To try and summarize something like the "contemporary refugee crisis" is a difficult task—the nature of the crisis is that it is made up of millions of disparate stories and narratives, none exactly alike. But the refugee crisis has also become one of the defining and most pressing issues of our time. One of the reasons Warsan Shire's "Home" has been so popular is that it vividly explores the emotional modes through which refugee stories are experienced and judged. A brief background about the crisis can help the reader understand the poem's message a bit more clearly.
A "refugee" is usually defined as someone who's been forcibly displaced from their home because of war, persecution, or violence. There's no precise date or time that the contemporary crisis started, though since 2008 the number of displaced people worldwide has increased exponentially. Most modern refugees come from Africa, South America, and the Middle East. (Half a century ago or so, Europe experienced its own refugee crises as events such as WWII displaced millions, causing an influx of European migrants to arrive at the US). As of 2017, there were 65.6 million refugees displaced worldwide; roughly 5 million were Palestinian refugees, 21 million were from Africa, 31 million were from Asia/the Middle East, and 8 million were from Latin America and the Caribbean.
These crises are caused by many disparate forces. Environmental disasters and climate change are major causes, with 25 million "climate refugees" currently existing across the globe. For example, the Syrian unrest that led to the refugee crisis was partly catalyzed by a drought that stripped farmers of their livelihood and caused a dearth of jobs and anger in the cities. However, people who flee their homes just because of climate disaster (and not war, violence, religious persecution or the like) are not considered refugees—though often climate disasters create the violence that defines someone as a refugee. Economic hardship is another major cause. Most refugees come from low-income countries with limited resources. The main cause, of course, is an upsurge in violence or a political insurrection. Many people leave their homes because their cities are being bombed, their children are being recruited to war, or they are being persecuted because they are an ethnic minority or belong to some other kind of marginalized group.
Some of the largest groups of refugees come from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Israel/Palestine, and Myanmar. Many refugees who flee those countries as well as other countries in Africa and Asia wind up coming to neighboring countries, and many also try to seek asylum (or safety) in Europe. But many European countries have or are attempting to shut their doors to refugees, leading to an influx of refugee camps on the edges of countries like Greece and Italy. A lot of migrants come to these places by boat, having been brought by smugglers who charge them large fees to make the dangerous passage across the ocean. Some are held in the squalid conditions of refugee camps for months or years at a time; often they may even have money or family already settled in new countries, but up to 2.6 million people are currently being held indefinitely in the camps, according to the UNHCR.
A similar phenomenon, though not of the same scale, is happening in the US as migrants flee violence, gang wars, and poverty in Central and South America to seek a better life in the United States, resulting in conflict at the US-Mexico border. The US's increasingly intensive anti-migration practices have created stagnation at the border, resulting in many people being held in camps and ICE prisons there.
According to modern refugee law, refugees are entitled to movement, non-refoulement (non-forced return to a place where they may be persecuted on account of their race, ethnicity, or other demographic quality), and security.
Half of all refugees, according to the International Crisis Group, are children. Many refugees experience severe mental health issues due to traumas they experienced at home or during their journeys.
