Invisible Borders: Recent Episodes
Invisible Borders
In this episode of invisible borders, I talk with Doris Meissner, former Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service now known as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). We discuss the impact of the Afghanistan crisis on migration, how migration policy has evolved from her time as commissioner, and how it hasn’t. This conversation took place in August of 2021, a few days following the fall of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.
In this episode, I talk with Alain Tenta, a Congolese refugee and the founder of Dzaleka Refugee Camp's first intercultural youth center, Salama Africa. We discuss Alain's experience witnessing violence in his home town, being threatened by human smugglers at the Tanzania-Malawi border, and spending over a decade of his youth in Dzaleka.
In this episode, Aliya Abidi, a Deployable Child Protection Specialist at Plan International, talks to us about refugees in the European context through her work in the Mediterranean region. Additionally, we discuss how Covid-19 has impacted the refugee community and what we can learn from it.
In this episode, I talk with Lidia Soto-Harmon, the CEO of Girl Scouts Nation's Capital, on her family's story as Cuban refugees fleeing political persecution. We discuss Lidia's time growing up in Ecuador and El Salvador and how she learned to "live the hyphen" as a young Cuban-American in the US.
In this episode, I talk with humanitarian psychiatrist Suzan Song on her experiences observing and improving the mental health of refugees and refugee children. Dr. Song shares examples of cases she's worked on and provides insight to the psychological effects migration and conflict areas can have.