Tag: refugees

When a refugee flees to another country and claims asylum, she is, in effect, petitioning the state to listen to her story.

On Lampedusa, history is never far from the islanders’ thoughts, and they are preoccupied by its contradictions. Is Lampedusa a stop on a long journey, or is it a graveyard? Does every fence need a hole in it?

“His brother, he assumed, was in the island’s detention facility, waiting to be sent to Athens with hundreds of other migrants. Days turned into weeks. Every time Javed tried Masood’s phone, the call went straight to voicemail. After a month passed with no word, it dawned on Javed that his brother was missing.”

Thousands of Haitians who fled the United States on foot last summer have started very different lives in Canada.

The U.S. immigration system is ill-equipped to deal with refugees who are feeling real violence and hardship but who don’t qualify for asylum.

A traveling crew of slackliners is trying to bring a moment of balance to young Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Now that Europe welcomes migrants no longer, asylum seekers are making nearly impossible journeys through South America to the United States.

A small town welcomed hundreds of Somali refugees. A militia splinter group wanted them dead.

When it came to gathering refugees, the waiting room of the U.S. consulate was probably the closest thing to Rick’s Café Américain.

The politics of immigration ignores the reality: a classroom of young people adjusting to life in the United States, and a teacher driven to help.

It had one of the most successful refugee resettlement programs in the nation. Then Breitbart came to town.

Canada is taking in gay Chechen men subject to persecution, the risk to Canada-Russia relations be damned.

Myanmar’s Rohingya people escape systematic discrimination at home only to suffer depredations in search of new homes.

Grace Linden considers repatriation to Austria — a place she has never lived.

“We just want a normal life. We are here for survival.”

“The number of migrants crossing illegally from Mexico to the U.S. has declined dramatically. Yet the rugged borderlands of southern Arizona have become a death zone.”

In Lapham’s Quarterly, Renata Adler returns to her familial homeland to explore Germany’s present-day reaction to the millions of people now trying to get in rather than out.

The Economist reports on how refugees prize mobile phone connection — even over food.

Michael Friscolanti reports on the 14 everyday Canadians who — galvanized by the sickening image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi face-down on the beach — banded together to sponsor a family of Syrian refugees whose names they did not know, in a bid to “do what’s right. To do something.”

At Maclean’s, Jason Markusoff reports on refugees who, in the face of tighter U.S. immigration restrictions, are risking their lives to find safe haven in Canada and on the network of people helping them do it.

The story of Eh Kaw Htoo, a Karen refugee from Myanmar — a man who “extolled the redneck’s work ethic” and helped build a community of 150 Karens who sustain one another by living frugally and sharing the bounty of the land in the rural community of Comer, Georgia.

200 Karen people from the Myanmar-Thailand border have resettled in Nhill, a country town halfway between Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia. The influx of refugees has revitalized the town, creating jobs, connections, and a sense of community.

At Maisonneuve, Seila Rizvic reflects on being photographed as a Bosnian refugee at age two.

In her essay in Pacific Standard, Rahawa Haile writes about identity, the anxiety of origins, and the search for a grounded life in unstable, isolating locales. Born to Eritrean parents, Haile grew up in Miami, Florida, speaking English and Tigrinya in a low land of built of hurricane deposits that felt doomed to rising sea levels. […]

In reading for this list, I read about all sorts of boundaries—in jazz music, in science fiction and in desert landscapes. Borders are implicit in the designation of which bookshelves belong to me and which are my partner’s.

But the Maasai of Loliondo are not alone in disputing these supposed benefits. Worldwide, 8 million square miles—a landmass almost as large as the entire African continent—have been classified as protected areas by governments and conservation groups. In turn, the locals have mostly been pushed off their lands. Though no one formally counts people displaced […]

“One thing was certain: neither Youssef nor Rashid, nor Anoush nor Shahla, were going to get to the place they believed they were going. Rashid would never be reunited with his wife and sons in some quaint Australian suburb; Youssef would never see his children ‘get a position’ there; Anoush would never become an Australian […]