Questions to Ask a Refugee
Questions for a conversation with someone who has been resettled or is seeking asylum, whether you are a neighbour, a volunteer, a teacher, or a journalist. The emphasis is on the whole person and the present, not only on how they left.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
How would you like me to say your name?
Ask, repeat it back, and get it right. People who have been resettled are routinely renamed by systems and by strangers who did not try, and getting this right in the first thirty seconds signals more about the conversation than anything you can say later.
- 2
Which language would you rather do this in?
Many people can hold a conversation in a second language but cannot say the harder things in it. Offering the choice, including the option of an interpreter or of switching mid-conversation, changes what becomes sayable.
- 3
How long have you been here?
An easy factual opener that also sets your bearings. Someone three weeks in and someone four years in have almost nothing in common in terms of what they need, what they know, and what they are tired of being asked.
- 4
What has surprised you about this place?
This invites them to be the observer rather than the observed, which is a rare position for someone who is usually being assessed. The answers are often about small things: the weather, how neighbours behave, how quiet the evenings are.
- 5
What was your work before?
Ask early. It is one of the fastest ways to stop treating someone as a category, and it frequently reveals a qualification that has not transferred. Follow up with what would be needed to do it here, since the barrier is usually specific and sometimes solvable.
- 6
What does an ordinary day look like for you now?
Answers often reveal an enormous amount of waiting: for documents, for appointments, for permission to work. Understanding how much of the day is spent waiting explains more about the experience than any question about the journey.
- 7
What has been the hardest practical thing to sort out?
Expect an answer about paperwork, transport, a bank account, a phone contract, or a school place, rather than anything dramatic. These are also the problems a nearby person can occasionally solve, which is why this question is worth asking early.
- 8
Who has been helpful, and who has not?
This gives an honest map of the local landscape: which agency answers, which caseworker follows through, which service exists on paper only. It is information that rarely reaches the people running those services.
- 9
What do people here assume about you that is wrong?
This asks someone to correct the record on their own terms rather than reacting to a stereotype you name. Answers commonly involve assumptions about education, wealth before leaving, religion, or whether they wanted to come at all.
- 10
What do you miss that nobody thinks to ask about?
The unasked things are usually specific and ordinary: a bakery, a radio programme, the sound of a particular street, a way of arguing with friends. It gets past the language of loss into what daily life actually felt like.
- 11
Is there food from home you have not been able to find here?
A light question that regularly turns practical, and it opens a subject people enjoy talking about after a run of heavier ones. It also sometimes ends with you learning where the nearest shop is, or being invited to eat something.
- 12
Who is still there, and how do you keep in touch?
Ask gently and be ready for the answer to be complicated: people still waiting, people they cannot reach, people they send money to. Remittance obligations in particular are a large and invisible pressure on household budgets here.
- 13
Is your status something you are comfortable talking about?
Ask permission before asking anything about paperwork. Immigration status can be precarious, contested, or unsafe to discuss, and a person may have been advised not to talk about a live case. A no here should end that line entirely.
- 14
What are you allowed to do here, and what are you not?
Rules on work, study, travel, and benefits vary by status and country, and they are frequently misunderstood by everyone including the people applying them. The answer often explains a situation that looks from the outside like a choice but is a restriction.
- 15
What are you trying to build in the next year?
This moves the conversation from what happened to what is being made. Plans are usually concrete: a course, a licence, a driving test, a family reunion application. It also tells you what a useful offer of help would actually be.
- 16
What would you be doing if the paperwork were not in the way?
The gap between capability and permission is the central frustration of many resettlement stories, and it is where a doctor ends up in a warehouse. Asking about it directly is more respectful than pretending not to have noticed.
- 17
What did you have to leave behind that you still think about?
Objects, animals, houses, graves, and documents come up more often than people expect. Ask it once, accept whatever is offered, and do not follow up with questions about the leaving itself unless they open that door themselves.
- 18
What do you want your children to keep, and what do you not mind them losing?
For parents this is often the live question underneath everything else. Language, faith, food, and manners get sorted into categories, and the ones they are willing to let go tell you what they think the cost of belonging here is.
- 19
Would you go back?
Ask this late, and only if the conversation has earned it. The answer is frequently a conditional rather than a yes or no, and the conditions attached tell you what someone believes about their own future and about the place they left.
- 20
What would actually help you, from someone like me?
Close by making it concrete rather than sentimental. The reply is usually smaller than you expect: a lift, a signature, practising a conversation, an introduction to someone hiring. Only ask this if you intend to follow through on the answer.
Asking well, and knowing what to leave alone
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Before you start
Before you start
- Say why you are asking and what happens to the answers, especially if you are writing, filming, or reporting anything.
- Learn the basics first: roughly where they are from, what has been happening there, and the difference between a refugee, an asylum seeker, and someone on a resettlement scheme. Asking them to teach you the news costs them energy.
- Start with the present. Questions about now are easier to answer and they establish that you are interested in a person rather than an event.
- Expect to be asked things in return. A conversation where only one side is questioned is an interview whether you called it one or not.
- Do not open with the journey. It is the question everyone asks and often the one they least want to answer.
Questions to leave alone unless they raise them
Questions to leave alone unless they raise them
- What happened to specific family members, and how anyone died.
- Details of violence, detention, or anything they experienced in transit.
- How they paid to get here, who arranged it, and how much it cost.
- The specifics of a pending asylum claim, which they may have been advised not to discuss with anyone.
- Whether they are grateful, or how they feel about people here who do not want them.
- Anything that asks them to speak for their entire country, religion, or community.
Interpreters, recording, and children
Interpreters, recording, and children
- Never use a child as an interpreter for their own family. It puts them inside adult decisions and it changes what a parent will say.
- Ask before recording, and ask again at the end, when the person knows what they actually said. Consent given beforehand is consent to an unknown thing.
- Speak to the person, not to the interpreter, and pause often enough for whole thoughts rather than paragraphs.
- Check whether the interpreter is from a community the speaker may not want to be identified within. This is a common and unspoken reason people stay vague.
- Agree in advance what will not be published or repeated, including names, locations, and anything about relatives still there.
Afterwards
Afterwards
- Do what you said you would do. Unfulfilled offers of help are a well-known feature of this experience and they cost more than not offering.
- Ask before sharing photographs or stories, including on social media, since visibility carries real risk for some people.
- If you are writing it up, offer to read the relevant part back to them before it is published.
- Follow up about something small and unrelated to their status. Being asked how a driving test went is a different relationship from being interviewed.
- Point questions about law, claims, or entitlements to a qualified adviser or a legal service rather than answering them yourself.