Life on the Line: Border Stories

Abstract

ABSTRACT Every refugee has many stories to tell. The complexity of their stories challenges dominant socio-political narratives, upending prevailing perceptions of people seeking refuge while demonstrating that the lines of responsibility for their circumstances are blurry. The stories of two asylum seekers highlight aspects of refugee phenomenology that are largely absent within the psychoanalytic literature and demonstrate that asylum seeking is productively understood as an active form of resistance and an embodied form of “radical hoping.” Radical hoping, we contend, exists in a complementary relationship to the despair and desperation that usually frames refugees’ stories in political rhetoric and public discourse. It acts as a bridge between hopeless resignation rooted in past trauma, current despair and uncertainty, and longing for a safer, more dignified future. It also supports the refugee’s ability to resist oppression and to act courageously without certainty about the future consequences of his or her actions. The refugee’s journey, we conclude, is productively understood as one of extraordinary agency rather than simply a desperate flight from danger to safety.