We each have a picture in our mind of a refugee. Perhaps it is an individual you know personally, or a current media meme, or a historic refugee crisis that resonated with you when you were coming of age.
We each have a picture in our mind of a refugee.
Perhaps it is an individual you know personally, or a current media meme, or a historic refugee crisis that resonated with you when you were coming of age.
For each one of you reading this today there are thousands more individuals who are refugees, forcibly displaced from their homes.
The magnitude of the refugee crisis can at times seem incomprehensible. This column will provide a refuge from the media deluge on refugees.
Using a few drops of information, this column aims to broaden to the perceptions of the current refugee crises around the world.
The website for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees highlights 135 prominent refugees.
Among them is Albert Einstein, who as a Jewish scholar popularized in the press after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1919, fled Germany at the rise of the Nazi party and anti-Semitism. The United States accepted him as a refugee.
Over the next week, when you come across a story about a refugee, picture the individual as Albert Einstein, and then ask yourself, does that change how I hear the story?
Peggy Lynn MacIsaac is a doctoral student at Athabasca University, researching distance education in emergency contexts with a focus on refugees.
