Migration Media Award: Second Place, Print Category, English
Author: Eleanor Ross
Media: Broadly
Date of Publication: 22/4/2016
Title: What It’s Like to Raise Kids in a Refugee Camp
Short summary: I chose to submit this feature because I wrote it when the world was panicking about the impact of migrants on Europe. At the time, TV screens were full of young men knocking down fences, but I wanted to look at the emotional trauma many migrants faced in refugee camps in Greece. I self-funded a trip to Ritsona on the Greek mainland, where I knew there were many trapped families waiting for passage to the rest of Europe. I visited just after news came that the border was shut, so I experienced the frustration, and restlessness of the children living there. Difficulties encountered during production included an unwillingness by the Greek authorities to let me visit any of the camps as a freelancer. I was allowed to only visit a ‘model’ camp — compared to Skaramagas, and other camps that colleagues had visited, Ritsona felt fresh and well-ordered. It frustrated me that I was unable to give a balanced report from a number of different camps. To make up for this, I also spent some time in the port of Piraeus, where a number of refugees who didn’t want to go into the camps, (and had avoided the controversial clearance of the port), had been stationed. I spoke to families there, who told me how frustrated they were at not being able to move on, despite having family scattered around Europe. Six months earlier, I had walked with refugees from Hungary’s Keleti station to the Austrian border, and understood how families became separated on their journey.
What It’s Like to Raise Kids in a Refugee Camp
Samaa fled the Syrian war for Lebanon’s Shatila refugee camp, where she has lived for almost half a decade with her four children. She’s one of thousands of women left stranded by the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.
