Introduction

The Role of Immigration Policies and the Media in the Dehumanization of Refugees

In chapter 2, Yasmeen Abu-Laban asks whether policy and policy-makers contribute to the humanization or dehumanization of refugees. Abu-Laban investigates this question by assessing policy developments and discourses with a focus on the years 2015–20 in Canada, the United States, and Australia. These three jurisdictions share considerable similarities in their formation as settler colonies and dispossession of Indigenous peoples, their historically racially exclusionary immigration policies, and their forms of continued settler privilege. Abu-Laban argues that while there has been a trend toward dehumanization—seen in criminalizing and punishing refugees and asylum seekers through policies relating to preventing entry, detention, and deportation—it is nonetheless the case that elected officials have a strong role to play in countering dehumanizing portrayals of refugees. The distinct role Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has played in humanizing refugees, both in Canada and in relation to the international community, is highlighted as providing an alternative discourse, especially in contrast to America’s Donald Trump. The chapter also features a discussion of the Global Compact on Refugees, approved by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2018, which gained Canada’s and Australia’s support but not that of the United States.

In chapter 3, Jeffrey M. Ayres addresses the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) pertaining to refugees. His analysis suggests that over the past several years, changing border processes have produced and/or shaped a duality of migrant precarity along the Canada-US border. The duality of precarity refers to the contradictory processes of globalization and contestation. On the one hand, government border policy reforms “from above” respond to globalization-influenced migration flows, often in dehumanizing ways. On the other hand, these may contrast with potential humanizing and human-rights-expanding interventions and claims-making by civil society actors on behalf of migrants “from below.” Ayres’s chapter illustrates how the Canada-US borderlands have become a site of contestation for challenging Canadian and US refugee and asylum policies—including the STCA. Ayres theorizes how both the humanizing (pro-refugee) forces and the dehumanizing (anti-refugee) migrant forces play out in relation to the structural conditions imposed by neoliberalism, precarity, and more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. With a focus on the border between Québec, New York, and Vermont, especially at Roxham Road, he examines important transboundary interactions. Specifically, he shows how the civil society transboundary interaction that is pressuring for formal changes to bordering norms and regulations illustrates a stark departure from the oftentimes negative media portrayal and partisan discourse surrounding asylum seekers and refugees. This highlights the human rights commitment of migrant-serving groups on both sides of the border.

Chapter 4 addresses the critical issue of whether we trust others to be good and to do right when past experiences have been negative and harmful. Specifically drawing from his experience as a refugee as well as work and leadership in the settlement sector, Fariborz Birjandian asks how we can collectively restore refugees’ faith in humanity through individual efforts, public policy, community engagement, and other interventions. Birjandian’s analysis shows the importance of what happens before, during, and after resettlement in Canada, noting that Canada is one among some twenty-five countries globally that are formally committed to resettling refugees. In breaking down what is often experienced by many resettled refugees into different stages, Birjandian draws our attention to the profound trauma associated with being forced to flee and the ways this may be amplified or mitigated in the journey, the wait to find a country for resettlement, and resettlement itself. He calls for settlement and integration policies not only to focus on immediate needs as they do in Canada but to go further to better take into account what individual refugees have experienced emotionally and even spiritually before arrival, as well as what they encounter en route. Such a holistic approach points to the value of boosting access to mental health support as well as being attuned to the additional pressures faced by many refugees, especially those who have recently arrived and who may have faced additional challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic when it comes to isolation, employment, and safe jobs.

In chapter 5, Nariya Khasanova analyzes Canadian media portrayals of Syrian refugees following the 2015 Paris attacks. Through a close analysis, she shows how media portrayals of refugees as either sympathetic or threatening depend on framing, current events, and their sociopolitical contexts. While the tragic photo of toddler Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body on a beach in Turkey stirred tremendous compassion for Syrian refugees in Canada, Khasanova shows how the media mood shifted abruptly with the Paris attacks and putative connections to Syrians in France. Syrian refugees to Canada had formerly been framed by religion (Islam), but this frame was now conflated with a conflict frame, thereby linking three discourses: asylum seeking, Islam, and terrorism. Such framing, Khasanova argues, heightened by the ongoing Canadian election season, promoted Islamophobia, amplifying a dehumanizing discourse contrasting Syrian refugees with Canadian values. This was achieved by referencing narratives of Islamic terrorism and antisemitism, implying that their immigration posed a threat to Canadian life and values, representing an “Other” opposed to the “West.” Indeed, most of the articles uncritically linked Syrian refugees, Islam, and violence, failing to give voice to the refugees themselves. However, distinctive newspaper discourses also revealed contrasting political alliances, supportive (the Globe and Mail) or critical (the National Post) of Liberal government policies. While the Globe and Mail mainly presented facts about government policies, the National Post tended to present opinion pieces grounded in Orientalist discourses linking Muslims with violence and antisemitism and raising the spectre of security threats. However, a few opinion pieces in both newspapers encouraged a critical response to dehumanization, portraying Syrian Muslim refugees as hapless but peaceful and poised to become good Canadian citizens. Overall, Khasanova’s analysis demonstrates the tremendous potential for the media to play a constructive role in encouraging a more humane approach. Yet such voices and perspectives are all too often eclipsed by the larger political and economic factors driving media representations.

The Role of Educational Institutions and Programs in the (De)humanization of Refugees

This section focuses on the role educational institutions and educational programs offered by not-for-profit organizations play in the lives of refugee children and youth as they resettle in their host countries. Research shows non-profit organizations have historically played a crucial and significant role in the lives of immigrants (see Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008). Although refugees typically no longer experience the same level of threats to their safety during resettlement, they are faced with the challenge of navigating an entirely new society with its institutions and their sometimes difficult-to-understand rules and regulations. For refugee children and youth, educational institutions are places where most of a culture’s dominant discourses are exchanged, everyday conventional acts are observed, and new ways of doing things are learned. In particular, schools are considered by scholars as potential sites for social-emotional support for refugees and war-traumatized youth (Sullivan and Simonson 2016). Unfortunately, schools can also reinforce existing inequalities and thus contribute to the dehumanization of refugees when social differences, pre- and post-migration trauma, experiences of social exclusion, bullying, racism, and marginalization due to school practices of testing and labelling are ignored. Moreover, because teachers and other school personnel possess important intercultural competencies to varying degrees, students of non-European descent are not treated equally in a system perpetuating the dominant Eurocentric culture, values, and norms through its curriculum and organization.

Consistent with previous research, the study in chapter 6, reported by Pallabi Bhattacharyya, Labe Songose, and Lori Wilkinson, reveals a range of dehumanizing pre-migration experiences among Yazidi refugees in Canada. Study participants reported highly traumatic experiences of torture, prolonged captivity by ISIS, rape, sexual slavery or other forms of enslavement, witnessing murder, and the rape or torture of family members. The chapter focuses on the impact of such highly traumatic pre-migration experiences on the participants’ adjustment and adaptation to life/learning/work after resettling in Canada as well as the impacts of these experiences on their young children. The study challenges resettlement practices adopted by the society at large that do not meet the specific needs of this particular population of people who suffer multiple traumas, including the trauma of adjusting to post-resettlement life in Canada. Such ineffective practices include lack of flexibility in offering English as a second language classes, lack of mental health support and care, lack of financial support, barriers to accessing services, and barriers to accessing employment. The authors’ critique of such practices is based on the recognition that meeting the complex needs of highly traumatized refugees cannot work unless it is approached through a trauma lens. The major contributions of the chapter are Yazidi refugees’ first-person accounts, which put a human face to traumatic experiences and their impacts during resettlement. Overall, the researchers advocate for the adoption of trauma-informed practices in resettling refugees as a practical approach to humanizing refugees after resettlement in Canada. Such strategies include providing sustainable and secure funding to settlement agencies, planning and investing in providing assistance to highly traumatized refugees prior to their arrival in Canada, and extending eligibility for services, including language learning beyond the current three-year period, as critical in meeting their needs.

Using a first-person narrative account, Jwamer Jalal begins chapter 7 with the question “Where are you from?” as a way of exploring the “purgatory of identity” that many first-generation refugees and immigrants who grew up in Canada experience. Examples of situations in which the question was asked include encounters with officials (e.g., police, teachers) as well as with peers and members of the general public in both the host country and the country of origin. Jalal’s analysis of these situations demonstrates how the question acts as a vehicle of othering as well as an indicator that first-generation immigrants belong nowhere. The chapter thus contributes to our understanding of what it means to experience dehumanization. More specifically, the chapter exposes harmful discourses and policies that may contribute to the othering experienced by immigrant children as well as their desires for belonging to their non-immigrant peer group in school and to the society at large. Jalal also offers an important critique of the conception of national identity from which Brown and Muslim citizens are excluded. In his account of how obtaining legal citizenship is a “false promise” to Brown citizens, he illustrates how citizenship does not necessarily lead to a sense of belonging for those who are not considered to be “true” Canadians (i.e., white, monolingual English speakers, and Christian). The chapter concludes by considering potential solutions to the adversities experienced by first-generation youth that could foster a movement toward inclusiveness and belonging. Jalal describes specific examples of community-based youth programs grounded in cultural wealth theory (Yosso 2005) that can help first-generation immigrants regain pride in their cultural heritage and begin to develop a healthier bicultural identity. In this way, the chapter contributes to our understanding of the practical approaches taken by some not-for-profit organizations toward educational programs that aim at rehumanizing refugees during and after resettlement in Canada.

Chapter 8 brings attention to the inclusion of refugee youth, especially those who are in the process of seeking asylum, within post-secondary educational institutions in Germany. Unlike other European nations, between 2015 and 2017, German society experienced a period of partial hospitality, mobilized by different social actors welcoming refugees and enabling their arrival. Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez’s study of a pilot program, Branch Out, is analyzed in the context of the implementation of the New Pact of Asylum and Migration, as adopted on September 23, 2020. The goals of the pilot program were threefold: (a) to be a bridge between the university and persons seeking asylum in Giessen, (b) to offer these persons introductory access to the university, and (c) to establish a transcultural learning space for major and minor students pursuing bachelor’s degrees in social sciences as well as persons seeking asylum participating in this course. Despite creating common courses, the refugee students, other ERASMUS students, and the German students did not meet on equal terms. Refugee students’ access through the audit program did not provide them with regular student status. Language barriers, othering, and racism were reflected in the classroom. The chapter highlights systemic barriers to refugees’ access to post-secondary education. By pointing to the potentials and limits of transcultural learning within the context of seeking asylum, the chapter offers a critique of the current post-secondary educational provisions for refugees regarding the unrealized potential of building anti-racist intersectional and transcultural learning projects in German post-secondary higher education in the future. The chapter also offers specific recommendations for reforms in post-secondary educational institutions in Germany that would lead to easier access for refugees. These include adjusting the requirement for German-language proficiency, which currently prevents refugee students who are participating in pathway programs from access to the university; taking into account potential health problems related to depression and trauma; and addressing financial barriers to refugee students’ access to higher education.

While chapters 6, 7, and 8 focus on issues of othering faced by refugees as they encounter the education system in the countries in which they resettle, chapter 9 provides a brief historical overview of the origins of the practices of homogenization. It traces such practices including “schooling the body” through a space-time continuum of school life, objectification, stereotyping, racism, and othering to the mid-seventeenth century. In her analysis of educational theories and practices that have created universal benchmarks for a “civilized” modern human that in turn have positioned those who are different as less than human, Anna Kirova examines the dimensions of dehumanization that have detrimental effects on refugee and immigrant students’ experiences of schooling in their host countries. The chapter also offers a critical analysis of essentialism and assumptions of normalcy that still exist in multicultural and anti-racist educational theories and practices, which have contributed to the persistence of “othering” those who do not fit the very norms these educational theories are aimed at eradicating. The chapter offers a framework for the humanization of education based on the key concept of interculturalism—“alterity” as a recognition of the Other’s perspectives, as a possibility for questioning one’s own. The chapter proposes that a pedagogical understanding of all children as strangers whom we can never fully know can allow educators to get “rid of the normalcy assumptions and essentialism” within themselves to attempt to transgress the deeply entrenched norms, rules, and codes meant to assimilate the Other into a homogeneous same. It calls for pedagogy that enacts alterity as a movement toward the richness and brilliance of the heterogeneous Other and also bears responsibility for who they are. The chapter concludes that only then can schools become sites where the educational experiences offered to all children, including those who come from refugee backgrounds, truly respect the alterity of the Other.

Countering Dehumanization: State Apologies and New Approaches

This section examines the idea of humanization through the prism of state apologies. In chapter 10, Abigail B. Bakan offers a case study of the over 900 German Jews seeking refuge from Nazi Germany in 1939 via the infamous ship called the MS St. Louis. They were repeatedly turned away—from Cuba, the United States, and finally Canada—and forced to return to Europe. Subsequently, 254 of the MS St. Louis passengers were killed in the Holocaust. On November 7, 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for Canada’s refusal to accept these Jewish refugees. Bakan argues this apology was long overdue, yet the narrative of this particular apology also asserted a certain narrow and distorted definition of antisemitism in the process. Bakan notes that antisemitism was described as centrally including criticism of the state of Israel, defense of Palestinian rights, and specifically the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. In the chapter, Trudeau’s problematic apology and the condition of Jewish refugees to Canada are considered from the perspective of anti-racist and feminist theory and policy based on a close examination of documents and context. What does it mean when a nation says “sorry” for heinous crimes? In an age of apology—including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada on the Indian residential school system and its 94 Calls to Action—how can states and social movements advance solidarity while redressing oppression based on difference? This question of solidarity is especially pertinent in a settler colony like Canada where Indigenous peoples and other racialized minorities have experienced different forms of state harm and where many have benefitted from the colonial project at the expense of Indigenous peoples.

Chapter 11 argues most state apologies are qualitatively about rehumanizing the apologizer and seldom the apologized party, such as the refugee, Indigenous, or ethnic minority groups. That is, the apology seeks to redeem, atone, and/or restore trust in the apologizer. Authors Reza Hasmath, Benjamin Ho, and Solomon Kay-Reid take a relatively unique angle and look at the rare instances when state apologies are employed to rehumanize the apologized group. The authors employ a novel framework by bridging insights from the literature about apologies, which has focused on how apologies function, and the literature on truth and reconciliation, which has focused on countering dehumanization through “rehumanization.” They pose three analytical queries: (1) How are apologies different toward refugee, Indigenous, and/or ethnic minority groups when the goal is to rehumanize the apologized party, not the apologizer? (2) What happens to the apologizer in such apologies? (3) What can be learned by jointly considering the apology and truth and reconciliation literature on how to make an effective apology? The chapter suggests that while the function of an apology is often to rehumanize the apologizer, paradoxically, an apology is really only effective if the intent is to rehumanize the victim, the apologized group.

In chapter 12, Jim Gurnett, a former member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and past executive director of the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, proffers a powerful argument for critical self-reflection, calling attention to the hypocrisy of refugee policy in Canada. While determined by principle in theory, the policy is characterized by political expediency in practice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Canada is a signatory, affirms that home, citizenship, and asylum are basic human rights. Yet not only does Canada often refuse refugees, but Canadians also fail to critically examine their complicity in creating refugees through their willing participation in an oppressive global system that directly or indirectly causes people worldwide to seek refuge in Canada. Many Canadians often blithely consume goods manufactured and distributed through a global system of exploitative cheap labour, resulting in economic displacement. Canada provides weaponry to oppressive regimes to boost its military-industrial sector, resulting in political persecution. Canada thus seeks political and economic advantage at the expense of human rights, producing refugees streaming to the West. Canada admits a few thousand of these refugees—usually only the wealthiest, best educated, and best positioned to serve its economy—but excludes most of the poor. The chosen few are welcomed at the airport with gifts and fanfare, before television cameras and smiling politicians. But this is all spectacle more than principle: millions of others (indeed, the vast majority) are excluded. The loss of home is traumatic, and yet Canada provides scant resources addressing refugees’ mental health, many of them suffering from PTSD, a condition exacerbated by uncertainty and life at the poverty line. If Canada seeks to become a global leader toward a more just world, one that recognizes refugees as “siblings in the human family,” its citizens must critically examine Canada’s refugee policies as well as the practices creating refugees in the first place. Human rights must take precedence over financial and political considerations, and home is a right.

Enacting (Re)humanization: Refugee Agency and the Arts

Chapter 13 is an autobiographical recollection of the events surrounding Jalal Barzanji’s imprisonment during Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and Barzanji’s family’s journey to Canada. The theme of being at home, losing a home, and finding a new home is central to the chapter. The role of the library as an institution—as “palaces for the people,” to use Eric Klinenberg’s (2018) words—is explored in relation to the main theme of home as an intellectual home. The building of the Erbil Public Library, like the bodies of the prisoners, was violated when Hussein’s regime converted it into a prison. The descriptions of torture, humiliation, and other violations of human dignity while in this prison are juxtaposed with Barzanji’s experiences of writing poems in his prison cell. Some of the poems written while in prison are included in the chapter and exemplify the role of art and artistic expression in resisting dehumanization, particularly for those who have been subjected to imprisonment as a violent and severe form of dehumanization. The chapter ends with regaining one’s humanity after resettlement. Thus, the chapter addresses how art, as an epistemological approach to humanizing (or rehumanizing), can be beneficial for refugees during resettlement in Canada.

Chapter 14, by Louise Harrington and Dana Waissi, examines the relationship between cultural production and exiled Kurdish people. As a group, exiled Kurdish people are often referred to as the world’s largest stateless nation, subjected to intense dehumanization in several jurisdictions. The chapter asks how the cultural production of literature and music might operate as a site for Kurdish identity in exile. The authors’ hypothesis is that addressing this question will uncover what a Kurdish cultural identity among a widely dispersed community might be founded on. The cartographic absence of a recognized, bordered Kurdistan has fostered the belief that Kurdish cultural identity cannot be unified. Therefore, the chapter examines both the literary and the musical outputs of Kurds from 1969 to 2019 to trace the patterns of “Kurdishness” at the heart of two significant forms of the culture. This approach acknowledges that Kurdish identity is likely located in multiple places, not in a singular site or form. It reveals how the literature and music of the Kurds make visible their historical plight and cultural identity even through the processes of exile and resettlement in Canada.

In chapter 15, Michael Frishkopf takes as his focus resisting dehumanization through music. This chapter develops a theory of transcultural music as a social technology for global human development. This is achieved by weaving connections: enhancing inclusive, diverse, resilient social linkages through resonant interactions across perceived social boundaries of culture or community. As Frishkopf insists, culture and community are concepts that should be treated not as countable nouns but rather as indivisible continua, albeit exhibiting regions of greater or lesser density. Transcultural music thus has the capacity to extend what can be termed the social fabric (empathetic connections among social subjects), as opposed to the social network (communicative connections among social positions). Importantly, transcultural music is shown to be a generative tool for the creation of grassroots solidarities. These are solidarities that are diverse and inclusive yet also cohesive and resilient insofar as they transcend or erase top-down boundaries of culture and community. As the chapter indicates, such solidarities can become the productive basis for a broader, more connected social fabric, both paradigmatically (as a generative model) and syntagmatically (as a connective nucleus).

Chapter 16, by Thomas Mapfumo, Chiedza Mapfumo, and Michael Frishkopf, centers on the story of Thomas Mapfumo as a musician activist in exile. In doing so, the authors explore music’s power to catalyze connection and change. Through a trialogue of interviews supplemented by archival research, the chapter recounts the life story of Thomas Mapfumo, a Zimbabwean musical icon and a tireless musical critic of injustice and corruption in his country. Born in a rural town of colonial Rhodesia, where he imbibed traditional folk music, his family later moved to the city, where he absorbed popular local and American styles. After his initial career singing covers, Mapfumo and his band developed a new genre called Chimurenga (“struggle”), fusing popular southern African styles with traditional mbira music, closely linked to pre-colonial life, and evoking the power of the people for freedom and justice. Singing to support the liberation struggle against the white Rhodesian regime, in 1980, he celebrated Zimbabwe’s independence under newly elected leader Robert Mugabe, participating in a massive concert featuring Bob Marley and the Wailers. But corruption quickly set in, and a decade later, he was criticizing Mugabe in song. “Music is a weapon,” Mapfumo has said, and the potency of that weapon was revealed not only through its effectiveness but also in the severity of the regime’s response to its celebrated musical critic. The repression, persecution, and brutality of Mugabe’s regime produced many Zimbabwean political refugees over subsequent decades, including Thomas Mapfumo himself. Forced into exile in 2000, he moved, together with his family, to the United States. But his music sustained his connections to the homeland, where he remained a potent force even while far away. Meanwhile, his band expanded to include American musicians, connecting him to various American music scenes. His many North American concert tours and festival appearances, along with radio play, garnered wide exposure. He helped link up the Zimbabwean diaspora while developing passionate new fans among North Americans. Amplified by many media appearances on platforms as widely disseminated as NPR and the Guardian, as well as local newspapers and radio stations, his music contributed greatly to raising general awareness of Zimbabwe’s dire political conditions and galvanized the Zimbabwean opposition in exile. Ultimately, the power of Mapfumo’s music to unite against injustice helped catalyze political change. In 2017, Mugabe was forced from power, and Mapfumo returned to a triumphant concert in 2018.

Chapter 17 contains the link to an online concert program, as well as being based on Frishkopf’s pre-concert talk called “Beyond Words: Transpositions: Music for Resilient Sustainable Communities.” Frishkopf centers on the power of music to support refugees undergoing a process of social transpositions. By weaving resilient, humanized connections, music can enable refugees to maintain social and cultural connections to their homelands while supporting social integration in their host societies. As the concert convincingly shows, music is not only aesthetically beautiful but also physiologically and psychologically powerful. It moves, distracts, and entertains us individually. But music is also a remarkably powerful social technology like no other. Some use that power for profit or power, but as Frishkopf points out, music can also be deployed for social good. He also introduces the concert program.

In concluding this volume with a concert program, we aim as editors to signal the tremendous and as yet not fully tapped potential of the arts to be a vehicle for discussion, experience, and resisting dehumanization. This and the other findings illuminated in the chapters of this transdisciplinary collection are offered to scholars, practitioners, and those who have experienced refugeehood as a starting point for a wider public conversation about resisting the dehumanization of refugees.

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