The other weekend I went to the cinema to see “Fuocoammare: au-déla de Lampedusa” (entitled "Fire at Sea" in English), a raw documentary on the refugee crisis in Europe that was nominated for multiple prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. The film gives an unfiltered portrait of Lampedusa, an Italian island off the coast of Libya, where over 400,000 desperate migrants have arrived in the past 20 years. I truly believe that without watching this film or speaking to refugees themselves, it would is nearly impossible to understand the extent of the human suffering refugees have faced.
Watching the film made me ask myself a troubling question: Where are all the refugees in Paris?
At the crossroads of many migrant flows, Paris is home to plenty of refugees. I just don’t see them. My daily habits insulate me from their alternate reality: a world of camps, like this one underneath Paris’s Stalingrad metro, which was evacuated the other day by the French government.
The film motivated me to join SciencePo’s Refugee Help, an organization that helps refugees acquire papers from the notoriously inefficient French bureaucracies, instructs language courses in refugee centers, and organizes sporting and cultural activities with students and refugees.
I convinced my teammate from the school soccer team to come play soccer with the refugees and me one afternoon. After meeting around 15 refugees at a youth refugee center, we walked to a nearby field introducing ourselves along the way. Conversation was difficult at first, but the game soon took over.
The match was a humbling experience. Soccer has an amazing ability to bring people together and develop trust. Our new friends were good, too! One Afghan was so crafty and technical that the French started calling him le brésilien (the Brazilian)! For two hours, both refugees and students forgot their worries and just played.
After the match, I walked back to the refugee center with Malik, an 18-year-old from Sudan. He had been in Paris for two months, the same as I had, and was completely alone. When he told me he came by boat to Europe, gruesome scenes from the documentary replayed in my head. I wanted to ask him questions about his voyage, his family, and his experiences, but I didn’t dare risk bringing back any painful memories.
Malik told me he wants to immigrate to America and asked if there was anything I could do to help. My heart sank. There was little I could do for Malik’s American dream, and I knew it. The United States has the world’s strictest and longest refugee vetting process in the world. Malik would need a miracle to pass every step, which normally takes up to 24 months to complete. I avoided the subject and encouraged him to learn French as quickly as possible.
When I got home to my cozy homestay, I couldn’t help but think about where Malik would sleep that night. Would he have a bed? Would there be a roof over his head?
Malik’s Parisian experience will certainly be nothing like mine. I have a privileged life in Paris. I live in the quiet fifteenth arrondissement in southeast Paris, a 20-minute run from the Eiffel Tower. My host family cooks amazing French meals, and I feel at home in their quaint apartment. Meeting and playing soccer with refugees has made me much more aware of the privilege I enjoy in the city of lights.
Both the documentary and my experiences with the refugees here in Paris have driven me to make a greater effort to leave my bubble and learn more about refugees’ experiences and how I can help.
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