2min chapter

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Seeking Refuge in a Hostile World, with Sally Hayden

Intelligence Squared

CHAPTER

The Difference Between Refugees and Economic Migrants

In sierre leon, your life expectancy is around 25 years less than it would be in europe a. It's one of the worst, if not the worst, country to give birth as a woman. You're very likely to die. And so there are these threts to your life that are relat to poverty that or but are still kind of 'trouble' Am bus: Are you from west africa? Share your story with CNN iReport.

00:00
Speaker 1
So
Speaker 2
you've discussed around east africa and some of the the routes that people take to say a bit about the refugees from west africa. Yet,
Speaker 1
the people coming from west africa, generally, they wouldn't be considered refugees in a legal sense. They'd be more what's termed economic migrants. Their people who have left looking for opportunity, where they fled from poverty or oer, things like that. Am bus. That was one of the interesting things for me. I went to serra leon, and i met one guy who who was from sierra leon who had been messaging me from inside detention. They don't have the opportunity to be legally evacuated, and so a lot of them end up, when they get locked in detention, their only way out is to be returned to their home country, tru an, you fonded joan's scheme, and so he got returned. But i ended up reporting in sierra leon a lot. And you know, for me, that allenge the idea of the distinction between refugees and economic migrants. Because, for example, in sierre leon, your life expectancy is around 25 years less than it would be in europe a. Might think it's aram one and ten children die before they turn five. It's one of the worst, if not the worst, country to give birth as a woman. You're very likely to die. And so there are these threts to your life that are relat to poverty that or but are still kind of, you know, i was even tereduring, am a big crone of ours outbreak, and there were no ventilators functioning in the country. So, like, if you needed a ventilator, you just died. So that when, when you look at it like that, it's not so clear cut that these are just people who want a job. You know? It's like they there is actually an active tra your life if you're in a very, very poor country.

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