‘#Refugees can be entrepreneurs too!’ Humanitarianism, race, and the marketing of Syrian refugees

Lewis Turner

doi:10.1017/s0260210519000342

Abstract

AbstractIn the context of a greater focus on the politics of migration, the ‘refugee entrepreneur’ has become an increasingly important figure in humanitarian, media, and academic portrayals of refugees. Through a focus on Jordan's Za‘tari refugee camp, which has been deemed a showcase for refugees’ ‘entrepreneurship’, this article argues that the designation of Syrian refugees as ‘entrepreneurs’ is a positioning of Syrians within colonial hierarchies of race that pervade humanitarian work. For many humanitarian workers in Jordan, Syrians' ‘entrepreneurship’ distinguishes them from ‘African’ refugees, who are imagined as passive, impoverished, and dependent on humanitarian largesse. Without explicit racial comparisons, humanitarian agencies simultaneously market Syrian refugees online as ‘entrepreneurs’, to enable them to be perceived as closer to whiteness, and to thereby render them more acceptable to Western audiences and donors, who are imagined as white. This article extends scholarly understandings of the understudied relationship between race and humanitarianism. Furthermore, it asks critical questions about the political work and effects of vision of the ‘refugee entrepreneur’, which it locates within the context of the increasingly neoliberalised refugee regime. ‘Refugee entrepreneurs’ do not need political support and solidarity, but to be allowed to embrace the forces of free-market capitalism.

Highlights

In the context of a greater focus on the politics of migration, the ‘refugee entrepreneur’ has become an increasingly important figure in humanitarian, media, and academic portrayals of refugees
Energy, and focus on what is deemed ‘entrepreneurship’, Syrian refugees are regularly understood to be both distinct from and superior to ‘African’ refugees, with whom many humanitarians are more accustomed to working, and who occupy a central position in how refugeehood and humanitarianism are often imagined
In responding to Benton’s call, and to the wider shortage of analyses of race and racialisation within International Relations (IR), the article expands scholarly understandings of the centrality of race and racial hierarchies to humanitarianism, by demonstrating some of the ways in which race is operationalised in discussions and portrayals of ‘refugee entrepreneurship’

Summary

Introduction

In the context of a greater focus on the politics of migration, the ‘refugee entrepreneur’ has become an increasingly important figure in humanitarian, media, and academic portrayals of refugees.

Results

Conclusion