The Exchange

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The Exchange: Migration

Migration

BBC Radio 4 - The Exchange, Migration

Two strangers meet to share a common experience, and their differences. They bring a gift.

Francisco Carrasco and Shakur Shidane share their migration stories, their decisions about whether or not to return to Chile and Somalia respectively, and exchange a gift.

Catherine Carr brings together two people who share a common experience but have made radically different choices in life. Each has a gift that unlocks their story. 

Francisco Carrasco and Shakur Shidane (Shaks) were children when they escaped political oppression and civil war. Now one has returned to the country of his birth, and the other is staying in the UK.

Shaks left Somalia on the back of a truck when he only five or six years old. In 1994, after more than two years, the family reached London - and safety.  Decades later, Shaks has returned to Mogadishu.

Francisco Carrasco was eleven years old when his family left Chile. His father, an economist and politician, was held in concentration camps by the Pinochet regime. In 1975, the Chilean authorities gave the family 48-hours to get out of the country. They were not allowed to return home until 1990 - and by then, Francisco says, “my Chile had gone”. Home is now Liverpool and he is applying for British citizenship.

At the heart of their exchange is the concept of belonging. 

For both, home is complex and mutable, but ultimately is it about people or place?


Presenter: Catherine Carr
Producer: Louise Cotton
Executive Producer: Jo Rowntree
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

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