Dehumanization in the Global Migration Crisis

Abstract

Abstract What can we learn about dehumanization from the global migration crisis? In reporting on the hardships that refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants face, scholars, journalists, commentators, and displaced persons themselves have frequently described their mistreatment using the term dehumanization. Yet, while this notion is commonly used or alluded to, it is rarely defined or conceptualized. This is surprising since its meaning is far from clear. Does dehumanization concern conditions of severe destitution in refugee camps, which do not allow for minimally decent living standards? Should we think of political games in which displaced people are perceived, portrayed, and treated as undesirable burdens or bargaining chips? Or is it about the ways in which (forced) migrants may come to feel alienated from their own humanity? This book examines what dehumanization entails through a critical study of the various forms of social and moral exclusion to which people are exposed in the global migration crisis. It presents a philosophical account of dehumanization that is empirically grounded in both the lived experiences of (forced) migrants and prevailing accounts of their treatment. The central argument is that dehumanization consists in a distinct form of moral exclusion that is characterized by neglect of or contempt for the moral status of human beings, which expresses itself in blindness for the significance of the human subjectivity of victims as a moral factor that should be taken into consideration.