Welcome to Britain with Ben Judah and Sunjeev Sahota – Guardian books podcast

http://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2016/feb/12/
welcome-to-britain-with-ben-judah-and-sunjeev-sahota-books-podcast

As migration continues to dominate the headlines, we go walkabout in a capital city transformed by new arrivals with Ben Judah, while Sunjeev Sahota explores home and identity in Sheffield

The biggest wave of mass migration since the second world war saw more than a million people arrive in Europe through irregular means in 2015, but what do they find when they arrive? We head for the streets of London with Ben Judah, who paints a picture of despair in a city where 37% of its inhabitants were born abroad. He explains how expectation is seldom matched by reality and explores how reportage can give a human dimension to the patterns of history. Then we travel to the Sheffield of Sunjeev Sahota’s Booker-shortlisted novel The Year of the Runaways to meet his cast of illegal immigrants, on the run from impossible lives and trying to carve a future for themselves on the margins of 21st-century Britain.