# Migrants Bring Opportunity to Boston and Beyond May 29, 2024 Jacqueline Bhabha Monique Tú Nguyen Margaret "Maggie" Sullivan Embed Monique Nguyen directs the Boston mayor’s office for immigrant advancement and explains why the word “crisis” mischaracterizes the realities of global migration. Massachusetts has made a moral and ethical commitment to helping people in need, and her office works to give migrants a pathway to stability and a foothold in their communities. Nurse practitioner and fellow with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Maggie Sullivan delivers primary care to families in shelters. She offers a vivid picture of a migrant family’s experience in temporary shelters, and also describes the fortitude and skills individuals bring to Boston. Attorney and human rights scholar Jackie Bhabha directs the Weatherhead Center’s Research Cluster on Migration, where Sullivan is an affiliate. Bhabha eloquently describes both the theory and practice of helping migrants and immigrants within the framework of human rights. She also provides insights on other countries’ experiences hosting influxes of migrants and the need for preparation and coordination involving the highest levels of government. --- ## Guests [Jacqueline Bhabha](https://wcfia.harvard.edu/people/jacqueline-bhabha), Faculty Associate; Chair, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Migration. Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Department of Global Health and Population; Director of Research, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School. [Monique Tú Nguyen](https://www.boston.gov/departments/immigrant-advancement/monique-tu-nguyen), Executive Director, Mayor's Office for Immigrant Advancement, City of Boston. [Margaret (Maggie) Sullivan](https://fxb.harvard.edu/leadership-faculty-staff-fellows/margaret-sullivan/), Instructor and Health and Human Rights Fellow, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University; Board-Certified Family Nurse Practitioner, Boston Health Care for the Homeless. ## Host [Jessica Barnard](https://wcfia.harvard.edu/people/jessica-barnard), Program Manager for the Weatherhead Research Clusters on Migration and Global History. ## Producer/Director [Michelle Nicholasen](https://wcfia.harvard.edu/people/michelle-nicholasen), Editor and Content Producer, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. ## Related Links - [Weatherhead Research Cluster on Migration](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/wrc22-migration), Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University - [Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement](https://www.boston.gov/departments/immigrant-advancement), City of Boston - [François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights](https://fxb.harvard.edu/), Harvard University - “[Reproductive healthcare in immigration detention: The imperative of informed consent](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00028-X/fulltext)” by Margaret Sullivan, Jacqueline Bhabha, et al. (The Lancet Regional Health—Americas, Volume 10, 100211, June 2022) - “[Health Rights for All: The Imperative of Including All Migrants](https://www.hhrjournal.org/2023/03/book-review-health-rights-for-all-the-imperative-of-including-all-migrants/)” by Jacqueline Bhabha (Health and Human Rights Journal, Vol 25/1, 2023, pp. 223-226, March 30, 2023) - “[The imperative of sustaining (rather than destroying) frontline empathic solidarity for distress migrants](https://www.bu.edu/ilj/files/2022/08/Vol.-40.1-Bhabha.pdf)” by Jacqueline Bhabha (Boston University International Law Journal, Volume 40:49, August 2022) - “[A Bridge Towards Tomorrow: Sampan speaks with Monique Tú Nguyen – Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement](https://sampan.org/2022/boston/a-bridge-towards-tomorrow-sampan-speaks-with-monique-tu-nguyen-executive-director-of-the-mayors-office-for-immigrant-advancement/)” by Christopher John Stevens (Sampan, Volume 53, Issue 9, May 10, 2024) ## Music Credits - “[Goldfinch: Flight to the North](https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Axletree/erthe/goldfinch-flight-to-the-north/)” by [Axletree](https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Axletree/). Source: [Free Music Archive](https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Axletree/erthe/goldfinch-flight-to-the-north/) ([CC BY 4.0 DEED](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)) - “[Dorian](https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Xylo-Ziko/mode/dorian/)” by [Xylo-Ziko](https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Xylo-Ziko/). Source: [Free Music Archive](https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Xylo-Ziko/mode) ([CC BY 4.0 DEED](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)) ## Transcript JESSICA BARNARD: Welcome to the Epicenter podcast from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Jessica Barnard, program manager for the Weatherhead Research Clusters on Migration and Global History. When it comes to helping migrant and immigrant families. Massachusetts strives to be a welcoming state. Since 1983, it's provided shelter to eligible unhoused families under its one of a kind right to shelter law. Since then, the state and the city of Boston have helped thousands of distressed families find shelter and pathways to stability. As of May 9, 2024, there were 7,490 unhoused families in shelters funded by the state's emergency assistance services. It is estimated that approximately half of these families are migrants. In 2021 to 2022, due to a rapid increase in migrants fleeing violence, political instability, and deep impoverishment, combined with lack of coordination at the national level, the state began increasing the use of motels for emergency housing as the emergency shelter system has long been at capacity. In August 2023, the governor declared a state of emergency, and images of families sleeping at Logan Airport left the stark impression that a humanitarian crisis was unfolding, prompting some to challenge the state's policies. This year, new funding has been allocated to open more shelters, and many families have moved out of temporary settings. But the crunch continues, and so does the global movement of migrants seeking safety for their families. Today, we're talking with three experts deeply involved with migrant services and migration research, both here in Massachusetts and abroad. And we'll discuss the challenges and opportunities of assisting migrant families in our communities. I want to welcome our guests. Maggie Sullivan is an instructor and Health and Human Rights Fellow at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, as well as a fellow of both the National Academies of Practice and the American Academy of Nursing. She is a board-certified family nurse practitioner who has spent years working with immigrant patients and their families. Since 2009, Maggie has practiced at the Boston Health Care for the homeless, providing primary care to patients in shelter-based clinics. Jacqueline Bhabha is FXB Director of Research, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Jeremiah Smith Jr Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and an adjunct lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is co-chair of the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Migration, and she has published extensively on issues of transnational child migration, refugee protection, children's rights, and citizenship. Monique Tú Nguyen is the Executive Director of the Mayor's Office for Immigrant Advancement for the city of Boston. She leads the department's work on advancing stability, economic empowerment, and social integration for the 180,000 immigrants in Boston. Nguyen spearheaded the creation of the $1 million MassUndocuFund, providing COVID-19 relief to excluded immigrant workers. Nguyen has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Immigrant Hero Award, the Move to End Violence Movement Maker Fellowship, and the Roddenberry Fellowship. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Monique, if I can turn to you first, as a representative of Mayor Michelle Wu's office, can you tell us about the current state of affairs right now for these emergency migrant families. MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: So currently right now in the city of Boston and also in the state, we're seeing a large number of Haitian migrants coming into the city of Boston as they are fleeing political turmoil and violence back in Haiti. And welcoming cities like ours are embracing them and seeing them show up in different shelters in the city, but also throughout the state. And the governor back last fall declared a state of emergency around the shelter system because the shelter system is under overcapacity, or can no longer serve everyone. So that's what we're going through right now. JESSICA BARNARD: Thank you. So you touched on some of these obstacles that the city is facing in helping these emergency migrants. Can you talk a little bit more about that and maybe how the city has changed their strategy since the state of emergency? MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: Yeah, so since the state of emergency, we've been working in lockstep to support the state with the response. So being in coordination for migrants and new arrivals that are coming through the city and around the city. And then inside the city, the state has also opened up congregate shelters, one in Roxbury and one in Seaport, where they're hosting a range of families that are coming through the system. And then for the city side, we also are hosting migrants in our individual shelter system, and have been supporting them with exit strategies, and just sheltering them in general. And our strategy has been pretty emergent and organic because of the dynamic nature of what's happening. So right now the city is currently focused on thinking about exit strategies for integration and also for exiting of shelters so they can get on their feet and be self-sufficient at a quicker pace than they would if they were navigating the systems alone. JESSICA BARNARD: Great. So I hadn't heard that term "exit strategies" before. So that's just a way of working with them on becoming independent and exiting the support from the city? MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: Yes, basically exiting the shelter system. Yes. JESSICA BARNARD: OK. MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: Yeah, and then we've also been working with the community-based organizations throughout the system to support migrant-- do the migrant care work. So a lot of community based organizations have been responding in many different ways, large and small scale. There's neighbors reaching out and organizing, like, aid to support the migrants that are showing up in the airport. And also there's even more organized responses, like from Immigrant Family Services Center, where they have-- Institute-- where they have been doing one of the largest operations of supporting Haitian migrants integrating into Boston. JESSICA BARNARD: That has been a big news story, the immigrants housed in Logan Airport. Are there still people there? MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: Yeah, there are. There are still people there. And we are working with the state to sort out how we can support them getting programming during the day while they're waiting for housing opportunities, and thinking about how they can transition out of there as well. JESSICA BARNARD: Mm-hmm. And clearly, this takes a lot of the city's resources. How do you respond to other groups who feel like people already in the city or other needy organizations and people should be prioritized before these new migrants? I mean, is there a scarcity of resources here in Boston? MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: I don't believe there is a scarcity of resources. And I would say that we're underinvesting in migrants, to be honest, because cities are built by migration and immigration. So there is no immigrant group in the history of Boston that didn't need help or got help. So I try to speak to that, because the city also and the country depends on migration for our economy, and also for us to survive. So that's a narrative I'm hoping to push out there. So whenever people ask me that, I actually frame it as an opportunity and a duty that we have to do as a community of people. And then there's a lot of negotiation in the rest of the budget where we can pull money from other resources to serve the community. So I think it's a matter of strategic use of public funds. And I think it's a worthwhile investment for us to support migrants, because over their lifespan, when they are integrated into the country, they actually give back multiple times more than what's invested in them in the first place. JESSICA BARNARD: Thank you. Now, something that I've thought a lot about is this crisis seems to come from a lot of good intentions. You mentioned earlier how Massachusetts is a welcoming state. It's certainly the only state in the US with this Right to Shelter law for families. And also the Biden administration has a few new policies that have been streamlining the possibility of applying for legal status. Can you talk about that? Are we, in some ways, a victim of our own success? And how can we continue to offer as much as we can in the face of so many people needing it? MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: Yes, I think it's a matter of our systems, you know, coordinating ourselves. I think a lot of the quote-unquote "crisis" is really because of lack of planning, and also lack of investments further beforehand this humanitarian crisis around the shelter system. So I wouldn't say that it's like we're a victim of it. It's just showing that the proof of what we're doing is working because there is-- it's responsive and people have been gravitating to us for what we are and what we continue to offer as a state and as a city. But then, yeah, I can speak from the city side, is that we are oriented to support them as they come through, and will continue to do so. JESSICA BARNARD: Thank you. Would anyone else like to add to that about this tension between doing our best and being overwhelmed by the need. Jackie? JACQUELINE BHABHA: Just maybe I could just jump in to say how exciting and unusual it is to hear a public servant like Monique talk in these terms, and how, really, yeah, I use the word "exciting" because it's-- we hear the opposite narrative so often, that resources are scarce, that immigration is a threat, that cities are struggling, that this is, you know, a crisis, which is making things unbearable. And to hear somebody like her who is actually at the front line with responsibility, saying that this is an opportunity, and that it's a question of carefully allocating resources-- of course, these are responsible public servants. But this is something that builds the future. I think it's just noteworthy, partly, unfortunately, because it's so unusual. So I just wanted to make that point to think how exemplary this is, and to wish and hope that other city leaders and other municipal authorities are going to take a page out of the book that Monique has just laid out. MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: Thank you for naming that, because I feel like I've had to be heavier handed now because I didn't realize that it wasn't a common narrative, even amongst our networks. And something raised-- someone raised to me, even amongst nonprofit leaders or foundations, they're also calling it a migrant "crisis," as if the migrants are the crisis, and they are absolutely not. This is a crisis that we brought upon them as a world for not figuring out humane pathways for migration. And it's a problem that we haven't tackled, is-- tackled as an international community. And we are bearing the brunt of that for that lack of planning and coordination. Because I just want to name that. So I mean, this is also a moment to call on other people who want to work on this narrative reframe, because it's so important, because what we say reinforces our culture. And then the culture becomes policy, and then policy becomes practice of who we are. Then it gets really refined and further deepened in our culture of who we are. And the absolutely not. We have to resist the anti-immigrant sentiment and also the xenophobia that's tied to the scarcity mindset, and as if they are a threat. Even right now, immigrants, children are seen as threats. There are-- a lot of them aren't even born yet. How are we doing that to the-- to women and their wombs? So I just want to name that. JESSICA BARNARD: Maggie, you are on the front lines of delivering primary care to families and shelters. What are your thoughts on this perception of scarcity? MAGGIE SULLIVAN: I'll just start out by saying that I'm speaking on my own behalf and not on behalf of Boston Healthcare for the Homeless. But I entirely agree that the way in which we talk about something, the way in which we name and identify a problem, shapes the way we try to approach it and solve it. And the way in which this is a scarcity of federal coordination, and a scarcity of system integration, and a scarcity of strategic investment is much more accurate than any type of blaming individuals who are facing truly geopolitical humanitarian crises. JESSICA BARNARD: Yes, I hear from all of you that this is both a local and a global crisis, which is, of course, very interesting to us as a Center for International Affairs. Maggie, if I could continue with you a little bit more. Your work brings together homelessness, health care, and immigration. How did these areas intersect? MAGGIE SULLIVAN: That's a great question, and thank you for that, Jessica. I think that it is-- they all intersect very dynamically and in multiple directions. So it's not necessarily that one thing affects another thing, which affects another thing. It's not a cascade. This is something that is a reciprocal, and mutually affecting situation. So homelessness-- and I, in talking about homelessness, I really think about it as displacement broadly for reasons that could include political violence, or climate change, or economic upheaval from the global pandemic, or racially discriminatory housing practices, or lending practices, or eviction practices. So displacement broadly can lead itself to health problems and the need to migrate. And similarly, health and migration can lead to homelessness, vice versa. If you have something that is more supportive-- so if you can strengthen something like work authorization-- then you can potentially decrease homelessness and improve health. And so this is just to say that these are very interrelated in dynamically changing areas. JESSICA BARNARD: Now, we've been talking generally about this problem. Maggie, as a nurse practitioner, you deliver care to patients in shelters. Can you tell us more about some individual experiences, how your clients would describe their challenges after arriving in Boston? MAGGIE SULLIVAN: Sure. And ideally, we'd have somebody here who could describe their own experiences, and that would be fantastic. And unfortunately, today is not possible. I provide primary care to lots of people who come from lots of different places in-- maybe in shelters. And so there's a very diverse and broad range of experiences, as well as strengths and challenges among folks. And so I would also take a step back and, first of all, describe the experience of homelessness in general as it's been described to me, and from what I can observe, is a very isolating, stigmatizing, and many times traumatic experience. So whether or not one has migrated from a different country, from a different state, is from this community, the experience of homelessness is a painful one. And migrant experiences are shaped by lots of things. So it really depends, when we're talking about migrants who are maybe at risk for homelessness, it really depends on where folks are coming from, maybe why they're coming, what were the experiences they had before they came here, what language they speak, what their race is. And it's-- we're in Boston, and so noticing that the experience, for example, of a English-speaking, white, Irish individual, whether or not they are documented or undocumented, is very different from a Haitian Creole-speaking, or Portuguese-speaking Afro-Latino immigrant. And so I think that to mention again Monique's point about the racializing of this, is it's important not to overlook. And so it really also depends on to what extent you have a social or family network to lean on. Some people are very briefly, like, very briefly experience homelessness. They are perhaps in a shelter for a few days, a few weeks until they're able to locate a contact, an acquaintance, a family member that they can stay with for a little bit while they get-- while they get on their feet. If it's somebody who has resources around legal supports, and being able to work through their work permit much more quickly, that's a very different experience than somebody who is here isolated, who is in a shelter, unable to have-- to obtain work authorization, do not have an immigration hearing for, let's say, two years. That is a very different experience. JESSICA BARNARD: It sounds like there's no typical experience, then, for any kind of migrant. But is there anything you can tell us about these emergency migrant families in terms of what might be a typical day or a week that they might experience? What kind of conditions are they in, and how are they managing? MAGGIE SULLIVAN: To not put too fine a point on it, I would also say that our ability as a society to welcome or exclude people really shapes-- is what shapes the conditions. So we can look at the very downstream aspects of media reports of a family motel having to be closed because of mold. Or we can look at the experience of being in a family shelter that has protests out in front of it. Or we can really take into consideration that our experience is shaped by whether or not we're able to welcome or exclude one another and really get at the root of some of this. Now, it also really depends on where you are. If you're at Logan, your experience is very public. You have perhaps a small child or children. You are in a public space. If your life, your family meltdowns, your toddler tantrums, your-- are on display for all to see. And that itself is also just enormously, enormously painful. I think if you're at an overflow shelter, like at a Roxbury Recreation Center, you're in a large communal space with very little privacy. Even if you're in a family motel or a shelter, you may have a microwave in a room, and your family is in one room, and you have a microwave for all of your needs, whether you're trying to warm up formula or cook for your family. The shelters are oftentimes isolated or far away from public transportation. Maybe the school that your children signed up for, maybe a place where you have a job opportunity, maybe the clinic where you first established primary care. And so it really depends on which of these systems– Now, fortunately, we're not-- and think that what we're trying to so desperately avoid in Massachusetts is a typical experience ever being where a family is outside. And that is in terms of being a state where there is a right to shelter for families since the early 1980s is just at the very, very least trying to make sure that families, children, pregnant individuals, are not outside, and that they can be indoors, that that's one of the things that we're struggling with right now as a state while there's a limit on families in shelters, and then now also a limit on how long families can stay in shelters. JESSICA BARNARD: Thank you. And I know it seemed like I was feeding you a few lines. One thing that I was remembering from the talk you gave here at Harvard was your description of the noise level in some of these shelters, and how stressful it was. I don't know if I can convince you to say a couple of words on that because it was really vivid. MAGGIE SULLIVAN: Yeah, well, first of all, if you're trying to do outreach with folks at Logan, there, you can imagine the noise there. You're in baggage claim. You have overhead announcements. You have all manner of things happening around you. In some of the overflow shelters-- at least the spaces where I've been-- the large communal spaces are very echoey. You have lots of people together in one space. Sometimes you have children who are wonderfully excited and energized and running around as they developmentally appropriately should be. And you have people who are not feeling well all at the same time in the same space, and it's hard to hear. And so I think that what– what that experience is like is especially difficult when we're trying to provide health care with appropriate language access services. So if you're trying to speak through an interpreter in that system, it's very difficult to hear and understand one another, especially while you don't have privacy. So you're in an open space. JESSICA BARNARD: That sounds very stressful, to have those conditions going on all the time. And we've touched a little bit on how these migrants can benefit the host community. I'm not sure from your end you're able to see that since you're dealing with people who are more in crisis. But maybe you can tell us about some of the strengths that these people bring to Boston that they can contribute to the community as they get settled. MAGGIE SULLIVAN: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for explicitly asking about that. This is something that I actually like to begin talks and presentations with, because I think that the strengths, and the assets, and the skills, and the talents that people bring are numerous, and a part of what is missing in the narrative. It's really impressive to me to see individuals and families persevere, and the amount of risk and sacrifice that one takes in leaving one's country with or without your family is enormous. And by and large, that risk and sacrifice is for the benefit and well-being of one's family. And that is just remarkable to me that people are persevering in that way, not knowing what's necessarily on the other side. So taking a risk and sacrifice into uncertainty, the amount of just fortitude is incredible. And that's not to say that fortitude is unending. We all need support. And this is not a situation where people are just unendingly resilient. People need supports, resources, strengths, and bridges to be able to continue to maintain that positive sense of self and that fortitude. And I think that, to what Monique was mentioning, that investing in these communities can really benefit all of us. These are groups of people who have amazing skills, backgrounds, interests, amount of energy, talents that are something, as Monique said, build entire communities. And so whether it's starting a daycare, starting a new business, I think about all the children that we see. And some of them are going to be the first something. They're going to be maybe the first teacher from Haiti during this time who started a bilingual class or a community group or something. And so just recognizing that these are our future leaders and community members. JESSICA BARNARD: Monique, did you want to add something? MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: Yeah, something I want to say, too, because of the exodus of people seeking humanitarian support from a very vibrant country is that we're getting people who are coming here from all walks of life in regards to sectors they can contribute in, not even naming the cultural things that they can offer to our communities. But if we're thinking about workforce, there's workforce shortages in every sector. The migrants are also ready and willing to work, and also-- and oftentimes jobs that Americans are not willing to take. So there's every sector, from even in public service in the city of Boston, we have actually hired some migrants to work for city jobs. They are security guards. They are helping maintain landscaping, a seasonal-- helping with the snow. So they're helping running the city already. And they're an invisible workforce. We have shortages of teachers in school, and I'm hoping to do some training up and skilling up people over time alongside with the other communities that are immigrant communities who are already here. We have shortages in nursing, in health care. There's many health care professionals from even doctors, nurses back home or public health workers that just need to be reskilled back here to be able to work here in Boston. So those are many opportunities, that we need more diversity in language and cultural experience to be able to serve our very diverse immigrant community here in Boston. One-fourth of the population in Boston are immigrants already, foreign born. And one thing that's very distinct about our immigrant community, of the 180,000 immigrants in the city of Boston, is 60% alone make up 10 countries. So that's how diverse we are as a city. That's very unique compared to other immigrant communities across the country. And the migrants, Maggie said it just right. They have so much fortitude, so much resilience. And America is made up of that type of grit. That type of grit is what makes America. It's what built America and will continue to build America. And them journeying has been their resume, has been their skills test to get here. Many of them have been journeying for years, moving through country to country, even collecting languages as they go along. I've met migrants that speak multiple languages because of their journey. Even their children are multilingual because of their journey alone. So for me, it's like, how can we hone in and help heal them, but also hone in on their strengths and talents for the future? So I'm just really grateful for this conversation. JESSICA BARNARD: Thank you for reminding us that we are dealing with such a diverse population of people from all over the world. Jackie, if I can turn to you, we are, of course, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. So this is, in some ways, an unusual story for us to be focusing on. But it's a unique story that combines the hyperlocal with the global. Can you help us get a sense of Boston's place within the current global situation for migration? Is our-- I don't want to use the word "crisis," since the migrants are not a crisis, but our current situation. Is that common in the world right now? JACQUELINE BHABHA: So the answer, of course, is yes. But let me give a slightly longer answer and say, first of all, that the issue of accommodating-- welcoming, accommodating, supporting, healing, educating what we call distressed migrants, people who are forced to leave their homes for whatever reason, is always both global and hyper local, because that accommodation, that educating, that healing always happens somewhere in particular. So, you know, I think Monique and Maggie have talked very compellingly about Boston, but they could, mutatis mutandis, with different shoes be talking about Lesbos, the very small island in Greece, which has a population itself of under 100,000 people, and had over a million people forced to flee through it. They could be talking about Bangladesh, where there are, at the moment, over a million Rohingya refugees from genocide in Myanmar. They could be talking about so many different-- just every continent has, unfortunately, examples of this. And every continent has hyper local places, as you put it, Jessica, that are dealing with this. So it is part and parcel of the reality of migration that, as I think Monique said beautifully at the beginning, this is something created by our creation of borders, which are not there to begin with. That's some man or person made-- typically man-made creation, borders. It's a creation of our laws and our policies that create the distinction between those who are like myself, and I presume all of us on this-- in this discussion that can travel very easily, and have passports that are recognized very easily, and those who can't, those who can't get a visa, those who cannot get away from danger, those who have-- the only option of getting to safety is by placing themselves at risk in an illegal status in the hands of people who may exploit them. So all these situations, I think contribute to this kind of situation that we're in right now. And I think whether we call it a crisis or not, I think it is very important to remember that it is made by us. There's nothing kind of-- And it's not going to pass. The other problem with using the terminology of "crisis," a crisis typically is something that passes, right? You have a health crisis and, inshallah, it'll pass and you'll get better. You have a personal crisis in a relationship, it gets better. But this crisis, so-called, is not going to-- because we're going to have distressed migration on a large scale for the foreseeable future. And so we need to stop thinking about it as something that is just kind of unexpected, and it's going to end in a hurry. JESSICA BARNARD: That's an important point, that migration is a process that continues rather than a discrete moment of crisis. JACQUELINE BHABHA: The other thing I just wanted to say, if I may, Jessica, picking up on some of the points that have already been made is it's so important, as Maggie said, to see this as multifactorial. I think we often have people-- I might rudely call some of them idiots in public life-- who identify one factor. All these criminals coming to our country, or all these illegals coming to take our jobs. So all these greedy so-and-sos or whatever. You identify one feature of a person, which is that they may be fleeing poverty, or that they may be fleeing conflict, instead of seeing how multifactorial all these situations are. Both Maggie and I teach at the School of Public Health, so we are used to thinking systemically in terms of a social ecology, as we call it, which has multiple factors. And migration, of course, is one of those multiple factors. Migration is epiphenomenal. It's a product of your life circumstances, the options that you weigh up. It may be contributed to by climate change. It may be contributed to by conflict. There are many factors that lead somebody to make, at a particular point, the decision to leave everything that they've known and that they're familiar with behind. JESSICA BARNARD: You're at the Weatherhead Center. You have you are a co-chair of the Research Cluster on Migration, which offers a bridge between theory and practice in studying the crisis of migration. How do both these methods work together to find solutions to the issues facing us? JACQUELINE BHABHA: Well, I think that if I may just zoom out for a second, Jessica, I think that any human rights issue, whether we're talking about domestic violence, or whether we're talking about distressed migration, or whether we're talking about child abuse, or, unfortunately, you name it-- a whole host of human rights issues that we, as human rights advocates, are concerned about, they always, to my mind, have to involve both theory and practice. Because you start from the practice. And Maggie is, I think, a poster child for that. You start from a case. You start from what you learn in a specific situation about how problems bundle together in a human life. And then, from that, you extrapolate to what you need to do about it. So we learn about the laws we need, the reforms we need, the solutions we need to craft, the policies we need to build, from our experience on the ground at the front line. It's no good just sitting in a-- in parliament or in just sitting in in the kind of headquarters of your office, or of your NGO, even, without listening to what's happening on the ground. Because actually, reality, of course, is complicated and no two cases are the same. And so you learn from that specificity how to build a bridge to improving whatever it is you've already crafted. So I'm sure this is true for Monique, you know, and the administration, she's part of all the time, that you have a shelter in, a right to shelter law framework. But you're tweaking it all the time. You're learning from the specificity of people arriving and their specific needs, what you need to do. And conversely, backwards. You think from theory to practice. So I just mentioned this, the notion of social ecology. I mean, that's a theoretical framework which helps us to understand how you're going from a micro context or a micro sphere, like the individual child, in a situation where they have, say, a parent who's deeply depressed, and how that does or doesn't affect the child's development, through to the immediate environment. Is the child living at Logan Airport with constant noise, to the broader context of is this child, a Black child, in a racist society, to an even broader context where we have climate change. So you have these nested spheres all impacting that child. And so the theory helps us to understand what we're seeing in practice. So I think both things come together. And maybe I can just add one point, which is that, again, both Maggie and I work at a center called the FXB center, as you can see from those of us who can see from the sweater Maggie's wearing, where one of our focus points are children. And I think I mention this particularly because in the migration context where, unfortunately, there is so much blaming and so much demonizing, we should remember that half of the migrants we're talking about are children. Half of them are. And of that, half, a significant number, are very small children. So the idea that you're demonizing, or blaming, or calling out self-seeking or irregular or immoral behavior in children is really obscene. And it's important that people bear that in mind, that this is one of the constituencies we're talking about. And again, therefore, we go from the front line of seeing how many children there are, and actually noticing that they're children-- which for many years we didn't; we thought that migration was really an adult phenomenon-- to the theory, which says that every child should have their best interest taken into account. That's part of our broad framework of international children's rights. JESSICA BARNARD: Thank you, Jackie, for giving us the more accurate picture that half of all migrants are children. I'm going to move on to my next question. There seems to be an established pattern in these host communities of initial goodwill when these crisis migrants first arrive, which lessens over time as more challenges are faced. What are the strategies for sustaining solidarity on both an individual level and on a state or government level? JACQUELINE BHABHA: I think the strategies are varied and I think they are poorly understood, which is why, as you know, Jessica, because you are part of our cluster, we've created our cluster looking at solidarity as a key and fragile resource in the migration context. So let me just say a little bit more about that. Our basic thought here is, as you say, that very often, when you look at what you, a minute ago, called the hyper-local situation, you see an outpouring of solidarity, of generosity, of warmth. You see people coming to a station with water bottles. You see, as we did in Poland, you know, people leaving what you call them in American-- we call them pushchairs-- strollers at the border for Ukrainian moms to use with their children. You see all these manifestations of enormous generosity and just what we might like to call humanity. And then, over time, as the challenges of having a large number of people in a community with needs and limited resources, as those challenges mount, so one often sees receding of that solidarity. And sometimes all too often you actually see that solidarity replaced with hostility. And our basic thought here is that there's nothing inevitable about that move from generosity to hostility. It's a consequence of a lack of planning. It's a consequence of a willful neglect by government of what is predictable. And so when you ask what should the elements be to support solidarity, I think that the example of Boston is actually a wonderful one. Here you have a city with a lot of demands, with a very varied population, as Monique says, some of whom have great needs, which has decided, first of all, that there should be a right to shelter. That is a preemptive move. That is taking at face value a core human right of non-discrimination and saying it doesn't matter what your citizenship is, it doesn't matter what your legal status is, it doesn't matter what you look like or sound like, or how clever or stupid you are-- you are entitled to shelter. It's a basic human right. That's the starting point. So that's a very important building block for solidarity, because what it means is that for other people in the community, there's a sense that the responsibility isn't only on them, that they don't alone have to deal with this. For anybody who experiences a large-scale arrival of people within their neighborhood, there's a mixture of excitement, warmth, generosity and probably a certain amount of fear and apprehension. Are they going to be making a mess in front of my house? Are they going to be disturbing my baby when I'm trying to put my baby to sleep? You know, the selfish instincts that we might all have. So the idea that the city, that the municipal authorities have already thought about this, and in a way that they've got your back, as a local person, is a very important building block. That's one. And like that, we could talk of many things-- having health care, having provision in your budget for health care for people who you know are going to arrive, because as I said, this is not a crisis that's going to go away. We're going to have people that are arriving for the indefinite future. And so preparing for that in our budget allocation, preparing for that in our training, having interpreters to hand, having some spare capacity that we plan for getting resources from elsewhere if we don't have enough ourselves. This was the problem in Lesbos. This tiny island just didn't get the help it needed. It had one hospital with seven beds-- seven beds or maybe nine beds. And here you had a million people coming from conflict, from war. So the needs were completely incommensurate with the available resources. So thinking about that preemptively. So that's one point, this whole question of preempting the need for resources planning. It's not rocket science what you need. We've been there before. We've done it. Second point is leadership. And I think, I mean, Monique is a great example. We need to think about the "we" in a different way. The "we" is constantly changing. Our communities are constantly changing. I think Monique put it really well. Cities are built by migration, whether it's rural to urban, whether it's cross-border, whether it's cross-continental. Cities are built by migrants. So the "we" of who we are as Bostonians is constantly changing. And we as leaders have to celebrate that, not demonize that. Third point is that I think we have to recognize that it's important to be transparent about how resources are allocated. You need a sense of equity and fairness. And Maggie mentioned that. People are going to feel resentful if they have been waiting for years for housing, and living in cramped accommodation on a couch or whatever, and they see newly arrived people getting something that they've been waiting patiently in line for. You need to have clear rules, clear eligibility, a clear strategy of how funds are allocated, and you need to explain your rules so that people understand them. Because people are going to be resentful and hostile if there's a sense that some people are getting more than their fair share. And that's a perfectly legitimate sentiment which needs to be responded to. We shouldn't demonize people who do that and say, oh, they're just racist. No, it's normal that if you have something that you need, and somebody else is getting what you need, and you think it's not fair, you're going to feel resentful. So we need to explain our rules. JESSICA BARNARD: Well, you have all provided so much insight into both the issues and opportunities surrounding distressed migration right now. Before we end, I want to zoom back in and ask what we as residents can do to help in our own neighborhoods? Monique. MONIQUE TÚ NGUYEN: Something I'm going to offer up, and it's actually something that generated from this group that, my last talk with you all, that made me think about needing to harness the solidarity and give people pathways to contribute. And also, it ties into what Jackie and Jessica were talking about earlier, about how solidarity wanes. I think solidarity wanes because there isn't enough cultivation of people's solidarity to be sustained. So I think that's something that I'm trying to gear towards my office doing, is that we create a platform that, as a community, that we develop the leadership of people and support them in supporting other immigrants. Oftentimes, the solidarity is overextended because they're kind of off on their own and not giving any capacity-building support or community. And they do it in isolation themselves. So it becomes like this big task that families or individuals take on. And they burn out, as any human does. So as a response, I'm thinking that this could work over time. We are building a community called City of Belonging. And we're calling all stakeholders-- neighbors to business sector, to educators-- to, in their own way, contribute to belonging, integrating existing immigrants, but also the migrants coming in. And how that looks is we're starting off in Immigrant Heritage Month in June. We have a city-wide festival of all the events and activities where we're inviting people to come in to connect with American communities and migrants, and learn more about the experience of immigration and migrants in the city of Boston. And it is in various forms, like arts and culture, dancing, food sharing, whatnot. But then, during those events, we're calling people to sign up for taking action, and taking action that could-- and it's up to their own discretion about what they want to do. It's like, I want to organize a food drive, or I want to host a migrant, because we've also had family members hosting migrants on their own, and letting us know afterwards, oh, I've been hosting people for months. I'm like, oh, let's connect you to community. So we also have a interfaith group that have congregants and other constituents having various service projects in support of migrants. So we're growing a community and movement of how do we really become a city of belonging, and hoping we can also harness the political power of immigrants, and having a platform for immigrants and migrants to have their say about what has happened and what will happen for people like them. JESSICA BARNARD: Jackie? JACQUELINE BHABHA: Perhaps I could just want to add one quick word-- and I know we're out of time, which is, Monique, that I was recently at a seminar with some colleagues from Amsterdam. And these colleagues who are working on the concept of majority-minority cities, because that's what many cities now in Europe are-- you know, the majority of people living in them are migrant background people-- what they said, interestingly, is that one of the best strategies for people from the community to work together is not so much to celebrate diversity, which always feels a little bit kind of artificial, but just to think of common projects, like what problems do you have? What problems do I have? We have similar problems. I don't know. The garbage isn't collected properly, or the school meals are not good, or the school bus, or whatever. And they said that what they found in their research is that the cities, which are the most successful, were the migrant background, non-migrant background constituencies are most cooperative and working well together-- our cities, where they actually address problems together. And they don't focus so much on, the celebration of diversity, but actually forget about diversity and think, well, we're all living here, and we all have similar issues. So I just put that out there, not to say it has to be one or the other, but I thought that was actually a very interesting point. JESSICA BARNARD: Maggie, would you like to make a final comment? MAGGIE SULLIVAN: Providing some package of basic services for people to be able to thrive is possible. And that's one of the beautiful things that I feel like I can sometimes see, whether it's with individuals, or hearing from my colleagues working with families, that you provide people who are struggling with some basic amount of services and supports, and people can just really take off. And I think that that is not happening enough, and to more deeply invest in that is something that we can do, as Jackie was saying in this idea of having this linked faith. \[MUSIC PLAYING\] JESSICA BARNARD: That's all the time we have today. I want to thank our guests for giving us a glimpse inside the city's efforts to help migrant and immigrant families, and for helping us understand the realities of the families who arrive in need. I'm Jessica Barnard, signing off from the Weatherhead Center at Harvard. To keep these important conversations going, please subscribe to the Epicenter podcast on your favorite listening platform. 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