This is Europe: The Way We Live Now

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Ben Judah: I first decided to write my book on London when I had returned mentally and physically to the city after spending a lot of time working on Russia, and I felt that I didn’t recognize the London that I’d grown up in. The city had been so transformed by a giant influx of migration and money from the rest of the world, and I wanted to bring some of the techniques of a foreign correspondent to London, and the chief amongst them was the assumption that you don’t know what you’re facing, and that you approach things with an open mind. So my book, This Is London, it’s a journey around London with me, as a narrator… And when I wanted to write a follow-up book, I decided I wanted to write a book about Europe, and I decided that I wanted to push that technique one bit further, and that is by getting rid of the narrator. I felt that the narrator is the sort of old-fashioned European travel writer, this sort of great white male wandering around in tweed across Europe or the Middle East; it sort of got in the way of speaking and listening to the people I’ve met. What does it now mean to call yourself European? Who makes up this population of some 750 million, sprawled from Ireland to Ukraine, from Sweden to Turkey? Who has always called it home, and who has newly arrived from elsewhere? Who are the people who drive our long-distance lorries, steward our criss-crossing planes, lovingly craft our legacy wines, fish our depleted waters, and risk life itself in search of safety and a new start? Given the predicaments the subjects inhabit, which are mostly perilous or exploitative, this is probably no great surprise. Still, you can’t help wonder whether this human churn, this vast cheap labour source and the global instability that drives it, is sustainable.

It’s when Judah sits down with someone and listens that the book really takes off. He is brilliant at getting people to speak: the London Underground cleaner; the Polish builder; the Egyptian heiress; the Filipina housemaid; the imam who washes the bodies of the dead; the teacher; the carer; the gang leader. Among the mass of migrant stories are recurring tales of the glamour of London as seen from afar, and the grime, fear, poverty and violence seen close up. We learn a lot about the work that migrants do and how they see the British. Mean, ugly, lazy, cruel, secretive and snobbish are among the words used about us, though there is respect for our constitution and amusement at how we’re always saying sorry. In a series of vivid, ambitious, darkly visceral but always empathetic portraits of other people's lives, journalist Ben Judah invites us to meet them. Drawn from hours of painstaking interviews, these vital stories reveal a frenetic and vibrant continent which has been transformed by diversity, migration, the internet, climate change, Covid, war and the quest for freedom. Vallée, Shahin; Judah, Ben (2 September 2021). "International Corporate Tax Reform". DGAP: German Council on Foreign Relations . Retrieved 25 June 2022.Sutton, Trevor; Judah, Ben (26 February 2021). "Turning the Tide on Dirty Money". Center for American Progress . Retrieved 24 September 2021. Oliver, Tim (1 May 2016). "This Is London: Life and Death in the World City Ben Judah" (PDF). International Affairs. 92 (3): 737–738. doi: 10.1111/1468-2346.12627. He is the author of two acclaimed books: Fragile Empire, a study of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and This is London, a book on the British capital. This Is Europe, his third book, will be released in June 2023withPicador. Ben Judah is a Franco-British author and journalist. He has reported from across Europe, with his writing on politics and society featuring widely, including in The New York Times, The Financial Times and Foreign Policy.

This event is organised in partnership between UCL European Institute and UCL European and International Political Studies (EISPS). The Belarussian family, after being in a protest, having to flee the country, going from a normal life to a life on the run.

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Whether it’s a young Turkish Erasmus student pining for her Austrian boyfriend, a disgruntled Romanian long-distance lorry driver, a Latvian teenager drawn into online sex work, an Ivorian migrant who goes through hell to get to France, or a Galician boat mechanic involved in illegal fishing in the Antarctic, their individuality is slightly lost in a relentless pounding mass. Judah, Ben (October 2009). "Moscow: Putin's Empire Strikes Out". Standpoint Magazine. Archived from the original on 9 March 2016 . Retrieved 19 February 2016.

Is migration changing the very essence of Europe? Could the European Union become the tool of right-wing populists? Is it possible for Britain to rejoin the European Union under a future Labour government?In a series of vivid, ambitious, darkly visceral but always empathetic portraits of other people's lives, Ben Judah invites us to meet them. Drawn from hours of painstaking interviews, these vital stories reveal a frenetic and vibrant continent which has been transformed by diversity, migration, the internet, climate change, Covid, war and the quest for freedom. A kaleidoscope of bright human experience. Moving, poignant and compelling - I devoured this in a day. * Jenny Kleeman, author of Sex Robots & Vegan Meat * His latest book is a hallucinatory tour de force written with a discerning and compassionate eye, and an ear attuned to the pain, the drama, the sheer relentless unpredictability of everyday life for vast swathes of the continent’s 748 million people. Ben Judah: ‘deep journalistic curiosity and unflinching gaze’. Photograph: Alexandra Chan for the Jewish Chronicle While Judah would doubtless be alarmed by the comparison, it’s notable that a number of those he documents, in particular migrants themselves, complain about the migrants they encounter – whom they characterise as immoral or criminal.