‘We have to live and cook outside and beg for food. In this type of condition Ghana is better than Europe.’ Because of the lack of work many immigrants are homeless. Michael lives in an abandoned barn with fellow Africans, where he tries to sleep and cook as normal as possible. Michael is not the only one, all over Europe undocumented day laborers face difficulties.
Longing for home
Dje Bi Kouhou from Ivory Coast used to work on the tomato farms in Italy, but tells The Guardian that the police drove him away: ‘The boss would say run if the police came, and if they caught you the police would just give you an order to leave in five days, which no one took any notice of. But then they started checking documents on the street, and you have to move,’ he says. Now Kouhou queues each morning by the roadside for work on the Calabrian orange harvest. He longs to go home, but his passport expired four years ago and he is now without documents. ‘My wife is begging me to come back. I haven't seen my children for years. But I have just texted her. It's impossible, there's no work there. I have no money to go back.’
Sleeping in an alleyway
In England failed asylum seekers are thrown on the streets and have to survive on a £10 food voucher a week. Abdi from Somalia wasn’t granted asylum in the United Kingdom and tells The Guardian how he survives. Abdi sleeps in different places. One of them is a narrow alleyway between park railings and a row of back yards. Here, he hides his sleeping bag under a pile of building material and he tries to hold on to it by marking it: ‘Don't take it. Please. Homeless’. The big advantage of this spot is the fact that it’s next to a place where teenagers hang out to take drugs in the evening. This means people tend to avoid this place, giving him a bigger chance of a good night’s sleep.
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