When I think of the word ‘refugee’, two memories come to mind. The first was when I stepped out of a taxi in the centre of Izmir in Turkey, a place that, at one point, revolved around the crude reception and distribution of hundreds of thousands of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees. I remember the smell of sheeshas, the widespread sale of makeshift lifejackets and the loud hubbub of cafés and hotels, all full to the brim with people who’d packed their lives into small rucksacks.
While walking around and being approached by smugglers asking me to part with €1,500, I came across a long queue of refugees. I remember how the line never seemed to diminish, even when vans and buses arrived at random intervals to collect a group. From a miscellaneous spot, someone among them with no knowledge of sea travel would be forced to steer a substandard and overloaded boat across an unpredictable stretch of water, and dump the passengers on the shore for the next phase of their uncertain journey. I followed the queue down, observing and counting as I went. Men, women, the elderly, and the young of all shapes and sizes tried to retain a degree of dignity within the frantic melée. As I reached the end of the queue of no fewer than 200 people, I saw a family of five; the youngest, a two-year-old, was playing with a flimsy lifejacket as if it were a toy. I remember feeling sick to the core; what I saw as I looked at him was my daughter’s face.
My second memory was of interviewing Syrians and Iraqis in a dilapidated housing project in one of Paris’s already bulging banlieues where social tension was high. I had already spent some days with refugees in the area, even sitting with them to watch the news as live reports came in of the nearby Bataclan terrorist attacks. During one interview with a family of six, the father, Assam, broke down as he described how he’d had to adopt a four-year-old whose whole family had been murdered. Over the course of the conversation, during which he shared horrific accounts of torture and death, his wife, Naram, sat quietly in the chair. From time to time, her children came in and lingered before running off, shouting.
Her six-year-old daughter Maya, however, would not leave her mother’s side. Occasionally, Maya opened her eyes and smiled at me before nestling her head back into her mother’s arms. As she moved her head, I could see hairs dislodge themselves from already bare patches on her head. Naram told me how she had only just started to recover from the weight loss and trauma of the journey. It transpired that Maya had been beaten by the Macedonian police as, along with thousands of others, they tried to cross the border. In the chaos, Naram was thrust to the floor and also lashed, all the while protecting her screaming daughter. Once again, my daughter’s face appeared in those moments.
A decade witnessing refugee trauma
I have come close to these realities over the last decade, having undertaken a longitudinal study of the refugee exodus into Europe and, more recently, by opening my doors to Ukrainians fleeing conflict in their home country in 2022/23. Aside from the appalling experiences and the tragedy of these people’s circumstances, the common denominator in my reflections is children, perhaps because I am a father. Through my studies, I’ve come to see how such ordeals experienced by children at a young age manifest as lifelong trauma. Through my privilege and fortune, I can mitigate such experiences felt by my children, but in these situations, I am confronted with people who will likely endure these things for the rest of their lives.
So, when, by a weird twist of fate, I was hosting Ukrainian refugees myself, I faced an unforeseen challenge: suddenly I felt responsible for alleviating their immediate traumas of having left their lives in Ukraine behind, as well as having to integrate joltingly into a new society and way of life. Since they had left husbands and fathers at home, I became responsible – to some degree – for their wellbeing within a fractured family, a new cultural dynamic, social situations and educational institutions. I hugely underestimated the challenge.
Maksym, aged 11 at the time, who stayed with me for six months with his mum and her two god-daughters, had to leave his father behind. He rarely made eye contact with me in the first few weeks. The sporadic video calls with his father – made at times when electricity was available and when there were no air raid threats – only made him want to return home. Though offered a place in school, his progress was hampered by cultural and language barriers, and he was bullied for his height and pale skin. He often came home crying, and his mother withdrew him. At home, however, while he started seeing me as the father figure and hugging me as if I were a family member, he was also recreating war games and developing neurological mental health conditions and irritable bowel problems.
I took him to play basketball along with my daughter. I made friends with other host families and tried to help him socialise with other children his age, perhaps naively thinking that a shared sense of suffering might bind him with others. It didn’t. As many of the Ukrainian women slotted into exploitative work opportunities and couldn’t tend to their children because of their demanding shift patterns, I involved them in after-school activities. But little changed.
The impotence of the situations
I came to realise that, in the large scheme of things, my role in these children’s lives was limited and my ambition to ease their pain unrealistic, perhaps most tellingly reflected in my failed attempts to quell another refugee boy’s anger and violent outbursts. Ighor was 10 at the time, and sometimes an uncontrollable rage would engulf him. Ighor’s mum, Anya, had quickly developed a deep depression in the aftermath of leaving Ukraine, having had to uproot her two young children and deal with the death of her husband – their father – who had been killed early in the conflict. For much of the time I knew her, she would spend long spells staring vacantly into space, desiring only to be alone and developing a heavy reliance on alcohol. She was like an empty shell and seemed to have disconnected from reality so often that frequently others would have to make her children dinner or read them bedtime stories.
In reflecting on my encounters with refugee children, from the crowded streets of Izmir to the fractured homes of Paris and the quiet pain inside my own house, I am left with a profound sense of helplessness and responsibility. These experiences reveal how deeply war and displacement scar the youngest and most vulnerable. My efforts to comfort or support often felt futile against the weight of their trauma. Yet, these experiences have sharpened my understanding of the long, invisible battles refugees face. Above all, they remind me that empathy alone is not enough, even if it is where we must begin.
Daniel Briggs is a Professor of Criminology and Sociology at Northumbria University.
Sheltering Strangers by Daniel Briggs is available on Bristol University Press. Order here for £27.99.
You can also access the book on Bristol University Press Digital via your institution’s library.
Bristol University Press/Policy Press newsletter subscribers receive a 25% discount – sign up here.
Follow Transforming Society so we can let you know when new articles publish.
The views and opinions expressed on this blog site are solely those of the original blog post authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Policy Press and/or any/all contributors to this site.
Image credit: Ozan Safak via Unsplash