Season 4: The Walls We Build
Meeting My Surrogate
Guest Host Nadene Ghouri takes us with her as she visits the Ukrainian woman who was the surrogate mother for her child. Nadene explains what the experience has taught her about the bond between mother and child, and what it means for women to control their own bodies.
Q&A with Bartholomäus von Laffert
Host Nadene Ghouri and journalist Bartholomäus von Laffert talk about On Spec's episode “Spy on the Mediterranean”, which tells the story of how activists working to save the lives of migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean have found themselves facing criminal charges for their work.
3. Spy on the Mediterranean
Europe is prosecuting human rights activists that help save lives in the Mediterranean Sea, where thousands of migrants and refugees have drowned as they attempt to evade some of the world’s most powerful naval forces and reach European shores in search of a better life. The charges, allegations of human trafficking that could land activists in prison for decades, have been helped along by a spy, a former private security guard who posed as a sympathetic worker on rescue boats and passed on information to Italian authorities and right-wing politicians. Journalist Bartholomäus von Laffert spent years with many of the people at the center of the case, and introduces us to the activists and spies whose allegations could end up making an already dangerous sea crossing even deadlier.
2. Surrogacy, War, and Survival in Ukraine
Guest Host Nadene Ghouri tells the story of how her search for a surrogate mother for her child brought her to Ukraine, and how she found herself repaying the ultimate kindness by helping one woman flee the war there.
1. Fortress Europe is a House of Cards
The French town of Calais is at the heart of a massive security infrastructure program meant to keep refugees and migrants from crossing the English Channel into the United Kingdom. Over the past 20 years, French and British authorities have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on walls, fences, different types of cameras, more police and security agents to keep people away from the shores. In order to do so, private firms have benefited from multi-year contracts to build, maintain or operate in the city and specifically around the port and railway tunnel areas.
Rights organizations and other NGOs say that the infrastructure only forces migrants and refugees to seek out more perilous routes to the UK. Journalists Margaux Benn and Judith Chetrit report from the ground and shed light on this corner of Fortress Europe.