Hi Nikhil!
For the icon project--and perhaps later projects for this class as well--I want to use data that I collected myself over a two-month period this spring. From March-June 2021 I was working as a freelance journalist based in Velika Kladuša, Bosnia, a small town in the northwest of the country right on the Croatian border, covering human rights and migration. Kladuša is situated right along the so-called ‘Balkan Route’ of migration, and has seen thousands of migrants and refugees pass through the area mostly since 2017.
Most of the migrants in this area live outside official camp structures, for a number of reasons: overcrowding, Covid restrictions, and the simple fact that the camps are terrible prisons and people would rather not live there at all. Instead, people live in abandoned houses (squats), or in tents in the forests.
As most people live outside camps and many have never applied for asylum in the country (so they are undocumented), it is extremely difficult--basically, impossible--to have real numbers on how many people are living in the area at any given time. You have to rely on your own counting, or asking refugees themselves how many people they think there are in their immediate area.
This being said, at the time I collected this data (May-June 2021), I would say there were roughly 200-250 migrants in Kladuša; 100 people in Šturlić, a smaller town nearby; 250-300 people in Bosanska Bojna (mostly Afghan families); and maybe 50-100 people in Gradina.
Anyway, this is all backstory. I lived in Kladuša for six months in total, first as an aid worker with a Spanish NGO and then as a freelancer. Over my time there, I paid very close attention to the media coverage of the situation and began to see a pattern, namely, that most of the stories were first-person accounts of border violence at the hands of Croatian police during ‘pushbacks’, the term to describe when authorities of one country illegally deport migrants/refugees/asylum-seekers before they are allowed to apply for asylum there. (This is illegal under international law.) Think: Croatian police officers finding a group of people in the forest in the middle of the night, taking their clothes, phones and sleeping bags, beating them up with clubs and tasers, driving them close to the Bosnian border, and leaving them for dead, even in the winter. This happens every single day there--and in other border areas of Europe, too.
These stories are very powerful, of course, but I got the idea that there could be a different way of covering the issue. I thought, What if you collected data on every aspect of migrants’ lives here, not just border violence, but their daily living conditions and information on their entire journeys? What sort of picture would that paint? Would the data potentially be useful towards future accountability for authorities? After all, the personal story of one man is powerful, but authorities can always dispute it, saying the man is lying. What if you get hundreds of stories using data?
Other, much larger organizations were already doing this, but primarily focusing on people inside camps--and as I said, most people live outside facilities. A similar study was conducted by three researchers in 2020, but only 54 people were interviewed. By contrast, I interviewed 159 people all on my own, devoting a great deal of time to the project.
So what was the project? I designed a multi-part health questionnaire with questions ranging from educational background, journey to Europe from their home country, access to food, water and shelter, physical/mental/dental health, alcohol and cigarette use, episodes of violence experienced along the journey, sleep patterns, etc. I then paid professional translators to translate the survey into four languages: Dari/Farsi, Urdu, Arabic and Bengali. (Most of the migrants passing through this area are from Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Kurdistan.) Then, I went out and did the interviews. As I said, I managed to interview 159 people, although not every participant answered every question in the survey. Those incomplete surveys I still included.
What I propose for this icon project is a pretty basic breakdown of episodes of violence migrants experienced at the hands of state actors (police, border forces, etc.). Here is the data itself:
159 surveys Expressed being the victim of violence - 148 participants (93.08%) No reported violence - 6 participants No answer given - 5 participants
Attacked with a knife - 31 participants (20.95%) Gun shooting (either shot with a gun or a gun was shot near them) - 37 participants (25%) Taser/electronic weapon - 60 participants (40.54%) Club/stick - 86 (58.11%) Physical fight with no weapons - 50 (33.78%) Held hostage - 12 (8.11%) Tortured - 49 (33.11%) Physically harassed/intimidated - 31 participants (20.95%) Psychological harassed/intimidated - 79 participants (53.38%) Sexual violence - 7 (4.73%)
I thought to focus on the percentages for this icon project, as I find them more powerful and accurate than the simple numbers. Depending on how you feel about this pitch, I can add more data results to enrich these figures. For example, what percentage of people reported they had been the victims of three or more types of violence? Or, where the violence took place (in a camp, during a ‘pushback,’ i.e. while trying to cross a border, etc.). I can also include breakdowns of gender, age and nationality very easily.
There are certainly many more data points than just the ones I’ve presented. I should stress that although 159 surveys doesn’t sound like much, given the population of people we’re talking about, I do think it is statistically significant. I interviewed people mainly in Kladuša and Šturlić, where in total about 300 people lived. I managed, thus, to survey more than half the population, keeping in mind that I did not survey children under the age of 18 unless they were unaccompanied minors.
And in general--and I cannot stress this enough--there is essentially no data out there on this. Bosnia is a black, black hole when it comes to migration. There is way more data, for example, about refugees in Greece. (See here: https://www.fenixaid.org/post/report-inadequate-emergency-response-to-the-moria-fires.) I found this out really when I was a reporter, because I could not find any information and had to thus rely solely on first-person accounts of events.
Let me know what you think, Nikhil. Really eager for your thoughts!