Migration Matters

Migrant Lives in Pandemic Time (2021)

Migrant Lives in Pandemic Times is a digital storytelling project produced by CERC Migration in Toronto, led by Professor Anna Triandafyllidou, in collaboration with Migration Matters. Migration Matters e.V. is a non-profit organisation based in Berlin, Germany, founded in January 2016 in response to media coverage during the so-called “refugee crisis.”

Recorded during the summer of 2021, the project presents both personal testimony and expert analysis to explore how the everyday realities of 12 migrants from across the globe changed during the pandemic.

From a Chilean home-school tutor in Oakland, California, to a Senegalese street vendor in Bilbao, Spain, these stories give voice to those often missing from media and public discourse, aiming to build solidarity and inform policy across borders.

While each story shares the lived experiences of individuals, they also offer insights into universal conditions and challenges related to work, mental health, and the importance of community. The project celebrates resilience while also critically examining broader structural and policy issues.

Each migrant story includes a personal portrait, a video statement, and a policy brief produced by an international migration scholar to provide context and recommendations for improving conditions. From start to finish, the migrants featured in the project have played an active role in shaping their own narratives.

I contributed original drawings and an artistic video, filming my hand while drawing in my Berlin studio during lockdown. My role was to create a kind of parallel visual narrative that was occasionally interwoven with the real-life scenes featured in the documentaries.

This documentary has been showcased at various social and migration-themed festivals around the world, including in New York, Cape Town, Toronto, Berlin, Warsaw, and Istanbul.