by Ying-Yu Alicia
Asia Correspondent

18 January 2020

Why I Am Connected To The Refugee Community

There are questions that every journalist must confront: what drives you to keep reporting? What is the topic you’re pursuing? Which stories trigger your anger and which pull at your heart?

And one question might be added if you’re writing on migration: “Where is your home?”

In 2015, hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants tried to cross the sea to seek safety in Europe. At that time, I studied abroad in Spain and met someone who greatly influenced my life: a chef working on a refugee rescue boat with Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

He witnessed a child’s birth in the midst of a mass drowning of 500 people, and comforted a mother who had survived when all her children died. His team rescued around a thousand people in a weekend, but two of boats with hundreds of refugees and migrants drowned before they arrived.

These stories of his work and scenes from rescue operations truly shocked me, and motivated me to create awareness of this unseen issue in Chinese-speaking societies.

I had the chance to interview several crew members working on a rescue operation after their boat disembarked at the harbor in Spain, spending three days with them. I listened to their stories, their struggles and their risky missions throughout the Mediterranean.

Publishing a report is part of the response to the movement of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean that shows the need for real, safer alternatives for people who need international protection. But I found it incredibly hard to remain unbiased while coming to understand the severity of the issues I was uncovering.

That experience drove me to Malta in 2017, where I produced reports on the struggles that refugees faced there. I interviewed refugee entrepreneurs who help newcomers integrate into society, and some young African asylum seekers who were living in a detention center in deplorable conditions. They gave me a welcoming smile, and a warm hug, and a lot of energy, joy and positivity that encouraged me personally.

Since then, I have been embarking on my journalism journey, sitting in a guest room with a group of Syrian refugees in a refugee camp in Lebanon, speaking to a Cambodian mother of two crossing the Thai-Cambodian border illegally multiple times to make a living; to an impoverished child in Belize walking barefoot under the scorching sun to sell fruit in the city; to the young pregnant woman from Sudan––under 25-years-old––who fled her country and finally delivered her baby on a rescue boat in the Mediterranean. Their innate resilience and human fragility are all now woven into my understanding of the reality and the real emotions generated by human beings.

I often ask myself: who am I to listen to their pain and suffering, who am I to ask some of the most intimate parts of  their lives with me? Sometimes I have an answer, but most times, I don’t.

Actually, instead, I take refuge in the hearts of those I encounter.

I slowly realized the answer to  “Where is my home?” lies in the same questions I ask my interviewees.

It started when I decided to study and live abroad. I began tracing my sense of belonging to Taiwan and my sense of  identity as a Taiwanese person, rather than Chinese. It allowed me to relate to the struggles that refugees have attempted to blend into a new country without forgetting their roots. Of course, I never had to flee my home to save my own or my family's life. Rather, I migrated to seek a better future.

I had my share of uncomfortable encounters.

While living in Spain, I would sometimes be met with teenagers laughing at me, calling me “China, China,” a derogatory term for a Chinese girl in Spanish. When living in Cambodia, I tried to dress in Japanese fashions to look more like an “expat,” rather than a “Southeast Asian migrant working in manufacturing factories,” who are so typically looked down upon. While I was with my white foreign boyfriend in Cambodia, people in the street would stare, mistaking me for a prostitute. I was perceived as a Filipina migrant worker by a few street stand owners near a Filipino community in Lebanon. There were other minor, but still alienating encounters too.

Indeed, many people I have met in the countries where I have lived did welcome me and treated me like family. Sometimes I’m surprised we share so many similarities even in spite of how far away we originally come. Every encounter matters to me, the good and the bad. There is a lesson in how they expand my understanding of home. I’ve found I have a lot of  “homes” now, not just one.


Back Home. Navigating Identity.
There is more to investigate about this personal feeling of connection to migrants and refugees. So I went back––all the way to where I am originally from, Taiwan.

The outbreak of Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement (the massive social movement against the passage of the Cross-Strait trade agreement that emerged in 2014) awakened me and many younger generations to question our identity and to defend the island where we call home. Through my participation in this social movement, I found that being Taiwanese is itself political.

The Republic of China remains Taiwan’s official name despite its democratic transition in the 1990s. Living under the shadow of it has shrunk Taiwan’s diplomatic space internationally, not allowing the world to recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty.

The emergence of Hong Kong’s protest in 2019, too, angered many Taiwanese. It mirrors the “one country, two systems” framework from Beijing that would gradually erode Taiwan’s democracy and freedom. Many Taiwanese worry we would one day lose our island and be forced to flee our home in the face of the increasing pressure from China’s government calling for “reunification.” It was not until last year that I began having conversations with friends on how people in Taiwan could flee the country when being bombed and militarily invaded by the Chinese government. The conversations terrified me as they sound not that different from the stories of my friends who had to fled their homes in Syria, Libya, Eritrea and other nations.


Anyone Can Lose Home.
Anyone could become a refugee overnight, regardless of your nation, race, religion or any other identity.

My background might be privileged in this era, but that can change rapidly in the next. It goes against our own interests to keep someone outside the door when they need help if we could be the ones seeking help one day too.

For that, it is my mission to continue documenting the journeys of those who have lost home, leave home or who are seeking a new one amidst precarious circumstances. It is my way to stay connected. I am grateful to be a part of Migrants of the Mediterranean, where I will expand the documentation of migrants’ stories to the Asia Pacific region. My hope is that it will help this audience understand more about migrants’ journeys in this unique region––so different, and so far flung from Europe and North America.

It is part of my subtle revolution to fight the ugliness in the world and create empathy beyond borders––and to do it right here on The Beyond blog.

Follow Ying-Yu Alicia on Twitter @yingyuchen9 and read additional work on her site.