On 23 July 2013 it is a warm, sunny day in Luton. Simon, the pastor, and Kassia, a children's centre family worker, are visiting families Simon knows from the church to register them with the children's centre. I have gone along with them. We knock on the door of a terraced house. Simon has visited the house before for a prayer meeting and knows at least two families with children live there. Nicolai, a Romanian Roma father, opens the door, recognises Simon and invites us in. We pass the front room, which has two double beds jammed into it, and go through to the back room, which has a table and some mismatched chairs. I see the kitchen is beyond this room, in an extension that looks like it might fall down at any moment. Dinka, Nicolai's wife, is sitting in the room breastfeeding her youngest child while her other two young children run around the room. Nicolai has heard about national insurance numbers from his cousin, Cezar, who also lives in the house, and he tries to engage Simon and Kassia in conversation about how he can apply for one. He works on Cezar's scrap metal van and sometimes manages to get work with the other men in the house in a meat packing factory. His wife, Dinka, a 20-year-old mother of three, does not speak English and does not engage with either Kassia or Simon. She quietly hands them papers from her handbag throughout the interaction and then attends to her three small children. Nicolai continues to ask Kassia about a national insurance number but she maintains she is there just for the children. Kassia does not seem to want to engage with this family more broadly, closing down areas where she might go beyond her formal role.

As we leave, Simon tells Nicolai to call him about the national insurance number. When I ask Simon a few days later about the family, Simon responds that Nicolai was “like a stuck record” and has no chance of gaining a national insurance number as he has no documentation for the work he is doing. Simon explains that Nicolai is being paid in cash and isn't keeping any record of his income because he can't read and write.