“Is it Commerce?”: Dehumanization in the Framing of Refugees as Resources

The idea that “refugees are resources” has been promoted as countering the dehumanization that frames refugees as burdens or security threats. But is framing people as resources truly humanizing? Resource theorists have highlighted how modern Western conceptions of what resources are depends on a distinction between the human and the non-human. This logic is similar to, and originates in the same epoch as, hierarchies of humanity. State appraisal and management of human and mobility continue to be shaped by race and perceptions of productive value in terms, just as the value of resources varies, and has always been social and political. This intervention highlights the perspective of a Burundian refugee in Tanzania who traces continuities between experiences and being called a resource—in that a resource can be sold or traded across borders with no input into its future. Refugees can and do meaningfully contribute to the communities and countries in which they live, but the “resources” lens curtails a truly humanizing perspective on refugees’ lives.

The Resettlement Experiences of Oromo Women Who Entered Canada as Refugees

A growing body of literature shows that gender-based experiences produce different circumstances for men and women who become refugees and thereafter. This article sought to contribute to this literature by investigating the challenges faced by Oromo women who have immigrated to Canada as refugees. Toward this end, we interviewed six Oromo women in Western Canada regarding what led them to leave Ethiopia, their experiences as refugees seeking asylum, and their struggles with resettlement and integration. The findings reveal that Oromo women share the challenges endured by their male counterparts, but also are victim of gender-based subjugation at each stage of emigration.

Humanizing Refugee Research in a Turbulent World

This essay adopts a critical perspective of the idea of humanizing refugee research. It argues that much social scientific research is intrinsically dehumanizing, as it simplifies and reduces human experience to categories and models that are amenable to analysis. Attempts to humanize research may productively challenge and unsettle powerful and dominant hegemonic structures that frame policy and research on forced migration. However, it may replace them with new research frameworks, now imbued authority as representing more authentic or real-life experiences. Rather than claiming the moral high ground of humanizing research, the more limited, and perhaps more honest, ambition should be to recognize the inevitable dehumanization embedded in refugee research and seek to dehumanize differently.

Training and Integrating Public Service Interpreters in a Refugee Health Clinic: A Mixed-Method Approach to Evaluate an Innovative Program

Language barriers can harm refugees’ health, and trained interpreters are a solution to overcome these barriers in all health consultations. This study trained interpreters and integrated them in a refugee clinic. Nepali-speaking migrants were recruited and underwent 50 hours of training to serve as interpreters for recently arrived Bhutanese refugees in Quebec City. To evaluate the project, mixed data were collected. At baseline and follow-up, patients’ health (as perceived by practitioners) and satisfaction were evaluated. Interpreters and practitioners were also interviewed and took part in joint discussion workshops. Patients’ health remained stable but, interestingly, patients were slightly less satisfied at follow-up. Practitioners and interpreters described both benefits and difficulties of the program. For example, integrating interpreters within the clinical team allowed for better collaboration and mutual knowledge of cultures. Challenges included work overload, conflicts between interpreters and practitioners, and role conflicts for interpreters. Overall, the full-time integration of trained interpreters in the clinic facilitated communication and case administration. This practice could be especially beneficial for refugee clients. In future interventions, interpreter roles should be better clarified to patients and practitioners, and particular attention should be paid to selection criteria for interpreters.

What Does a Humane Infrastructure for Research Look Like?

In this intervention I make two main suggestions to humanize refugee research. First, the tendency to select “research hotspots” as field sites—where researchers tend to approach the same interviewees and spaces—should not only be called out and avoided, but battled against. Second, I suggest that refugee research should collaborate directly with other studies of social, political, and economic phenomena in an effort to not make displacement the sine qua non condition for doing research but, instead, only one of the many conditions a human being can inhabit within receiving societies. Pursuing this aim will be easier when studies on forced migration do not become compartmentalized and develop in isolation from other disciplines and research groups.

The Cautious Politics of “Humanizing” Refugee Research

In this intervention, I reflect on what it may mean to ‘humanize’ refugee research. The assumption often made is that ‘humanizing’ can arise through a concern with the particularity of the individual, through drawing from ‘the mass’ the narrative of the singular and employing this as a means to identify, , and potentially understand others. Yet such a move risks a reliance on creating relations of empathy and compassion that elide political responses to dehumanization and often relies on a assumption of what constitutes the category of “the human,” an assumption that has been critically challenged by post-colonial writing.