The Scrutinising Neighbour

The View From Up Here: A Short Film- https://youtu.be/gSbVx-HNmks?si=iRpe2nJU1Ypw4xsb

“No one puts their children in a boat unless the boat is safer than the land”- Kamran Foladi, Afghani Refugee.

Imagine this. You have just gone days without food, trekked miles and gone in a tiny boat all over the sea. Now you are in a foreign country, with no friends, family, no one you know. This is the story of thousands of refugees all around the world. We are going to investigate a particular case of the refugee named Leila, who has fled Syria from its bloody civil war. We see her neighbour, Claire, say how her life is much better than people who “actually live here”. She then follows up with “I’m scared, (…) we didn’t ask for you to come (…) we’re just expected to welcome you with open arms?” (Leo, 11.22) . This shows how not everyone accepts new people, and not everyone actually welcomes them with “open arms” as said. 

Push and Pull factors

There are many different factors that affect migration, but they can be classified into 2 distinct factors- Push factors and Pull factors. As the names suggest, push factors are the factors that “push” people out of a country. Some examples include: war, conflict, economic regression, political instability and environmental disasters. We can see that Leila fled Syria due to push factors- war and political instability. Data shows that 59% of migration is due to mainly push factors. 

Pull factors are factors that “pull” you to a country. Usually, this is because of better conditions, like safer neighbourhoods, better political conditions and better economic opportunities. Leila likely flees to the US because of this- better neighbourhood, political situations and better job offers. 

Leila and Claire having a tense exchange over Leila’s residence

A New Perspective

We can clearly see 2 perspectives. 1 is the “ignorant”, overprotective neighbour, who may seem to ‘mean well’ but we can see it is clear that she only really cares for herself and the “real” members of the building, who are actually  working and have families, where she thinks that Leila is not deserving of the large house if she is alone, without a job and is living off the kindness of the Church. This is said when she says “Pastor Carney, he’s done an awful lot for you” (Melissa Leo, 2:44) , but we can see an extremely condescending facial expression and tone of voice. This shows how she is just slowly breaking down everything that she sees wrong. We see the 2nd perspective. The refugee, the person who has just gone thousands of miles, across inhuman conditions, just to get a decent place to live. We see, she doesn’t know anything new here, she is scared, yet she is still trying to make a decent life and start making a living. We see, the amount she is trying, yet the amount of persecution she is facing. We see now, how not everyone is like me, or my classmates. We see in so many real life cases, how refugees are othered, submitted to s*xual violence and even shipped through storage containers just to escape.

How it stacks up.

We see two very different sides. We see how this affects our society and how we see people. We see, more than 130 million people are displaced, but only 43.7 million people are actually recognised as refugees. We see how Leila is one of the lucky ones, but 70+ million others are still displaced. We need to understand how none of these people actually asked for this. Their government attacking their own citizens, war ripping their lives apart, or even nuclear disasters that make places unliveable for hundreds of years after. 

I will now conclude this blog with the powerful quote “The greatest nations are defined by how they treat their weakest inhabitants”- Jorge Ramos. This shows how great countries need to treat their refugees and asylum seekers better, as everyone has the right to life, shelter, health and education.