“I think there is this misunderstanding that some people have about what staying at home with your parents indicates. I think in Sri Lankan culture it is just the norm that you have multi-generational families in one house.”

When 11 year old Anique left Sri Lanka she thought it’d be temporary. Almost two decades later she talks with brother Navin and mum Sushani about guilt, obligation, and what freedom really means.

Scroll down to listen to the podcast episode.

Conversations With My Immigrant Parents is a podcast/video series where immigrant whānau have conversations they normally wouldn’t, crossing barriers of language, generation, and expectation.

Co-hosts and producers Saraid de Silva and Julie Zhu travelled Aotearoa meeting families from different countries, sitting in as they spoke to each other about love, disappointment, what home means to them - and where home really is.

Made possible by the RNZ/NZ On Air Innovation Fund.

Watch more from the series:

Judah, Tafara, and Pako: Not your white boy

Honest conversations with our mums

A Zimbabwean mum, dad and daughter interrogate colonial tools in New Zealand