That’s a shame — I researched this by speaking to the CEO of an organisation who has been working with refugees and conflict survivors for over 27 years (the actual interview is linked here too), because I didn’t feel that I had the experience or right to make up my advice based on meeting a handful of refugees myself. You can look at www.cwwpp.org to read more about their work and experience.
Unfortunately, many refugees from around the world have not been able to start searching for jobs and carrying on with their lives because the legal systems in place do not give them that luxury — so it’s possible that Charles’s experience relates more to people who have spent months or years in detention centres with their basic dignity taken away, or those who lived in war for prolonged periods of time.
The situation with Ukraine is an exception — the EU has given those fleeing Ukraine the right to access the labour market and live here for up to a year. However, the other way in which this situation is different, I believe, is that there has been very little time to get into a ‘much better state’ — here in Prague, people have escaped from their cities being bombed and arrived in a stranger’s home perhaps two or three days later. Because of social media, a lot of people have bypassed official routes and have found spare rooms via Facebook groups while they’ve barely just crossed the border out of Ukraine. I don’t know if that was your experience, too. What I’m hearing is pride, anger, and not wanting to feel as if you are being pitied or looked down on in any way. That’s a valuable part of the discussion, too, and I appreciate your perspective. And I’m sorry if “allow them to talk” came across in that way — I was directly quoting the guy I interviewed there — but feel free to suggest an alternative? I think the overall sentiment was “don’t shut people down when they’re trying to share their experiences”.
But we also did clarify that we were not only talking about the current war in Ukraine; Charles was sharing his experience of working with conflicts in the Balkans, Nigeria, Kenya, Syria and many of the other places he has worked. Maybe I need to make this clearer in the article.
Unfortunately I suppose a lot of ‘official’ advice that comes out is going to sound tone-deaf, too, because everybody is going to have had a different experience and those who work with refugees, but haven’t actually experienced being a refugee themselves, can come across as patronising or out of touch with the reality of the situation. That’s why comment threads like this one *can* become valuable places to clarify, add suggestions, and enter into deeper discussion.
