Global Migration Podcast

In the seventh episode of the Global Migration podcast “Geographies from the Heart: Life-writing from Newcomers to Canada,” host Mohammed Alsaleh speaks to Nuria Sefchovich from Mexico. Nuria shares her experience as a mature international student and of learning to navigate a system that determines her identity based on the social construction of immigration. 

In the sixth episode of the Global Migration podcast “Geographies from the Heart: Life-writing from Newcomers to Canada,” host Mohammed Alsaleh speaks to Camille McMillan-Rambharat, from Trinidad and Tobago, who combines her unique Afro-Caribbean heritage with the stories learnt from her grandmother and father and her marriage to an Indo-Caribbean Member of Parliament. Camille is a mother and has fought battles with racism here in Canada. She continues to stand tall and stand proud.

In the fifth episode of the Global Migration podcast “Geographies from the Heart: Life-writing from Newcomers to Canada,” host Mohammed Alsaleh speaks to Malena Mokhovikova who shares her family’s journey leaving Russia as asylum seekers. In 2012, Malena, with her mother and younger sister, stepped off a cruise ship temporarily docked in Quebec City and decided to claim asylum in Canada. They knew no one and spoke no English. However, the racially motivated attacks on the family’s Jewish and Afghan heritage in Russia were becoming too dangerous. Malena speaks of their journey to Canada, experiences of settling, family separation, and starting over in this touching episode of one family’s brave story. 

In the fourth episode of the Global Migration podcast “Geographies from the Heart: Life-writing from Newcomers to Canada,” host Mohammed Alsaleh speaks to journalists Diary Xalid Marif, from Iraqi Kurdistan, and Akberet Beyene, an exiled Eritrean journalist, who speak of the escape from their homes and the struggle to be heard. 

In the third episode of the Global Migration podcast “Geographies from the Heart: Life-writing from Newcomers to Canada,” host Mohammed Alsaleh speaks to Muhialdin Nyera Bakini and Albino Nyuol who share their stories of exile from South Sudan. Albino will share his journey as a child soldier to a settlement worker here in Canada. Muhialdin will speak of his journey as an asylum seeker from Sudan to Israel and then eventually to Canada as a student at UBC. 

In the second episode of the Global Migration podcast “Geographies from the Heart: Life-writing from Newcomers to Canada,” host Mohammed Alsaleh speaks to acclaimed Kurdish-Canadian and recently published (2020) novelist, Ava Homa and Kurdish journalist, Shanga Karim who join us to share their experiences as newcomer women writers. Shanga came to Canada as a refugee claimant from Kurdistan in 2015, where she was a journalist and women’s rights activist. Shanga is currently writing a chapter about her experience in the Stories from Newcomers to Canada book, and author Ava Homa joined the SNtC life-writing project as a guest speaker supporting other new writers. As well as exploring the complexities of minority representation in their work, the two also explore the forms and importance of newcomers mentoring other newcomers in the field of writing, life-writing, and literature.

Amea Wilbur (UFV) and Suzanne Smythe (SFU) speak with Laura Mannix, (DIVERSEcity). They discuss everything from digital inequities, gender-based violence, and racialized work to how the pandemic has also brought forth many unexpected positives in community outreach.

 In this episode, Dr. Dan Hiebert, Professor of Geography at UBC explores the refugee and settlement experience with Saleem Spindari, Senior Manager of Refugees and Migrant Workers Programs at MOSAIC, one of the largest settlement organizations in Canada, and with Dr. Nancy Clark, Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Victoria.