Today I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussions titled “Moving Asia” - a dialogue sessions by photo journalists about migration in South Asia. This panel discussion was among the many events held throughout the week as part of the Photo Kathmandu initiative, the only international photography festival in Nepal. Throughout this 14 day long festival there were photo exhibitions held in various venues around the city, and different talks, workshops, slideshows were being organised. I attended the session eager to see how contemporary migration in South Asia was portrayed by local journalists. I was especially interested to see how this phenomenon of foreign migration, that was so common especially for those in Kathmandu Valley, was understood by the Nepalese people.

2016 was a year that sparked up much debate on the “Global Migration Crisis”. I was among the many that watched from the safety of their homes, the horror unraveling as civilians endured unimaginable journeys risking their lives to flee their country, only to be met most of the time by unwelcoming faces. The issue of migration has been one of the key components in some of the major political events this year; the US presidential campaign, and BREXIT to name the obvious.

The story that was told today however was not the story of refugees who were fleeing from war or terrorism. Rather, they were stories of economic migrants.

The three panelists each highlighted different aspects of South Asian migration, bringing to us each time a new perspective to reflect on.

The first panelist displayed his work on images of migrants who mysteriously disappeared overseas, and their desperate family trying to look for them. The story of one vanishing while overseas is not uncommon. I recalled an incident that occurred a few years back, where my grandparent’s domestic helper in Singapore received a sudden phone call that her brother had fallen off from a building he was helping construct in Dubai. Setting aside the other glaring issue regarding safety hazards, this brother could easily have become a “missing migrant”, an incident swept under the carpet in a far away land.

However it was not always painful and tragic stories. Controversy to the fear we sketch up in our minds when we hear that these individuals go missing, there are cases where it is the individual’s choice not to be found. They may have found a partner, and may have decided to leave behind their history to start a new life. “Missing migrants” as the panelist put it could come in so many forms, and the family’s wish for their child or spouse to return, was not always aligned with what the individual wanted for themselves.

The second panelist highlighted the situation of women migration. She began by explaining that the image people had of women leaving the country was most commonly related to sex work. Therefore the social stigma attached to them made it difficult for women to publicly announce their departure, or the fact that they were currently abroad. Most women would just say that they were going for work in Kathmandu. However it was not always the case that women were exploited into the sex industry. From what the panelist found, some were thriving in a tailoring factory in Jordan living a satisfactory life. The women were unable to reveal that they were living dignified lives - a degrading dichotomy between reality and the soceity’s assumptions of their women.

The last panelist’s work was focused around Bangladeshi migrants in Malaysia. His words hit me deeply, and unexpectedly.
“Economic migration is often seen as something unfavorable (by the host country). But sometimes it’s the only chance for one to radically turn around they’re life”.

People did not have the power to make the decision of where to be born. It did seem almost selfish once you thought about it; how we desperately protected our borders, ruthlessly kicking out those that we deemed unfitting when we don’t even have control over where we come out in this world. Was it really right to condemn those who only came in search for a better chance to support their families? Free economic activity across borders may be taking it to the extreme, but do we have to shun away and belittle migrants as we do now, treating them inferior to citizens of the country? By going through the various pictures of the migration journey, this journalist was humanizing the process, reminding us (mostly foreigners who were not from South Asia) that these migrants were just…people. There were so many ways we could relate to them because in the end, they were just people.

This session made me realise that the story of humankind, sadly still flooded with agony and desperation, has to be actively told. When I say stories, I mean stories of individuals, not just a collection of people we compress into data. We are so immune to the numbers already - how many millions and billions suffering, dying, and migrating around the world? Somehow we have become numb to the numbers we see and hear in the daily news. Perhaps we can’t fathom the fact that they are actually figures of people, maybe we are automatically stretching out a filter on our minds because we don’t want to believe it.

That is why we need to shed more light onto the story of individual human beings. Especially with some of the issues concerning human rights that often get silenced. This is the only way we can become more compassionate, and see the other not as something isolated from our world, but another human being that shares the same pains, hopes and dreams as ourselves.

My deepest respect goes towards the stories and the unique media that the journalists brought forth today. Thank you for putting a human face on these issues that we see as only issues, a phenomena that we treat and deal with just as a phenomenon.
It is now our responsibility to share this human story with others.
If we can all really look at people as people, I imagine the world would be a better place.