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tv   The Stream Beyond Borders - Migrants Online  Al Jazeera  May 8, 2024 12:30pm-1:00pm AST

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the military boats bringing they've actually used it as a city across the river. maria, it was a central, says she until when you old baby are lucky to be alive. a lot of people, drama. you still did horses floating on the river. it was like a to nami, most of those day the water stuff, it dries and if 5 in the morning, we escaped to the top floor of a screen yet about a 150 other people know what to know. food people were disciplined. no one knew what is happening. funny and why did that and her brother was finally rescued, but had to leave everything they had behind. i ask mario santos with he and his family will do that. i don't know. i have no idea who i'll go to my sister's house for now. last, every time i've heard that when we have nothing left. nearly 1500000 people have been affected by the unprecedented flags, the worst ever seen in the state of rio grande. it will soon, a juicy or
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a company. the army owner rescue boat passing submerged homes on the way to a low dazzle. the sergeant believes climate change along with the new phenomena are responsible for this disaster. risk teams using jet skis and rubber disease can only bring one or 2 people out of time to the waiting military boat, women, children, and the elderly. a given priority to 50000 people it's a painfully slow process. help is coming from all over brazil, volunteers bringing anything that floats,
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even surfboards to evacuate people. the government is releasing emergency funding aid, but more than 400 municipalities of the state. and it's colonial style. capital are still flooded, you know, 50000 people have no shelter, and the watches showed no sign of receding to see and human al jazeera, puerto late, the present. or you can have online for more information about that story as well as phase other top stories. our website is out to 0 talk. com. we'll have more news at the top of the hour with volleyball cfo after the stream. thanks for watching the,
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the, the. ringback the most of us use social media, it's a shame update to stay and talk to the loved ones. but for some people, it is quite literally a lifeline. migrants often use social media to know any communicate with loved ones abroad, but also to document that johnny's, i'm gain by full information for the safety. so how is social media impacting migrant jennings? primary info for this, the stream, the k i n c the largest p for taishan efforts and lots of
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people die on these journey. new york knows most limits, illegal immigration, none the control of our board is the refugees have been known to use facebook to quote for help if they get stranded see i'm even to ask which tends to purchase that johnny, but criminal gangs also use social media to advertise dangerous crossings unless potential victims in this episode will be discovering the role that social media plays in the choices being made by those risking it. oh, for a better future. hey, to discuss this with me. uh, zoe, you gotten uh an independent migration policy reset to advocate on rice a. joining us from london from oxford, sent me 9 on the poet, asked us to make an offer of the book seeking refuge. 2060 on carlos
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eduardo s b. not an immigrant rights activist law student who provides legal advice on migration to his 8400000 father is on 6 talk. he joins us from washington dc. welcome to you. oh, thank you for being a zoe. i'll start by asking you you research migration. today, migrants produce a huge digital footprints documenting the roots and it's pitfalls what kind of changes, how social media brought to the experience of on documented migrants. right, thanks for having me. yeah, i mean, i think that at the moment um, what we see when we're working with migrants, especially when they've just arrived. the most important thing that they ask for the 1st thing they have asked for as a charge and for that time. so that's smartphones, because that has become the way in which they receive all the information. keep in touch with that families and loved ones back home. and it's become
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a huge part of how they're able to make the journey so that they make. so i think it was like, the key thing is just access to information. there's a huge amount of information that shed across social media by migrants and by other actors in, in, interact, thing with migrants be that as a smugglers and facilitators and fixes or, and also governments who are seeking to influence the movement of people across the board as well, so it's, it's a huge space for information. some of that is positive. it helps people to avoid danger. and, and unfortunately, because it's a totally unregulated spaces. also a place where there's a huge amount of misinformation being shad i'm and that can be both bice level is but also governments of who are sharing information that is designed to prevent people from making johnny safely to reach destination countries. and we will
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definitely be coming back to that carlos, you provide legal advice mainly in spanish, to you. millions of follow is on social media. tell us about what kind of content does best with your follow is and also what motivates you to create that. so yeah, no, thank you for having me. so i create content in spanish for my audience. a lot of them are immigrants, or people who plan on emigrating to the united states. and mostly what i provide is not so much legal advice. just information in general. that's out there, but maybe people don't know how to find it or they have trouble breaking it down. so for example, the united states government launch is a new policy or changes certain regulations. there's always a lot of misinformation around a lot of confusion. so i get these very complicated topics and i break them down and make them easy to understand. and in the language that people, you know, are able to, to comprehend because it's not very helpful if the government is putting out things in english and most migrants don't understanding was so just trying to break down
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that barrier. uh, go to a trusted sources, find that information and then i'm able to pick out, you know, this is what people should know and then i put it out there. so whatever it is that people are doing, at least that they are informed and they know of what's really going on. and like i was mentioned previously, if they don't fall into the trap of believing and misinformation or lies, or, you know, these deceiving a things that are being put out there on social media and you're telling a soul. so maybe what motivates you in this work that you do as yeah, well, i just believe, you know, uh, i believe in truth, i believe that immigration is a human right. and that, you know, if people are going to make this decision or they should be aware of the possible consequences, the risks associated. and you know, i also do a lot of content about alternative pathways. so, you know, i tried to encourage people who are maybe thinking of taking a legal routes of immigration, of being aware that there is
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a lot of legal pathways as well to immigrate to the united states. that's mostly what i focus on because i'm here in the united states, but i know there's also a lot of leaving ways in other countries. and, you know, people shouldn't be made aware of those because sometimes they want to emigrate legally. they just don't know how to or don't understand the process. so i try to help or help break that down as well. thank you so much for me. you have written a book seeking refuge in 2060, which features and nigerian boy who sets off 3 of us the heart does. it does not full see the odyssey of trials and tribulations which await him. how social media made it easier or harder for migrants to full? see the challenges ahead and you'll, you indeed, and there's 2 main characters and he's, he's one of them. and the other one is a video game kid in the u. k. who gets recruited the home office to stop? mike? stop me. stop michael until refugee is getting in. but yeah, i mean, so in the book, one of the smugglers in the book says to came, take the journey,
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see, right, to germany, make you a new home in paris or rome, hire a fleet to take you to greece. as long as you pay, you get to you k. now, what's that? that's an adverb because we're talking about an economic market. hayes and economic market, which some people say is illegal elicit. but then some people, the people would say that the shipping of asylum seekers to the one to is equal. and then they sit by the end of the dates. we're talking about a place where a product is being advertised and both smoking as i'm traffic is because there is a distinction between the 2, a working in this space and people are wanting information. that one thing to compare people that want to compare different service providers because some of the service providers will have you drowning in the mediterranean o dying and as hard as the other ones will get you to europe or get you to the places you want to go and so we're talking about the method is a tool at the end of the day. social media is a tool, and it's a tool which can be used by nefarious actors. which also can be used by actors who
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have good intentions. i mean, social media as a refugee themselves concert on social media when they're at the pool is may or somewhere the case to life jackets. and i bought both, i'm one of them actually works and the other one is fake. and this is how you tell the difference. so there's plenty of information which can be said through social media. well, in 2021 david young b o. we stood outside the you and hcr headquarters in tripoli, in libya, to process the treatment of refugees and migrants in the country. a process which lasted over 3 months. at the time he was himself being south, sit on today. he's a spokes person at the n g o refugees in libya, assistance'd him. i am a person with the very heart him. all experience is starting from my country of origin. and having left my country to reach a several other countries as a refugee and then on to libya,
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towards the end of 2018 where i was subjected to a new margin. no, i mean much novel atrocities, human rights violations, torture, exploitations and slash level. we haven't been afraid of persecution. we started using social media longer, go to document and publish what was happening. but until then, we had to remote those mask because we couldn't be over it anymore. we had to tell our stories, unfiltered as it was. we had to use the social media when we, when stuck in the street in front of the units out, they did what and trip on it. we had nothing. we, on the use social media, we weren't able to reach to the european commission. we weren't able to reach and to speak with the pop process. and we were able to reach subs. they're all a european civil societies and the united nation has haul. so this was alrighty. a perfect example. not no more than where we are. we can always use what is available
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at the disposal of and social media was one of the results in which we wanted to gain recognition entities. continuing to these days is i'm carlos. david was able to get the attention of the all sorts. he's in the you and even the pope using social media. do you feel that it can be a tool that can help you know, change policy in favor of margaret? right? yes, for sure. i mean, i personally know there's a lot of politicians here in the united states or policy makers who follow not just my kind of content, but other people as well. and i think uh, like was mentioned previously while social media has been use right to misinform a, not only about the journey, but also about immigrants themselves and paint them in a negative light. it is also a platform where people can highlight the positive things. so i make a lot of content, you know, educating, not just migrants, but people in general about what immigrants provide to the united states. a lot of
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times we don't even realize the great contributions we make to this country to break down a lot of misconceptions. and also i share stories, there's a lot of new migrants who arrived will that make videos about the businesses they've created or the, the jobs that they're doing, that kind of stuff. and i try to use my platform to up lift those things and kind of break down the stigma and these fake narratives that you know, immigrants are all the criminals and horrible people when that's really not the case. i definitely do think that social media can be used to highlight the positive and that ultimately leads to more humanitarian policies. for me, is there a sense that social media can also give a voice to the perspective of migrants? you know, the connection may be that they themselves make between historical and maybe contemporary phones of inequality in the wild migration flows which are pops less apparent in mainstream discourse. a 100 percent in, in, in the main stream media we often see these things put to one side and
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unfortunately, especially in the u. k. but also in the us flow, especially in both of them. we see this narrative of small boats, of invasion, of people coming and trying to steal jobs, people coming and trying to, um, kind of change our culture. and it's, it's really not true. um it's, it's, it's, it's, and it's something which can be challenged by people sharing the journeys people sharing the stories through social media, which is a space which, i mean, we all know the stories about social media being owned by a few 1000000000 as and, and sort of binding in the rest, by the end of the day, what we've seen with garza is it social media, provides is a different space apart from mainstream media where a different story can be told and it's the same with the the migrant journey. um, if you, if, if someone says the realities of what they go through as they travel through the libyan route or the, the, the rates are turkey. and they, that personality comes across the similarities between them and the people watching
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in the west or in any other country. you can really start to build the empathy, which is something that is, is unfortunately not um, not built through through mainstream platforms these days, which are very, very quick to scape goat migrants which and refugees, which are very, very quick to try and blame them for a lot of problems and also social media can address things like to be the doubling regulation and some of this stuff which is left out of some of the less peripheral european countries and actually say, well look, look at what greece and the cool entity of dealing with the u. k. is dealing with, it's really not equivalent in any way shape or form. mm. well, while social media has provided migrants with information which can help them, it has also of course, me a no man's land where traffic is and smugglers also pray on vulnerable people. in one of the workshop groups, they lied about the ways to travel to the us. someone says the things they said
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weren't true, they just wanted to swindle us or use us as a means of transporting drugs. they followed that information and they disappeared, that our room is that they were kidnapped by drug traffickers. but we don't know where they are. sorry. is this something you've come across and can you tell us about some of the dangers that migrants also face was relying on information on social media? yes, obviously doesn't know about actors in this space as well, who are trying to sell a passage across. and even if that what they're providing is completely unsafe and then in the worst cases that can also be everett into being trafficked and being exploited and forced labor on arrival as well. um, but i think that it's important when you mentioned that story about those, those people who disappeared in the desert and the the, the way they had been tricked by social media. it's important also to highlight
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that through social media, people are prevented from disappearing. so with the alarm for a network and the what's the med network and various of the at, and g o activities using social media across the mediterranean region. the refugees and the science teachers are able to send messages about that location and that can be shared with these groups. and then that support costed and allows those people to be found and rescued. but also for us to monitor in circumstances where for example, in the great case is too often happening with the greek authorities are actually engaging in illegal push back activities. so that's why they actually force people onto life roughed and leave them adrift in the middle of the ocean, effectively disappearing them. so the long time network is one of these really important ways that that's shining a lot on that issue. and stopping people from being disappeared in that way as well . well, in 2022, many well monta rosa sets out for the united states with a plan to record his journey there before. so hold on one second. yeah. okay. yeah,
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i'm on, i'm on frontier and i'm where are you the thought of out on the lot on the yes he well he posted it on youtube to one of the perils they might face. he eventually made it to america off the, his post went viral. he's now become an insurance, having returns to south america, where he now and living from price thing about migration. ruth carlos, 70 percent of migrant. say they regularly get information from facebook more than any other source other than was a mouth. do you have any reservations about social media companies like messer and youtube making money of these kinds of pers, which ultimately can be seen to encourage people to take dangerous routes? yes, i think there's a lot of complexities when it comes to the social media platforms and the
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regulations around this kind of content. i personally struggled with it. a lot of times you know, i try to put out information that's true. that's verified. and that's reliable. and then you have issues of shadow banding and stuff like that. when then you see other kind of content, you know, that's just completely false or misleading, or even, you know, using by smugglers, etc. and that content, it goes viral. so it's very hard to gauge exactly what they are pushing and what they're not pushing. but what is true is that uh, every day, more and more people are relying on facebook and also take talk more recently to get this kind of information. and it has become a sort of no man's land where anyone can post anything which can be good because you have the positive side of, you know, migrants can share their unfiltered stories of people can share help that kind of stuff. but then you also have the other side of where those bad actors are able to have a large platform. and. ready viral really quickly and i think um it is uh,
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there definitely needs to be a little bit more, you know, clarity on what exactly the platforms are. policies are from this kind of content, but i have seen that seem to be a big problem. a lot of people will reach out to me, you know, sharing their stories of how they were either kidnapped or how they were trafficked, or how they were just rob, different kind of the degrees of, of horrible experiences because they believed in things they saw on social media which ended up not being true. and i think the platforms do whole some sort of responsibility and just use these situations for promoting that kind of content in knowing that it is not correct. um, semi once manual was able to make a living in latin america, he preferred to stay there. rather than migrate to america. do you think that social media can also sell us another type of line, maybe one, which is maybe not a real picture of what awaits migrants in the countries that they're headed to?
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a what just a slight a slight that deep to it, which is relevant and based on what the lady was saying as well before he stopped and not in america. exactly. and as a lot of people, there's a difference is a distinction between some remedies we're able to pay upfront for the whole journey and others who kind of have to do this whole leg by legs thing. and traditionally, when you do this leg by leg thing, you kind of pay to get to libya or you pay to get to hundreds and then you and then you work for that and you pay for it somewhere else. you're actually more likely sometimes to be victim to the seats because of the fact the intensive, the reputation in terms of kind of the reputation of the smuggler, which is the only thing apart from the price that they combine con, when you'll kind of picking up a 2nd, smoke and a half way through your journey. there's less tons of them doing something wrong to you. and the news of that getting all the way back home with social media and with what separate this kind of stuff. it changes the games by the way, even if you're doing this, how leg by legs thing you can still talk to the people, you can still maybe want them if something goes wrong. okay, well, don't go to these people that don't go to this area. and so yes, people can misinformed, but it's a way for people to also inform as
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a potential friends and relatives of that is about by act as further down the line . but definitely that is to some degree, people are not going to share the worst aspects if someone gets to europe and then they end up on the streets of greece. so the streets of athens or the end up in the kylie jungle, maybe they're not going to send home store to put on the instagram story, how they're struggling. maybe they don't going to tell the family back home, the reality of what they're facing and foreigners, europe, especially as they are trying to maybe even move from one country. they haven't, if, if they want to get past it to the increase, given the doubling regulation, where as i said, you have to claim asylum in the 1st country land on. they might be burning off the finger tips so that they don't, they don't get deed and they might be an amazing police. i'm living kind of still underground that. and i do think there's a degree to which people are not going to share the worst aspects of the journey, but there's a degree to which is, well, we have to remember the conditions that some of these people are feeling. it's not necessarily pull factors. they don't necessarily people who are being pulled by the idea of riches and wealth in your
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a lot of these people are losing the because of the push factors, then losing because those wall and moving cars as inequality in the world. meaning that they come from countries that are impoverished by the global economic system, which extracts wealth from the global so, and puts it into the global most. and the global north is where the wealth is where that countries stolen wealth is. and the way that the problems are forwarding and then we're going to keep them following tomorrow or the day after. and so there's a lot of people who are not polled by kind of ideas of wealth and rich and fame in the west, but pushed away by difficult situations at home. well, uh it is a neat migrants and g o is using social media in this way. today, governments are also looking to influence the space earlier this year. it was reveal that the you think of that would pay instances to publish videos to discourage and full migration to the u. k. and it's now set to the pool asylum seekers to run the even before the cases have been assessed. let's take
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a look. so britain has just passed one of the most anti immigrant laws i have ever seen. they are planning to spend asylum seekers. 21, the wilder case is still being her. and just in case you're wondering how far is lowanda from the u. k, they're planning to send people 6000 miles away while their case is being heard. first of all, people pointing out that is cruel and unusual punishment for people who are seeking asylum. it is the right to seek asylum in the u. k. but people are also pointing out how much this whole program is actually going to cost. sorry, is that a narrative will happening on social media right now. and what does that tell us about the migration to be happening in the real world? as we all know, um, well resonates on social media and what people, sharon, respond to and trust is direct interaction between the, the, the content creator and the view as so that feeling of authenticity is what social
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media has. so when you talk about government communications going through social media, they just don't have that sense of trust built up. and that sense of authenticity. so now that going about it in most of the various ways and trying to create the impression of the spontaneous content being created by paying the content produces and creators and influences to relay that message on their behalf. but the numbers are really huge. and when you talking about social media companies making money off of the videos from different actors in this space, and this are more likely to do it either. i think the, the real money coming into social media companies is coming from government. so we know that in 2022, the government spent over 800000 pounds. the u. k. government spent over a $100000.00 hands on social media. targeted advertising. we just had another 30000
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pounds has been spent this year. and it's using these deeply invasive products of digital targeting that are available through these websites and that made available to governments and, and what's interesting as well as who they're talking. so they talk in different groups with different messages. and i think that goes to that sort of information versus misinformation conversation, because the targeting people in vietnam and albania with messages to counteract the messages. because those a countries of origin for people who are being trafficked in the most cases, to the case of that being told that they are coming to work and legitimate jobs and that they'll be able to make money in the u. k by that traffic has. but then they go into situations or forced labor and exploitation, and that's the difference between traffic and simply smuggling, which is just bringing somebody across the border without that level of the economic transportation being involved. so that can be a positive if the government is targeting people in those countries with true
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narrative about what might happen to them and what the trafficking involves. thank you to, i guess very semi and carlos and thank you for watching. did you enjoy the show? talk to us on social media, and if you have a conversation or topics that you'd like to flag to us, this is also your shows. so we are always open to suggestions to use the hash tag or the handle h i stream, and we'll look into it. take care and i'll see you soon. despite his exile form or lead the carlos please, the mall is set to run for president. when the spanish region polls early elections, could his political return reignite the separatists bid for independence? and how would it impact spain's political landscape? the catalonia elections on a jersey to of the,
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investigating the use and abuse of power across the globe. now to sierra this business uptake this voltage by the city bank growth, partner of bunker dash before he is the
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this business uptake. these me, bang, gross not net a bundle, a dash before to use the, [000:00:00;00] the low. this is in use our own alger 0 for the bad people live in doha, coming up in the next 60 minutes. is rad launches, as strikes on a rasa, and blocks water, food, and fuel for more than a 1000000 people crammed into guys's 7 most city patients and medical workers leave

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