“Catastrophes” by Cristiana Giordano explores the idea of the perceived temporality of the “migrant crisis”. Giordano explains how the perpetuation that the crisis (and the migrant experience tied to this crisis) is temporary, poses many consequences that have a particularly strong impact on migrants. Giordano supports this claim by saying that “understanding the present moment as a catastrophe implies looking at migration as an extraordinary event and thereby ignoring its ordinariness.” These extraordinary events are emphasized with such an urgency that all other experiences surrounding it are ignored.

Consistent with this idea of over emphasizing an extraordinary event, there was one sentence in this piece that really stood out to me: “trauma theories.. question the idea that the most important event in someone’s life is the moment of border crossing”. From the way I have seen migrants portrayed, I have noticed that they are often reduced to their experience of crossing a border. In turn they are minimized to symbols of victimhood, tragedy, misfortunate and all other negative aspects of migration. This can be very dehumanizing and because of this, it is often forgotten that these individuals are multidimensional human beings who have complex identities aside from being migrants, refugees, displaced people etc. I believe that recognizing migrants as people beyond the extraordinary event they undergo is an absolutely necessary foundation for tackling many problems faced in migrant communities .