Our population crossed the 8 billion mark in November, 2022. As we move towards trying to hunt for alternative domiciles for our ever-expanding population, even in outer space, we still have to take into account the increased movement of people across the Earth in search of alternative homes driven by external circumstances or by personal needs.
Some have lost their homes and lands to war, some to climate emergencies and some moved out out of choice. Here we have collected narratives of past and present migrations, emphasising the fluidity of borders, despite the lines drawn artificially by manmade constructs. In an earlier interview, Anthony Sattin talks of nomadic migrations and the concept of asabiyya, or brotherhood, which tied humans to ideas and ideals instead of a piece of land mooted in Arabia by Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century. Has the time come to revive this concept with conflicts and the climate crises becoming real? As weapons, fire and water affect our habitats, one wonders if reverting to the concept of nomadic existence is not becoming a necessity… This small collection of writings will hopefully highlight the concerns.
Migrants
In Migrating to Myself from Kolkata to Singapore, Asad Latif explores selfhood in context of diverse geographies. Click here to read.
In How I Wound Up in Japan, Suzanne Kamata gives her story as an immigrant. Click here to read.
In Belacan, Farouk Gulsara shares a narrative based on the life of a migrant in 1950s Malaysia. Click here to read.
Ujjal Dosanjh, former Minister from Canada and former Premier of British Columbia, talks of his own journey and learning as he migrated out of India to Canada. Click here to read.
Migrant poems by Malachi Edwin Vethamani. Click here to read.
Refugees
In Mister, They’re Coming Anyway, Timothy Jay Smith writes on the refugee crisis in Lesbos Island, Greece, in 2016 with photographs by Michael Honegger. Click here to read.
In A Voice from Kharkiv: A Refugee in her Own Country, Lesya Bakun relates her journey out of Ukraine as a refugee and the need for the resistance in 2022. Click here to read.
An excerpt from Ramy Al-Asheq’s Ever Since I Did Not Die, translated from Arabic by Isis Nusair, edited by Levi Thompson. The author was born in a refugee camp. Click here to read.
Refugee in my Own Country/ I am Ukraine… Poetry by Lesya Bakun. Click here to read.
Bringing Along their Homeland, a poem by Abdul Jamil Urfi, for refugees from the India- Pakistan Partition. Click here to read.
In 1947, a biographical poem by Masha Hassan, set during the India-Pakistan Partition. Click here to read.
The Grave is Wide, poems on refugees by Michael R Burch. Click here to read.
We are very grateful to our contributors who shared these unique narratives with us.
Borderless 