Pardee School Student Leads Launch of Migration Tales
Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies sophomore Yiran Yu (’23) co-founded and debuted the website Migration Tales, where students publish interviews with immigrants about where they come from and where they hope to go in their American journey.
Yu co-founded the website with fellow Terrier Lara Werneck (CAS ’23). A number of other Pardee School students also work on Migration Tale, including Mary Estaba (Pardee ’22), Secretary; Lauren Mai (Pardee ’22), Global Affairs Consultant; and Safiya Umrani (Pardee ’23), Global Affairs Consultant.
Migration Tales’ mission is to create a story-sharing platform for migration narratives. Leveraging the power of storytelling, they hope to debunk migration myths and celebrate diversity, inclusivity, and empathy. The goal of the website is to post two interviews per week, as well as to expand into a BU club. The students hope that would help form branches on other campuses.
Yu told BU Today that her interest in migrants’ stories was sparked by writing for the Daily Free Press, where “I was taught the power of storytelling,” she says, and by an anthropology class where she was assigned to interview her mother about moving to the United States.
The site finds interviewees by leveraging students’ family connections and local nonprofits working with immigrants. “We have designed two sets of questions: one for someone who has personal experience of migration, and one for a child or a family member of migrants,” Yu said. “Several of our interviewees said that they found our questions a valuable opportunity to contemplate and celebrate their journeys, which are often unmentioned in their daily lives.”
The launch of the new website was the subject of articles in the Daily Free Press and BU Today.
Visit Migration Tales’ website for information on how to become involved as well as the latest stories and research,