Prior to my involvement in UNIV 190, my knowledge of refugees was very limited. I did not imagine for a second that by the end of the year, I would have experienced as much as I have. My involvement in this class has given me the opportunity to hear first-hand accounts from refugees hailing from all over the world, hear about conflicts that I did not even know existed, and learn about a marginalized sector of the population that is unknown to most people. All in all, this class helped me grow as an individual, and gave me the tools to communicate this issue to others.
Before this class, I only knew about refugees from my personal interest in world conflicts or my involvement in Model UN. However, reading about these issues only shed light on refugee situations outside of the US. I knew about camps all over Africa and how governments struggled to support refugees from other countries. However, I sort of took for granted what happened once refugees were resettled. In that scenario, I saw refugee resettlement as the last step in the process. Now I know it is only the beginning of another arduous process for refugees.
Exactly how hard this process is became very clear early on in the class. Reading “What is the What”, hearing stories directly from lost boys and other speakers like Alpha Diallo, and more importantly listening to the refugee family I worked with were great sources of knowledge on this topic. They all stressed common themes about what hardships they went through. Language, social norms, education, relationships, employment and nostalgia were all themes that came up repeatedly throughout all these sources.
One of the brothers in the family that I worked with this past semester, Blood, was about my age and thus made it easy to understand his hardships. He told me about how much he missed get-togethers and social events in his homeland of Congo, and furthermore explained the stress of having to study for his ACTs while still taking ESL classes. Taking college placement tests was hard enough for me without it being in a language that I was just recently learning!
This class also helped me to realize how globalized the world truly is. Right here in Rogers Park, in one semester of class, I’ve met refugees from Congo, Sudan, Cambodia, and Ivory Coast. From my friends’ experiences, I’ve heard of many more. Although it is alarming to hear about the amount of conflicts going on overseas, it is certainly calming to know that the global village is working together to aid people in need.
Resettling refugees in America is a noble pursuit, and one that I was glad to be a part of in this semester of classes. However, through UNIV 190, I also learned that it is an imperfect process, and one which has lots of room for improvement. The video we watched on asylum seekers in the US shed a light on how arbitrary the processes of getting into this country can be. Although refugees are in a different situation altogether, it helps to showcase their difficulties. Furthermore, the systems that take care of refugees once they arrive in the United States are also a bit lacking. This is in part due to a lack of funding, because I do believe the people involved have the best intentions for refugees.
Being in UNIV 190 and the experience that came with it helped me grow intellectually and personally, I definitely gained a lot from it. Although I know I would have to dive deeper into the vast pool of refugee social service in order to receive its full benefits, this small glimpse of a section in society that I for the most part did not know about was extremely beneficial for me.