Refugee Tales Volume IV

by Chakrabarti, Shami; Veglio, Maurizio; Macfarlane, Robert; Mohammadi, Khodadad; Nayeri, Dina; Sands, Philippe; Pincus, Anna; Herd, David; Mamata, Bidisha SK; Smith, Simon; Sierra, Natalia; Lefteri, Christy; Sackville, Amy; Seiffert, Rachel

• ISBN13: 9781912697489
• ISBN10: 1912697483
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2021-09-30
• Publisher: Comma Press

Summary

Seventy years after the adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UK is guilty of undermining the very principles of asylum, inhumanely detaining those seeking protection and ushering in sweeping changes that threaten to punish refugees at every turn. But the UK’s immigration system is not alone in committing such breaches of human rights. The fourth volume of Refugee Tales explores our present international environment, combining author re-tellings with first-hand accounts of individuals who have been detained across the world. As the coronavirus pandemic defies borders—leaving those who are detained even more vulnerable—this collection shares stories spanning Canada, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and the UK, and calls for international insistence on a future without detention. Featuring a prologue by Baroness Shami Chakrabarti.

Author Biography

Shami Chakrabarti is a human rights lawyer, campaigner, life peer and privy counsellor. She was the director of Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) from 2003 to 2016 and the Shadow Attorney General from 2016 until 2020. She is a Master of the Bench of the Middle Temple and carried the Olympic Flag at the London Games in 2012. She was formerly Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University and the University of Essex. She has written, spoken and broadcast widely and is the author of two books: On Liberty (2014) and Of Women (2017). Both are published by Penguin. Maurizio Veglio is a clinical faculty member at the International University College (IUC) of Turin and a lawyer – admitted to the Turin bar – specialising in immigration law. Since 2011 he is a lecturer at the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic (HRMLC). He is author of articles and contributions on the topic of asylum, administrative detention, legal storytelling and cultural translation. In 2014 he co-authored the textbook ‘Lo straniero e il giudice civile’ (Utet). Robert Macfarlane is a British writer and Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He is best known for his books on landscape, nature, place, people and language, which include The Old Ways, Landmarks, The Lost Words and Underland. Khodadad Mohammadi was born and raised in Daykundi province in Afghanistan. He left Afghanistan in January 2016 and has been in Germany since November 2020. Dina Nayeri is the author of The Ungrateful Refugee, winner of the 2020 Geschwister-Scholl-Preis, and finalist for the 2021 Elle Grand Prix des Lectrices, the 2019 Kirkus Prize, The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2020 Clara Johnson Award. Her essay of the same name was one of the most widely shared 2017 Long Reads in The Guardian. A 2019 Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination Fellow, winner of the 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant (2015), O. Henry Prize(2015), Best American Short Stories (2018), and fellowships from Philippe Sands, QC is a British and French lawyer at Matrix Chambers, and Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. His book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity was published in 2016. Anna Pincus, a founder and co-ordinator of Refugee Tales, has worked for Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group for ten years supporting people held in immigration detention and the volunteers who visit them weekly, managing outreach work and raising awareness about the campaign to end indefinite detention. David Herd is a poet, critic, and teacher. His collections of poetry include All Just (Carcanet 2012), Outwith (Bookthug 2012), and Through (Carcanet 2016), and his recent writings on the politics of human movement have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Parallax and Almost Island. He is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent, has worked with Kent Refugee Help since 2009, and is a coordinator of Refugee Tales. Bidisha SK Mamata, known professionally as Bidisha, is a British broadcaster, film-maker, and journalist specialising in international affairs, social justice issues, arts and culture, and international human rights. She was one of the judges for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction, and was announced as one of the judges of the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She is a patron of the SI Leeds Literary Prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women in the UK and is a trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation. Simon Smith is a poet who lives in London. His most recent books appeared in 2018: The Books of Catullus (Carcanet), DAY IN DAY OUT (Parlor Press) and some Municipal Love Poems (Muscaliet Press). In January 2020 he appeared on the Radio 4 programme ‘In Our Time’ to speak about Catullus. Natalia Sierra is a multi-passionate woman. She was born on a beautiful island the