Hey worldly listeners, as you hear this I'm out traveling with family because it's the holidays and I like you would like to enjoy that.

But because we didn't want to deprive you of your worldly experience, we went through the archives and picked a classic worldly episode, one in which I go to Hungary and talk to a migrant about what his experience in one of the most anti-migration countries in the West is like.

We think that you'll really enjoy this one because Eberar's story, the refugee that I meet, is a really

important one to tell and retail again.

So have a happy holidays and a merry new year.

Welcome to Worldly from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Zach Beacham. I'm here with

Jen Williams as always and a frequent guest of ours Alex Ward, a writer on our foreign team. We've heard a lot recently

about immigrants and asylum seekers in the United States, but this is a global

problem and the ongoing refugee and migration crisis is transforming politics across Europe.

A few governments, most prominently a Hungarian one, have been feuding with Germany over its openness

to refugees.

And in the last few days, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made a radical policy shift in the anti-migration direction.

I actually just spent a week in Hungary reporting on this story and other ones.

So today on the show we're going to talk all about immigration and asylum to Europe.

But first, Jen, let's start on the basics of Europe and immigration.

What has been happening and why is this such a big deal?

Yeah, so for the past several years,

there was this massive flood of people coming into Europe

from places like Syria and Afghanistan in particular as well as all across

Africa and kind of beyond in part driven by you know the Syrian Civil War the war

in Afghanistan climate change things like that.

So you had this massive kind of flood of refugees that just suddenly kind of spiked trying

...