30. What does it mean to be in solidarity with refugees?

Talking Migration

Many people express and urge others to stand in solidarity with refugees. In 2016, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke about the 65 million forcibly displaced in the world, addressing the UNHCR Executive Committee. He said: ‘The numbers are staggering. Each one represents a human life. But this is not a crisis of numbers. It is a crisis of solidarity.’ But, what does it mean to stand in solidarity with refugees? What precisely is a crisis of solidarity? What is one committed to when one expresses solidarity? This has been the topic of a project funded by the White Rose University Consortium, led by Kerri Woods, Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Leeds, Alice Nah, Lecturer at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, and the producer of this podcast, Clara Sandelind, Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. You can read more about the project, 'Understanding Solidarity Amid Refugee Crises', here: https://www.whiterose.ac.uk/collaborationfunds/understanding-solidarity-amid-refugee-crises/ In this episode, we discuss some of the topics and conclusions drawn throughout this project, which are currently being collated and finalised for a Special Issue.