We hear politicians deliberating on how to integrate foreign labourers and permanent residents while neigbourhoods become increasingly diverse with people from China, India, Bangladesh and the Philippines converging on our shores.
 
It's all a bit more intense in Europe, where some politicians are up in arms over immigration, claiming the situation is spiraling out of control with illegals from the Middle East, Africa and Asia eroding the European culture.

Life, it seems, is multicultural. As native Belgian Marc Andre, a teacher of immigrants at the Brussels Centre for Intercultural Action, says: "Interculturalism is a phenomenon. I don't need to imagine what it means; we're living it right now."

Immigration is transforming the world, and everyone is caught up in it in some way.

In Europe, the latest wave of immigration began with the entry of foreign labourers half a century ago – akin to what Singapore does with the calibrated admission of economic immigrants into the workforce.

Which is why we packed our bags to travel halfway around the world to see how immigration has changed the social fabric of Europe – and how it might alter Singapore's, too.
 
We stopped strangers in their tracks, strained to make sense of three-way translations and survived forays into dodgy places.
 
All that, just to meet people willing to share their side of the immigration story.
 
There were many.
 
Passionate activists, staunch survivors, hapless refugees, worried parents, unhappy residents, disapproving politicians, critical academics, optimistic families, happy-go-lucky youths – we met them all; over 100 of them. Together, they painted a picture of a continent in the midst of an intense transition, caught between the ups and downs of immigration.
 
We were outsiders reporting on outsiders. Strange, but sometimes it takes a fellow outsider to understand how it feels to be different. We were sneered at explicitly in a shopping mall. One man even raised a rude middle finger at us.
 
The struggle is surely much harder for immigrants. They face unfamiliarity in every aspect of their lives, from the workplace to their children’s schools, from taking public transport to figuring out how to pay utility bills. And for them it is not a project; it is their life.

Although Europe and Singapore are in many ways worlds apart, the bottom line remains the same: it’s human nature to fear those who are different from us.
 
But what’s important is to recognise the similarities through those differences.
 
It was not the immigrants’ looks, cultures or habits that struck us the most – but their smiles, tears and fears.
 
After all, these emotions apply not only to immigrants, but are universal among us all.