.
And maybe that is why, today, when someone hears “go back to your country”, there are many stories behind that phrase. Stories of fathers, mothers, children and grandchildren who have spent years trying to find a place where they don’t have to justify who they are.
Because belonging should not be a privilege someone grants. It should be a possibility built on respect, living together and recognising our shared humanity.
It is not only people who migrate. Their absences, their silences, their memories and sometimes their wounds travel too.
And some of those wounds are still looking for healing several generations later.
The struggle to start again
I try to learn the language. I look for training. I ask about jobs. I send applications. I gather documents. I wait for answers.
I face administrative procedures that can seem endless.
Sometimes I meet someone who listens to me, guides me and treats me with respect.
Someone who doesn’t ask first about my nationality, but about my name.
Someone who gives me back, even for a few minutes, the feeling that I belong to the world.
Other times I meet indifference, prejudice, exploitation at work, abusive rents, discrimination and closed doors.
I make mistakes. I get tired. I lose heart. Sometimes I think I won’t make it.
And yet I try again.
Because I have responsibilities. Because I want to work. Because I want my children to have opportunities. Because I want to live without fear. Because I didn’t travel all that way to give up on my life.
I don’t want anything handed to me. I want real opportunities. I want my effort to mean something. I want my abilities to be recognised.
I want to be able to choose, make mistakes, learn, grow and build a future.
Integration is a two-way road
I don’t want you to idealise me. I am not perfect. I have my mistakes, my difficulties, my beliefs, my customs and my contradictions, just like you.
I am not asking you to give up your culture to understand mine. Nor do I want to give up mine to earn your acceptance.
I want us to be able to meet.
I want to learn from you, and I want you to be curious to get to know me too.
I want to take part, contribute, work, connect, build bonds and feel that I can be part of this society without hiding where I come from.
I don’t want to live forever under the label of immigrant.
I want you, one day, to be able to see me without my origin being the first thing you notice.
I want my children and grandchildren not to inherit fear, shame or the need to prove they deserve to be here.
I want them to be able to feel they are from here and from there, from several places or from none, without anyone forcing them to choose between their roots and their present.
I want them to be able to say who they are without having to defend themselves.
And now I want to ask you something
When you tell me to go back to my country, have you ever asked yourself why I left?
When you call me an invader, have you asked yourself what I had to leave behind?
When you accuse me of receiving benefits, have you asked yourself whether I have ever been able to get them?
When you see me wandering, have you asked yourself what it means to live without a family network, without legal security and without knowing what will happen tomorrow?
When you look at me as someone different, have you thought that the same things happen inside me as inside you?
I also love. I also fear. I also feel hunger, hope, shame, pride, desire, memories and dreams.
It also hurts me to be rejected.
I also need to feel that I matter.
I am not asking you to ignore the problems in your society or to give up your worries. I am asking you not to make one person responsible for everything that worries you.
I am asking you to look beyond where I come from, my documents and my differences.
To get to know me before you judge me.
To listen to me before you label me.
Before you ask me why I came, to try to understand why I had to leave.
Because before I am a foreigner, I am a person.
Before I am an immigrant, I have a story.
And before you judge me by the place I come from, perhaps you could ask yourself what made me leave.
What does a life cost? And why do we stay?
Sometimes leaving costs a whole life.
And arriving does not mean you have yet found a place to live it.
Some people leave to save their lives. Others to be able to live with dignity. Some are looking for freedom, safety, opportunities or simply a future for their children.
They all carry something that does not appear on any travel document: a human story.
And perhaps the question should not be how much a life costs, but how much we are willing to lose as a society when we stop recognising the value of other people’s lives.
Because behind every person who migrates there is much more than a movement of population.
There is a childhood, a family, a goodbye, a journey, a fear, a hope, a struggle and a deeply human wish: to live without having to apologise for existing.
About this project
This project wants to give a face, a voice and dignity to those who migrate.
Not to speak on their behalf, but to open a space where their experiences can be heard.
It wants to go through every stage of migration: the reasons for leaving, the goodbyes, the journey, the borders, the arrival, having no papers, looking for a home and a job, loneliness, discrimination, adapting, integration and rebuilding a life.
It also wants to show what remains after arriving: separated families, absences, memory, multiple identities and wounds that can be passed down from generation to generation.
It does not aim to build an idealised image of migrants, nor to reduce them to suffering.
It wants to show whole people: their abilities, their contradictions, their joys, their contributions, their dreams and their right to build a future.
Because migrants are not only people who suffer. They are people who live.
And because perhaps the first step towards living together is not learning to tolerate those who are different, but to stop looking at others as if their humanity were different from ours.