Roshan: If you had to move out from your childhood home and you found yourself in a new environment, in a new place, it's not just the physical home that you have left. There are many little aspects of the life that you had that you have stepped away from. You may not necessarily be able to place it, but those small things were what gave you structure, gave you comfort, gave you meaning.

[Music]

Nikunj: No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.

This powerful quote by the Somali-British poet Warsan Shire really captures the unimaginable choices that someone who has been displaced, and who is a refugee, has to make every day.

Welcome to Postcards, your passport to unseen corners of people, policy, and politics.

We have a really, really fascinating and heartfelt episode ahead of you, where we talk about the refugee crisis around the world, the cost of displacement, the mental toll, and what is really happening around the world regarding this issue.

I have a wonderful guest and a very, very dear friend with me today, Roshan Melwani.

Hi Roshan, welcome to Postcards.

Roshan: Hi Nikunj, I'm so glad to be here. Displacement as a topic is very close to my heart, both personally and in terms of my own work, so I'm really excited to dive in.

Nikunj: I'm even more excited because this is something you have worked towards — human rights law, working with refugees and asylum seekers, working around the mental health side of things, which is really less talked about. But hopefully, we can cover that in today's episode.

Right now, you're also working in the space of climate, so quite an interesting experience.

We met at Oxford, right? We were both doing our Master's in Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government between 2021-22.

I've had Anish and Lucila on the podcast so far as our friends.

What are some of your favorite memories from Oxford, or what do you really miss?

Roshan: I think that the thing that surprised me most about Oxford was that I joined the MPP with the idea that the most transformative aspect of the experience would be gaining policy insight — skills like new perspectives, new frameworks for understanding how policy ought to be better designed.

But it turned out that actually what stuck with me most was the power of connections with people and the power of connections within our community for actually making things happen and for transforming things.

I think that's what has really struck me most — the power that empathy and having an understanding community can bring in actually bringing about change. Those reflections are things which have been informing my own journey post-MPP.

Nikunj: That is beautiful. I remember we used to do this series called Discomfortable Discourse, and one of the times, you beautifully facilitated a space where folks were discussing topics around what we're going to talk about today as well.

What has that whole experience been like? I remember Professor Joe Wolf, while he was teaching us philosophy — that was like the basis of what we were discussing.

Roshan: I think when you're in a safe space, being able to enter that discomfort has been such a source of growth.