Refugees and the Image of Suffering. Why Does Nobody Listen? (original) (raw)
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Symptomatic of the crisis of the current global political order are the millions of displaced that have fled their homes but are not allowed to enter the country in which they seek refuge. Instead, they are placed in camps. To understand the site of the camp and the bare life it produces, testimonies of refugees are indispensable. This essay aims to examine and listen to these testimonies by, first, introducing the notion of testimony and some of the characteristics of the testimony of refugees; second, examining what it means to listen to testimony and which role is played therein by the narrative, literary structure of testimony; and, third, by interpreting the form of life to which the testimonies of the camp attest, which several witnesses describe as a life in “limbo.” This essay concludes with some brief remarks on the relation between experience, truth, and language in testimony.
The image of the refugees in the host country
Sofia University 'St. Kliment Ohridski' & Estidia , 2017
The role of media and the image of migrants The media play an important role on creating the image of the refugees in the host country. The local public creates an image, an opinion or a prejudice about the foreigners in their country. The creation of this image starts as soon as the media report on various conflicts and then continues with the arrival of the refugees in a host country. Besides of their suffering, the media coverage focuses also on possible adverse action or on ordinary crimes committed by refugees in asylum countries and this often increases the sensitivity of intolerance of the local public toward refugees. The transmission of negative attitudes for the refuges by various political organizations of the host country enhances the intolerance of people in the host country toward the refugees. However, also the refugee has a pre-cooked image about the host country where he is being housed. He arrives in the host country with his memories, his culture, his lifestyle and with the information obtained earlier during his lifetime about the country where he now is a refugee, or other European countries. The image of a country or a population begins with the readings provided by the school system, continuing with the information provided by the media regarding a certain country. Apart from this, there is also the impact of government officials statements broadcasted by the media and those statements make people take an attitude or create an image which could be either friendly or hostile (unfriendly) toward that country. In today’s circumstances of the global insecurity, we constantly pose the question “why do they hate us” and how could we possibly be more attractive to avoid the need of using the ‘carrot and stick’ in order to direct the others in the desired direction? The paper will address also the channels of communication and contents of message that encourage intolerance towards other cultures, spread more through online forums, where communication actors are often Muslim clerics. The findings show that the media has a double role between these two parties: they may cause the increase of intolerance of the refugees toward the values of the host country, or they may cause the increase of intolerance of the host country public toward the refugees. In recent years there has been a vast amount of these kinds of audio-visual massages that spur intolerance against other cultures. At the time when millions of people are communicating simultaneously through internet as a mediating channel without the need of physical presence, in a world when everybody sees all and knows everything and where numerous linguistic, political, cultural, religious, and other differences, make communication and tolerance even more complex.