Focus: The Challenge of Migration

Say the word “migrant” and a host of troubling images are conjured up in your mind – the straggling lines of exhausted people, the makeshift camps, the capsized boat, the drowned child on the beach. The second decade of the 21st century confronted Europeans with scenes that they thought belonged to the past, or at least to countries at a comfortably safe distance from their own shores.

refugees on boat

Learn more by reading the article on p. 141. Work with the tasks in the textbook and those below.

What does it mean to be a refugee?

About 60 million people around the globe have been forced to leave their homes to escape war, violence and persecution. The majority have become Internally Displaced Persons, meaning they fled their homes but are still in their own countries. Others, referred to as refugees, sought shelter outside their own country. But what does that term really mean?