Artist Bruno Catalano beautifully captures the plight of migrants whether they are North-North, North-South, or South-South migrants (Leal & Harder, 2021). Each sculpture depicts a person traveling. The suitcase they carry represents their hopes and dreams for the future as they venture to a new place. However, each sculpture appears as the core of the person has vanished representing how after arriving in the place of their hopes and dreams they never feel fully complete. As seen in the Migration Inside and Outside Africa video (Aljazeera, 2015) many Somalis and people from Mozambique arrive in South Africa with hopes and dreams for a better life, but are frequently met with disputes from South Africans and the difficulty of acquiring jobs, all while being far away from a familiar place. While many people travel as a way of learning cultures and exploring the world, migration comes with deeper levels of trauma both from sending and receiving countries. In the sending country, people may be facing conflict, government corruption, drought, famine or many other things that can cause an unstable living environment. However, in the receiving country, they are met with discrimination, forced assimilation, and people that do not understand their background or culture. The sculptures that Catalano erects represent the hopes and dreams for something better while also losing part of oneself in the migration journey.

The article I am sharing is written in French, but within the article there is a video with English subtitles sharing a bit of Catalano’s story. He was born in Morocco and spent time growing up in Italy and France, but never truly felt he belonged anywhere.

Leal, D.F., Harder, N.L. (2021) ‘Global dynamics of international migration systems across South-South, North-North, and North-South flows, 1990-2015’ In Applied Network Science Vol.6 No.8

Aljazeera (13 Jun 2015) Migration inside and outside of Africa [Film]. Aljazeera