From Migrant Crisis to Migrant Critique

Abstract

This chapter discusses the reframing of the "refugee crisis" by critical scholars, who argue that the crisis was not brought to Europe by refugees but rather exposed existing fault lines in European institutions and values. The author argues that it is essential to complement these conceptualizations with migrants' own understandings of crisis and draws on interviews with local Afghan interpreters who worked for Western armies to explore their crisis experiences and critiques of European values. The author argues that migrants' diagnoses of converging crises and the comments linked to these inform their agentive social responses. This enables migrants to adopt a strategy of 'affirmative sabotage' based on a simultaneous appeal to and critique of European values. The article seeks to foreground the voices and actions of migrants and challenge a framing of crisis that reproduces a division of labour between migrants and refugees and states, governments, and European institutions.