The Essay

Benjamin Markovits considers the freedom of the immigrant in Britain. Half-German, half-American, part-Christian, part-Jewish, Ben has never felt fully rooted in a single culture or completely implicated in the society around him. To many, this might sound like the crisis of modern immigration: a failure to integrate. But for Ben the writer, there is freedom in being rootless in a new place - a freedom which is far from the isolation it is often associated with.