Sophie

Sophie says again and again that she loves this country. Her enthusiasm is infectious. But her life certainly hasn't been easy here. The hardest thing is that it's the people around her who have exploited Sophie's desire to work hard and she slipped into irregularity after being both deceived and robbed. Sophie never intended to live in this country without papers.

Sophie's journey starts four years earlier in India. After an accident in which her husband became unable to work, life became a struggle for the family. Sophie sold the house and went to work as a household manager in Africa for two months. Her work included managing the accounts. The family she was working for, however, forbad Sophie to call home and when she could no longer bear it she left. But things in India were just as bad, there was no work and she couldn't see how she was going to provide for her two boys' future. That was when Sophie made the difficult decision to leave her family behind for England and try to improve all of their lives by moving on. Sophie came to this country on a six month tourist visa with all her savings. She had hoped to apply for a student visa to get further qualifications in order to work as a teacher in this country. Sophie was a dedicated primary school teacher in India with qualifications in alternative teaching methods. In the first few months in England Sophie wanted "to see what God's wish is for me".

In the beginning Sophie found work in mail delivery and in a restaurant where she was paid less than £4 per hour. Then she started working for the owner of a small supermarket working in the shop, cleaning and cooking for the family, taking care of the children and taking charge of the accounts. Sophie worked 13 hours or more every day for 4 months for the owner but she never saw any of the money. He made Sophie pass as his wife in order not to have to pay any taxes. Worse still, he managed to get a hold of Sophie's savings and professional certificates and never gave them back. Before she knew it, her tourist visa had run out but Sophie saw no way of applying for a student visa without her academic and professional credentials. When she demanded her papers and money from him her employer threatened to call the police. Sophie was trapped and desperately unhappy-"I wanted to die" she says.

Finally a friend, an English woman she had met at church, helped Sophie find a job as a domestic worker and that is how Sophie started working cleaning, cooking and running family households, raising English children. Sophie has worked more than 13 hours a day, often seven days a week, earning between £140 and £250 per week -never earning enough to pay rent Sophie has been dependent on friends and acquaintances for accommodation. Some employers have asked for papers, but most haven't. One of them turned her down when Sophie explained why she didn't have any papers, but another employer refused to pay her the full agreed salary after he found out about Sophie's immigration status and she was forced to accept even lower pay.

Sophie considers herself lucky because she has always found work, which she attributes to the supportive references her employers have given her. What do they say in the references? "That I am hard-working, trustworthy, honest and self-reliant" -one of her employers even cried and begged her to stay.

The worst thing about being irregular she says, isn't the way she is treated by the state or society. The worst thing is the suffering and humiliation caused by those around her. Some of the other women that Sophie has shared a room with, women with English citizenship or 'proper' papers, have threatened to call the police for any petty reason or just to be cruel. It's the fear of being subject to the whims of others and feeling vulnerable, the injustice of being criminalised that is worst for Sophie. Talking about how she was exploited and deceived by the owner of the supermarket, her own powerlessness, brings Sophie close to tears.

Sophie is a devout Catholic and she goes to mass almost every day. Especially in the beginning when things were most difficult Sophie felt the only place she could cry and let everything out was at church. Sophie has found a lot of refuge in her faith and religious community but what she doesn't want is 'charity'.

"I want to pay taxes!" she says. "I don't want this country to lose!". The irony is that it's the honest people, hard workers like Sophie, who are losing out and the dishonest who are winning. "I don't want to take money or benefits away from this country!". "I am not a criminal" she says. The real criminals are people like the supermarket owner who was living, Sophie says, like a king, claiming benefits, with several houses and avoiding his taxes. But people like him are protected, while migrants who "came to this country for our children's sake" are vulnerable to exploitation. It's the state itself which is sheltering criminals like the shop owner and Sophie is aware that it is especially the women who are vulnerable to the shadowy areas of unregulated domestic work.

Today Sophie says she is happy: she is working as a nanny for a good family who "take good care of me" and she is relieved to be living out because it means she can get a break at the end of the day. Sophie's preciously little free time is spent volunteering in her local church helping to orientate girls who have recently arrived cooking for them and giving them guidance they are in need of just as much as Sophie was when she first arrived.

What would Sophie do if she was given citizenship? Without hesitation she replies that the first thing she would do would be to fly home to visit her sons whom she hasn't seen in all these years. Sophie still calls home every single day and her youngest boy asks her to escape from the family she is working for at night "Mummy, come home, while they are sleeping". Sophie's little boy back in India still thinks that England is close enough for his mother to go home overnight and be back to clean and manage the homes of English families the next morning. "If we were citizens," Sophie says "we would be able to go anywhere we are needed and work there, for example in rural areas".

"This country will be richer with us", Sophie says and she is referring not only to the economic benefits brought by the regulated migrant labour this country needs, but to a society in which the hard-working are rewarded and the criminals are punished. If she were given citizenship, Sophie would study and then work where she feels she is needed and where her vocation lies, as a primary school teacher- in other words, Sophie would do what she had originally planned to do when she arrived here.

Story collected and written by Tamara Hale

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