In this activity, participants explore issues about refugees in Europe, first through creative story telling and then through discussion.

“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”

Warsan Shire

Issues addressed

• The problems refugees and asylum seekers face when coming to Europe
• Empathy towards displaced people
• Stereotypes, prejudice and xenophobia towards foreigners

Aims

• To inform participants about the refugee crisis, the reality and causes
• To understand the reality of daily life faced by refugees
• To promote empathy and solidarity with refugees and migrants

Preparation / Materials

• Read through the activity, try to assess which issues may be raised by your group, and inform yourselves accordingly.
• Research the daily lives of refugees and migrants where you live and choose a case to be the starting point of your activity.
• If possible, make contact with someone locally who is a refugee or migrant or, if this is not possible, contact an NGO working with them.
• Flip chart and pens for the facilitator and the small groups; mobile phones, 2 or 3 per small group

Instructions

1. Tell the group that they are to write a short story about a refugee who lives locally, for instance, “Miriam, a refugee, is 26, has a small child and is working on a local farm harvesting fruit and vegetables”.
2. Ask participants to form groups of four to six to write a short news article about Miriam: where she comes from, where she lives, her family and how she feels about living here. How did Miriam get to our town and what did she leave behind? Don’t forget to add a picture of her! Give participants 20 minutes for this.
3. Then ask each group to present its story. Record the main points on a flip chart and go on to the debriefing in plenary.
4. The debriefing will raise many questions which will need some research before they can be answered. Break up into small groups again, with each group tasked with finding the answer to a specific question. Tip: start by putting the questions or key words into a search engine. Give the groups 30 minutes to do the research and then continue the debriefing.

Debriefing and evaluation

Start the discussion by inviting the groups to reflect on each other's stories.

• Were the stories based on facts, beliefs or assumptions? How realistic were they?
• Where did participants get their information about refugees from?
• In the different stories, was Miriam in fact a refugee or was she a migrant or asylum seeker?
• How are these three groups welcomed and treated in your country?
• There are many examples of refugees benefiting a country’s economy in general and bringing positive change to communities. Do you know of any examples in your country?
• Why are some people opposed to accepting refugees? What arguments do they use? Can these be supported with facts?
• Because of their location, the southern European countries receive more refugees than those in the north. Is this fair? How many refugees has your country accepted this year? Could and should it do more to take in refugees?
• Assuming Miriam is a refugee, what help (official and unofficial) does she receive in your country to help her integrate? Is this support enough? What else would help her to settle well?
• How do you think she feels about living in your country? What challenges does she face?
• Can you imagine things changing in your country such that you have to flee, to become a refugee? What would you take with you? How would you escape?
• Some people say that the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants is a device to let the privileged in and keep the rest out. What do you think?
• To be accepted as a refugee you must fear for your life at home because of persecution. People who are poor or destitute and starving also fear for their lives and the lives of their children. Should they not be eligible for refugee status? Why? Why not?
• Has anyone in the group moved from where they were born to where they live now? Why? What challenges did you face? What rewards are there? How would it have been if you had come as a refugee?
• What can you do to support refugees where you live?

Tips for the facilitators

This activity is particularly suitable for local groups because it opens the way for solidarity and action. With international groups, emphasis may be put on awareness raising. By comparing differing national attitudes towards refugees and differing national responses, participants may come to see new opportunities for action in their own countries.

The topic of “refugees” and “the refugee crisis” is huge and complex. It is therefore recommended that you try to focus on issues that will open the possibility for the participants to take action locally.

The way you set the story will reveal how much the participants know about refugees and the refugee crisis, and the assumptions we all make. For instance, participants from western European countries may assume Miriam to be a migrant worker from eastern Europe, or maybe trafficked and you may find it more appropriate to focus on the rights of trafficked women in their community. On the other hand, people living on the Mediterranean coast may assume that Miriam is an asylum seeker who arrived on a small boat. Everywhere there are people who are neither officially asylum seekers nor refugees but who have come to your country to escape desperate living conditions at home. Some of these are living illegally and “underground”, maybe on the streets, begging and without any access to medical care. These people may be more prevalent in big cities.

The stories that people write will depend not only on their locality but also, among other things, their backgrounds, ethnicities, job status and ages. Most groups are likely to produce very varied accounts, raising issues about trafficking, ‘push’ factors such as persecution for political, religious and sexual orientation, and economic ‘pull’ factors, escaping poverty and hoping for a better life in Europe. For this reason, facilitators should inform themselves about the issues, and know where to direct participants to find information. For instance, you may need to clear up confusion about the term ‘refugee’, which is often used loosely to mean someone fleeing their country. A highly recommended resource for background information and also for other activities relating to refugees is the British Red Cross publication, Positive Images.

This activity can be a challenge for facilitators since it will be hard to know which direction it will go in. The knowledge and concerns that the participants reveal in their stories may mean the discussion and research do not focus on refugees (people with refugee status) but rather on asylum seekers or migrants. Alternatively, concerns may be about unaccompanied minor asylum seekers, family reunification, problems with the Dublin Regulation, or that there is not an equitable distribution of refugees among European countries.

Data and information about refugees is widely available online starting with United Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees.

A recommended way to introduce this activity is to read Warsan Shire’s poem ‘Home’, that starts with the line, “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”. You could then go on to put the European refugee problem into some perspective. There are useful graphs on the Internet.

Variations

1. Rather than writing news stories, the groups could "dramatise", or make a short sketch about an episode during Miriam's departure from her country or her arrival in our town.
2. Invite a refugee or migrant who is living in your town to visit your group. Invite them to tell the group briefly why they left their country of origin, how they travelled and what happened to them on the way. Follow up with a longer question and answer session. You will need more time for this option.
3. Read a story or watch a film. If it is not easy to find a refugee or migrant who would be able to help, an alternative is to use a refugee’s story; there are plenty on the Internet. The resource Positive Images, listed above, will be useful.

Suggestions for follow-up

Take action: Schedule time in a forthcoming session to work on the information and ideas gathered in this activity to decide what realistic and practical action the group could take to support refugees locally.

Move on to another activity: Sometimes it can be very difficult to know how to react in a situation when you see someone discriminating against someone else. It happens all the time, on buses, in shops and on the street – but how do you react? What should you do? Explore this in ‘Sharing discrimination’, or ‘Target and bystander’.

Background information

There are important legal differences between a refugee, an asylum seeker and a migrant:

• A migrant is someone who moves from one country to another. If they settle in another country for more than a year, they are called an immigrant. These include those who move to study, work or seek a better life.
• A refugee is a person who has fled armed conflict or persecution, for instance, because of their religion or sexual orientation, and who is recognised as in need of international protection. Refugees are protected under international law by the 1951 refugee convention. Once someone has been given refugee status, they should be able to access housing and welfare benefits, and have help in finding a job and integrating into society.
• An asylum seeker is someone who is claiming protection as a refugee. Under the refugee convention, states must not immediately return asylum seekers to the countries they have fled from. If an asylum seeker’s claim is accepted, then they become a refugee.