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Riley Carraher(she/her/hers)
3rd year Biomedical Engineering phone: 404-353-4851 email: rbcarraher@gmail.com My involvement with impact:
My freshman year, I attended the Food Justice trip to Durham, North Carolina. I loved the direct service, but the most unexpected and impactful part of my first trip was the conversations that stemmed from volunteering. I had never experienced service that reflected on and continued the conversation long after the initial work. This idea pushed me to be more intentional and created a strong community that helps me grow in everything I do. My sophomore year, I went to Savannah, GA for shelter and resource access. My biggest take away was learning more about sustainable service as well as the intersectionality of all social justice issues. Why I am interested in my trip's focus? Refugee awareness and immigration in general has become increasingly relevant in today’s political climate. I wanted to learn more about this topic because I realized how little I knew about the process. Coming from a place of privilege, I wanted to understand how I could best support current refugees and use that power to advocate / give them a platform to use their voice. I hope to learn more about how identity is shaped through this and see how different perspectives view the topic. A Fun fact: I have my black belt in karate! |
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Nicolas Perez-Carreño (he/him/his)
3rd year International affairs and history with a minor in Latin American and Caribbean studies phone: 706-934-1837 email: nrp54873@uga.edu My involvement with impact: I went on a Youth Empowerment trip to Bluefield, West Virginia that made a huge impact on me and I learned a lot about myself and sustainable service. My second year I was a site leader for the Immigration Awareness: Farmworker Justice trip in Immokalee, Florida where we even got to march along with the farmworkers fighting for rights. I’ve learned the importance of the difference of “charity work” and actually fighting for justice and participating in sustainable service, which Impact aims to do.
Why I am interested in my trip's focus? I think the identity of refugee has been politicized immensely and the aspect of humanity has been erased from them. As a child of immigrants, it is important to recognize how others’ experiences are when they arrive to the United States fleeing from persecution and understanding what it means to settle into the US on top of racism and xenophobia. A Fun fact: I met the dog from Men In Black 2! |
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Trip Information
Key terms:
- Asylum seeker - An individual who is seeking international protection.
- Borders - Politically defined boundaries separating territory or maritime zones
- Climate migration - The movement of a person or groups of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive change in the environment due to climate change, leave their habitual place of residence
- Displacement - The movement of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence.
- Immigrant - From the perspective of the country of arrival, a person who moves into a country other than that of his or her nationality or usual residence
- Refugee - A person who, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear unwilling to return to it.
- Reintegration - A process which enables individuals to re-establish the relationships needed to live.
- Visa - An endorsement by the competent authorities of a State in a passport or a certificate of identity
- Vulnerability - Within a migration context, vulnerability is the limited capacity to avoid, resist, cope with, or recover from harm.
- Xenophobia - attitudes, prejudices and behavior that reject, exclude and often vilify persons, based on the perception that they are outsiders or foreigners to the community, society or national identity.
Refugee Resettlement in Athens:
https://www.onlineathens.com/article/20130427/NEWS/304279953
https://flagpole.com/news/news-features/2016/04/27/refugees-have-been-resettling-in-athens-for-years
https://www.onlineathens.com/article/20130427/NEWS/304279953
https://flagpole.com/news/news-features/2016/04/27/refugees-have-been-resettling-in-athens-for-years
- Refugee Outreach at UGA
- Most refugees seek to resettle in Clarkston, GA or in areas by Decatur/Atlanta, leaving few to move to Atlanta.
- The International Rescue Committee (a nonprofit refugee resettlement agency) hoped to establish a small office in Athens, GA in 2015, but several government leaders, including Mayor Nancy Denson voted against it. She claimed that her priorities were to focus on the people already in the city, particularly the issue of homelessness.
- Many of the refugees in Athens work at Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant.
Don't feel sorry for refugees - believe in them
Refugee resettlement Intersectionality:
- Climate change
- People who work near shorelines or have agricultural based jobs are now at higher risk of being impacted by rising sea levels, higher temperature fluctuations, and natural disasters.
- https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/climate-change-and-disasters.html
- Access to resources
- Immigrants often struggle finding long term access to resources because of their legal status and sometimes surroundings.
- Quality educational access
- Healthcare / Insurance
- Politics
- Overtimes, refugee’s identities are politicized and different views on immigration impacts policies and laws
- Documentation status
- LGBTQ+ community
- Some refugees become refugees because they are fleeing their home due to prosecution
- https://www.uua.org/lgbtq/witness/international/lgbtq-refuge-asylum
- Social constructs / humanity
- Discrimination in the workplace, school, and various other social settings
- Bias
- Stereotypes
- Cross between refugees and people of color POC and they racism that can stem for it.
- Women’s rights
- Higher chance of being trafficked
- https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/women.html
