Event: Syrian Trajectories from Damascus to Euroland
Date and Time: April 12th 4:00-5:30 PM
Location: Pomerene Hall
For my non-IA event this semester I attended the talk “Syrian Trajectories from Damascus to Euroland: Trans Mediterranean Assemblages” by Dr. Leila Hudson. In this talk, Dr. Hudson discussed her project in which she assisted a family that was trying to relocate from Damascus to Germany. Her talk was broken up into three discussion points of ethnography, family, and information assemblages.
When talking about ethnography, she talked about how the people she was helping were five middle aged, working class sisters and their families. Ultimately she ended up helping the youngest sister cross the Aegean with her children. Dr. Hudson pointed out how helping the women allowed her to see the perspective of women and how their experiences as refugees are different compared to men. Women experience completely different obstacles and have to make different decisions especially in regards to family.
Dr. Hudson also talked about how she learned the importance of family in making the decision to relocate and how the journey can cause the family unit to deteriorate. She referred to the family as a tree that when uprooted shows the “fluid network of relationships”, but this tree-like structure falls apart to the point where these connections break down as the refugees get farther from home.
While traveling, it is necessary for refugees to have a cell phone that allows them to stay in contact with people they need along the way. Dr. Hudson showed a picture of one of the sons on the phone with the person that was smuggling the family to ensure the meeting time and place was correct. Information assemblages are very important for refugees to be in a state of awareness so nothing goes terribly wrong. She even mentioned how Facebook groups were important sources of information that allowed people to share things like locations of police checkpoints. It was interesting to hear about the importance of technology because I had never even thought about how refugees utilized this tool.
In the Q&A session, someone asked how Dr. Hudson dealt with the privileged position that she had when interacting with the refugees. She responded by saying she needed to control her impulse of wanting to “save” them by just buying a boat for them to get to Germany on her own. The family had to educate her by rejecting her offer and explaining that if she did that every other refugee family would want to get on the boat as well and soon she would be forced into the smuggling business just by sheer demand. So, instead of offering to help with big things, she participated in small acts of reciprocity. They provided her with food and information so she gave back with small actions like offering to mail heavy documents to them so they wouldn’t have to carry them the whole trip.
This lecture was interesting to listen to because it not only shared the story and obstacles of the refugee family, but it also provided Dr. Hudson’s perspective of a privileged outsider and the things she learned. As an International Affairs Scholar I think hearing both perspectives is important because as a privileged outsider myself, I do not have a true understanding of what these women and their families went through. There is a huge refugee crisis going on right now and when I hear about it on the news it feels as if the human aspect of it is diminished. When I heard about it through this lecture and learned about the obstacles of a specific family of refugees it made the issue seem less distant. I enjoyed this lecture because I’m used to hearing only the political side of the refugee crisis and Dr. Hudson’s story allowed me to hear about some of the barriers refugees actually face on a smaller scale.