Migrant Lives in Pandemic Times is a digital storytelling project produced by the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration and Integration at Ryerson University (Toronto) and the media non-profit organization Migration Matters (Berlin). Recorded during the summer of 2021, the project presents both personal testimony and expert analysis to explore how the everyday realities of 12 migrants from across the globe have changed during the pandemic. From a Chilean pandemic home-school tutor in Oakland, California, to a Senegalese street seller in Bilbao, Spain, the stories give voice to those missing in media and public debate with the aim to build solidarity and inform policy across borders.
While the stories share the lived realities of individuals from different cultural, social and professional backgrounds, they also reveal insights into universal conditions and challenges in terms of work, economical uncertainty, freedom of movement, mental health, activism and the importance of communities during pandemic times. The stories demonstrate resilience on a personal level, while also critically analyzing the larger structural and policy issues at play.
Each story includes an individual portrait of a migrant and an accompanying video statement and policy brief produced by migration scholars to provide additional context and suggestions for how conditions could be improved. From start to finish, migrants featured in the project have taken an active role in the production of their stories.
