Why refugees’ fate concerns all of us
Author Wolfgang Bauer in conversation with academic activists Alison Phipps
A twofold catastrophe is taking place before our eyes: the Syrian civil war is still claiming countless human lives. Millions of Syrians are fleeing from their homes. Some of them risk the crossing from Egypt to Europe. Each year, hundreds of people die in the course of this endeavour; the Mediterranean is thus the world’s most perilous maritime border.
"Zeit" reporter Wolfgang Bauer has accompanied Syrian refugees. In their hideouts in Egypt, on the boats, on the streets of Europe. He describes the fates concealed behind the abstract figures, and the dramatic circumstances of flight. His book
Across the Sea - With Syrians on Their Escape to Europe is an authentic document and at the same time a passionate appeal for a more humanitarian refugee policy.
Wolfgang Bauer, born in 1970, works for the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT. For his reportage he has been awarded the Katholischer Medienpreis and the Prix Bayeux-Calvados des Correspondants de Guerre as well as other distinctions.
Alison Phipps
| © Alison Phipps
Alison Phipps is Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies, and Co-Convener of Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNET). In 2012 she received an OBE for Services to Education and Intercultural and Interreligious Relations in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
She has undertaken work in Palestine, Sudan, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Germany, France, USA, Portugal, Ghana. She has produced and directed theatre and worked as creative liturgist with the World Council of Churches from 2008-2011 for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation. She is regularly advises public, governmental and third sector bodies on migration and languages policy.
This lecture is part of the global discussion/debate series
“Kritikmaschine”. Organisers are the Goethe-Institut and Kursbuch, one of Germany’s leading intellectual magazines. Speakers include journalist Meredith Haaf on the new feminism, architect Friedrich von Borries on political design, author Wolfgang Bauer on refugees, historian Sabine Donauer on work in digital society, and Kursbuch editor Armin Nassehi on social criticism. The event series seeks to confront mutually “otherised” perspectives with each other; it aims to search for new answers – and new questions.
Back
