On an ordinary, slightly tatty street in Finsbury Park, North London – an area best known nationally for the mosque in which Abu Hamza used to preach – people from across the globe, from Somalia to Vietnam, Pakistan to Peru, live and work side by side. Amid ongoing public debate about the impact of immigration, London has developed into the most multicultural city in the world, with people from 243 nations (according to the 2001 census) now neighbours.

Stroud Green Road, with its ecelectic shops and small businesses, is a patch that has long attracted immigrants – Ho Chi Minh is said to have once lived there, while in 1878, a young Pole named Joseph Conrad found lodgings in the neighbourhood. But what of today’s settlers? And what are their thoughts about the land they now call their home?

Tim Pozzi walked the 1,056 yards of Stroud Green Road, and listened to ten remarkable stories of migration, hope and new British patriotism.

Click on the slideshow to see pictures of each of the interviewees

Sunflower Gallery: Burkan C., 41

Born Istanbul, Turkey

“Finsbury Park is a very cosmopolitan area, and that’s why I love it. It’s beautiful. You get Brazilians, English, Greeks, Turks, everything – it’s really nice in terms of that. Different cultures – you learn something new every day.

“When I first came to London from Istanbul in 1986 I had this image in my mind that it would be like LA, or New York. To be honest when I arrived it put me down a little bit. Because I didn’t know the place, I didn’t have many friends here then, and for the first few months I was really, really bored. I wanted to go back so many times.

“I was studying for a BTech in business studies at Haringey College. As soon as I got my diploma in business studies – well, it was never my intention to live here you know – I was gonna go back. One of my friends from college, also from Turkey, said, ‘Do you wanna go to uni?’ I said, ‘Look, I can’t afford to go,’ so he said, ‘No no, come on I’ll lend you some money, we’ll stay together,’ so I said, ‘All right then.’

“So I went to university and studied international business administration. I finished that. Then I got married. But the marriage didn’t work out very well. We got divorced after three years.

“Then I started to do a masters degree at North London University. After that I met my second wife. We’re still married, and we have a daughter, Ceren.

“I opened two businesses actually. First there was a restaurant in Enfield, which did very well. We sold that – which I regret now – and bought a restaurant and nightclub in Highgate. It was a big mistake. I got into a lot of problems with the council. I had to close it down after a couple of years. We went bankrupt.

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