Little Bosnia: Arrival Times
A big part of our work on Homeland is connecting with the community and having conversations about immigration. We’ve found these conversations to be very different locally than what we tend to hear nationally and in the mainstream media. While it’s sometimes pointed out to us that Missouri isn’t a “border state” (thanks, we realize that), we’ve learned after a year on this project that our community is extremely interested in both immigration policy and in the immigrants and refugees here in our region.
One of the reasons we’ve put together this series on “Little Bosnia” is because our community has asked for more information about this large group of immigrants. We’ve also heard from people in the South City area that we should do more stories on their Bosnian neighbors.
We’ve now done Little Bosnia segments about economic impact, cultural differences, SabaH (the Bosnian newspaper based here in St. Louis) and most recently, two segments about the Bosnian war that brought this community to the U.S.
The above video is a compilation of first impressions of the U.S. and St. Louis, from a few members of our Bosnian community. Nearly every family has stories like this; they either get passed down over the years or they get lost. In addition to providing information about the Bosnian community in St. Louis, this series could also be looked at as an opportunity to document the experiences of one of our most recent populations of immigrants.
Watch the above video—how do you think you would react to arriving in a new country for the first time? What are the “coming to America” stories in your family? Are they much different from the ones shared here?
Associate Community Producer: Sonya Stevenson.
Category: Refugees
