MAPS are fascinating tools and when combined with news or video they can offer useful insight into migration. Everybody comes from somewhere after all and when people click on the diaspora map on IOM's home page, they inevitably want to know what's going on in their homeland. Where are migrants coming from and where are our emigrants heading?
The map above shows where those interviewed for Journeys of Belonging hail from. Their diverse origins and current homes speak to an increasingly hyphenated world. There's a Saudi-Swedish woman, for example, who was educated in Germany. There are people of Asian, African, American, Middle Eastern and European origin and they tell their individual stories in 114 short videos. Some are migrants, others have never left the countries where they were born, often to migrant parents. But all have traveled fascinating journeys of discovery.
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New videos explore where we belong
by Kara Hadge and Stephanie Durand
30 October 2012
Washington, DC - In a world where we all too often end up focusing on differences, we can forget that there are many things that can unite us, whether we are Americans, Brits, Christians, Muslims, Israelis, Palestinians, youth, women or members of any number of other communities.
The British Council’s Our Shared Future project and the UN Alliance of Civilizations have just released a new video series, Journeys of Belonging, that brings to light the common threads that bind people of diverse ages, genders, cultures, religions, ethnicities and beyond. Produced in partnership with the University of Missouri School of Journalism, the series features 114 short video clips in which 17 public figures and young leaders discuss their multifaceted identities, the communities they belong to and the journeys they have gone on to find that sense of belonging.
The paths that these individuals have followed were rarely smooth, and many of the videos reveal the conflicts that now shape who they are. In one clip, Sofana Dahlan – daughter, Saudi, American, social entrepreneur and lawyer, among other things – reflects on the process she went through to figure out that her identity was something she needed to define for herself, rather than something defined by others based on their assumptions of her.
More on Hadge and Durand's article here.