The management of African asylum seekers and the imaginary of the border in Israel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Weinblum
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
National Security ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Economic Threat

This chapter engages the Israeli border discourse against the backdrop of arriving asylum seekers from Africa. Focusing on parliamentary debates, the chapter looks at how exclusionary techniques employed to regulate migrations are legitimised through the association of migrants as a problem of national security, as an economic threat, and a threat to national identity. Contrary to the literature which examines borders as dislocated sites of control, the chapter instead directs attention to the regulation of migrations through very classical discursive frameworks: as tools of ordering, controlling and physical enactment of statecraft and sovereignty.

‘I Certainly Don't Want People like That Here’: The Discursive Construction of ‘Asylum Seekers’

2003 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Saxton
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
John Howard

In October 2001, it was alleged that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard in order to manipulate the Australian Navy to pick them up and take them to Australian territory. In response to this incident, Prime Minister John Howard announced on radio 3LO: ‘I certainly don't want people like that here.’ (Mares, 2002: 135) A discursive approach is adopted in this paper to examine how asylum seekers have been constructed to be ‘people like that’ in the print media. The analysis demonstrates that asylum seekers have been represented as illegal, non-genuine and threatening in these texts. These representations were employed within nationalist discourse to legitimate the government's actions and public opinion concerning asylum seekers and to manage the delicate issue of national identity. The discursive management of the collective identity of asylum seekers by the dominant culture to construct a specific social reality is discussed and illustrated.

scholarly journals ‘Art is my language’: Afghan cultural production challenging Islamophobic stereotypes

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-129
Author(s):  
Bilquis Ghani ◽  
Lucy Fiske
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
The West ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Afghan Women ◽  
In Transit

Afghans and Afghanistan have, since September 11, risen to prominence in Western popular imagination as a land of tradition, tribalism and violence. Afghan women are assumed to be silent, submissive, and terrorised by Afghan men, who are seen as violent patriarchs driven by an uncompromising mediaeval religion. These Islamophobic tropes also inform perceptions of Afghans seeking asylum. In transit, identities are further reduced; asylum seekers lose even a national identity and become a Muslim threat – criminals, terrorists or invaders. These narrative frames permeate political discourse, media, and reports of non-governmental organisations (seeking donor funds to ‘save’ Afghan women). Drawing on fieldwork in Afghanistan and Indonesia, this article looks at how Afghans in Kabul and Indonesia are using art and other forms of cultural production to challenge over-simplified hegemonic narratives in the West, to open spaces for dialogue and expression within their own communities, and to offer a more nuanced account of their own identities.

Historical analogies under dispute: Reactions of Israeli Jews to analogies between the Holocaust and the plight of African asylum seekers in Israel

2020 ◽  
pp. 175069802090794
Author(s):  
Gal Ariely
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
Population Based Survey

This article examines the characteristics that shape different public reactions to analogies of historical events while emphasizing the role of national identity. It analyzes responses by Israeli Jews to comparisons between the situation of African asylum seekers in Israel and Jews during the Holocaust via a letter written by Holocaust survivors against the proposed forced deportation of asylum seekers in 2018. A population-based survey experiment conducted during Holocaust Remembrance Day was used to evaluate whether attitudes toward the expulsion of asylum seekers were affected by the analogy. The findings showed differential responses to the analogy, including acceptance, rejection, and ambivalence, which demographic characteristics, unlike aspects of national identity, do not explain. It was also found that participation in Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations was positively related to acceptance of the analogy. The overall conclusion is that responses to historical analogy are determined more by an individual’s identity and not by demographic factors.

Imagining Zimbabwe as home: ethnicity, violence and migration

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 616-639
Author(s):  
Duduzile S. Ndlovu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Migration Narratives ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Over Time

Abstract:Migration debates tend to focus on the numbers of people moving, whether they are economic migrants or asylum seekers, deserving or not of protection. This categorization usually rests on national identity, necessitating simplified one-dimensional representations. Ndlovu uses a case study of Zimbabwean migrants memorializing Gukurahundi in Johannesburg to highlight the ways in which migration narratives can be more complex and how they may shift over time. She presents Gukurahundi and the formation of the MDC in Zimbabwe, along with xenophobic violence in South Africa, as examples of the ways that the meanings of national and ethnic identities are contested by the migrants and influenced by political events across time and space.

scholarly journals Biopolitics, borders, and refugee camps: exercising sovereign power over nonmembers of the state†

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Zeveleva
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
The Government ◽  
Treat All ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers ◽  
The Relationship

This article addresses the relationship between the concepts of national identity and biopolitics by examining a border-transit camp for repatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers in Germany. Current studies of detention spaces for migrants have drawn heavily on Agamben's reflection on the “camp” and “homo sacer,” where the camp is analyzed as a space in a permanent state of exception, in which the government exercises sovereign power over the refugee as the ultimate biopolitical subject. But what groups of people can end up at a camp, and does the government treat all groups in the same way? This article examines the German camp for repatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers as a space where the state's borders are demarcated and controlled through practices of bureaucratic and narrative differentiation among various groups of people. The author uses the concept of detention space to draw a theoretical link between national identity and biopolitics, and demonstrates how the sovereign's practices of control and differentiation at the camp construct German national identity through defining “nonmembers” of the state. The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork at the Friedland border transit camp and on a discourse analysis of texts produced at the camp or for the camp.

scholarly journals Seeking asylum in the digital era: social-media and mobile-device vetting in asylum procedures in five European countries

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarten P Bolhuis ◽  
Joris van Wijk
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
National Security ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Private Life ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Right ◽  
Social Sorting ◽  
Tools And Methods

Abstract The increasing use of social media and mobile devices by asylum seekers offers new vetting opportunities for immigration authorities, to verify the identity or to assess national-security or 1F-exclusion aspects. Based on interviews with practitioners in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, the first experiences with both of these new methods seem to be mixed, while formal evaluations of the results seem to be lacking. We argue that the increasing reliance on these methods, in combination with the further advancement of technology, raises important questions about possible infringements on the right to private life, as well as the risk of function creep and social sorting. It can be questioned to what extent the use of these new vetting tools and methods is proportional to the results they produce and to what extent fundamental human rights, including privacy, are sufficiently safeguarded.

scholarly journals CONSTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH NATIONAL IDENTITY IN RELATION TO BREXIT: EVOLUTION OF THE DISCOURSE OF THE PRIME MINISTERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
I.V. Kazakov ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Identity Transformation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Main Method ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Eu

The discursive reality of Brexit had its effects on the discourse of the British Conservative Party which is important as the latter plays a key role in the process of making political decisions. The article discusses the components of the British national identity linked with the UK's membership in the European Union and Brexit as a political process. The UK's case is unique as it allows us to trace the identity transformation during the process of withdrawal from this integration group. The author chooses the constructivist approach and post-positivist discourse analysis as the main method. The paper studies the speeches of conservative politicians and parliamentary debates to analyze the changes in the discourse of the Conservative Party during the terms of the UK’s last three prime ministers. The discursive layers are highlighted: basic concepts, basic political orientations and extratextual ideological constructions used by conservative politicians to construct reality. The author traces the transformation of ideological constructions of the conservative party's discourse and consecutive changes in the significance of individual elements of the British national identity in the discourse. The paper examines relations between British and European identities, between the images of Britain and the EU in the discourse of British conservatives.

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