Reflection on the Origins of the Refugee “Crisis”

Over the course of the semester, our group has focused on the refugee “crisis”  emerging from Northern Africa and the Middle East. More specifically, we centered on the nations of South Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroon, Somalia, and Syria. Beginning with defining what a crisis actually is, our group outlined the basis of what we would discuss throughout the semester - factors leading to the migration of millions of people out of MENA and into Europe. In Northern Africa, we discussed factors of differing ethnic groups in a single nation, dictators, terrorist organizations, human trafficking, weakened governments, and civil wars as causes of migration. Climate change, terrorism, and civil war were components we examined as the cause of the Syrian Refugee Crisis.

Before we even began writing our first blog post, our group met in the library to decide how we would structure the three posts of the semester. We divided it up into the preliminary post to present what we were planning on discussing throughout the semester, a second focusing on Africa (we hadn’t quite decided which nations we would center in on at the time), and lastly, a Middle East refugee crisis post (we originally planned on exploring Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq - we ended up only doing Syria). From there, we divided up who would do what part of each post and we each did our own research. We did not designate one or two people to be researchers, another to be the writer, and another to be the editor/publisher, we each did our own research and wrote our own sections and put them together in a single document. I preferred doing my own research as opposed to doing the research for the entire group or having someone doing research for me because I was able to formulate what I wanted to write as I was gathering sources.

In the end, I learned a great deal from contributing to these blog posts. I learned not only about the Syrian Refugee Crisis more in depth, I became more aware of a refugee crisis in Africa. I discovered the role that climate change played in adding stress to an already tumultuous political climate in Syria, catalyzing a series of events that led to the Syrian Civil War and increased refugee migration from the area. Had I written the blog on my own, I most likely would have focused in on the refugee situation in the Middle East without giving much regard to Africa. Research, I’ve discovered, is difficult because you need to vet out unreliable sources to find ones that dependable material that also helped further the points we were trying to make in the blog posts. Over the course of the semester, I found that I prefer to do assignments on my own. My group and I were able to collaborate well, but I am the type of person who doesn’t enjoy doing group projects. Ultimately, I enjoyed this assignment. I was able to not only learn more about the topic our group focused on, but the subjects that other groups focused on as well.