Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T01:13:03.943Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Refugee Advocacy, Traumatic Representations and Political Disenchantment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Abstract

Most studies of how refugees are represented focus on negative media representations. Less attention has been paid to sympathetic counter-representations. This article explores the representations preferred by refugee advocacy organizations and how they tend to exclude the mass of ordinary refugees and the difficult arguments required to defend refugee rights. The article outlines the rise of the health paradigm for understanding the conditions of refugees. The contemporary representation of refugees as traumatized victims is inspired by compassion. However, the trauma framework implies impaired capacity and the need for individuals to surrender their welfare to expert authorities. The article argues that casting refugees in the sick role risks compromising their rights. The article is informed by the writing of the sociologist Talcott Parsons on the sick role and the philosopher Hannah Arendt on refugees.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Nicci Gerrard, ‘Faces of Exile’, Observer, 3 July 2005.Google Scholar

5 E.g. ‘Into the Asylum Exhibition’, Howard Davies Refugee Arrivals Project Summer 2003, formerly available at http://www.refugee-arrivals.org.uk/. See also http://www.guardian.co.uk/.Google Scholar

6 ICAR, Media Image, Community Impact: Assessing the Impact of Media and Political Images of Refugees and Asylum Seekers on Community Relations in London, London, ICAR, 2004.Google Scholar

8 Article 19, What's the Story?, London, Article 19, 2003, available at http://www.article19.org/pdfs/publications/refugees-what-s-the-story-.pdf. ICAR, Reporting Asylum: The UK Press and the Effectiveness of PCC Guidelines, London, City University, 2007; Ronald Kaye, ‘Blaming the Victim: An Analysis of Press Representation of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the United Kingdom in the 1990s’, in Russell King (ed.), Media and Migration, London, Routledge, 2001, pp. 53–70; Statham, Paul, ‘Understanding Anti-Asylum Rhetoric: Restrictive Politics or Racist Publics? Political Quarterly, 74: 1 (2003), pp. 163–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 ICAR, Reporting Asylum.Google Scholar

11 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, San Diego, Harcourt, 1985.Google Scholar

12 Talcott Parsons, Social Structure and Personality, New York, Free Press, 1965. Talcott Parsons, Action Theory and the Human Condition, New York, Free Press, 1978.Google Scholar

13 Joshua Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggle for Human Rights, London, Wildwood House, 1981.Google Scholar

14 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974.Google Scholar

15 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971.Google Scholar

16 Joel Carlson, No Neutral Ground, New York, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973.Google Scholar

17 Kenan Malik, The Meaning of Race, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996.Google Scholar

18 Frank Furedi, Politics of Fear, London, Continuum, 2005; Philip Hammond, Media, War, and Postmodernity, London, Routledge, 2007.Google Scholar

19 Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, London, Simon & Schuster, 2001; Frank Furedi, Culture of Fear, London, Continuum, 2002; Theda Skocpol, Diminishing Democracy – From Membership to Management in American Civic Life, Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar

20 Michael Moran, The British Regulatory State, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007; Catherine Needham, The Reform of Public Services under New Labour, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2007; Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism, New Haven, CT, and London, Yale University Press, 2006.Google Scholar

21 Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture, London, Routledge, 2004; James Nolan, The Therapeutic State, New York and London, New York University, 1998.Google Scholar

22 James Heartfield, Death of the Subject Explained, Leicester, Perpetuity Press, 2002.Google Scholar

23 Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995; Ian Shaw and Louise Woodward, ‘The Medicalisation of Unhappiness? The Management of Mental Distress in Primary Care’, in Ian Shaw and K. Kaupinnen (ed.), Constructions of Health and Illness: European Perspectives, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003, pp. 125–38.Google Scholar

24 Alastair Campbell, Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries, London, Hutchinson, 2007.Google Scholar

25 Michael Collins, The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class, London, Granta, 2004.Google Scholar

26 Richard Koch and Chris Smith, Suicide of the West, London, Continuum, 2006.Google Scholar

27 ICAR, Reporting Asylum, p. 41.Google Scholar

28 Derek McGhee, Intolerant Britain? Hate, Citizenship and Difference, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 2005.Google Scholar

29 Hammond, Media, War and Postmodernity; Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War, Cambridge, Polity, 2007.Google Scholar

30 Kate Henry, ‘Knife Scare Victim's Life Ruined’, Shields Gazette, 29 August 2007.Google Scholar

31 Clare Weir, ‘Murder Victim's Widow Tells of her Terrible Loss’, Belfast Telegraph, 25 August 2007; BBC, ‘Freed Britons “Traumatised” ’, 8 August 2003, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3136249.stm.Google Scholar

32 Caroline Innes, ‘Tributes Flood in for Tragic Rhys’, Liverpool Daily Post, 23 August 2007; Matthew Moore, ‘Rhys Shot on Anniversary of Liverpool Killing’, Daily Telegraph, 24 August 2007.Google Scholar

33 Michael Wooldridge and Stefan Page, ‘ “Studentification” and the “Student Ghetto” ’, Leeds Student, 3 September 2007.Google Scholar

34 Myles Palmer, ‘Why Harry Kewell Will Blossom at Arsenal’, Arsenal News Review, 25 June 2003, available at http://www.anr.uk.com/articles/m-2003-06-25-11-02-25.html.Google Scholar

35 Fekete, Liz, ‘The Deportation Machine: Europe, Asylum and Human Rights’, Race and Class, 47: 1 (2005), p. 66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Article 19, What's the Story?, p. 9.Google Scholar

37 Pupavac, Vanessa, ‘Pathologizing Populations and Colonizing Minds: International Psychosocial Programs in Kosovo’, Alternatives, 27 (2002), pp. 489511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Henrik Rønsbo, unpublished paper, European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) 11th General Conference, Bonn, 22 September 2005.Google Scholar

39 Ibid.Google Scholar

40 Macinko, James and Starfield, Barbara, ‘Annotated Bibliography on Equity in Health, 1980–2001’, International Journal for Equity in Health, 1 (2002), pp. 120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

41 Stefanie Borkum, A Humane Asylum Policy, London, Manifesto Club, 2007.Google Scholar

42 Parsons, Social Structure; Parsons, Action Theory.Google Scholar

43 Parsons, Action Theory, pp. 77–8.Google Scholar

44 Furedi, Therapy Culture, p. 98.Google Scholar

45 Ibid.Google Scholar

46 Robert Jackson addresses the problem in international relations and Joanna Macrae addresses the problem more specifically in humanitarian politics. Robert Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990; Joanna Macrae, Aiding Recovery? The Crisis of Aid in Chronic Political Emergencies, London, Zed Books, 2001.Google Scholar

47 For example, Furedi, Therapy Culture; Nolan, Therapeutic State.Google Scholar

48 Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 292–300.Google Scholar

49 Ibid.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., p. 294.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., p. 287.Google Scholar

52 ICAR, Reporting Asylum, p. 41, p. 141.Google Scholar

53 Sonya Dyer, Boxed In, London, Manifesto Club, 2007.Google Scholar

54 Ibid., p. 295.Google Scholar

55 Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World, New Haven, CT, and London, Yale University Press, 1982, p. 39.Google Scholar

56 ICAR, Reporting Asylum, p. 41.Google Scholar

57 Article 19, What's the Story?, p. 34.Google Scholar

58 ‘A Sensible Proposal to Break this Vicious Circle’, Independent, leading article, 25 April 2007. See also special pleading for a visa extension in James Randerton, ‘I Am Not an Asylum Seeker’, Guardian, 23 October 2007.Google Scholar

59 ICAR, Reporting Asylum.Google Scholar

60 Student Action for Refugees (STAR).Google Scholar

61 ICAR, Reporting Asylum, p. 13, p. 141.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., p. 35Google Scholar

63 Martin Bell, ‘The Journalism of Attachment’, in Matthew Kieran (ed.), Media Ethics, London, Routledge, 1998, pp. 15–22.Google Scholar

64 Hammond, Media, War, and Postmodernity; Mayes, Tessa, ‘Submerging in “Therapy News” ’, British Journalism Review, 11: 4 (2000), pp. 30–6;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Greg McLaughlin, The War Correspondent, London, Pluto, 2002; Howard Tumber and Marina Prentoulis, ‘Journalists Under Fire: Subcultures, Objectivity and Emotional Literacy’, in Daya Thussu and Des Freedman (eds), War and the Media: Reporting Conflict 24/7, London, Sage, 2003, pp. 215–30.

65 Article 19, What's the Story?, p. 9 and 35.Google Scholar

66 ICAR, ‘Women Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK’, women's briefing, available at http://www.icar.org.uk/briefings_womens.Google Scholar

67 ICAR, Reporting Asylum, p. 34.Google Scholar

68 Article 19, What's the Story?, p. 35.Google Scholar

69 See, e.g. Burman, Erica, ‘Innocents Abroad: Projecting Western Fantasies of Childhood onto the Iconography of Emergencies’, Disasters, 18: 3 (1994), pp. 238–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Louise France ‘It is as if I Am Dead Already’, Observer, 22 July 2007.Google Scholar

71 Article 19, What's the Story?, p. 9Google Scholar

72 ICAR, Reporting Asylum, p. 31 and 61.Google Scholar

73 Article 19, What's the Story?, p. 10.Google Scholar

74 Frances Nicholson and Patrick Twomey, Refugee Rights and Realities: Evolving International Concepts and Regimes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999. For a personal example, my parents-in-law were fortunate in arriving in Britain on the evening before the government introduced visa requirements for Yugoslav citizens in November 1992. Their nephew who tried to travel to Britain the next day failed and was unable to flee the war, although had he managed to enter Britain his claim would probably have succeeded.Google Scholar

75 Rutvica Andrijasevic, ‘The Difference Borders Make: (Il)legality, Migration and Trafficking in Italy among Eastern European Women in Prostitution’, in S. Ahmed, C. Castaneda, A. Fortier and M. Sheller (eds), Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration, Oxford, Berg, 2003, pp. 251–72.Google Scholar

76 Ibid.Google Scholar

77 ICAR, Reporting Asylum, p. 145.Google Scholar

78 Ibid.Google Scholar

79 Jonny Medland, ‘Coleman Petition Slammed’, Oxford Student, 19 April 2007.Google Scholar

80 National Union of Students (NUS) ‘No Platform’, available at http://www.nusonline.co.uk/campaigns/antiracismantifascism/11534.aspx.Google Scholar

81 Teresa Hayter, Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls, London, Pluto, 2004.Google Scholar

82 Teresa Hayter, ‘Watching David Coleman, Comment is Free’, Guardian, 16 March 2007.Google Scholar

83 Terence Blacker, ‘If Academics Can't Think Freely, Who Can?’, Independent, 9 March 2007; Richard Garner, ‘The Academic: Oxford Professor Defends his Anti-Immigrant Views’, Independent, 9 March 2007.Google Scholar

84 Maria Grasso and Lee Jones, ‘If We Want Open Borders, We Need Open Debate’, Spiked Online, 5 March 2007.Google Scholar

85 See, for example: BBC online news, ‘Asylum Seekers' NHS Use Reviewed’, 2 December 2007; BBC online news, ‘Are Health Tourists Draining the NHS?’, 14 May, 2004; BBC online news, ‘Fresh Crackdown on NHS “Tourists” ’, 14 May 2004, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/; ‘“Health Tourists” Leave Tens of Millions in NHS Bills Unpaid’, Daily Telegraph, 2 October 2006, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/; Frances Elliott, ‘NHS Bill for Treatment of “Health Tourists” Soars to More Than £62m’, The Times, 3 September 2007, available at: http:www.timesonline.co.uk.Google Scholar

86 BBC, ‘BMA Warns of Job Shortage Threat’, 25 June 2005, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4618677.html; Jo Revill, ‘Job Shortage for New Doctors’, Observer, 25 June 2006.Google Scholar

87 Edwin Borman, ‘Health Tourism: Where Healthcare, Ethics, and the State Collide’, editorial, BMJ, 10 January 2004; Zosia Kmeietowicz, ‘GPs to Check on Patients' Residency Status to Stop “Health Tourism”’, BMJ, 22 May 2004. ‘Asylum Seekers and their Health’, BMJ, November 2006, http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/asylumseekershealth.Google Scholar