“In one of my jobs they were like, hold on a second, you have a bit of a Cork twang to your accent. I was like, yeah, I’ve heard that before. I didn’t realise it was happening, but it’s happening somehow,” says social worker Abeer Ali Ansari (35).
After completing his undergraduate degree, Ali Ansari worked for a blue-chip company for five years in Karachi, his native city and Pakistan’s largest, with an estimated population of more than 20 million.
“It was always a bit of a goal of mine to study abroad. I said look, I’ll finish my bachelor’s degree, then I’ll work for about five years and then I’ll explore my options,” he says.
He initially investigated options in Australia but thought, “it’s a bit too far away, in the event of an emergency it would be a bit of a trek to come all the way from there”. With some friends and family in the UK, he also considered universities there, but the uncertainty surrounding Brexit at the time led Ali Ansari to Ireland and ultimately to choosing to study at University College Cork (UCC).
He moved to Cork city in August 2017 to pursue a master’s degree in business.
“I kind of fell into business, because the family was doing it and they said, look, it’ll be easier if you just go down that path because you know you can take help from your brothers.”
“So, I went down that road for a very long time,” he says.
Having completed his business masters at UCC, Ali Ansari was working in recruitment in Ireland when the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, “and that sort of gave me that time to really think about what I wanted”.
“So, I said I want to go into the profession of helping people because that’s something that I was really into. I had a couple of friends who already were social workers [in Ireland] so after I spoke with them about the experience of it, it did resonate with me.
“We didn’t have a social worker in Pakistan because it’s a non-welfare country, so I wasn’t aware of this profession.”
“And then I thought about it, it took me a long time thinking about it, and I made the decision to go down that road. I had a bit of money saved from jobs so I said maybe it’s time to test the waters and go back to UCC to study a master’s in social work.” Having completed work experience and a bridging course in social policy, he was accepted to the master’s programme.
“There was a bit of convincing involved,” he says, when it came to telling his family and friends about his career move. “I talked to my mom, and she’s very open and honest about things, so she did say ‘Are you sure? Because you work in a business, in a blue-chip company, and they are considered to be good companies to work for’.”
“I was like, mom, look, it’s fine. You know, the salary is not exactly millions, but it’s not bad either.
“And at the same time, when I close the laptop, when I go home, at least I have that sense of achievement, no matter how big or small, that you have at least tried to make a family’s life better.”
Ali Ansari, who volunteered with NGOs when he was a student in Karachi, says he grew up in a community with limited access to public resources and witnessed the struggles people faced due to both individual and systemic inequalities.
“In Pakistan, the socioeconomic divide really is very, very, very apparent. So much so that if you can speak English, you are considered to be within a certain socioeconomic category. If you can’t, you’re considered to be a different socioeconomic category.
“And, of course, education is a privilege, it’s not really a right back home. Some people, they would not be able to afford it,” he explains. “Comparing that to Ireland, the class divide is not that apparent here, and that’s a very good thing.
“So in terms of education, food, being able to pay your bills and medical care, it’s difficult for people living in Pakistan, let’s put it that way.”
Now working for a public agency in Cork, Ali Ansari says, “it does throw you off the deep end, I’m not going to lie”.
“In Pakistan you see [inequality], it’s so obvious, it’s so apparent, but over here in Ireland, it’s less so, but you change the country, you change the language, you change the geographical location [but] society and humanity is very similar.
“So if there are vulnerable people in Pakistan, it would have been naive of me to assume that there wouldn’t be vulnerable people in Ireland as well.”
Ali Ansari created a great network with his fellow international students when studying his business masters at UCC, but later realised he should have branched out more, as most of his friends returned to their home countries after the course, leaving him at square one.
It was when he moved into a house share with “a few lads – two of them were from Waterford, one of them from Tipperary" that he began to grow his network again.
“It’s a bit of a process but once you really hack it, then you are kind of in,” he says.
Although it would be a goal of Ali Ansari’s to buy a house in Ireland one day, he says: “I do accept there are loads of challenges because we all know that the housing crisis has not just affected people who are looking to buy, but even to rent.
“It is tough out there. And being in the social work field you see the consequences of that crisis.”
But its “not all doom and gloom” in a house share, he adds, as he often chats to his housemates after a tough day and they have gaming nights and go to the cinema together.
Something Ali Ansari misses most about his home city is the food, particularly its level of spice, he says, adding that it’s in one of the regions in Pakistan with the spiciest food. He says he has gone to some good Pakistani restaurants in Ireland but he’s pretty sure they’ve tweaked the recipes “to make them a bit more local”, he says.
He doesn’t miss the tea, however, as he says the blend he’s used to is identical to Barry’s Gold Blend, and it’s served in the same way in Pakistan, with milk and sugar for some.
Ali Ansari says he hopes to continue to grow his network of friends in Cork and to “give it my best shot in terms of my career”.
As far as he and his colleagues are aware, Ali Ansari may be the first Pakistani person to qualify as a social worker in Ireland, and he hopes more people born outside of the country will feel encouraged to do the same.
“Ireland, even comparing 2017 to now, has become so multicultural, so diverse,” says Ali Ansari.
“And having people with life skills and the understanding of different cultures and languages and things, I do think that would definitely add value to the [social worker] profession.”
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
