The African Diaspora Professional

The struggle working in the Diaspora.

"Institutionalised discrimination refers to the unjust and discriminatory mistreatment of an individual or group of individuals by society and its institutions as a whole, through unequal selection or bias, intentional or unintentional; as opposed to individuals making a conscious choice to discriminate.”

I know someone that I shall refer to as a 'second class citizen' who previously worked in management role in Africa, but migrated to the U.K because of family, desperate for a job they sacrificed their career progression and took a pay cut and accepted a much lower role in company A.

Company A recruited new employees which 'second class citizen' had to train to understand their roles. Second class citizen suffered personal abuse from some of the new employees but remained strong as they appreciated the value their job added to their life.

Eventually one of managers resigned and later one of the abusive employees was dismissed and 'second class citizen' was forced to work from home. The same cycle of recruitment and training of new staff continued, second class citizen thought after all the years of hard work and commitment perhaps their opportunity to move back to their management role was now possible.

Second class citizen was shocked when one of the new employees they trained called them an advised they were now the new manager. Second class citizen was not even invited to apply for the role or advised by the senior management that they were going to be looking for a new manager. Second class citizen was very upset by this and if life was as simple as leaving one job for another, I'm sure second class citizen would have already left the company.

But the reality is job hunting as a second class citizen has become more and more of a lottery, so second class citizen has to just adjust to their new environment and just try make the best of it, because where second class citizen comes from, people can not even have a meal all day.

This story is some of the realities of the Diaspora, the African Migrant worker, these are the sacrifices some have to make just for the sake of being able to access good public services they struggle to get in their home country.