When there is nowhere to go, nowhere is home.

Ai Weiwei's Documentary "Human Flow" and the Reluctance of Refugees

I recently watched Ai Weiwei's documentary "Human Flow" for the first time and found myself marveling at the simplicity and relevance of the film.

It is not a complicated movie. Much of the runtime is spent listening to the refugees themselves talking about their experience or showing their experience. In fact, there is very little commentary from the filmmaker himself although the occasional talking heads from UNHCR or other organizations provide a minimum of context.

Despite providing little in the way of traditional “information” or “explanation,” it is entirely worth watching for the way that it communicates an important moral argument about our collective responsibility to provide safety to refugees.

At one point in the film, a woman, who is sitting with a child and her aging mother, says:

"No one leaves their country lightly. You only put yourself through the hardship of fleeing in order to find safety."

Refugees—and immigrants more generally—are often stereotyped in negative ways as people seeking to “game the system,” exploit “loopholes,” or otherwise take advantage of lawful forms of migration. These kinds of bad faith assessments of refugees are often used to justify draconian policies, such as the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy that has forced over 70,000 asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for their asylum hearing. Many give up altogether rather than face precarity and uncertainty.

However, in my personal experience working with refugees and in the research on refugees in both North America and Europe, one thing seems clear: refugees are most often characterized not by a desire to move, but by a great reluctance to move. There are a variety of factors that disincentivize fleeing one’s home and there are many opportunity costs to leaving home.

Not to mention the dangers of seeking safety itself. In one of the most painful scenes in the movie, a man weeps as he recounts the deaths of his entire family who died at sea trying to reach safety in Europe. He flicks through a stack of identity documents in his hands as he names people he has lost, and it seems to pain him when he sees his own identity document—as if he believes he ought to have died; as if an enormous part of him did.

Instead of framing questions about refugees in terms of what it will cost, Weiwei's documentary asks us to start by trying to understand the enormous price that refugees have already paid.

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