Countering technocratic and humanitarian refugee narratives with a “one‐world” solidarity narrative
Kesi Mahendran
Abstract
This article articulates a one‐world narrative, which reconfigures
human mobility in dialogical response to the ideational borders of
the European Union. Fifty‐two semi‐structured interviews, in
Scotland and Sweden, bring participants, ranging from people with
refugee status to the generationally nonmobile, into dialogue with
the integration ideals of the European Union. Within this ideational
space, participants employ I‐positional dialogical capacities such as
“outsideness” and “multivoicedness” to articulate a postnational
“one‐world” solidarity narrative (OWN). OWN is revealed as distinct
from a posthuman “one‐earth” sustainability narrative, which
was found to “border” and delimit mobility. Three dimensions of
OWN, (a) borders as constructed; (b) citizen of the world; and (c)
accidental nature of existence, together repoliticise depoliticised
technocratic reasoning, culturalism, and the asymmetries of humanitarian
narratives on refugees. In conclusion, articulating the public's
dialogical capacities is key to moving beyond public opinion
towards public dialogue on vexed political questions such as
immigration.
Introduction
The overarching aim of this article is to contribute to a fuller understanding of the public's dialogical capacity to respond to vexed political questions. The question under scrutiny is the parameters of human migration into and across the European Union (EU) in the context of unprecedented levels of forced human displacement of which 54% in 2015 were from Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Despite media attention on “Europe's refugee crisis,” the
majority (86%) of people seeking refuge do so in neighbouring countries (Grandi, 2016; UNHCR, 2016).
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