figures
Odysseus:
My name is Odysseus Athene:
I only know you from the news. See, Odysseus, the destroyer of cities, the undefeatable fox in all deserts he created, returning on a life raft of junk. If I had only foreseen the possibility of such landing, I would have come with tape and camera and would have earned more from the selling of such illustrative news, then the destroyer of cities with all its prey.
Odysseus:
Cities are only destroyed, when they lie in the way of the good cause. It belongs to the inventible misses of even the most precise airstrikes, that the firepower occasionally misses the frontlines and airspaces of the enemy and comes down on marketplaces and schoolyards and hospitals…
Athene:
…. Collateral damage. Isn´t that called collateral damage? Over here, at the beaches, there holds an easy saying in such damaging event: Just miss is as good.
(Ransmayr, 2010: 17, own translation)
“The core qualities of Odysseus, his resourcefulness, remorselessness and self-control will unfold, develop and cross-fertilize in the Odyssey. Faced with the unpredictability of the high seas, its monsters, its gods and its enchanters, Odysseus proves infinitely adaptable: he is decisive when impetuosity is required and gentle when moderation is called for. Faced with adversary, he proves himself a model of survival, using every device and wile to overcome it. At this level, Odysseus is a paragon of the bricolage. Unlike to many of todays managers, Odysseus never complains of inadequate resources.”
(Gabriel, 2003: 623)
Odysseus, the centrepiece of two of the most important texts in literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey and one of the most widely discussed figures, is presented as a multitude, as villain and entrepreneur, as
unorganized, as cunning, as heroic. The ambiguity of Odysseus becomes apparent through the exemplary excerpts presented above: Ransmayr describes him as a villain, the destroyer of cities, returning from years of plundering, raping and stealing only to find his home country Ithaca
destroyed and laying fallow. The play “Odysseus, perpetrator (sic)” is situated in a “postwar-period as all-time; an ill-time [org: Unzeit; Italics in original]
abeyant between present, future and an indelible past” (Ransmayr, 2010: 8).
Gabriel on the other hand reminds us of the possibility to see Odysseus as an entrepreneurial figure, as a manager of resources and limitations and
possibilities. Albert Camus (1991/1942: 75) describing Sisyphus as the
“wisest and most prudent of mortals”, while also practicing the “profession of highwayman”, famously concluding: “I see no contradiction in this”.
Odysseus, for some the son of Sisyphus, is also potentially the wisest man and a highwayman, a perpetrator of the bad yet a hero, a loving husband returning to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, as well as a pirate.
And just as it is not only not a contradiction to be all of this, both Sisyphus and Odysseus can be both (and all the more) at the same time, changing between the states and modes depending on the situation and their use of it as well as what is inscribed into them.
Defining the refugee as ‘in between’
Gabriel reads Odysseus through an occasion happening on the shores of New York harbor on June 6th 1993: a shipwreck is found and a group of men and woman trying not to drown is reaching the shore, swimming. 282 illegal aliens, Chinese refugees, reach the United States and are being put into prison immediately by the authorities. And just like Odysseus, Gabriel (2003: 630) states, “the Chinese refugees hungry, cold and covered in brine, emerge from the hostile sea as The Other, the needy, the displaced, the incomprehensible” and though they appear as the unorganized other they cannot remain like this, they become part of an organizational
machinery, they are orchestrated and ordered, finger prints and photos are taken, they are put into detention centers and state prisons, their ability to move and manoeuvre is restricted, limited: 282 Chinese people become subject to the organizing force of state power.
Yet this organizing force is not able, or is unwilling, to integrate the other fully, indeed seems determined to keep the refugees in the category of the ‘other’. This being ‘in between’, in a limbo state, has been persistently used as form and means to define and inscribe refugees: They are in between, but being in such zone of indistinction means they are, like
Odysseus, in an ambiguous and poly-variant position that invites analysis and repels determinate conclusion. From an etymological point of view, we come across the word ‘refugee’ for the first time in the late 17th century, when Calvinist Huguenots fleeing the Netherlands from prosecution reach France and are being conceptualized (sic) as réfugiés (those, who are taking shelter and seek protection), this framing finds further distribution when a hundred years later, the same group is forced to leave France (Zolberg et al, 1989: 5).
Ever since then the category ‘refugee’ has been used to describe a variety of different actors and subjects and masses of people. These
definitions have been conceptualized and altered again by a wide variety of migration related actors, includes those, from which the refugee is fleeing and those who would like to hinder the flight, to those they are meeting, influencing, needing, making use of or being used by during the flight itself, to those governing, limiting or enabling any potential arrival. Politics links the
‘refugee’ to questions of inner or outer security and economic progress, political parties use the figure in simplifications as a basis for political success and party programs3, International Organizations and
Non-Governmental Organizations frame and discuss the figure of the refugee, partly in strong opposition, partly in agreement to (supra-) national refugee policies, and finally, refugees themselves have an interest in shaping and
3 As we can se in the US presidential election campaign 2016, where Donald Trump is using the fear of the unspecific as a foudation for his campaign, as well as with the rise of right-wing parties in Europe throughout the 2015 – 2016 election period, e.g. in Denmark, Germany, France, Hungary and so forth as an immidiate reaction to the so-called European refugee crises.
modulating the meanings of this social figure under which they themselves have been subsumed.
What seems to arise out of this argumentative and discursive struggle is not a complexification of the notion ´refugee´, but rather a void, which serves as a frame, understood by all parties involved in the shaping of the figure, but filled and changed depending on political, social, cultural and economic demands at the time of the discussion (Inhetveen, 2010: 152).
Maybe, a more restrictive, seemingly precise description of the ontologies of the term ´refugee´ would be too limiting in light of the empirical
manifoldness or the experience, reasons and perception of fleeing. On the other hand, as a delineation it is still quite prescriptive, and risks, as Haddad (2008) has rightfully warned, a political delimitation and hence exclusion of people subsumed into a singular category often for political reasoning.
Being in between has meant being, like Odysseus, a protean figure that resists any firm categorization. For decades now refugees have ranked high in public attention and experience an increasing interest in academic research. The social figure of the refugee has been researched in a variety of academic disciplines, leading to the emergence of a distinct field (Harzig &
Hoerder, 2009). It is surprising, however, that there is no universally valid definition for the term ‘refugee’, and maybe even more so, since its appearance as a group and its use as such can be traced back for such a long time and its appearance has been causing numerous political, aesthetic, and social debates. This lack of a definition can partly be explained by the complexity and the highly political context of the subject (Haddad, 2008). In addition to the lack of a clear definition, the distinction between commonly used terms such as immigrant, refugee and asylum seeker is blurred and subject to an ongoing controversy among researchers and policymakers:
“While some studies emphasize this distinction as crucial [...] others have declared it irrelevant. [...] still others have attempted to determine its importance on an empirical basis” (Gold, 1988: 411).
Historically, one of the first figures we come across regarding the refugee (and maybe ironically so, in times where the discussion on the
refugee is shaped mainly by the reappearance of its image either as victim or potential perpetrator) is the one of ‘the maker’, the refugee as an
entrepreneurial figure (Inhetveen, 2010). Grounded in post-world war II experiences, the refugee appears as the one, who did make it, who suffered, but held on and who is willing to build and shape their own life, and also more structurally to join in the recreation of streets, cities, states, nations.
Post-world war II German sociology for example, is impregnated by such a view on the refugees. Gerhardt (2000) describes such a sketching of the refugee, despite the suffering endured by this figure, as inherently
entrepreneurial.
This figure of the refugee is followed by the story of the immigrant child, of figures like Steve Jobs, the story of second generation immigrants who founded businesses, went into politics, became part of the civil society.
This figure is relatively independent of the political circumstances of her/his fleeing, it is perceived mainly through the experience of the economic and social possibilities of integration.
This separation of the political circumstances of fleeing from those who are forced to migrate and the inherent capacity of the refugee to build, to create and to make new and better lives, businesses and enterprises ends with the Cold War: the refugee appears from now on as political avant la lettre: the figure becomes the means and end of a political discourse:
People fleeing both ways (from the west to the east and from the east to the west) become embroiled in ideological gaming, a condition best exemplified through the western perception of the figure, who is crossing the fences, walls, and barbed wires, symbolizing both the attractiveness of the system he or she is reaching as well as the de-dignifying circumstances of the political system he or she is fleeing from. The theorization of the refugee articulates the symbolic victory of a system, underlined and emphasized through the hardship of the fleeing itself. It is within these circumstances and realities, that Salamon (1991) has described the lack of willingness of Western states to accept people fleeing form the South as refugees; the use of the term and figure is bound to the nature of social and political opponents, prompting
questions as to whether accepting refugees is perceived as bolstering the systems into which they have fled vis-à-vis those they have left.
It is the end of the Cold War that marks historically the appearance of a new type of refugee, the one described earlier as the subject of
humanitarianism. As Chimni (2000) has pointed out, the refugee now becomes the means and end of a variety of International and
Non-Governmental Organizations who carry and care: carrying indeed becomes the new form of dealing and approaching refugees and it is in this sense that the figure is inscribed into discourses of victimization. We come across the refugee as the helpless child, the helpless mother, the helpless elderly. This inscription is still present and accentuated through a number of policies and measures advocated by both religious, civic and international organizations as well as by states. Malkki (1995: 10ff.) in a semiotic study has clarified the aesthetic appearance of such a perception as an almost Madonna like figure, which is being used as a symbol for the organizations governing and
directing new forms of humanitarianism. While, for example, the actual number of men amongst refugees equals the number of woman and
children, Non-Governmental Organizations and International Organizations often claim that the number of so called vulnerable people (e.g. children, women, elderly) make up to 80% of the total number of refugees worldwide.
The underlining gendering of refugees through such presentation remains seldom discussed, even though an implicit inscription of the potentially potent men (able to defend, attack, move, behave on his behalf) is mirrored and enforced through its oppositional representation of the vulnerability of the helpless woman and/or child.
Sørensen (2014) has historically analysed the production and
organization of refugees, exemplified through an interpretation of the iconic photo of a young Jewish boy holding up his arms during the clearance of the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazis, along with an interpretation of Paul Klee´s painting ‘Angelus Novus’, arguing the link between aesthetic presentation and the organising it implies is identified through the reading of the refugee as victim. The refugee understood as such remains, unlike the
entrepreneurial figure or the political hero, a figure of distance (Inhetveen:
2010). Implicit to such inscription is the de-politicizing effect of its nature, the refugee cannot cause danger or harm, but stays rhetorically, aesthetically and politically indeed far away from the audience, that is moved, touched and urged towards donations of help. Through this, the refugee as victim fulfils at least two purposes: it helps to intrinsically motivate members of those organizations, who seek to help the figure they have been socially producing, as well as satisfying the needs of politically distancing the figure from the audience that then, unthreatened, can be safely appealed to. The active and strategic distribution of the ´refugee as victim´ stereotype
reappears and is set out in charity appeals, journalism, politicians’ speeches, as a drama and staging of suffering (Inhetveen 2006). In its purest form, the refugee as a pure gesture and icon of a new humanitarianism comes across as the woman with a child, harmed and helpless, and those who lack the inscribed attributes either try to make up for it (through narration or
comparison) or set themselves in relation to this stereotype (Turner: 2002).
This discourse is not directed and orchestrated by the refugees themselves:
it is imposed on them by a world of humanitarian help. This does not mean, however, that the discourse is not picked up and made use of by refugees;
the stigmatization, the sketching as victim becomes possibly a means of identification, integration, exclusion or separation – depending on the audience to which this sketch is aimed, and hence offering opportunity for counter-narrating the sketch.
Countering the ‘victim’ discourse comes the refugee as ‘villain’ an epistemological opponent to the figure in need of assistance. The refugee as cunning crook as Horst (2006) coins it. Refugees enjoy, based on precisely their status as refugees, certain rights, and the cunning crook is expected to exploit those: he or she is manipulative and steals, lies about family members and the country of origin, the reasons for fleeing. He or she misuses the infrastructure provided, looking only to serve personal reasons or acting on behalf of the vested interests of a political or military group. The Kenyan government, for example, has called the world´s largest refugee camp Dadaab a “nursery for al Shabaab”, a militant Islamic group operating
in the Horn of Africa (The Guardian, 2015). Of course alternative accusations surround the same camp, with some suggesting Al Shabaab then, somewhat ironically, serves as an argumentative and actual reason for the upholding of the very same camp, since its mainly Somalian inhabitants have been fleeing the war between the remains of the Somalian Government (supported by, amongst others, the Kenyan army) and the very same militia Al Shabaab, which uses the camp and Kenyan ground as recruitment station, hospital and resting place for its fighters. The villains are everywhere, and nowhere.
The same in Europe and the USA where the arrival of refugees or immigrants is greeted with often-implicit accusations concerning their
villainy: they lie about their country of origin, or throw their passports away in order to benefit from social systems. Indeed, studies (e.g. Kibreab, 2004) do show misuse of systems, and commonly identify refugees seeking benefits and advantages through undermining social systems and administration. But while in other sociological fields, such behaviour can be perceived as
adaption, its appearance amongst refugees labels the very same figure a crook and lawbreaker. This mistrust in the refugee per se, whether he or she actually is rightfully fleeing or forced to migrate, i.e. in accordance with the current states of laws, one is common, especially is further fuelled through an alarmist fear of the entrance of radical religious and extremist political views into these countries under the refugee label.
The ‘crook’ and the ‘victim’ are two figures, which do not only exist in opposition to each other, but are often embedded in social discourses
around refugees at the same time. Both figures are used to mark refugees in respective groups, to then base political actions and arguments as a
response to the co-emergence and existence of the two. The figure of the villain and the crook merge and become important at the same time for political discourses and actions.
Defining the refugee through mobility
Woven into these attempts to equate the refugee with an in-between status, or liminal one, of victim and criminal, comes another equated with
those who are on the move, usually forcibly. At its core, the term ‘refugee’
revolves around some form of human migration – which describes a temporal or permanent change of residence by individuals or groups of people. Reviewing literature about migration brings up several factors that are often used to categorize different kinds of migration. One important differentiator is the migrant’s freedom of choice about their departure.
Migrants can be assigned to one of two groups according to this factor. The first group consists of free migrants “who decide when to depart and where to go according to their own desires and life-projects” (Harzig & Hoerder, 2009: 67). The second group contains forced migrants – including all kinds of involuntary migrants such as forced labour migrants (including those that have been enslaved or kidnapped); migrants displaced by political, religious or other intolerance; refugees from war or other violence and persons displaced by ecological disasters (Harzig & Hoerder, 2009). While this distinction enables a first typology of migrants, there are still cases that might not clearly fit in one of the two categories, for example “bound labour migrants who have to sell their labour for a number of years because of poverty” (Harzig & Hoerder, 2009: 67). Still, it becomes obvious that refugees – who often lack any choice about their departure, who usually do not make extensive plans before their departure (Gold, 1988) and who are often ill suited to take up employment elsewhere because of country specific skills and qualifications (Wauters & Lambrecht, 2007: 202) – belong to the second group of forced migrants. This, it seems, differentiates them from those migrants who voluntarily and consciously decide to migrate and who often “carry substantial financial assets” with them (Bager, 2003: 221).4
Another key attribute characterizing refugee mobility is the reason for their departure. According to the United Nations Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is defined as a person who
“owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his [sic] nationality and is unable or, owing to such
4 It should not be forgotten, however, that refugees embody a significant flow of resources to their host countries, bringing “human capital in the form of labor, skills and
entrepreneurship” (Jacobsen, 2002: 577-578).
fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it” (UNHCR, 1951).
Following this definition, refugees are not only characterized by the lack of choice about their departure, but also by a forced migration based on some form of persecution. From a psychological perspective, refugees may have experienced traumatic events that “can cause psychological problems, which hamper self-reliance and self- employment” (Wauters & Lambrecht, 2007: 201). These are “generally considered to be more severe than those of [other] immigrants” (Gold, 1988: 413).
Given this sense of migration being a response to threat, it should be noted that the UNHCR definition has been subject to criticism as it includes only migrants who depart reactively but excludes “people who proactively analyze deteriorating circumstances and leave on their own” (Harzig &
Hoerder, 2009: 137-138). Reading and understanding refugees as victims obviously affects the public opinion and the acceptance of refugees.
Recalling the earlier categorization of the ‘in between’, one explanation for the emergence of this narrative is that the humanitarian effort to distinguish refugees from migrants has had to be so vigorous that it is now very hard to imagine a refugee as anything other than a victim (Braithwaite, 2016).
Despite the criticism of above definition, it seems to be commonly accepted in academic research to define refugees as a group of forced
migrants that “flee their country because they are being persecuted and, as a consequence, [...] leave for humanitarian reasons” (Wauters & Lambrecht, 2007: 201). This creates a contrast to other groups of migrants, such as economic immigrants, who usually leave their country in search of more economic security.
The forced nature of their departure has far-reaching consequences for refugees. The social network of refugees in their new host country is for example “likely to be less extensive than that of [other] immigrants”