Migration stories don’t become real until you meet people in the journey: the carpenter carrying photos of his fantasy coffins, or the Libyan city worker burying the forgotten dead, or the Tatar woman watching her livelihood collapse at a militarised border. Following these surprising human threads is the only way journalism can cut through collective exhaustion and make readers confront a crisis they’ve been trained to ignore.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: From changing the wet clothes of babies who have just arrived across the Aegean Sea to dodging police to interview vulnerable people who have poisoned themselves to avoid deportation - life as an aid-worker-turned-journalist in Eastern Europe.