RENEWED BARBARISM: The Global Roots of Current Refugee Crisis (original) (raw)
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One of the justifications offered by European imperial powers for the violent conquest, subjection, and, often, slaughter of indigenous peoples in past centuries was those peoples’ violation of a duty of hospitality. Today, many of these same powers—including European Union member states and former settler colonies such as the United States and Australia—take increasingly extreme measures to avoid granting hospitality to refugees and asylum seekers. Put plainly, whereas the powerful once demanded hospitality from the vulnerable, they now deny it to them. This essay examines this hypocritical inhospitality of former centers of empire and former settler colonies and concludes that, given that certain states accrued vast wealth and territory from the European colonial project, which they justified in part by appeals to a duty of hospitality, these states are bound now to extend hospitality to vulnerable outsiders not simply as a matter of charity, but as justice and restitution for grave historical wrongs.
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This chapter describes the background of the refugee crisis and the responses by the international community in terms of refugee management. It looks at the national attempts to manage refugee flows and the inclusion of refugees into the European nation-states. It outlines the general discursive presentation of the refugee issue and uses this as a departure point to initially describe the responses from civil society actors to deal with the crisis and provide alternative models for engaging with the refugee issue. Our argument is that although these responses are diverse and have different aims, they also share some common features as they may be regarded as emerging solidarities based on diverse alliances. We reflect on the role and potential of such alliances and solidarities for developing alternatives to the current management of the refugee crisis on local, national, and transnational levels. Keywords Border spectacle • Civil society • Contentious politics Refugee crisis • Crisis of solidarity 'We are facing the biggest refugee and displacement crisis of our time. Above all, this is not just a crisis of numbers; it is also a crisis of solidarity. […] We must respond to a monumental crisis with monumental solidarity' (UN 2016). These words were spoken by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in April 2016 at a conference in Washington, DC addressing CHAPTER 1 From Refugee Crisis to a Crisis of Solidarity?
A conversation about Refugees Crisis, Voices & Global Control
While my ethnographic cycling project around Denmark, I had a talk with a friend C. who is an Iranian political refugee, a documentary maker and lives and works in Denmark since 3 years after going through the UN process. I was curious to get an insider point of view about the way media are portraying refugees as rapists since the Refugees crisis has become a theme for political elections so I asked him if he would agree with reporting our talk and having his views presented on my blog. He consented. I was surprised about how he feels with the way media and polls portray refugees as rapists as he seemed really okay with it because the rape problem is true following him. Men need to be educated. Women or girls are offering sex services any time as he reported it happened to him while going to camps from kids in exchange of services or protection. The strange thing is that he didn't seem to feel resentment about being called a rapist but he explains that he understands that by the fact (Danish) people are scared about refugees. I was blasted. How would he be so relax with repressive politics of representation targeting his community? To be honest, while I was listening to him, it was a bit too much of an empathy to my eyes to consider that the politics has its rights in portraying Refugees as rapists and in considering that it is okay. Encouraging violence for commercial purposes (weapons traffic and oil access) has nothing to see with humanitarism and shouldn't lead to any kind of understanding! I am saluting the tolerance and empathetic abilities of my friend but I wondered what were the real global policies at stake with the issue of rape in the camps and the blatent revisionism of dictatures' violence from western societies. My friend knew well about that after he was jailed for his political ideas in his country. The violence of power was a common ground on which we agreed As I have been myself a victim of sexual and gender violence while travelling in UK, Germany and Sweden.