Louder than Words Podcast: Migration

Professor Jules Pretty and journalist Martha Dixon, take you on a journey to discover why we need to learn from our past in uncovering the global impact of migration on our people and our land. Our speakers have direct experience of migration and the impact it has had on their lives. We discuss why this is such an important issue and why we need to learn from the past to look forward. Roma Tearne arrived on a boat from Sri Lanka more than fifty years ago. Her parents were Tamil and Sinhalese, caught in a conflict between the two ethnic groups. Roma is an award winning artist and novelist. Her art reflects departed memories and she works with asylum seekers and immigrants to make an imagined archive of what they've lost. Professor Susan Oliver looks at past migration through literature. This provides valuable insights into trying to understand the current impact of migration and the longer view. But this understanding cannot happen without engagement from the public – the very people who have been forced to leave their homes because of conflict, poverty or just an inability to survive. Professor Ahmed Shaheed is a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, and a migrant from the Maldives forced to leave after a coup. He discusses how conflict creates more displaced people and the effects of climate change that force people to travel. But there is hope for the future –if people learn about each other and spend time with someone of a different identity and ethnic background. Professor Jonathan Lichtensein, professor of drama at Essex, has recently published a book, The Berlin Shadow, about his father’s experience of escaping the Holocaust. They go on a trip to Berlin to re-visit his past. The experience is cathartic – for the first time in his life, though in his mid-80s, his father can sleep.