In Western countries, refugees are often seen as a burden, as an indistinct mass of people threatening our values and well-being. In today’s episode of Refugee Realities, Simona Camillini and Jenifer Elmslie speak with three of the hundreds of thousands of people who every year are forced to flee their homes and leave everything behind to start a new life elsewhere. Here are their incredible stories.
Call them by their names
Host: Simona Camillini, MSc student, Gender, Development, and Globalisation, LSE
Paul is from Nigeria and since 2014, he has been living in Sankt Poelten, a city in Lower Austria near the Austrian capital Vienna; Nour is from Syria and she has been living in Vienna since 2017. Their experiences of refugeehood are very different and yet, in a way, very similar. Not only because they are both very well integrated into the Austrian society, but also because being a refugee deeply marked their lives. However, despite the traumatic experience they both went through, Paul and Nour remain hopeful and have a message for governments and politicians: believing in the human capital of refugees and in their potential is the first step to creating a more just, open, tolerant, and inclusive society for all.
Listen to the podcast
Navigating asylum in the UK as an unaccompanied minor
Host: Jenifer Elmslie, MSc student, Gender, Development, and Globalisation, LSE
In this interview, Mustafa Ali discusses his experience leaving Afghanistan as an unaccompanied minor at the age of 13, and his 10-year journey to gain asylum in the UK. Mustafa discusses his journey which led to him graduating from Cambridge in 2017 with a degree in architecture. He talks about the difficulties he encountered during his time studying for his undergraduate degree while simultaneously attempting to secure the right to stay in the UK. He discusses how the UK government’s heavily politicised and hostile domestic policies towards immigration have affected the right of asylum seekers to seek refuge in this country.
Listen to the podcast
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Image credit: Will Pagel on Unsplash
