![]() ![]() My passport was confiscated in Ibiza to be returned on departure… On arrival back in England, whilst my husband and children passed quickly through the queue for British citizens, I very slowly crawled through the queue for the non-British immigrants. At this point, I had absolutely no idea that my residency in Britain was as tenuous as it was revealed to be… I do recall questioning glances from immigration officials as we were leaving England but these were only confirmed on arrival in Ibiza when I understood the implications of what it means in Western societies for me to travel on a Jamaican passport. My husband and children travelled on his British passport. I had decided to travel on the Jamaican passport I owned: it had been a deliberate decision on my part to be a first-class citizen of Jamaica rather than the second-class citizen status attributed to us in England. It was in 1987 that my husband, children and I were travelling to Ibiza for our summer holiday. I refer to this very briefly in my book: Towards Bicultural Competence: Beyond Black and White. Watching, I realised I could have been one of the overt casualties of the Windrush Scandal… I wasn’t, an overt victim, on this occasion simply because I had already undergone an experience in 1987, revealing to me my vulnerable status as a ‘black’ member of British society. This is having, in adulthood, consciously and deliberately worked through the cultural phase of the individuation process during the period of my employment as a lecturer at London South Bank University (LSBU) the result of racial victimisation catapulting me into a race-based identity crisis.įrom the emotional lenses of a child of the Windrush Generation, ‘Sitting in Limbo’ reminded me of how poorly we have been treated by a country who turned to their previous slave plantations and now colonies, for help in rebuilding the country post-WW2. I also watched it through the lenses of an integrated self-authoring/transforming British African Caribbean (BAC). I watched it from the emotional lenses of a ‘child of the Windrush Generation’ who arrived in England in 1959 to join my parents who travelled to England earlier in the decade. I ‘ve watched the above drama a couple of times since it aired on Monday. ![]()
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