Q & A
The author’s words
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Agatha & Cyrille: “[Ukrainian men fleeing the draft] is one of those topics that is talked about on social media, but less has been written. A lot of reporting came from tracking telegram chats, social media, leveraging our circles [...] A lot of the sources came from word of mouth, just talking to people asking friends, friends of friends, whether they knew anyone who had left.”
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Morgane: “My piece interrogated how we can adapt to climate migration and what is happening [in flood-stricken Belgium] right here, right now. I was surprised by how accessible climate experts were. The key was nuance. I told them I asked one-sided questions on purpose so they could respond and nuance the argument, and I think that is something they appreciated.”
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Flavia: “I explored how Bengali migrants live in Italy by crossing personal testimonies with national data. Some ‘agencies’ in Bangladesh promise them Dubai, but these people somehow end up in my home city of Matera. When they arrive in Italy, they are burdened by debt and often live in overcrowded apartments [where women can face discrimination].”
Cristina: “I talked to a lot of members of the Belarusian diaspora in different countries [to document cases of potential transnational repression]. One of the most common issues is that people fear for their families in their country of origin, and some have also witnessed the presence of strange people at protests.”
Margaux: “I worked on a Church accused of different abuses on its members and pastors. I wanted to document the issue a little further. Before starting to report, I read everything I could about the topic, even from foreign media sources.”
Elitsa & Ioana: “An expert gave us a box with all her files from the past 10 years. That allowed us to create a map of evictions, which showed that 15 out of 50 took place within 1 km of the new grand paris express line […] It was a lot of trusting the process and keeping reporting even if you don’t understand everything.”
Ilayda & Mascha: “Working with traumatized people required patience. At some point, the interviews became like therapeutic sessions, because people were sharing difficult and sensitive stories.”
Lise: “It started with the claim made by associations that migrants are taking more risks because there are more police forces on the coastline [...] I showed that migrants are now starting their journey from rivers or further south, which increases length of journey and bears specific risks [...] I used data from rescue services, which were not exhaustive but useful; I relied a lot on local news to document the crossings.”
Michal: “I had a breakthrough after a few weeks, when I got to speak to people at an event. It allowed me to expand the scope of the people I could contact, and I was able to have some victims of genital mutilation to talk to me.”
Juliette & Aurore: “We talked to people at suicide prevention centers who told us they were seeing more and more unaccompanied minors, and what was completely impossible to do was a psychological follow-up for people staying in the street. [...] What was complicated for us was to find an unaccompanied minor who would be ready to talk to us.”
Maëlle: (On the militarization of the French-Italian border on migrant crossing points) “It was covered by the media, so I was trying to find a new angle. And what I figured by reading local media articles is that they were mentioning the deaths, but not really diving into why those people died.”
Aarushi & Luca: “We found that the largest Frontex-organized deportation from the EU to a third country in 2023 was from Iceland to Caracas. [...] We were surprised by what Venezuelans are doing in Iceland. So we went deeper into it.”
Amanda & Kat: Exploitation of migrant workers for the Olympics. “You can come to the conclusion that there are undocumented migrants that are exploited all over the world and not only in France. But finding the way to show the specificities of the French system and to use and translate the legal language is a bit more difficult.”
Sarah: About birthright citizenship in Mayotte.
“At first my story was more of a legal one because I wanted to know how it was possible that this [law] passed even though it created such a strict legal separation between Mayotte and the rest of France. But then in the middle of my investigation I realized what was in front of my nose from the very beginning, which was that there were actually very real human consequences to that.”
Julia: About nurses with diplomas from outside the EU: “It’s a subject that’s been talked about mainly for doctors, especially since the immigration bill. However I was surprised that no one was talking about nurses. [...] What I found out is that they are basically invisible to the system and no one is really looking into it”.