The Collateral Repair Podcast aims to share the stories of refugees living in Jordan.
Season 2 (2024), "The Waiting Station," examines Jordan's policy landscape. In a country hosting more than 600,000 refugees, few can work and even fewer have prospects of return or resettlement. Through interviews with community members and experts, we'll examine how refugees navigate this 'limbo.' Episodes every two weeks beginning January 10, 2024.
Season 1 (2018-2019) featured monthly interviews with members of Jordan's refugee communities.
Spotify / Google / Anghami
Season 2, Bonus Episode #1: Behind the Community Art Project
In this bonus episode, Grace Nuri, the artist behind the beautiful graffiti you encounter at our centers, reflects upon the significance of this community project.
The Community Art Project first started in the summer of 2023 and saw the completion of several outstanding mural pieces in both our centers. More recently, Grace came back to Amman to visit the city and her family and decided to develop the Community Art Project further following talks with the community about how there was a need for more representation, especially women’s representation.
Written and hosted by Grace Nuri
Edited by Francesca Maria Lorenzini (https://francescamarialorenzini.com/about/)
3 Apr 2024
Season 2, Episode 7: Community Empowerment
Season 2 (2024): Episode 7, "Community Empowerment"
Many of our recent episodes have focused on policy…. Good policy, and bad policy, and the policies that need to change. But these are shifts that might take generations, and in the meantime, refugee communities don’t have the luxury of waiting.
For our final episode of Season 2, we bring our attention back to Jordan. We hear from Ricky and Hassan, the co-founders of a critical, anti-racist English as a Second Language program run by refugee-led organization Sawiyan, a partner of CRP. In the face of slow political change, how can community programs like Sawiyan’s equip people to be their own advocates?
Background reading
Read more about Sawiyan’s ESL (https://sawiyan.org/about-the-program) program.
What is critical pedagogy, the education theory underpinning this program? Listen to this short explainer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXUv7pIveMA).
Make sure to catch this recent piece from Ricky and Sawiyan co-founder Dina Baslan, for Untold Magazine (https://untoldmag.org/reliving-it-at-a-distance/), about the continued displacement crisis unfolding in Sudan, and its reverberations in Jordan.
20 Mar 2024
Season 2, Episode 6: The Border Inside: Notes from Belgrade and El Paso
Season 2 (2024): Episode 6, “The Border Inside: Notes from Belgrade and El Paso”
It might seem strange for a podcast about displacement in the Middle East to suddenly pivot to two other continents. But that’s exactly what we’re doing here! In Belgrade, Serbia, Zach talks to his friend Zaki, who left Afghanistan to seek safety in Europe. And from El Paso, TX, USA, Zach speaks to Jesús de la Torre and Aimée Santillán of the HOPE Border Institute (https://www.hopeborder.org/) to reflect on what’s happening at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The point of this journey is to see how migration policies around the world are interconnected. Too many governments have bought into the same erroneous philosophy: the idea that a security response can answer humanitarian and political questions. How can we rethink migration, and our policy approach to it, so that displaced people can restart their lives again, meaningfully and on their own terms?
Background reading
Host Zach Goodwin spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Belgrade, Serbia, where he put together a collection of refugee oral histories, including a contribution from interviewee Zaki. Read the collection here (https://www.theworkshopbelgrade.org/_files/ugd/a8571b_5414bda4a81a423aa3554243f45e2c97.pdf?index=true).
Curious to learn more about the journeys of Afghan refugees? Two books explore this in great detail: The Lightless Sky (https://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/authors/nadene-ghouri/books/the-lightless-sky-a-twelve-year-old-refugees-extraordinary-journey-across-half-the-world) by Gulwali Passarlay and The Naked Don’t Fear the Water (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/books/review/the-naked-dont-fear-the-water-matthieu-aikins.html) by Matthieu Aikins.
This op-ed (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/asylum-seekers-migrant-crisis/677464/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter) from The Atlantic dives into the narrative of the ‘migrant crisis.’ Is it really what politicians say it is?
Many asylum-seekers arrive in the U.S. and have no one to guide their entry. How can we change that? This white paper (https://www.hopeborder.org/_files/ugd/e07ba9_b72d83908acd4f02a5fc52c2789f970c.pdf) from HOPE Border Institute gets the ball rolling.
6 Mar 2024
Season 2, Episode 5: On the Other Side of Waiting: The Long Path to Resettlement with Kitti Murray
Season 2 (2024): Episode 5, “On the Other Side of Waiting: The Long Path to Resettlement with Kitti Murray.”
Most people registered as refugees in Jordan hope that, one day, they will be accepted for resettlement to countries in North America and Europe, where there are more viable paths to work and citizenship. However, last year, just 1.4% of Jordan’s refugees were accepted for resettlement. The laborious, time-consuming, and retraumatizing process can take years, and in the meantime, the uncertainty is enough to drive anyone mad.
In this episode, we talk to Kitti Murray, the CEO and founder of Refuge Coffee, which provides job training for newly resettled refugees in Clarkston, GA, USA, once described as “the most diverse square mile in America.” We ask Kitti: what lies beyond resettlement, in the early days of one’s new life?
Background reading:
Did you know that Clarkston, GA, is the “most diverse square mile” in the United States? Read this profile (https://bittersoutherner.com/the-souths-ellis-island-clarkston-georgia-refugees) to learn more.
Take a look at this 2017 New Yorker profile (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/waiting-for-resettlement-in-the-age-of-trump) from journalist and CRP board member Tara Sutton, reported from the halls of CRP’s center, about 11 Syrian and Iraqi men caught in the interminable wait for resettlement.
Why is the Biden administration falling so short of its refugee resettlement targets? CBS News covered it here (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/refugee-admissions-target-2022-biden-administration/).
21 Feb 2024
Season 2, Episode 4: Refugees and Jordan's Economy with Shaddin al-Masri
Season 2 (2024): Episode 4, “Refugees and Jordan’s Economy with Shaddin al-Masri.” To survive in today’s world, you need money. And to make money, you need a job. But this is not a simple proposition for Jordan’s 700,000 refugees, the majority of whom face exclusion from Jordan’s formal economy.
In this episode, we talk to Shaddin al-Masri, a PhD student at Danube University Krems whose research focuses on nationality-based discrimination in humanitarian aid and labor market integration for refugees. We break down Jordan’s kafala sponsorship system, its uneasy relationship with refugees, and certain initiatives that have created limited paths for refugees to work.
Given the academic nature of this episode, we hope the reading list below will help you get caught up to speed.
Background reading:
The basic framework governing foreign labor in Jordan is the kafala system. But what is the kafala system (https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-kafala-system#:~:text=The%20kafala%2C%20or%20sponsorship%2C%20system,workers), a private sponsorship structure predominant in the Arab world?
Around 2016, visits from academics and donors spurred conversations around economic self-reliance for Syrians in Jordan. These conversations (https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/refugees/articles/2016/07/25/jordan-experiment-spurs-jobs-for-refugees) created groundbreaking, if fragile, employment schemes for Syrians.
But this 2016 ‘compact’ only served Syrians and left other refugees in the dark. Shaddin wrote more about it here (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dpr.12734).
Nowadays, limited entrepreneurship, cash-for-work, and volunteering programs provide refugees with economic lifelines — but for how long (https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/cash-for-work-jobs-offer-temporary-lifeline-at-zaatari-refugee-camp/)?
7 Feb 2024
Season 2, Episode 3: Jordan and the 'One Refugee Approach'
Season 2 (2024): Episode 3, “Jordan and the ‘One Refugee Approach.’” Jordan's refugee response actors say their work has been guided by the ‘One Refugee Approach.” That is, a refugee is a refugee, deserving of the same rights no matter where they’re from. But is this the case in practice?
We talk to two members of CRP’s community from Sudan and Yemen, who tell us about the challenges faced by minority refugees in Jordan amid a landscape that has been defined by the Syrian crisis. We also hear their stories of perseverance, and how they’ve used the lessons learned from these experiences to become leaders in their communities.
Background reading:
Check out the work of Sawiyan (https://sawiyan.org/our-story), a Sudanese and Somali-led organization developing critical and empowering education curricula for refugees in Jordan.
Take a look at CRP’s sexual and gender-based violence prevention (https://www.collateralrepairproject.org/crps-leaders-fight-gender-based-violence/) program, which uses a gender-integrated approach to empower both men and women as advocates.
Read about Somali and Sudanese refugees in Jordan (https://merip.org/2016/09/sudanese-and-somali-refugees-in-jordan/), and the consequences often faced by those who protest discriminatory treatment.
Go in-depth into the experiences of Yemeni refugees (https://sanaacenter.org/files/A_Precarious_Refuge_Yemeni_Asylum_Seekers_in_Jordan_en.pdf), the third largest asylum-seeking group in Jordan.
24 Jan 2024
Season 2, Episode 2: Refuge, Home, and Memory in Hashemi Shamali
Season 2 (2024): Episode 2, “Refuge, Home, and Memory in Hashemi Shamali.” Our second episode of the season discusses CRP’s home neighborhood of Hashemi Shamali in East Amman, which has long been a refuge for people fleeing from other countries.
We speak to two members of the community who arrived from Syria, 40 years apart, about their lives in Hashemi, memories of their old country, and prospects for the future.
Background reading:
Learn about Hashemi Shamali (https://www.advocacynet.org/on-hashemi-shamali-and-urban-refugees/) and the lives of urban refugees in Jordan, by Teresa Perosa.
Understand the reality of Syrians in Jordan (https://apnews.com/article/jordan-syria-refugees-civil-war-return-4a87a2f77db9e6099306db7554898062) today, caught between the regime that persecuted them and the state that wants to send them back, from AP News
Catch our next episode, focused on Jordan’s minority refugee groups, on February 7, 2024!
10 Jan 2024
Season 2, Episode 1: The Waiting Station
Season 2 (2024): Episode 1, “The Waiting Station.” After a five year hiatus, the Collateral Repair Podcast is back! This season, we’ll be exploring the lived experiences of refugees in Jordan and the policies affecting them, amid the wider context of global displacement.
In our introductory episode, we talk to Ali, a CRP colleague and member of Amman’s Iraqi community, and Amanda Lane, CRP’s executive director. We begin to understand the constrictive environment for refugees in Jordan, and hear how community members channel their skills and experiences through CRP to combat these conditions.
Background reading:
Learn about the history of CRP (https://www.collateralrepairproject.org/overview/) and how it's changed over the years
Read about how Iraqi refugees (https://pomeps.org/refuge-market-and-garden-tropes-of-jordanian-stability-among-ammans-iraqi-residents) navigate Jordanian social life by Zachary Sheldon
Look out for our next episode on January 24, 2024!
9 Jan 2024
Season 1 Archive: Mandaeans
ARCHIVE Season 1 (2019): The Mandaeans are a small ethnoreligious group who were living exclusively in the south of Iraq and Iran until they recently had to flee their homelands. Today we will be looking into who they are, why they left, and a snippet of their beliefs.
8 Jan 2024
Season 1 Archive: Winterization and Mental Health
ARCHIVE Season 1 (2019). In this episode we talk about winter. Munah, an Iraqi refugee who came to Jordan with her two sons a few years ago, talks to us about her experiences of trying to settle in a new country during winter, and the stresses it induced in her family. Following that, we talk to a team of mental health professionals from Médicine Sans Frontières about mental health challenges refugees suffer, which are exacerbated during the winter months.
7 Jan 2024
Season 1 Archive: CRP Executive Director Amanda Lane
ARCHIVE Season 1 (2018): We sit down with Amanda Lane who is the executive director at Collateral Repair Project, and reflect on how far the organization has come since her arrival. We also talk about CRP's future plans, the new center, and what's in store for 2019.
6 Jan 2024
Season 1 Archive: Employment
ARCHIVE Season 1 (2018): In this episode of the Collateral Repair Podcast, we examine the daunting challenges refugees go through when looking for a job. Emad, a Syrian who crossed the border into Jordan in 2012, walks us through his job hunting experiences in Amman. After that, Anas Al Chalabi, who is an NGO consultant with UN, explains the differences between Syrian and Iraqi refugee employment issues.
5 Jan 2024
Season 1 Archive: Education
ARCHIVE Season 1 (2018): This episode marks the launch of the Collateral Repair Podcast, a new platform from Collateral Repair Project to tell the stories of refugees living in Amman, Jordan. We begin our program with an episode on education, a critical and complex factor in refugee children’s lives after displacement. You will hear from Suleiman, an Iraqi teen who took a singularly unique education path, and Karam Hayef, CRP’s Education Specialist.
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