Filmmaker Sonita Gale documents the UK's hostile migration environment through her personal South Asian history

Sonita Gale’s family. Copyright © Galeforce Productions, 2021.

Words and interview by Dalia Al-Dujaili.

Our personal histories inevitably inform our creative expression and how we present ourselves to the world. For Sonita Gale, it’s no different. In fact, she made her personal history as a second generation migrant into not only a creative statement, but also an act of resistance against what many call a ‘hostile’ environment in the UK, on account of immigration policies which have been created to make the lives of migrants even more difficult and deter their settlement here.

Sonita talks to us about the process behind her new documentary film Hostile, from charting her personal journey, her family’s experiences as migrants in the UK, and her experiences as a South-Asian female filmmaker in a white-male dominated industry.

Sonita, you're a second generation migrant Sikh who grew up in the midlands, and as I understand it, your mother's journey from Lahore to Punjab has inspired you as a creative. Tell me more about how your upbringing as a working-class British Asian inspired 'Hostile' specifically and what other stories from your family/past you drew on.

My parents migrated to the UK in the 1950s, almost a decade after their lives had changed dramatically due to the partition of India and Pakistan. My mum would tell me later in life that times were hard. I never really fully realised it until I was much older. 

The reason was that they arrived in a country where they didn’t speak the language and, like other immigrant families, had to adapt very fast. They were working class parents and one way to get by was to develop a strong sense of community with other migrant families. With 10 children, there was a lot to manage and to support – as you can imagine.

We were all born in New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton. I lived on Bradley Lane, which was predominantly white working class. My parents started out as manual workers in factories in the West Midlands, and eventually they opened up a convenience store. The store formed many great memories and was the centre of the community. I felt we had a strong community spirit and I lived not so far away from the Gurdwara and our extended Indian community. However, when my father passed away, my mother had to eventually close the shop, and went to work in a factory, working long hours day and night.

During this time, as I was growing up, the National Front also became a presence in my area, so racism was definitely something I was aware of. As a child, I would be called racist names, and oftentimes I would be scared walking to and from school. 

I would actually talk to many of these people and try to understand why they were acting this way - deep down I actually felt sorry for a lot of them, a lot of whom came from broken homes. I felt that by having conversations with these people, it really helped break down barriers. It’s an attitude that’s continued within my work today – opening conversations to influence change.

Sonita Gale’s family. Copyright © Galeforce Productions, 2021.

Tell me about the journey of making this documentary once you found the inspiration – how did you get started? What was the research process like, are there any interesting anecdotes that made the filmmaking process a particularly interesting or unique one?

When lockdown began, I started to see the rising number of people who were unable to get their basic needs of food and shelter met. This made me think of my childhood growing up with Sikh parents, and the support network we had amongst our mixed community. 

When I began filming, I started documenting the communities I grew up with: Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Black and White working-class communities, and their responses to the pandemic. The more I filmed, the more I learned about the ‘Hostile Environment’, which is what ultimately became the focus of the film.

Meeting my participants and filming their unravelling narrative led me on a personal journey of discovery, one which linked my family’s history to the larger story of British identity, and the extent to which migrant communities, such as the one I grew up in, were essential to the fabric of this country.

As a filmmaker, the compelling personal nature of the story, combined with the fact that there were so many inconsistencies in our society and contradictions in our current political system, was fascinating to me.

What was interesting to me about the process of making this film was filming while so much change was happening in real time. 2020 and early 2021 was a very politically active time, with the global protests that began after the murder of George Floyd, and which were accompanied by Extinction Rebellion protests and NHS Fair Pay protests. It got to the point where me and my cameraman would be running, often backwards so we could capture the action, from one protest to the next.

From the other perspective, Brexit negotiations were ongoing, and government policy on a whole number of issues was, for a long time, up in the air. We had to be really alert to constant changes in the debates that were going on, while translating them in our film in a way that we wanted to be relevant a year or two later when audiences would actually watch the film.

Anonymous participant. Hostile, 2021, ‘Hostile’, Copyright © Galeforce Productions, 2021.

Tell me about being a female documentary filmmaker - there aren't many women of colour in the film industry, let alone in documentary film. What obstacles have you faced and how have you overcome them?

I’m a mother of two, and I started work on my debut film during the pandemic when my children started remote schooling. So right off the bat there was the challenge of how to juggle my personal and professional life, while learning this aspect of filmmaking which was new to me.

The obstacles I faced had to do with financing the film, which became a real challenge. One aspect of this may have had to do with the fact that I was a new voice in the documentary world, as well as the fact that the topic I had chosen was perceived as challenging for audiences.

There seems to be a lack of funding opportunities in the documentary space for political films of this kind, particularly for British-Asian female debut directors like myself. The way I overcame this is that I was fortunate to be able to finance this through my production company. To do so, I had to keep the budget as low as possible, which meant a very small production team and using skeleton crews for most shoots. This is very much an independent film as a result, and I hope it will put me in good stead when financing future projects.

Could you please tell us a bit about the UK's 'Hostile Environment’ – what does this mean, for people who are unfamiliar? And what's the best way for people to help tackle these policies?

The UK Home Office’s ‘Hostile Environment’ policy is a set of administrative and legislative measures designed to make staying in the United Kingdom as difficult as possible for migrants without leave to remain (i.e. those that are not permanent residents), in the hope that they may "voluntarily leave". The term was coined in 2012 by the then Home Secretary, Theresa May.

The idea is to make life in the UK as unbearable as possible for migrants by, for example, blocking access to public services (under the No Recourse to Public Funds provision, for example). Under the ‘Hostile Environment’, employers, landlords, NHS staff and other public servants have to check your immigration status before offering people a job, housing, healthcare or other support, which effectively turns them into border guards.

Dakshana Varsania, Community Response Kitchen, ‘Hostile’, Copyright © Galeforce Productions, 2021.

But the film argues that the ‘Hostile Environment’ has existed for decades, and it has its roots in Britain’s Empire. The reason for including the story of Partition, was to illustrate this history, including the subsequent post-World War wave of migration. This is the legacy of Empire which has continued to influence our society today.

In the decades since scapegoating migrants became a favoured way for politicians both on the right and left of the political spectrum to score easy political points and turn attention away from other policy failures, whether it is unpopular wars, or economic policies that did not serve the voters.

Brexit was, to me, a prime example of this, and such a prominent indication that something was wrong with the way we talk about migrants in public discourse. Whether it was the image of Nigel Farage standing in front of a poster with a queue of migrants, or the idea that migrants were sponging off the benefits system, the language used was intended to divide and rule, which again took me back to this idea of the after effects of the British Empire which lingers on today.

Zahara Sultana, Kill the Bill Protest, ‘Hostile’, Copyright © Galeforce Productions, 2021.

How has being the child of a migrant and a British-Asian shaped your creative voice and how has it found its way into other work of yours, besides 'Hostile'?

As a second generation Asian I feel closely linked to the migrant experience, and as most second generation Asian would understand, it is as though I am living with two identities, as the name British-Asian implies. Growing up in a household where English was not my parent’s first language also meant I naturally felt different to many of my classmates.

This has helped me in many ways in my career. With Hostile, I felt my instincts were naturally guided towards migrant stories and how they were faring when the pandemic broke, which was the genesis of my journey. 

In addition, it allowed me to speak to migrant communities with a degree of honesty and trust that perhaps it would have taken another filmmaker a longer period of time to build up. I mentioned growing up in a multicultural community of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, and white and working-class black communities. I drew on these connections early on in the filmmaking process.

Finally, what's next for you? Do you want to continue working on the same themes 

My next project might best be described as an evolution of the themes I started exploring in Hostile. It will be a more expansive look at the system failures that have brought us to the point we are at today. 

Immigration, and the ‘Hostile Environment’, play one part of this, but there are other aspects of our political and social infrastructure that I am keen to explore that address the issues we are facing in our current moment.

Saba Sair, ‘Hostile’, Copyright © Galeforce Productions, 2021.

Keep up to date with the film and Sonita’s work here.