Interview with Carolina

Carolina is a first-generation immigrant, who grew up in the town of Cherán, in the region of Michoacán, Mexico. She belongs to an indigenous community called the Purépecha, with its own language, traditions and unique view of the world. Her parents both speak Purépecha, and whilst she can understand it, it is Spanish she speaks at home with her daughter and Spanish husband. She later studied Physics and Maths, gaining a PhD in Astronomy from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Academics started her migration journey, where she took up a post at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain. After three years in Spain, she returned to Mexico to work at the National Observatory. A year later, Carolina and her husband migrated to the UK, where she now works as a Software Engineer at the University of Exeter. I asked her to bring something with her to the interview that reminded her of her migration experience; she brought a photograph which showed herself aged four or five and the earrings she was wearing in the picture. The earrings are particularly special to her since they have become a kind of heirloom, they were given to her by her mother and will be passed to her daughter when she is old enough to wear them.