Subverting Schrodinger’s Refugee
As many of you know, we’re in the deep middle of our Refugee Issue. My personal motivation for this series was simple: I hate the way refugees are often presented in the media — lacking agency, completely helpless, and… maybe terrorists? (Not too different from Schrodinger’s immigrant.)
We wanted to introduce other narratives in the mix — and maybe encourage people unfamiliar with refugee struggles to feel compassion towards them. Here are a few ways we’ve been attempting this:
Why Uganda Is An Unexpected Haven for Refugees
Abigail Higgins explains how the East African country treats refugees differently from almost anywhere else: they welcome them with open arms, give them the right to work and travel freely, access Ugandan social services, a plot of land to live on, and a plot of land to farm.
Their liberal policy, at odds with most of the world, has borne some fruit: less than 1% of refugees in rural Ugandan settlements depended entirely on humanitarian assistance.
Refugee Workers Need to Care for Themselves, Too
Working with refugees can take a heavy toll. There may not be a single breaking point, but helping people who have suffered in extreme ways — coupled with feeling like the world will never do enough to correct the systems that led to their oppression — can lead to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and burnout.
Katia Savchuk describes precisely what this burnout looks like, and how aid workers can practice self-care everyday. Fantastic reading for anyone who’s served marginalized populations.
“My Apartment Building Is Full of Women Worrying About What Is Next”
“We found the first bullet in my brother’s crib. It wasn’t the first bullet, but it was my first — and it was when I realized there was war in Somalia. I was five years old and playing in the house when I heard it pierce our thin ceiling and hit the bed where my brother was sleeping.”
Mulki Mohamed Omar escaped war-ravaged Somalia as a teenager and has been living in limbo Kenya for the last 13 years, awaiting resettlement in the United States. We shared her story, in her words, as told to Abigail Higgins.
All of this work builds on our stories last week, which included an inquiry into whether Brazil could serve as a lifeline for Syrian refugees; an essay from a woman whose family arrived in the U.S. as Jewish refugees, and is now struggling to talk to her parents about the Muslim ban; and a personal reflection from a #blessed Millennial on traveling the world a generation after her father escaped Vietnam in a rickety boat.
We have another week left of our refugee series, and we’d love to hear from you. How are we doing? What else would you like to see from us? How are we, in our sincerest effort to do otherwise, still perpetuating myths about refugees that you wish would go away?
Happy reading!
