Field trip: Debrecen refugee camp

Technically I'm not a refugee because my family left Vietnam voluntarily and for economic reasons, though I did live in a refugee camp in the Philippines for a few months. But I remember nothing, so the trip with my Refugee Law class to a camp in Debrecen was really my first. It would be foolish (but probably unavoidable) to predict what such a camp would be like. We drove three hours east by bus and entered what looked like an elementary school: dry, green and yellow grass; subdued, white and beige buildings with flat roofs; and in the middle, a wooden jungle gym and a blacktop for football and basketball. One classmate said it looked like a summer camp. Another took offense at the gray walls and barbed wire along the perimeter.

At first we expected to be observers, like apprentices come to examine this specimen called the refugee. I think I expected them to be used to visitors, but they're there for such a short time we might have been the first such group to drop in. So they stared at us as much as we did them. It occurred to me as they tried to answer in Hungarian that they might have thought we were locals and they were the outsiders (while we had thought something similar of them). But Central European University is made up of so many international students (and few Hungarians) that this Refugee Law class is often introspective and just about everyone is an outsider.

We had a panel discussion with the camp director and then the decider, an asylum official, both in a bright yellow room with childrens' drawings and posters from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on the walls, origami cranes hanging from the ceiling, and crayon marks on the floor tiles. At any given time there are some 700 asylum seekers hosted at the camp, where they stay for two months on average and receive around $30 petty cash a month. Debrecen generally serves as a stopping point for asylum seekers from Eastern and Southeastern Europe on their way west.

"They don't like us," the director said of Debrecen's locals and authorities. It's probably safe to say that such a negative reception conflicts with the view of most people in that room, and yet I get the impression it's a common sentiment (racism? xenophobia? nationalism?) in any region with a sizable foreign population. I don't think I could ever empathize with such a sentiment, but how, I wondered, could there be such a wall between our openness to foreigners and their rejection of them, both of which seem 'normal'? It's true, we're a self-selected group, students who choose to study refugee law. Still I don't understand it.

Part of it, the director suggested, was the perception of criminal activity among arrivals (though I stress perception because I reject the claim that it is any more prevalent among this group than another). Some shoplift, he said, admitting that just that morning police took a camp resident into custody on human trafficking charges.

I don't know which bothered me more - the crimes, or a potential cause of the crimes, namely the inactivity among the refugees. Most don't stick around long enough to find employment as they wait for their cases to be decided, and of the children, only one-sixth of them can be accommodated at the local schools. As someone asked the director how people spend their time, a handful of children banged on the door, divided between remaining obediently outside and spilling into the room like paparazzi anytime someone went in or out.

"This is what the kids do," the director joked. "I don't want to say what they do when they're more active! Same for adults."

The children turned out to be the unexpected highlight of the trip. It began slowly, with two or three boys peering curiously in through a six-inch gap in the window. As we walked by the jungle gym and the football matches, one or two would greet us with the only Hungarian they knew, "Szia!" But once the camera came out, all hell broke loose. I took a couple shots and showed them to the children, who quickly caught on and clamored around the camera. We had no common language, so they pointed and posed, competing for the attention of the lens. (Note: At the camp's request, I am not posting any photos of them.) It was a shallow friendship but I'm not complaining, because the icebreaker encouraged the children to follow us around for the day, and when we left, they waved goodbye and cartwheeled and ran along the side of the bus.

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Listening to: More Dirty Dancing [soundtrack]