I am proposing to research the humanization of refugees because I want to find out why the number of refugees and granted asylums vary in order to help my reader understand how the international community can better receive displaced people in crisis. Humanizing refugees is just one possible approach for facilitating integration, but the definitions and implementation of humanization vary. Thus, humanizing refugees has had a variety of successes and failures. In addition, humanization can come from different parties in the conflict.
One school of thought defines the human in terms of the home; Dan Bulley analyzed a case study of the Kosovan refugee crisis where Great Britain humanized refugees by tying their identity to their home “as if [their] lives can only be properly saved if they can return to their specific way of life which is only possible within the territorial borders of Kosovo.” (1) Part of human identity is ethnicity and origin, so by tying refugees to their home country, people could better humanize them under an identity. Great Britain humanized the Kosovan people by sympathizing with their cause and making speeches to the international community about the importance of helping refugees, emphasizing the inhumane conditions they face, and thus humanizing them. However, Great Britain tied their humanization of the Kosovan refugees to their identity of being from the territory labelled Kosovo to avoid having to accept refugees and instead have border countries take the refugees. Even though Great Britain leaders “were so deeply shaken by the refugee crisis and had demanded international action as a moral principle,” they only accepted 330 refugees, while other countries had taken 1,000 (Turkey) – 10,000 (Germany). (2) Why was it so difficult for Great Britain to accept refugees, even though they were humanizing and sympathizing with their cause? Many countries acknowledge the tragedy of refugee deaths, but it’s not enough to take any action. Cleary this form of humanization is not effective, but there was recognition and relief provided based on Britain’s call for the recognition of Kosovan humanity.
While humanization can come from the governments of countries and a legal perspective, refugees and migrants are receiving recognition and humanizing themselves through bodily protests. These protests, including hunger strikes and lip-sewing, have become a popular way for migrants and refugees to express the abuse they face, for they feel they don’t have any voice and are neglected by the international community, who are unwilling to house them. Bargu describes the bodily protests as “a symbolic mark of de-subjectivation. Speech [logos], of course, since Aristotle, is considered to be the characteristic that distinguishes a human being from other living beings, which can only express pain and pleasure by sound [phōnē]” (4). Lip-sewing highlights innately human characteristics enables refugees to receive recognition as human beings, earning them sympathy from the community. For example, four hundred asylum seekers in an Australian detention center went on hunger strike, sewed their lips shut, and even a couple of them swallowed razors and drank detergent because of the low prospects for asylum granting. (5) By taking such extreme measures and abusing their bodies, refugees and migrants emphasize their humanity and bring attention to their cause. Many refugees and asylum seekers have participated in these bodily protests while in detention facilities to protest and challenge the limits on number of cases accepted as well as combat poor conditions in the detention facility. This form of humanization, from refugees and migrants themselves, helps refugee and asylum issues to be recognized and challenges the limits on the welcoming of displaced peoples. Why are refugees forced to such extreme measures for recognition? The protests show just how difficult it is for receiving countries to view refugees with any humanity or accept them.
Refugees and asylum seekers who have been displaced are dying or being detained, and many countries are suffering because they cannot handle the influx of refugees. Learning how to share the responsibility of refugees and be more hospitable is important in alleviating the pressure from the crisis. Surveys conducted by Pew Research indicates that in 2015, 51% of people in the United States believed the number of refugees accepted should increase; however, only 44% of people believe the United States should be doing more for refugees. (6) During 2015, the crisis had just begun, so the tragedies being reported were new to people, and there was an inherent humanization of the conflict. As refugee displacement and conflict continues, aid from the United States decreases. As a result, the United States invested $ 3,059,000 in 2015 towards migration and refugee assistance, but it has slowly been decreasing $3,066,000 in 2016 and$ 2,798,600 in 2017 (7). The refugee processing center released information on total refugees admitted, and it has slowly been decreasing from about 69,987 and 69,933 admitted in 2013 and 2014, increasing to 84,994 in 2015 to a drastic decrease to 51,392 in 2017 (8). While aid decreases, the cap on refugees and asylum cases is also decreasing, withdrawing the United States from the conflict, even though migrant and refugee displacement continues. Clearly there is a lack of sympathy towards refugees if the amount of aid is decreasing. The sharp decline in refugees accepted reveals a disconnect, for the conflict is ongoing. I hope to research humanization to understand the decrease in acceptance and integration of refugees, so my two research questions are:
What explains the integration and lack of integration of refugees into other countries? (General)
Why does the United States law refer to foreigners as aliens? (Specific)
- Dan Bulley. “Home is Where the Human Is? Ethics, Intervention and Hospitality in Kosovo,” Millennium 39, no. 1 (July 2010), 50.
- Ibid, 55.
- Ibid, 50.
- Banu Bargu. “The Silent Exception: Hunger Striking and Lip-Sewing,” Law, Culture and the Humanities (May 2017), 12-14.
- Ibid, 2-3.
- “Mixed Views of Initial U.S. Response to Europe’s Migrant Crisis: Influx of Migrants Registers Widely with Public,” Pew Research Center for The People & The Press (September 2015), 1.
- “Congressional Budget Justification: Fiscal Year 2017.” United States Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Relations Program.
- “Refugee Admissions Report.” Refugee Processing Center (August 2017).
October 4, 2017 at 2:44 pm
Gwen — you are off to a very good start overall, both in terms of empirical background research and some theoretical frames that could inform your research. On the theoretical level, be sure to look beyond the idea of humanization (which I know is your primary interest) to other lenses or theories that might explain questions of asylum and refugee status (institutional explanations, for example, or economic theories). As you move forward, keep thinking about the different variants of explanatory research questions that you might investigate as well. What you propose here is a good start, but note that the first question asks about something a bit different than your research problem statement (integration vs. granting of asylum status) and, also, begs the question of what exactly you mean or would measure with the idea of “integration.” The second question is also conceptually different than your problem statement. That is not a problem for your research, per se, but you do want to keep thinking more specifically about what you want to explain, concretely, in order to then be able to say something bigger about the conceptual and theoretical issues that interest you.