Making Home Away

So I sat them down and told them: the five of us are here, me, you and your father, wherever the five of us are, that place should be your heaven.
Discover their stories

Mohammed’s mother

Current 'Home' London, Ontario, Canada

Mohammed's mother, who has lived in Canada since 2016, tells us what she has found in her new home country, as well as what is missing:

"The country is beautiful, and people are nice here, they treated me well and took care of my health condition and provided medical surgeries for me. But it is difficult for me even when I do any activity or when I communicate with society here because I immediately remember my children, and I wish I could see my daughters and my son. I always think of what our life has become, and how we live apart and far from each other. My son got married in the UAE, I did not see him, and he has a daughter that I haven’t seen either. Each one of my daughters in Syria has five children, most of them we did not see, they are growing up and they did not see their grandfather.  Even our happiness feels different without the whole family."

Family reunification processes have been even further delayed - in some cases halted entirely - by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated travel bans.  This blog post explores the ongoing difficulties faced by refugees in Canada, and the ramifications of increased complications in light of COVID for their precarious economic, legal and family migration circumstances.

Image shared by a Syrian refugee in Canada, showing damage to their former home - image copyright Suzan Ilcan.

SUZAN ILCAN

This extract is from an interview conducted by SUZAN ILCAN during 2019 as part of the British Academy funded ‘Lost and Found: A Digital Archive of Migration, Displacement and Resettlement’  project’s Making Home Away archive.