AUTHOR’S NOTE

In 2013, I got a call from a stranger. It was a Hamilton College economics professor, Erol Balkan, who knew I often wrote about immigrant communities. He said, “Did you know Utica has become a city of refugees?”

Utica is an old manufacturing town on the Mohawk River, about 100 miles northwest of Albany, New York. It might seem an unexpected spot for refugees fleeing persecution and war to put down new roots.

Four days later, I was in Professor Balkan’s car.

He drove me through streets once filled with abandoned houses. Piles of sneakers now sat on the porches of homes where Somali Bantu families live. We ate at a tiny restaurant owned by a Burmese brother and sister. We passed a large Bosnian mosque, carved out of an abandoned Methodist church.

In the seventies, when I was a student at Kirkland College—Hamilton’s coordinate school—I was intrigued by Utica, 15 minutes away. It seemed under a spell, like Sleeping Beauty. Its downtown—only 12 blocks long—was filled with empty storefronts and dark brick Victorian mansions that had seen better days. Social service organizations and food pantries had moved into many buildings.

Fascinated by how Utica had changed, I kept returning, and in 2014 I wrote a story about the city’s revitalization for the New York Times.

But instead of moving on, I kept going back.

My first week reporting, I met three remarkable newcomers. Sadia, a bright, rebellious 15-year-old, answered the door. I’d come to see her mother, who had 11 children and worked at Chobani, the yogurt factory. “Will you save me?” Sadia said, laughing, as she pulled me inside. She’d recently been suspended from high school for getting into a fight with another Somali Bantu girl.

And I was drawn to Ali, an Iraqi interpreter with large reserves of feeling. He worked in Utica’s courts and hospitals but seemed shadowed by war. Mersiha—a Bosnian refugee who ran a bakery out of her home—was a kind of visionary. Her head was buzzing with entrepreneurial ideas.

I didn’t expect to follow my subjects for eight years. But their lives were changing so rapidly—and I kept wanting to see what was next.

Utica was not the only struggling city sparked to life by newcomers: Dayton, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, and Detroit, among others, were developing strategies to attract immigrants. They needed an economic boost—but also hoped that by becoming more culturally diverse, they would draw young professionals.

Sadia, Ali, and Mersiha were finding their way in a city that needed them. This was true for thousands of recent immigrants and refugees across the country.

In 2015, the world shifted.

More than 65 million people were on the run. It was the largest wave of displaced people since World War II.

Climate change helped trigger this migration: Extreme weather over the years had eroded people’s ability to sustain themselves on small plots of land. People were fleeing ISIS in Iraq, and conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. The great hope was to get to the United States, Germany, or Italy. All through 2015, tragic accidents were reported: Over 3,770 people died trying to cross the Mediterranean.

An age-old nationalism started rising in Europe, and borders began to close. Donald J. Trump, running for president, held enormous anti-immigration rallies and called for building a wall.

In Utica that same year, more than 10,000 refugees were busy working and raising children. Sadia, a young Somali Bantu girl, was starting to break her clan’s rules.