scholarly journals The trouble with ‘truth’. On the politics of life and death in the assessment of queer asylum seekers

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-23
Author(s):  
Marie Lunau
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Politics Of Life ◽  
Geopolitical Context

This article explores death and dying in the context of queer migration by reflecting on the ways in which queer asylum seekers are exposed to various forms and manifestations of death through the process of seeking asylum. The article is based on qualitative interviews with queer asylum seekers in Denmark. Drawing on the concept of necropolitics, the article considers how the politics of truth within the asylum system manage life and death not only by the rejection and deportation of applicants, but also by exposing applicants to a slow death in the temporalities of a prolonged process of seeking asylum. The politics of truth within the asylum system appear to be predicated on ideals of normalised national white queerness and homonormativity that come to determine queer asylum seekers’ legitimacy and access to inclusion. Queer migrants’ paths to protection play out in a geopolitical context where the hope of life, asylum and citizenship are infused with deathly practices and normative imaginaries of truthful queerness. 

The Asylum Procedure in Germany: Desperation and Uncertainty as Risk Factors for Violence Among Young Adult Asylum Seekers in Collective Accommodations

2020 ◽  
pp. 088626052095797
Author(s):  
Ahmad Al Ajlan
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Right To Work ◽  
The Right ◽  
Asylum Procedure

This study explores how violence occurs among young adult asylum seekers in collective accommodations in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It provides an insider perspective to understand a phenomenon related to non-European people who were forced to leave their countries to seek asylum. Based on 16 qualitative interviews with young adult male asylum seekers from Syria and some African countries, seven interviews with social workers, and one interview with a German psychological therapist, the author finds that the asylum procedure in Germany as a total institution catalyzes violence among young adult asylum seekers in collective accommodations. The present study shows that collective accommodations are unhomely places, where “inmates” lack privacy and autonomy. In addition, the asylum procedure deprives them of essential human needs, such as the right to work and to have full access to the health care system. These circumstances make them uncertain and desperate, which leads to violence among them. The author calls for more attention towards the human needs of asylum seekers, rather than making them related to the granting of asylum, which can ultimately take years.

The Politics of Life and Death

Red Brigades ◽  
1990 ◽  
pp. 146-173
Author(s):  
Robert C. Meade
Keyword(s):  
Life And Death ◽  
Politics Of Life

scholarly journals Caught between sympathy and suspicion: journalistic perceptions and practices of telling asylum seekers’ personal stories

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (8) ◽  
pp. 1031-1047 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mervi Pantti ◽  
Markus Ojala
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Personal Stories

Personal stories in news reports serve multiple purposes, but at their core lie efforts at illustrating and authenticating a social or political issue through human experience, an illustration that is compelling in its affective appeal. Telling the personal stories of people belonging to minority groups may work as a potent journalistic vehicle in countering negative stereotypes and prejudices against them. This article examines how Finnish journalists incorporate the personal stories of asylum seekers into their coverage of the so-called ‘European refugee crisis’ of 2015–2016. Drawing on qualitative interviews, we inquire into how journalists understand the meaning and purpose of asylum seekers’ personal stories in their news reporting and reflect on the professional values and ethical dilemmas when telling them. Our findings reveal that while journalists tend to sympathise with the vulnerable and see it as important to combat xenophobia and racism, their relationship with asylum seekers becomes increasingly informed and constrained by socio-political and discursive structures that foster a culture of suspicion towards asylum seekers.

scholarly journals Disaster linguicism: Linguistic minorities in disasters

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinya Uekusa
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Language Barriers ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
Linguistic Minorities ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Linguistic Minority ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Multiple Levels

AbstractLanguage is a means of communication but it functions as much more than this in social life. In emergencies and disasters, it can also be a matter of life and death. Language barriers and effective communication in disaster contexts (i.e. distributing critical disaster information and warnings) are the central concern in current disaster research, practice, and policy. However, based on the data drawn from qualitative interviews with linguistic minority immigrants and refugees in Canterbury, New Zealand and Miyagi, Japan, I argue that linguistic minorities confront unique disaster vulnerability partly due to linguicism—language-based discrimination at multiple levels. As linguicism is often compounded by racism, it is not properly addressed and analyzed, using the framework of language ideology and power. This article therefore introduces the concept of disaster linguicism, employing Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence, to explore linguistic minorities’ complex disaster experiences in the 2010–2011 Canterbury and Tohoku disasters. (Disaster linguicism, language barriers, language ideologies)*

Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Rosenow
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
The United States ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Attitudes Toward Death ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
Working People ◽  
Grave Markers ◽  
People’S Attitudes

The post-Civil War Industrial Age brought fundamental changes to the economy and its workers, forcing Americans to reassess the meaning of life and death. This illuminating study of working-class rituals of dying and the politics of death explores how Americans struggled to understand the broader forces transforming their worlds. The book investigates working people's beliefs, rituals of death and dying, and the politics of death by honing in on three overarching questions: How did workers, their families, and their communities experience death? Did various identities of class, race, gender, and religion coalesce to form distinct cultures of death for working people? And how did people's attitudes toward death reflect notions of who mattered in U.S. society? Drawing from an eclectic array of sources ranging from Andrew Carnegie to grave markers in Chicago's potter's field, the book portrays the complex political, social, and cultural relationships that fueled the United States' industrial ascent. The result is an undertaking that adds emotional depth to existing history while challenging our understanding of modes of cultural transmission.

scholarly journals Socio-legal status and experiences of forced labour among asylum seekers and refugees in the UK

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dwyer ◽  
Stuart Hodkinson ◽  
Hannah Lewis ◽  
Louise Waite
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Asylum Seekers And Refugees

Socio-legal status determines the differential rights to residence, work and social welfare that accrue to migrants depending on their particular immigration status. This paper presents analysis of original empirical data generated in qualitative interviews with migrants who had both made a claim for asylum and experienced conditions of forced labour in the UK. Following an outline of the divergent socio-legal statuses assigned to individual migrants within the asylum system, early discussions in the paper offer a summary of key aspects and indicators of forced labour. Subsequent sections highlight the significance of socio-legal status in constructing such migrants as inherently vulnerable to severe exploitation. It is concluded that immigration policy and, more particularly, the differential socio-legal statuses that it structures at various stages of the asylum process, helps to create the conditions in which severe exploitation and forced labour are likely to flourish among asylum seekers and refugees in the UK.

scholarly journals 大乘中觀哲學的生死觀

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Ellen Y. ZHANG
Keyword(s):  
Hospice Care ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Support ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Philosophy Of Life ◽  
Other World ◽  
General Desire

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.生死是任何哲學和宗教都不能迴避的問題，佛教更是如此。相比中國傳統的儒家思想，佛教對死亡，甚至如何去死具有更詳盡的梳理和論證。而佛教的生死觀又源於佛教的核心的教義以及其背後的哲學思考。根據佛教的教義，覺悟、解脫或涅槃意味著從根本上去除人生的煩惱，而佛教認為，人生最大的煩惱便是生死輪迴之煩惱。但大乘佛教的反對將覺悟與紅塵、涅槃與輪迴看作絕對的二元對立，因此強調在生死煩惱中體驗超越的時空和宇宙的真理。本文以大乘中觀學派為主，從其「緣起性空」的哲學脈絡和「相即不二」的辦證思維，審視大乘佛教的生死觀以及它對中國儒道傳統的補充與融合。最後，文章論述中觀學的生死觀在當代臨終關懷中的啟示意義。Death is one of the major issues for all religious traditions; it is especially so for Buddhism, as Buddhist teaching is centered upon death and the impermanence of life. This essay discusses death and dying from the framework of the philosophy of life and death, as outlined in the Māhayānic Buddhism of China. The discussion centers on early Madhyāmika Buddhism and its non-dualist approach to samsara and nirvana, this world and the other world, and life and death. The essay shows that the notions of reincarnation and karmic action offer an alternative perspective on the finitude of human existence and reflection upon life’s uncertainty pertaining to the experience of death. The author contends that the theory of interdependent origination explicated by Madhyāmika Buddhism helps Buddhists to develop adaptive qualities that enable a person to remain balanced in the maelstrom of change and impermanence. This realization of the impermanence of life and the emptiness of interdependent origination leads to the Buddhist ethical positions of no self and non-attachment.The essay also addresses the question of hospice care from the perspective of Buddhism as a religious support system. Although Buddhists understand that suffering is a part of life, there is a general desire to avoid suffering whenever possible. Hospice care is important in Buddhism not only because Buddhists recognize the weakness and fragility of the body and mind in the process of death and dying, but also because Buddhists see the connection between the patient’s end-of-life needs, both physical and spiritual, and the well-being of other people associated with the patient. The essay argues that a positive attitude toward life and death, as presented in Madhyāmika Buddhism, can help patients and their families to deal with the pain and anxiety of terminal illness.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 1527 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

The Politics of Life and Death in the Time of COVID-19

2021 ◽  
pp. 275-296
Author(s):  
Joanne Travaglia ◽  
Hamish Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Life And Death ◽  
Politics Of Life

Death and Dying

2018 ◽  
pp. 203-226
Author(s):  
Philip A. Mackowiak
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
History Of

Chapter 9 (“Death and Dying”) concerns a number of issues related to the end of life: the age-old question of what happens to one after death, the litany of problems encountered in old age, the mixed benefits of defying death, and the long history of assisted dying. These weighty issues and others are addressed in a series of compelling works that celebrate dying in the presence of friends and family, both glorify and demonize death in battle, and question the value of ICU care that suspends patients in a web of tubes and wires simply to create a kind of purgatory between life and death.

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