My parents are both British and moved to Spain independently in the 1970s. They met at the end of the decade and decided to get married and start a family in a small coastal town in Alicante, where a few years later I was born. Hi!, or should I say Hola? Good question. Speaking English at home with my family and Spanish at school with friends, I never quite knew which one was my main language, or even my nationality.  Despite having never lived in England, I had a British passport and not a Spanish one. I compromised by calling myself European. Growing up, I noticed that a UK passport made it easier to travel, and in 2007 I decided to work at a summer camp in Rhode Island, USA. I loved it so much that I spent the next year waiting for summer to come again so I could get another visa and go back. I did the same the following year. I took a break after the summer of 2009 and flew to Germany, calling Frankfurt my home for a couple of years until I just couldn't hold back anymore and in 2011, I returned to the summer camp. I decided to stay on year-round, running both the school year and summer programs before leaving in 2014 and moving to Brooklyn, NY, where I have now been granted permanent resident status. The expired passport in the photo remains with me, containing within it the story of my immigration told through stickers, stamps, and visas. My new passport has a fresh supply of blank pages with a whole new set of stories ready to be told.

 

– Sam Whitehead

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant