{"id":124,"date":"2025-09-21T22:24:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T02:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/?p=124"},"modified":"2025-11-07T15:43:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T20:43:22","slug":"week-4-blog-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/week-4-blog-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 4 Blog Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been mostly focused on the \u201caftermath\u201d of being an immigrant: programs like TPS, suspended visas, refugee aid and resettlement centers. The status of being in limbo. The status of being essentially without status. This week\u2019s news stories were along the same lines, outlining the reinstatement of Syria into BAMF\u2019s Return and Reintegration Assistance Program, in the aftermath of Assad\u2019s fall from power, the fear of Syrian migrants living in Germany of potentially needing to return to Syria\u00a0 due to the same event, Syrian doctors\u2019 deliberations over whether to stay in Germany or to return to Syria, having filled in critical gaps in the German health sector. All of this reinforces for us the reality that the process of migration continues long after a human being has physically moved across borders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But Kingsley\u2019s and Mikhail\u2019s books were critical reminders that we, as journalists, cannot forget to attend to the process of becoming a refugee before reaching one\u2019s destination: both of being persecuted in one\u2019s home country, as <\/span>The Beekeeper<\/span><\/i> so vividly portrays in the Yazidis\u2019 case, and the harrowing journeys captured in <\/span>The New Odyssey<\/span><\/i>. It struck me that those living in a country that typically receives immigrants, like many of us in the U.S., might be more inclined to follow the stories that impact migrants once they reach their destination. I find myself naturally hooked to news of Chicago ICE raids, the construction of new inhumane detention centers, the end of protections for certain migrant groups. But I appreciated how these books re-widened my lens on refugeehood into how the process begins with persecution in one\u2019s country of origin and how a migrant might carry that forward: why people need protections in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

The books took different approaches to trying to familiarize the reader with their subjects\u2019 struggles and I think <\/span>The Beekeeper <\/span><\/i>was more successful. Kingsley was telling a story that had been told before, and he seemed to know it, and play it up. But I was a bit put off by his decision to lean on <\/span>The Odyssey<\/span><\/i> and classical Greek mythology to tell this modern story. Kingsley writes in the prologue, \u201cToday\u2019s Sirens are smugglers with their empty promises of safe passage; the violent border guard a contemporary Cyclops. Three millennia after their classical forebears created the founding myths of the European continent, today\u2019s voyagers are writing a new narrative that will influence Europe, for better or worse, for years to come\u201d (Kingsley, P. 10-11). But other than dramatic ocean journeys, the Odyssey references feel more like an appeal to Western audiences and classical values than a truly justified comparison. It\u2019s the kind of fun context that usually makes a longer-form story more enjoyable, but this one didn\u2019t do it for me. Is the clever war-hero Odysseus, who was trying to get home for so long, really comparable to the modern refugee? It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t see what Kingsley is getting at, it\u2019s more that I feel stories like Hashem\u2019s flight from Syria can speak for themselves. (And I say all this as someone who really does love the <\/span>Odyssey<\/span><\/i>).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mikhail\u2019s appeal worked much better for me. Part of it was that every sentence was a shock: I\u2019d never before read about the Yazidi genocide and its treatment of women and children, so all was freshly egregious. The refrain of Mikhail\u2019s role as a teacher, and whether she should tell her students stories like Nadia\u2019s, really worked for me because even if she didn\u2019t tell her students, she was telling us. And the reporting and storytelling reminded me of Asmat Khan\u2019s in their meticulousness (the use of Google Maps to scope out areas of Syria and track how they\u2019d changed, the commitment to Abdullah as a main character), but it was more gripping for its book-form. I think Siyeon also really got at the success of the book’s poetic qualities and the blurring of subject and narrator. This week\u2019s readings reminded me to pay attention to the whole arc of migration and how best to narratively capture that arc when writing about it. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been mostly focused on the \u201caftermath\u201d of being an immigrant: programs like TPS, suspended visas, refugee aid and resettlement centers. The status of being in limbo. The status of being essentially without status. This week\u2019s news stories were along the same lines, outlining the reinstatement of Syria into BAMF\u2019s Return and Reintegration Assistance Program,<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5539,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}