holly pickett

Diaspora

More than 11 million people have fled their homes since the Syrian uprising began in 2011. Around 4 million are in neighboring countries, while an estimated 7 million more are internally displaced. Relatively few Syrians, only around 200,000, have been able to apply for asylum in European countries. In most cases, they must first brave a dangerous, illegal, and expensive trip to Europe via a human smuggler.

A 2014 travel grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting enabled me to document the lives of Syrian refugees in four countries—Greece, Germany, Sweden, and Russia—as they attempted to adjust to their surroundings, obtain legal status and social services, and build new lives for themselves and their families. More can be found at the Pulitzer Center's project page here: A War's Diaspora: Syrian Refugees in a Troubled Europe.

Greece

In 2014, thousands of Syrian refugees made their way to Europe via boats smuggled from Turkey to Greece. Sometimes the boats make landfall on an island, but more often, they are intercepted by the Greek Coast Guard in the water. The boats appear almost everyday, and financially-strapped Greece is struggling to cope with the increasing numbers of new arrivals. In most cases, Syrians are given documentation allowing them to stay in Greece for six months, but asylum is essentially impossible, and there are few official resources to help them. For these reasons, most Syrians come to Greece hoping to travel illegally to another European country such as Germany, Holland, or Sweden, where they can request asylum and receive state support as refugees. To do this, they often must pay a human smuggler to procures fake documents and facilitate their travel. It is a difficult, sometimes dangerous, and often very expensive journey to reach safety.

Germany

Around 200,000 people, many of them Syrians, applied for asylum in Germany last year, more than in any other European Union country. The following images are from a story about one close-knit, middle-class family, the Al-Aydis, who fled their home in the middle of the night, in advance of a Syrian Army assault on their Yarmouk neighborhood. Eight adult siblings scattered, some making their way to Lebanon, others to Turkey or Egypt. Two brothers, Wisam and Mwafak, and their families arrived in Germany in 2013 and 2014, respectively, but were resettled on opposite sides of the country. For Wisam’s family of seven, the previous three years took a toll and the transition in Germany was not smooth. They had moved 12 times since the war began, half of those since they arrived in Germany. They prepared to move one last time, to Lüneberg in the North, to live close to Mwafak and his family. During the chaos of this last move across the country, Wisam and Mwafak’s sister Manal managed to fly from Turkey to Friedrichshafen in southeastern Germany, terminally ill with cancer. She collapsed at the airport, and Mwafak rushed to be with her in the hospital. These refugees, who were now safe from bombs and snipers, turned all of the energy toward being together.

Sweden

In September 2013, Sweden pledged permanent residency for all Syrian refugees who sought asylum within its borders--the trick of course was that Syrians had to find a way to get there. A year later, waves of Syrians have arrived, the Swedish refugee system has begun to show signs of strain, and now some Swedes are questioning their country's immigration policy.

The town of Södertalje is known for its open-door policy toward refugees, especially Christian Syrians and Iraqis, who make up 30,000 of the town's 90,000 residents. Since the Syrian war began three years ago, the town has seen a marked increase in Syrian refugees resettling in Södertalje, and seeking housing, education, and other services. 

In the small town of Fagersta in rural south-central Sweden, Lulu, an Arabic literature student from Yarmouk near Damascus, is still trying to adjust to her new life. She fled with her father to Greece in early 2014, and arrived in Sweden in March. Lulu has been blind since birth and chose Sweden because it has generous social services and open-minded people. Her sister, husband, and mother are still in Damascus and keep her constantly worried.

Russia

Human rights workers estimate that between 10,000 and 20,000 Syrian refugees reside here, but there is no hope for asylum, or even legal status, despite decades of political cooperation and cultural and economic exchange between the two countries. Many Syrians came on work visas, hired as tailors in Syrian-owned textile factories in Noginsk, a town 20 miles outside of Moscow, while others took advantage of the Russian government's student visa program and modest grants for tuition. If refugees are unable to obtain work or student visas, they can apply for temporary asylum, but this provides neither stability nor social services. Temporary asylum must be renewed each year, and if it is denied, the applicant can be arrested, jailed, and deported. Both kinds of visa are increasingly difficult to obtain, and many now find themselves trapped here, facing exploitation due to their lack of legal status. Since the war in Syria began, factory owners in some cases are not paying their workers on time, and Syrian workers are regularly harassed by police for bribes.

Yasser came to Noginsk with his father in 2008 to work as a tailor in one of the Syrian-operated textile factories. Yasser's mother and other siblings fled Syria and arrived in Russia in 2011, at the beginning of the war. The family's home in Aleppo's Salahaddin neighborhood was destroyed by shelling in 2012, and they can't go back to Syria. The family is currently waiting to see if their temporary asylum documents will be renewed.