“The Right to Stay, The Need to Belong”

How one North London community reflects a country still redefining who belongs.

By Anna Noia

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In the community of Barnet, in Northwest London, different stories, languages and origins coexist every day. Walk along Barnet High Street amid the hustle and bustle of commuters and the constant noise of buses to see how much arrivals, departures and intertwining accents shape this borough. According to the 2021 Census, around 43% of Barnet residents have roots abroad, one of the highest figures in the English capital. This is a snapshot of an area shaped by decades of migration, adaptation and new beginnings.

While the streets reflect this cultural richness, the national debate on immigration is becoming increasingly heated. Keir Starmer's left-leaning government has announced new measures to reduce illegal migration, while right-leaning politicians, such as Nigel Farage, are calling for even stricter policies. Farage was recently criticised by Peter Ettedgui, a former classmate, who accused him of fuelling divisive and anti-Semitic rhetoric. But in Barnet, more than in the chambers of Parliament, these discussions take shape in the lives of those who remain, those who hope to stay and those who were born here yet continue to feel like foreigners.

I meet Lorenzo Bianchi and the sky above High Barnet is grey, as it often is in mid-November. He has finished a shift at the office and happily accepts a coffee as he looks back on his early years in London.

“I always said, ‘Six months and then I'm going back to Florence’.”

Those six months, however, turned into eight years. He arrived in 2017, changed jobs, neighbourhoods and friends; in 2022, he obtained Settled Status. Today, he lives in High Barnet, the Northern Line terminus, a quiet area he describes as, “the first place where I really breathed.”

Even here, small incidents remind him that he is a foreigner. A colleague smiles and says, “Italians are everywhere,” or a customer asks him if he will, “go home one day.”

“My whole life is here now,” he says. “My job, my friends, my routine... but sometimes I still feel like a guest.”Every morning on his way to work, he passes the Barnet Italian Deli. The smell of warm bread fills the street. “It reminds me of home, Florence,” he says. “It's a smell you can smell everywhere in Italy: in the alleys early in the morning, outside neighbourhood bakeries, even in the smallest streets. It's something that gets into you, that smells like home.’ He pauses for a moment, as if he can see that memory before his eyes.

“Here in London, it's different, but at the same time familiar. It's as if that smell connects me to who I was before I came here, and who I have become living in this city. You can't erase your roots: they move, they grow with you, but they stay with you. And sometimes the smell of bread is enough to remind you that you can belong to two places without having to choose which one is your home.”

A few miles from High Barnet, in the Colindale neighbourhood, Rohan Mehta's morning always starts the same way: with his email open on his phone before he even has his coffee. He is a recent graduate in Data Science from London Metropolitan University, lives in a shared flat and alternates between job applications and part-time shifts at Tesco. 

“They say the UK needs skilled workers, but when I send my CV, they reply that they don't sponsor visas. It's as if the country wants you, but the companies don't, and that's really frustrating.” When he's not working, Rohan spends a lot of time at Chipping Barnet Library. The library, with its gentle buzz of students and the smell of paper coming from the older shelves, has become his personal refuge. That's where he sits with his laptop and, between books, spends his time checking job offers, writing cover letters and doing practice tests for tech companies. "Every time I open my email, I hope to finally see a yes, but so far I've only received no's, and it's really discouraging. When I decided to come to London to study, I thought I would have more opportunities than in India, but after finishing university, I realised that it's not as easy as I imagined. Time is running out: in a year, my postgraduate visa will expire, and I feel the pressure more and more every day."

Sometimes, after his shift at Tesco, Rohan sits outside Colindale station watching people come and go, “I wonder how many of them are in my situation, how many have made it, how many are waiting for a response that will change everything, and how many have given up.” For now, Rohan continues to wait, between libraries, evening shifts and emails that never arrive. It is a life in limbo, made up of attempts and small hopes, in a borough where many, like him, are learning every day to build their future one step at a time.

In East Finchley, Ruby Khalil leaves the bar where she works part-time while studying Graphic Design at the University of Greenwich and crosses the road to Cherry Tree Wood. Ruby was born in London; her accent is English, yet her surname tells a different story. Her grandparents arrived from Cyprus in the 1960s, when East Finchley was very different from today: few shops, low-rise houses and a small community that was just beginning to form. Ruby grew up listening to those stories that have become part of her identity.

"They hear my surname and ask me, ‘Where are you really from?’ I reply, ‘I'm from here, I'm English!’” Then Ruby starts telling me about the days she spent at Cherry Tree Wood when she used to spend hours playing with her grandmother. "It's absurd to think that even though this is the place where I have all my memories since I was born, for some people, it's not enough to consider me one of them.”

Lorenzo, Rohan and Ruby don't know each other, but their lives intersect every day: on Northern Line stations, in parks, in supermarkets, in the places where they work. All three have built something in Barnet; all three live with a fragile, conditioned and constantly shifting sense of belonging. Their voices reveal what is often overlooked in political discussions: the right to remain and the need to belong do not always coincide.

As I listen to their stories, I realise that part of them also speaks to me. I'm Italian; I've been living in London since 2019 and I've got Settled Status. For me too, “home,” has become a word that oscillates between two countries, two languages and two identities. I've learned that home isn't just the place where you were born, but also the place where you found yourself, often far from where you started. I understand this every time I go to Italy on holiday to visit my family. When I leave, I am sad to leave them, as always, but at the same time happy because I'm going home. It's a difficult feeling to explain: the feeling of living between two worlds and belonging deeply to both. In Barnet, one of London's most multi-ethnic boroughs, these realities walk side by side and remind us that belonging and identity are never fixed. They are a balance, a process, a choice that is renewed every day, in every place we learn to call home.

Written by Anna Noia. Published 10 December 2025.

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