Bruna Kadletz is a writer, facilitator and activist, and the Founder and Director of Círculos de Hospitalidade – Circles of Hospitality, a non-profit organization based in Florianopolis, Brazil. The organisation currently works with over 14,000 refugees and immigrants. In this Blog post, weaving through the lived experience of one family, Bruna reflects on her work, insightfully exploring the spiritual dimensions of humanitarian work and both the outer reality, and the individual inner states of displacement. Join us on 16th November when Bruna will be visiting London and exploring these themes at St Ethelburga’s Centre.
‘One afternoon, while at the office of the organization I coordinate, I received a call from a prosecutor at the State Public Ministry. The conversation was about an Afghan family facing the prospect of losing custody of their minor relatives. Given the work we do, we were asked to attend a hearing with the judge to act as cultural mediators and humanitarian translators between the parties involved and the State, and then speak with them all separately. The day unfolded as a mosaic of intertwined stories. Our task was to gather these fragments and weave them together in a way that accurately reflected the complex realities and experiences shared with us. Our report to the judge could deeply impact the future of four unaccompanied Afghan youths.
In the nights following the hearing, I stayed awake, accompanied by my thoughts and the pieces of the mosaic I was reconstructing in my mind, trying to give shape and meaning to the story. After the ‘fall of Kabul,’ an Afghan couple with eight children—four of whom were adults and four minors—lived in a province near Kabul. Like thousands of other families threatened by the Taliban’s rise to power, leaving the country was their only means of survival. In September 2021, the Brazilian government issued an inter-ministerial decree facilitating humanitarian visas and safe passage for Afghans affected by the conflict. Thus, the couple’s eight children and their relatives received humanitarian visas and arrived in Brazil at the beginning of 2022. The eldest son was responsible for his four younger siblings, who were then aged between 8 and 14 years. Like many Afghans who came to Brazil through the humanitarian visa, the eldest son and two other sisters took clandestine and perilous routes to North America and Europe, respectively, leaving the four minors in the care of another sister who was married and had five children of her own. The eleven of them lived under one roof in a small apartment, facing financial pressure and complaints from neighbors about the noise created by the nine children and teenagers and their daily conflicts. One Saturday, verbal and physical violence escalated, resulting in a serious fight between the eldest brother of the four minors and his brother-in-law. The boy fractured his arm and ended up in the hospital, which notified the municipal social services and, as a protective measure, took temporary custody of the minors and placed them in a foster home.
For me, reconstructing these narratives happens in quiet moments—during the pauses in my daily life and in sleepless nights spent digesting and integrating the often difficult stories that intertwine with my work. One thing is certain: if I don’t create a conscious inner space to process and elaborate these narratives, they leave gaps in my sleep, asking to be seen and heard, keeping me awake part of the night. Furthermore, this process involves not only revisiting and reconstructing stories, but also a practice of emptying and displacing myself. It’s as if I have to empty part of myself and walk towards the story so that a true meeting can take place. A story makes no sense in a vacuum; it is not limited to the words spoken, nor to my limited worldview.
In my work, to achieve an intercultural and humanitarian approach, context and contextualizing are essential. They call for an understanding of the various individual and intersubjective layers—familial and community, cultural and ethnic—and how they relate to the historical, social, religious, economic, and political dimensions, as well as local, regional, and global contexts, including geopolitical factors and economic interests in specific areas, geography, and ecology. I strive, within my capabilities and acknowledging my limitations, for a complex, systemic, and integrated worldview. To bring about profound meaning, I also seek perspectives from dimensions often overlooked, bridging inner awareness and outer change, and examining how these inner worlds relate with the external reality, which is often considered the sole reality of life.
In the case of the family discussed here, it would be both shallow and reductive to view their story as just another isolated instance of neglect or domestic violence. It would also be easy to fall into the trap of xenophobic and Islamophobic narratives that dehumanize them into ‘the other,’ a common perspective among public sector professionals in Brazil, reducing the situation to a discourse that they are uncivilized, that their culture is inherently problematic, or that all Muslims are oppressors and violent. We must broaden our perspective to recognize and understand other layers, such as the socioeconomic context in which they live in Brazil, language and cultural barriers, emotional burdens, and the challenges faced by individuals who become refugees and their losses. Beyond these aspects, we must ask other fundamental questions: what is the political and economic situation in their country of origin? Why was the family separated, with the children coming to Brazil alone while the parents stayed behind? What is life like in Brazil? Why did some siblings flee, leaving others behind? What was the lived experience of these eleven individuals in that apartment? What impact do all these factors have on the lives of children abruptly torn from their families and society, and on the adults as well? What do they want?
For nearly a decade, this has been my work. I engage with individuals and groups who are victims of armed conflict, war, social collapse, and human rights violations in various contexts—people forced to flee and seek refuge in unknown lands. In Brazil, this work is conducted by the organization Circles of Hospitality (Círculos de Hospitalidade), which includes guidance on rights and public services, assistance with immigration documentation and refugee status, intercultural mediation, psychosocial support, donations of essential items, Portuguese language classes, support for formal employment, entrepreneurship opportunities, among other activities aimed at the integration and protection of forcibly displaced individuals.
Beyond the activities we undertake and the services we provide, there is an ethos that grounds us in a profound purpose of serving humanity and understanding that we are living through unprecedented humanitarian crises. Our ethos calls us to act from a place of love, awareness and knowledge.
The debate around migration is polarized and evokes significant anxiety and conflicts within and across societies. One of the most challenging aspects of this work is creating safe spaces where individuals with differing and conflicting worldviews can come together and discover ways to coexist peacefully. It’s essential to facilitate these encounters without exacerbating existing walls of separation, humanitarian crises and human suffering. Another challenging aspect of this work is to keep oneself grounded and aligned in the midst of injustice, suffering and a sense of helplessness.
This understanding fuels not only my work and that of my team but also prompts us to grapple with critical questions: How can we contribute? What responsibilities do we bear? And what actions are needed to catalyze meaningful social change? However, there is another dimension that I explore in my quiet moments—one that bridges worlds and illuminates the need to understand how our inner and outer worlds relate and communicate. Since I believe that stories—whether individual, collective, or global—do not manifest in a vacuum, I seek to find meaning in the global crises we witness and their repercussions on both individual and collective levels. To do so, I aim to understand the inner roots of these crises, as transformation cannot happen without considering the individual and collective inner states. These reflections have prompted me to ask questions such as:
The number of forcibly displaced people grows each year and currently stands at around 117 million worldwide. If we include environmental and climate displacements, this figure would increase significantly. This is an inconceivable number, often distant from our reality and concern—until one of us is affected by armed conflict or severe and widespread human rights violations, or until we know someone who has been.
During my visit to an indigenous community in the heart of the Amazon, who were on the edge of displacement due to the detrimental effects of a hydroelectric power plant, I learned about the nuances of displacement. In their case, it involved a stage preceding the physical displacement of the community. The Xingu River, which is a source of life and identity for them, has had its course diverted for the construction of the dam. In their struggle against this mega-development project, they have not only been uprooted from their land and river but also from their identity and culture, their traditions and spiritual rituals. The stories I heard while in Altamira, in the Brazilian state of Pará, pointed to an inner process of displacement that preceded the external one.
I believe our modern way of life—characterized by a highly destructive cycle of production, rampant consumerism, and the relentless pursuit of profit, success, and fame at the expense of human relationships, reverence for the Earth, and respect for the more-than-human world—reflects an inner displacement. This inner displacement is marked by a forgetting or erasure of who we are and why we are here. At a time when we most need to connect with the deep place within us that nourishes us and gives meaning to our existence, our attention is scattered and fragmented across countless distractions, captivated by the allure of screens and the incessant desire to possess. This reflection leads me to ask: can the increase in global displacement be a manifestation of both collective and individual inner displacement?
These dark times of crisis are uncharted and evoke fear and uncertainty; however, they also pave the way for a potential for transformation. I believe they serve as an invitation to create inner space for personal transformation and to actively participate in change. The stories of forcibly displaced families, such as the one I have shared in this blog, direct my attention towards an inner state of awareness where I seek to integrate the pieces of a mosaic. They also inspire me to engage in meaningful actions that directly support families aided by Círculos de Hospitalidade and foster social change.
Bruna holds an MSc in Sociology and Global Change from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and has visited and worked with refugee communities in Europe and the Middle East. She is the Founder and Director of Círculos de Hospitalidade – Circles of Hospitality, a Brazilian non-profit organization serving 14,000 people whose work lies in ‘regenerating a culture of peace and hospitality in times of polarization and xenophobia against refugees and vulnerable immigrant. Bruna is part of the teaching team at the Postgraduate Course in Psychology and Migration at PUC-Minas, in the Climate Crisis, Environmental Degradation and Forced Displacement discipline, and the author of the books “My land lives in me and”, and “Hospitality, não hostility”.