Daily Archives:January 29th, 2024

What makes them do it?

The problem of large numbers of asylum seekers trying to cross the Channel in small boats is one, I confess, that I have avoided thinking about too much — and I therefore understand few of the subtleties involved.

So I was particularly taken by this BBC piece, which follows one 14-year-old boy, Obada, who died a couple of weeks ago on the Normandy coastline.

How did he get there? Why was he trying to get to the UK, rather than some other country?

The authors have done a lot of research to make it a personal story, rather than another abstract statistic.

Well worth a read.

© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser