It started, perhaps fittingly for a podcast based in Amsterdam, with a story about a bicycle.
Mohamed Bah was on the train, nervously eyeing the bicycle he had tucked into a corner of the wagon. His heart pounded as he glanced around him, searching for any sign of a ticket inspector or plainclothes officer who might fine him – or throw him in jail – for failing to pay the small fee to bring his bicycle on board.
“It was not because I couldn’t afford a ticket for my bicycle,” he explained in the opening minutes of the City Rights Radio podcast. “It was due to the fact that I am undocumented.
“And as an undocumented migrant, I don’t have access to online banking. And to buy a bicycle ticket you need an online bank.”
The anecdote speaks to the podcast’s central mission: to create a space where the estimated 23,000 to 58,000 undocumented people in the Netherlands can share their experiences, detail the singular obstacles they face and voice their views on how to create a city that works for all who live there.
“We are here and we want to be part of society,” said Bah, originally from Guinea and the host of the podcast. “We are the ones that sleep right above you, in that apartment we rent, who probably cry all night and you don’t know about it. And in the morning, we say ‘Hi’ like nothing is happening.”
Launched in 2021 by a group who describe themselves as “undocumented citizens”, episodes of the podcast have tackled everything from police profiling to access to healthcare. Along the way, a changing roster of guests offer a window into how being undocumented in Europe colours every aspect of people’s lives.
For example, there’s the near impossibility of opening a bank account without papers in the Netherlands. The result is a series of knock-on effects, particularly as services such as public transport become cashless. “What does this do?” Bah asked. “It makes it so that I, as an undocumented person, am forced to steal [from] the metro. Not because I don’t want to pay. I may have cash, but I don’t have a bank account.”
Others touch on the vulnerability of having to ask everyone from employers to landlords to deal in cash. “This leads to people being exploited in rent,” said Bah, 29. “It leads to people being attacked because they have a lot of cash, or being accused by the police if they are arrested with a lot of cash.”
The reasons why so many people across Europe can find themselves in this bureaucratic bind are many. Some have entered without authorisation; others were born in Europe to parents who themselves are without papers; others have overstayed their visa or have had their asylum claims denied. Whichever the route taken, the destination is the same: a “ghost citizen” status that carries innumerable difficulties.
Assembled with donated equipment in a barebones studio in the city’s vibrant east end, the City Rights Radio podcast seeks to lay bare the jarring contrast between the experiences of the undocumented and official policy. One example is healthcare; while everyone in the Netherlands has the right to access healthcare, undocumented people said that they are often turned away when they reveal that they don’t have health insurance. The result is that most learn to live with small issues, such as a nagging headache, until it becomes something they cannot ignore, said Bah.
After three years of living in the Netherlands without papers, Bah became a legal resident in 2022. As he adjusts to the transformation, he has started to hand over the microphone to a fresh crop of storytellers.
Among them is Seid, a smiling 19-year-old originally from Ethiopia. “I’ve been waiting to do this type of thing for so long,” he said. For years he had listened as others spoke on migrants’ behalf, at times resorting to stereotypes and fear-mongering. Now he was eager for the chance to tell his own story. “I’m going to be a voice for a lot of people out there,” he said. “I want them to understand us.”
He was 12 years old when politics forced his family to leave their home, embarking on an arduous journey that brought them to the shores of Greece, he said. Homeless and working for just a few euros a day, he joined a group of 11 people who spent about 18 months walking to Italy in the hope of finding a better life.
“The things that I’ve seen, it’s not humane or normal,” said Seid. “This is what’s happening at the borders that no European knows about.”
For Bah, the podcast is a chance for undocumented migrants such as Seid to “turn this experience into a strength”. This view perhaps explains why he avoids looking at any data on how many people are listening, choosing instead to imagine who might be tuning in. “For me it’s not about the general masses,” he said. “It’s about if I can change one person, that’s one more person with knowledge about migrants.”
He also hopes that policymakers are listening. “We’re not taken into account when their research is being made,” said Bah. “And then the law, whether intentionally or not, excludes us. Why are they making laws that exclude 60,000 people who live in the city?”
Ultimately the podcast is as much for those behind the microphone as it is for listeners, said Bah, pointing to the drawn-out, all-consuming process of obtaining papers. “All of these traits of culture, tradition, joy, memories, turn into just ‘documents, documents, I need documents’. And that’s a huge problem.”
While this battle may have been the starting point for the podcast, it has since sought to go far beyond, said Bah, allowing people to reclaim some of who they were before their lives became dominated by being undocumented.
“For me, the most difficult thing was not knowing. You don’t know how long the procedure is going to take, when you will get your interview or even if you will get your papers,” said Bah. “But this uncertainty makes it that people lose themselves in trying to find the papers. As a human being, you want to have dreams, you want to have objectives, you want to fall in love, you want to travel.”