"They don’t even know what a visa or a passport is": An Interview with Sofia Kalogirou at the Florence Project

We caught up with our former student Sofia Kalogirou, who now works with detained migrant children.

Michelle:

We’re proud to share a conversation with Sofia Kalogirou, whom I had the good fortune of meeting in the fall of 2015. Just eighteen and newly arrived from Phoenix, Arizona, Sofia enrolled in my course on immigration, which was otherwise filled with juniors and seniors. Self-effacing and shy—and perhaps intimidated by the older students—she tended to defer to others in class, but she suddenly came alive in a mock trial on asylum law. Being an advocate, even in a fake setting, brought out her inner ferocity.

That same month, Paris was rocked by terrorist attacks that killed over a hundred. Just a week before, our students had gone to a concert at the Bataclan, where ninety people were gunned down. Summoned by fearful parents, a number of our American students flew home. Sofia stayed, and for the next few years she worked with refugees here.

Three years later, after immersing ourselves in asylum law, Albert and I took Sofia and seven other American University of Paris (AUP) stud…