Hundreds of people crammed on sinking rubber boats in the Mediterranean sea. Bodies washed up on European shores. Lines of decomposing skeletons across the Sahara desert. Young west- African men sold on slave markets in Libya and Nigerian women raped and forced into the sex trade.

We have all seen these images and heard these stories which represent a humanitarian crisis of seemingly infinite horror. But who are the survivors of these traumas and what happens to them once they end up in the hands of the Italians authorities?

 Daisy Squires who worked for three years on the BAFTA-award winning documentary series “Exodus- a Journey to Europe” and freelance journalists Sophia Seymour (The Guardian, The Idler, Vice) and Lou Mariller (The Libération, Le Monde, The Intercept) discuss the true reality of life on the ground for economic migrants and present clips from their forthcoming documentary « Hotel Garibaldi – Life in the waiting room». The film intimately follows the lives of four West African migrants as they use music, friendship and community activism to fight back against discrimination, exploitation and an increasingly hostile and xenophobic social and political landscape where all migrants have become merchandise, exchanged in a business line that has become more profitable for the Italian mafia than drug trafficking.