Preview

Media And The Dehumanization Of Refugees

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1031 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Media And The Dehumanization Of Refugees
There is a certain perniciousness about the contemporary intolerable outsider otherwise known as the migrant of the Middle East spreading throughout the European Union (EU). Statistics about the numbers of outsiders pouring in are distorted through panic and trepidation that has festered through the conglomeration of the masses of migrants and with the actors pulling the strings behind the system of migrations. These actors fuel the current discourse of the migrant, refugee, or potential asylum member. In other words, the media, politicians, and devout bureaucracies have seized upon the migrant, creating the migration industry to project the migrant as a dehumanized, unknown, and potentially dangerous entity that is abounded within a wave full …show more content…
Much has been written about the threat of migrants lurking outside of the European gates and shores: news reports, documentaries, and photographs in which the capricious migrant is followed and scrutinized by the media. These resources lead to an inevitable convergence of the public’s perceptions. Media consumers enjoy binaries. Ergo, there is no in-between in the framing of migrants, refugees, and asylum members: they are either a risk or “just people,” but it is easier to frame them as a risk because consumers know how to deal with a risk. Thus, the media simultaneously develops and addresses audiences’ preconceptions about the migratory …show more content…
Due to current discourse that labels refugees and migrants as a homogenized wave, the tsunami of outsiders is treated as a mass that requires a generic solution. However, the current strategies and policies that address migration at its source should be explored in order to encourage successful assimilation into American society. The idea of assimilation, in this sense, is more like the notion of multiculturalism in which two or more different cultures may coexist peacefully in a shared location. At the commencement of the process of assimilation, the anthropologist should be present to ensure a smoother transition into America. In other words, the anthropologist should assist in the relocation services by identifying which segments (age, productive ability, etc.) of refugees would better assimilate in different gateway, or refugee-receptive, communities to ensure smooth assimilation. Anthropologists must ensure that refugees receive the same equal rights and protections as other segments of (mainstream or otherwise known as the majority) societies by analyzing the individual refugee to help him or her better integrate. Anthropologists need to be the voices of insight and compassion. The following will address different approaches that anthropologists may take if, theoretically, the United States approves the entrance of 20,000 political refugees

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In “Migrant Hostel”, Skrzynecki describes the importance of upholding one’s cultural identity in the face of a prejudice…

    • 998 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Peter Sckerznki Summary

    • 879 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In Migrant hostel an emphasis on the physical and emotional divisions set up different nationalities are shown. They are searching for some sense of belonging in a foreign land, “nationalities sought each other out instinctively”. The use of the simile “like a homing pigeon circling to get its bearing” creates a sense of the migrant’s desire for a home; a place where they belong. Belonging also implies alienation and national groups are physically “partitioned off at night”, but they also choose to separate themselves from the other migrants because of “memories of hunger and hate.” The use of alliteration through the ‘h’ creates a sense of the migrant’s vented emotions at the other groups.…

    • 879 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    ‘Sudden departures from adjoining blocks that left us wondering who would be coming next’: immigrants have no control over their fates, they do not understand the situation and the system. Helpless, dislocated feeling…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    With higher risk of gang brutality and homicide, many children, teenagers, and families are choosing to leave their countries and seek asylum in the United States. For example; July, a 32 year old woman dealing with the violence in her town alongside her three children. “For eight years, July’s family has been struggling with the gang and narco-cartel violence that has overtaken many areas of her country. On Oct. 29, 2007, her brother, Carlos Luis Pérez, a skinny 22-year-old, was kidnapped and then found dead two days later in a sewage ditch, his hands and feet cut off.” ( Sonia Nazario. “The Refugees at Our Door.” nytimes.com. October 15, 2015. Web. January 6, 2016.) With regular killings, the danger of living in gang infested towns…

    • 144 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Migrants and refugees often feel a loss of connection and identity which leads to a…

    • 1165 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Immigrants are known to travel to new countries in hopes of finding a better life for themselves and their families. Refugees are different types of immigrants in a sense that they were not moved willingly, due to political or economic reason’s they were forced out of their home country. In “Braving a New World: Cambodian (Khmer) Refugees in an American City” by MaryCarol Hopkins, Hopkins ethnography is about Cambodian refugee and their lives in Middle City, CA after the Khmer Rouge which forced them out of their country in the 1970’s. Her book describes the many cultural differences Cambodian’s face as they try to assimilate in a country that is significantly different from their own. They face many barriers when they arrive in America and…

    • 1852 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Immigrants and their assimilation into America is a long standing occurrence, with initial experiences by the Pilgrims of the early 1600s to the first documentation of mass immigration with the arrival of Catholic and Jewish immigrants, from Italy and Russia during the colonial era in the late 1800s to early 1900s. With this influx at the time being labelled as “New Immigration”, “Nativists feared the new arrivals lacked the political, social, and occupational skills needed to successfully assimilate into American culture” (Wikipedia). These historical concerns continue to evolve in modern debate of the pros and cons of immigrant assimilation, the conflicting interests of Immigrant and Nation, and examination of the meaning of the term “assimilation’…

    • 220 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The piece written by Michael Gordon in The Age on October 19 2011, argues that ten years after the Australian federal election that sparked the asylum seeker controversy, asylum seekers are still being demonised and alienated by both of Australia’s major political parties. Gordon writes in an assertive, controlled and a somewhat concerned tone throughout the article with his target audience aimed at ‘The Age’ readers who have considerable knowledge and understanding of the ongoing debate. Current parliament members from both federal parties could also be his target audience as Gordon provides a solution to the crisis, in that the failure of the Malaysia solution provides Australia to take a completely different path that aims at focusing on the compassion of asylum seekers. Gordon’s piece was brought about as the tenth anniversary of the SIEV-X tragedy that killed 353 people was marked and the fact that to this day Australian policy on the issue has not changed.…

    • 856 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chapter five in Illegality Inc examines the life African migrants are faced with once they have managed to cross the border into Ceuta. Although, they believed “fortune was smiling upon them”, many hoped and desired to receive refugee status but, ended up as “Europe's most abject Other”-illegal immigrants. As previously explored, the term illegal immigrant carries with it a negative connotation and is even viewed as a stigma, both home and abroad. As the primary object of scrutiny, pity, and coercion it would not be long before these migrants rebelled and began protesting against their confinement by occupying downtown Ceuta. Evidence of the building discontent amongst migrants is displayed in this quote, “ We are not newborns,” “We are men” (pg. 185). Without permission to work, residents of the camp were forced to accept any handouts coming their way. Migrants are people filled with dignity, pride, and…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    immigrants vs refugees

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Very often, people do not know what a refugee is, and what they have to go through, and once they do get informed about whom they are and their characteristics, they compare them to immigrants. What they don’t know is that these two peoples are very common but only come to a new country because of different reasons.…

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The concept of foreign in majority of the cases depends on the ideas and images constructed socially, which reduces the globe to “us”, “them”, “good ones like me”, and “the normal”, the others who are distinctive: a disruption, a threat demonstrating a degradation of appropriate behavior and values. Despite that majority of the individuals consider xenophobia as generally acceptable and in contradiction with the human rights culture; it is not atypical. Discriminations on the basis of xenophobia, for instance acts of violence and verbal abuse, are evidently the violations of human rights (Correa, 2000).…

    • 2116 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The refugees are more likely to have the common support in our community because of the misconceptions about homeless people being associated with drugs and other personal consequences. Refugees were once a group of human beings who were free and had rights like everybody else until they were stripped away from them, which leads us to sympathize with refugees more than with homeless people who probably ended up in such a situation because of drug abuse, disregarding their education and etc;. Also, there are organizations and charities (that includes soup kitchens and shelters) which have been built to help the homeless in Canada, but refugees do not have that opportunity unless the government do something about them and help them start anew…

    • 123 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Trends indicate that unauthorized migration made up of more and more refugees fleeing violence in Central America and much less of job seekers from Mexico. The rise in asylum seekers has strained an already overwhelmed U.S. immigration system. The debate continues on how to handle the flow of refugees and how to address the additional needs of refuges from the Middle East.…

    • 663 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hispanic Migration

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Immigrants are torn by contradictory social and intellectual demands, while facing the confront of entry into a strange intimidating environment. The migratory progression, for whatever the reason, seems to improve the sense of harmony among those who migrate, who are often united by ties of affiliation, community and customs, as well as class. Symbols of ethnicity, such as language and religious behavior serve as reminders of their origin to the migrants themselves, while at the same time marking these people as outsiders in their new locale. Some migrants make a conscious decision to abandon an old unsatisfactory way of life for what they believe will be paradise on earth, land of the free, the place to find the American dream, never thinking about why or what the leave behind.…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The fact that there is a lack of a biological basis for racial difference raises fundamental socio-political questions as to why certain groups are marginalised in society and others are not. The notion of being Australian or ‘un- Australian' is facilitated and maintained by the news media and their ability to portray nationalist stereotypes. This ability to construct racial boundaries based on the ideas of ‘nationalism' and ‘otherness' must therefore be scrutinised in order to uphold the basic human right's that apply to all citizens living in a liberal democracy. Using the negative representations of asylum seekers in 2001, I will argue that the relationship between the news media and the government perpetuated racism, and furthermore, that the media failed in their cross-examining role as…

    • 646 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays