Background

Media coverage on migrant workers and refugees tend to take a top-down approach focusing on statistics. Migrant workers and refugees are rarely featured in the media, creating a disconnect between Malaysians and the migrant workers and refugees that co-exist in many spaces and sectors.

This impact & engagement activity aimed to train migrant & refugee content creators from different social media platforms on how to create more migrant-centred content for the Malaysian audience. The activity also connected the content creators with migrant and refugee communities in Malaysia in order for them to share their experiences across borders to find similarities and juxtapositions.

Objectives

• Helping migrant & refugee content creators to enhance their content;
• Content creation that is centred around migrants & refugee issues guided by their perspectives in order to ensure an authentic narrative;
• Humanising the content creators’ in the eyes of the Malaysian public, who view them purely from a statistical perspective.

Methodology

Applicants were asked to fill in a Google Form with questions pertaining to their eligibility, their preferred social media platform and to gauge the level of commitment they were able to offer. From the eleven applicants that applied, eight were chosen to helm three social media platforms: YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

The eight participants then underwent a four-week workshop session, conducted every Sunday in May 2023, where they learnt from platform-specific content creators for YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, and exchanged experiences and insights with local migrant mobilisers.

In June 2023, the participants attended two walkabout sessions – visiting a Madura kongsi (settlement) in Selangor to experience their hospitality as well as attending one of PERTIMIG’s (the Indonesian Domestic Workers’ Association) weekly meetings to hear stories from their members who have been fighting for their rights for many years. The objective of these walkabout sessions was to expose the participants to different migrant groups and their way of living, as a way of inspiring content ideas.