Refugee Assemblages: The Figure of the Refugee during the ‘Crisis’ of Europe

Maryam Mushtaq 

I. Introduction

According to the European Network Against Racism (2017), there has been an increase in antagonism towards refugees in the last few years. Both the rise of the radical right and a surge in the number of refugees have contributed to this antagonism. The ENAR report has found that support for right wing parties in Europe is growing, in addition to the increase in the number of politicians and commentators on the right conveying anti-migrant and racist speech with impunity. 

The backlash is not only rhetorical but also reflected in Europe’s 2015-2016 policies. The European Union forged a deal with Turkey to return all new refugees from Greece in exchange for increased rate of resettlement of refugees residing in Turkey, provide visa-free entry for Turkish citizens, and provide financial support of 6 billion Euros for refugees residing in Turkey (Collett 2016; Gagou 2017). Countries such as Sweden and Germany have toned down their ‘generosity’ towards refugees (Kingsley 2016; Benner 2017). Hungary has taken a more hardline approach, passing a law that forces all refugees into detention camps, with the prime minister applauding the move, calling migration a “Trojan horse for terrorism” (Wintour 2017). As a result, hate crime has risen and as such any act committed is then seen as an expression of “a socially appropriate emotion in socially inappropriate ways” (Ahmad as cited in Puar 2007, 45). On the internet where anonymity is permitted, the backlash against refugees is much more intense, as the internet captures the various ways in which refugees are conceived of: as economic migrants-terrorists-sexual predators. A video titled “#MoreThanARefugee,” released by YouTube in June 2017 to commemorate World Refugee Day, depicts popular YouTubers’s interactions with refugees from different countries, showing clips of these refugees playing football, rapping, and flying kites. While the intent was to allow the audience to sympathize with refugees, the video was not well-received. Before the ‘dislike’ button was disabled, it received around 463,000 ‘dislikes’ as opposed to 144,000 ‘likes.’ A lack of empathy with refugees was equally pronounced in the comments section, which included “Seig Heil”, “#SaveEurope”, “#RemoveKebab”, “Why do they still try to convince us that there’s no difference between a refugee and an economic migrant”, “More than a refugee, an invader”, “#RapefugeesNOTrefugees”, and “#JustaRapefugee #JustaMuslimTerrorBomber.” Despite YouTube’s efforts to delete these hateful comments, the torrent did not slow down. 

This paper shows that terms such as ‘economic migrants’, ‘rapefugees’, and ‘terrorists’ are just some facets of a discourse that make up the refugee assemblage. The assemblage theory can help us better understand the refugee ‘crisis’ of Europe by allowing us to analyze processes and events that contribute to the ever-changing identity of the refugee. With regard to the refugee assemblage, I focus on three identities that are important and especially relevant to the current flow of refugees—the refugee as an economic migrant-terrorist-sexual predator. In addition, I discuss the figure of the refugee at borders and in camps that also contribute to the overall refugee assemblage. This refugee assemblage can be found in discourses, media, imagery, policies that question the legitimacy of the refugees’ claims. Given time and space constraints, I do not cover all issues that contribute to the overall refugee assemblage. Instead, I focus on the parts of the assemblage that contribute to becoming-refugee, specifically concerning the discourses surrounding the crisis and the material effects of such discourses (Wagner-Pacifici 1994, 7). The material effects of the antagonistic discourses towards refugees are apparent in the policies adopted by European countries in response to the increase in the number of refugees attempting to enter Europe. 

In the first section, I discuss what the assemblage theory is, how it has been used, and its relevance to the case of refugees. Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of assemblages as a decentralized chaotic network, where everything turns into air and is always-becoming, poses a problem as a concrete analysis becomes almost impossible. Yet, their work on the relations and connections between heterogeneous parts offers us insight into the different facets that influence the conceptions of refugees and helps us avoid both macro and micro-reductionisms. Furthermore, the always-becoming facet of their theory helps us understand identities as unstable and ever-changing, where gender, sexuality, and race are read as events and becomings. Finally, assemblages follow various ‘lines of flight’ where aspects can be placed in juxtapositions that reveal paradoxes, which I will discuss in greater detail. DeLanda’s work offers more stability in the formation and character of assemblages, which has led me to supplement Deleuze and Guattari’s work with Delanda’s on coding and territorialization. For methodology, I look to Puar’s work as a guide, as I argue that the refugee assemblage overlaps with the terrorist assemblage in many ways. For example, the conflation of Muslim/Islam/Arab is one way in which the refugee body and the terrorist body are both read. 

The second chapter, titled, The Figure of the Refugee, explains how the refugee subject emerges post-WWII, with the initial refugees being of European origin. The chapter examines international law concerning refugees and the inadequacies of the definition, as the status of refugee is limited to those fleeing persecution based on religion, race, nationality, and political opinion and covers just those living outside the country of their nationality. It demonstrates that the refugee crisis is, in fact, a European crisis: it is a crisis that reflects  Europe’s inability to reconcile human rights based on universality and that the access to those rights is limited by borders. Therefore, in the next subchapter, I closely examine the figure of the refugee at borders. It was the interaction of the refugee and Europe’s borders that brought media attention to the plight of refugees. Images of children and the dead body of Alan Kurdi, for instance, became key to the debate surrounding the refugee crisis, with some claiming a shift had occurred. In this section, I examine the images and both the short-term and long-term responses to them, as the images do eventually “go away.” Borders are where the nation-states filter out people based on their self-interests using medical certificates to prove trauma and determine age of the refugees, regulating whose claim is genuine and whose claim is ‘bogus’—thus, they try to determine who is worthy of refuge. In the next subchapter, I examine the figure of the refugee in camps, where in the space of exception, they are reduced to bare life—making them objects of aid and passive, depoliticized persons. Nation-states and humanitarian organizations see refugees in camps as bare life, increasingly dependent on humanitarian aid. 

I then introduce the refugee assemblage of economic migrant-terrorist-sexual predator in the chapter Refugee Assemblages. The formation of the assemblage is largely related to (mis)conceptions surrounding where the refugees are from, more specifically, which conflict they are fleeing. Some conflicts are more present in the media. For instance, the Syrian civil war was covered far more than conflicts in South Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Thus, the refugee from the Middle East fleeing Islamic extremists is more likely to be classified as a terrorist, as the former President of the United States Donald Trump has done. The terrorist is also one who is sexually perverse, which makes the refugee also a sexual predator. Finally, those entering Europe who are not Syrian are classified as ‘economic migrants.’ 

In the chapter Refugee as an Economic Migrant, I discuss the classification and assemblage of refugees as economic migrants, in order to delegitimize them. Refugees not of Syrian origin were portrayed as illegals and economic migrants by the media and politicians. By claiming that they are not refugees, the media and politicians implied that they were trying to benefit from the refugee resettlement program and steal benefits from the government. This rhetoric of the more legitimate refugee as a Syrian refugee had serious policy implications. 

The next subchapter Refugee as Terrorist, discusses the relationship between national security and closing up of borders due to perceived threats of terrorism, resulting in the conflation of refugees as terrorists. In this state of exception, the refugees are seen as sleepers for terrorism, thus reinforcing the conflation of Muslim with Arab and Islam. In the final subchapter, I discuss the process in which the refugee becomes the rapist and sexual predator. The Cologne attacks on New Year’s Eve was a key event that framed the attackers as Arab and North African refugees who targeted German white women. I discuss the media discourse surrounding the event and the resulting policies of teaching sexual norms to refugees. The analysis of the classes reveals the underlying ideas of perceived sexual exceptionalisms of the West. 

II. Literature Review

In this section, I discuss the various ways and fields in which the assemblage theory has been used. Furthermore, I discuss some of the problems concerning the assemblage theory as presented by Deleuze and Guattari. The assemblage theory is a theory developed (or not fully developed, a debate I will touch upon later) by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari focusing on the relations between both the heterogeneous parts of a whole and the process involved. It is concerned with states of becoming and emergence which are “sensitive to time and temporality” (Venn 2006, 107). One important aspect of the assemblage theory is that all the parts are located on the same level of ontology. The problem that the assemblage theory attempts to address is the “inherent and the irreducible heterogeneity of its objects” (Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). What it aims to shed light on and avoid is the isolation of one aspect and making it seem as though it is the most important aspect in order to understand the social world. In other words, it attempts to avoid falling into the trap of essentialism (Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). In addition to avoiding traps of micro-reductionism, it also attempts to avoid macro-reductionism, generalizations of ‘society as a whole’—“a society that fully determines the nature of its members” (DeLanda 2016, 10). 

The assemblage theory has been used by a number of authors in various fields of study such as international relations (Acuto and Curtis 2014). In human geography, Robbins and Marks also coined the term ‘assemblage geographies’ (Anderson and McFarlane 2011; McCann 2011; Dewsbury 2011; Robbins and Marks 2009). It is also used in archeology (Harrison 2011), sociology (Haggerty and Ericson 2000), and feminist and gender studies (Currier 2003; Saldanha 2010; Puar 2012). However, it is Puar’s work, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007), that fully incorporates the assemblage theory into various aspects, such as queer and gender theory, geo-politics, bio-politics, law and so on. She rethinks intersections and discourses as assemblages, thus including different types of source materials, including images, print media, popular culture, and law. Her analyses of terrorist bodies as sexually perverse is particularly useful to my discussion as I not only show how refugee bodies are conceived of as terrorist bodies but also how refugees are currently conceived of as sexual predators. 

Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptions of the assemblage theory is found in two of their works, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). Nonetheless, Deleuze and Guattari’s work, taken in its entirety, also poses some problems. To them, assemblages are composed in a “chaotic heterogeneity that cannot be taken apart” and as such “melts everything into air”, therefore we are left with no possibility of analysis (Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). Due to its complexity and radicalism, I supplement the primary readings on assemblages with secondary sources by Manuel DeLanda, who has written extensively and concisely on assemblage theory, specifically in his book Assemblage Theory (2016). With DeLanda’s processes of coding and territorialization, which are internal to assemblages, he offers us more stability to work with; this allows for possible analysis. DeLanda applies the assemblage theory to social history, language, war, science, and mathematics, using this theory, as many have, to various fields. This application of assemblage to various areas of research is both an advantage and a limitation. Due to its vague and ambiguous nature, the assemblage theory does not have concrete guidelines—everything becomes fluid. This is where Puar’s work becomes particularly noteworthy—I use it as my basis for research into refugee assemblages. 

Worthy of note, competing views exist on whether Deleuze and Guattari’s work is a full-fledged theory or not due to the lack of formalization of the assemblage theory on the part of Deleuze and Guattari, as they have “used it ad hoc throughout their work” (Nail 2017, 21). While DeLanda’s (2006) stance is that the theory is in need of supplementation and speculative extrapolation because it is not a full-fledged theory (a sort of neo-assemblage theory, if you will), Nail, in his article What is an Assemblage? (2017) argues that it is, in fact, a coherent theory. 

The Assemblage Theory

While there is much debate around the development of the theory, this chapter focuses on the points of agreement. It is agreed that the assemblage theory helps avoid micro and macro reductionisms. Puar (2012) encourages us to be critical of intersectionality vis-à-vis assemblages and of which pitfalls that can be avoided with the use of assemblages, in her work titled, “I Would Rather be a Cyborg Than a Goddess: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory.” Finally, I seek to address the issue I mentioned in the previous chapter—the radicalism of Deleuze and Guattari can be solved by some of DeLanda’s concepts of territorialization and coding. The term assemblage is, in fact, a mistranslation of the French word, agencement, which refers to both the action of fitting together components and the result the action creates, i.e. both the process and the structure (DeLanda 2016, 1; Nail 2017, 22; Elder-Vass and Rutzou, 2017). A clarification of the term assemblage is important as the term implies a coming together of two or more things; thus, the reader must “disassociate” from the common understanding of assemblage to fully grasp the theory (Nail 2017, 22; Phillips 2006, 109). Assemblages cannot be reduced to just the components. Rather, assemblages are contingent on the interaction and connection between the various components (DeLanda 2016, 9-12), as Puar elaborates, “specific connections with other concepts is precisely what gives them their meaning. Concepts do not prescribe relations, nor do they exist prior to them; rather, relations of force, connection, resonance, and patterning give rise to concepts” (2012, 57). 

One way to understand an assemblage is through the idea that the whole is made of parts but cannot be reduced to just the parts themselves (DeLanda 2016, 9-12). Thus, this theory is helpful in avoiding and providing an alternative to essentialism and micro-reductionism because without the concept of emergent properties—the properties of a whole caused by the interactions between the parts—the properties would just coexist, implying no interaction between the parts (DeLanda 2016, 11-12; Nail 2017, 23). Essentialism or the logic of essences and the problem with essentialism is, as Nail explains:

…it enquires us to already assume the finished product of what we are inquiring into. Assuming the thing to be a complete product, we simply identify the enduring features of its history and retroactively posit them as those unchanging and eternal features that by necessity must have pre-existed the thing…if we want to know what something is, we cannot presume that what we see is the final product nor that this product is somehow independent of the network of social and historical processes to which it is connected. (2017, 23-24)

In short, the interacting parts make a whole, but the whole is not the sum of its parts. One way to understand this dynamic is through the concept of the common notion, which simply refers to a situation wherein two or more things have in common through a relationship. As Philips puts it, “it is the representation of composition as an independent unity” (2006, 109). Taking poisoning as an example, the poisoned body is one that is irreducible to neither the body nor the poison; the body and poison have a relationship insofar as they both participate in the event of poisoning (Phillips 2006, 109). 

One feature of the components of an assemblage is that all the parts are on the same level of ontology. According to Deleuze and Guattari, “we believe only in totalities that are peripheral”, meaning that the “whole exists alongside the parts in the same ontological plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 1972/2004, 45; DeLanda 2016, 12). The parts or entities existing on the same ontological plane allows for the entities which operate at different levels to directly interact with one another, which would not be possible with a hierarchical ontology (DeLanda 2016, 19-20). While the entities may be on the same level of ontology, they are not the same; assemblages are composed of heterogeneous components, such as people, material, and symbolic artifacts (DeLanda 2016, 20). The parts could include “material forms (persons, bodies, things), practices (action, activities, agencies), knowledge (epistemes, scientific statements, concepts, discourse), social organizations (capital, culture, politics, bureaucracies, institutions, organizations) and forms of expression (gestures, words, music, affect, desire)” (Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). 

Hence, smaller assemblages can form larger assemblages, such as communities and organizations (DeLanda 2016, 20). When an assemblage is formed via the interaction between parts, it starts to act as a “source of limitations and opportunities for its components” in a fashion of “downward causality” (DeLanda 2016, 21). Assemblages, when established, are formed from bottom-up, but when formed they have a top-down influence on the various parts (ibid). The capacities and properties of the whole emerge from the interaction between the various parts, yet the capacities and properties of the whole are “irreducible to its parts but do not transcend them, in the sense that if the parts stop interacting the whole itself ceases to exist, or becomes a mere aggregation of elements” (DeLanda 2016, 71). The whole has a top-down influence on its parts and works to both constrain and enable them (DeLanda 2016). 

This ontological emergence is continual, meaning that everything is in a state of becoming. The concept of becoming is key to understanding Deleuze and Guattari’s work. As noted by May (2003), “becoming is the unfolding of difference in time and as time…being as difference is a virtually existent pure duration whose unfolding we can call becoming, but only on the understanding that the difference which becomes is not specific something or set of somethings, but the chaos which produces all somethings” (147). In short, becoming undermines stability and stable identities, redirecting our focus to the process rather than a fixating on a static identity (May 2003, 150). As such, the assemblage theory goes against Object-Oriented Ontology, which “emphasizes stability as the norm, autonomous essences, and definite boundaries” (Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). In contrast, assemblages can be understood as process-oriented ontology that “emphasizes the contingency, fluidity, and dynamism of the social world” (Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). Therefore, the assemblage theory can supplement intersectionality as assemblages “de-privilege” the human body—“matter is not a ‘thing’ but a doing” as bodies are “unstable entities that cannot be seamlessly disaggregated into identity formations” (Puar 2012, 56-57). Intersectionalism maintains that all identities are lived at intersections, and that no one body exists within one identity or a set (Puar 2012, 52). With intersectionalism the problem arises with identities that are in contrast to the center, but always remain in terms of that center. As Puar (2012) puts it:

Despite decades of feminist theorizing on the question of difference, difference continues to be ‘difference from’, that is, the difference from ‘white woman’. Distinct from a frame that privileges ‘difference within’, ‘difference from’ produces difference as a contradiction rather than as a recognizing it as a perpetual and continuous process of splitting…the specificity of Others has become a universalizing project that is always beholden to the self-referentiality of the ‘center’ (53-55).

The result is a stratification of the feminist scholarship; production of scholarship on women of color is largely produced by women of color, whereas white women “continue to produce scholarship that presumes gender difference as foundational” (Puar 2012, 53). This stratification is not just limited to race and gender—other categories such as sexuality, religion, ethnicity, age, nation, and disability also participate in re-centering the center in their discourse, as they emerged from “modernist colonial agendas and regimes of epistemic violence” (Puar 2012, 54). These categories become taken for granted which then blinds the promulgation and presumptuousness of these epistemological frames (Puar 2012, 54). Because Deleuze and Guattari base their theory on difference and variation, they problematize the conception of identity as stable due to the fact that “social entities are not made up of bipolar oppositions.” Rather, social entities are composed of multiple and various “interzones.” Assuming bipolarity and stability would prevent “the social field from being mapped out in a clear and distinct way” (Guattari 2009, 26 as cited in Puar 2012, 59). Within the assemblage theory, intersecting categories, such as race, sexuality, and gender are not simply identities or ascribed attributes. Rather, they are regarded as “events, actions, and encounters between bodies” (Puar 2012, 58). 

The question of how a subject emerges within the assemblage theory, if not in terms of “difference from” the center then arises. The mind is transformed into a subject through the “habitual application of certain operators” which are “contiguity, causality, and resemblance” (DeLanda 2016, 26). The habitual groupings of ideas through “relations of contiguity,” the habitual perception of “constant conjunction” between cause and effect, and finally the habitual comparison through “relations of resemblance” are the operators through which the mind transforms into a subject (DeLanda 2016, 26). Moreover, some interactions between people, i.e. social encounters are ritualized enough to categorize them as assemblages and the identity presented in these encounters are also a part of the assemblage of the subject as its part of interaction or relations (DeLanda 2016, 26). 

Due to multiple and obscure ‘interzones,’ one cannot use reified generalities. Rather, DeLanda suggests that the focus should be on various dynamics that function at different levels to conceptualize the real, heterogeneous agents and avoid viewing them as “monolithic entities” (2016, 16). Reified generalities, such as the ‘State’ and ‘Market,’ can be “eliminated from realist ontology by a nested set of individual emergent wholes operating at different scales,” in the sense that the ‘different scale’ would only imply a scale in terms of relation to the whole (read: same level of ontology) (DeLanda 2016, 16). Similarly, Deleuze and Guattari argue that Capitalism should not be understood as a single, monolithic mechanism which is universal in its nature and operation; rather, it should be understood as a combination and a co-functioning of multitude of agents working as machines in their local context (Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). Deleuze and Guattari, argue that when we view it as a single mechanism, the characteristics seem multidirectional and at times contradictory, which gives reified generalities a “schizophrenic” quality (Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). We should also avoid these reified generalities in relation to objects within assemblage theory as well, as DeLanda advocates defining or characterizing objects through their properties and capacities (2016, 72-73). When a capacity of an object is determined, it does so as an event; DeLanda uses the example of the knife to explain. The knife, used as a kitchen assemblage, has the capacity to cut, but it is not always used to cut something, thus the capacity is not fulfilled. When a capacity is fulfilled, then it does so as an event, “never as an enduring state” (DeLanda 2016, 73). Finally, while the properties of the knife may be finite, such as the weight or shape, its capacity is infinite, for the knife also has the capacity to kill, when used as weapon assemblage (DeLanda 2016, 73). There is no doubt that the objects’ capacities are largely directed by their place in various social assemblages, yet they “retain their own properties” that allows for them to “detach from one assemblage and [be] plugged into another” (DeLanda 2016, 74).  

Thus, the only unity in assemblage is that of “co-functioning” of living parts in the social world that are unstable, mobile, and inseparable, rather than parts that are “fixed or hierarchal” (Deleuze as cited in Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). In other words, it is a de-centered and fluid structure (Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). What stabilizes assemblages is its territorial sides (a process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization) and coding. Deleuze and Guattari (1980/2013; original emphasis) explain on the territorialization of assemblages:

 On a first, horizontal, axis, an assemblage comprises two segments, one of content, the other of expression.  On the one hand it is a machinic assemblage of bodies, of actions and passions, an intermingling of bodies reacting to one another; on the other hand it is a collective assemblage of enunciation, of acts and statements, of incorporeal transformations attributed to bodies. Then on a vertical axis, the assemblage has both territorial sides, or reterritorialized sides, which stabilize it, and cutting edges of deterritorialization, which carry it away (102-103).

Reterritorialization refers to the degree to which the social whole homogenizes its components or how when boundaries are sharpened, the assemblage is stabilized. These boundaries can in fact be real borders and boundaries that determine and contain, thus homogenize the assemblage from within (DeLanda 2016, 22; Elder-Vass and Rutzou 2017). Deterritorialization refers to the process of taking the assemblage back to its previous state, prior to its formation resulting in weaker connectivity between the parts (DeLanda 2016, 27; 30). The second parameter that stabilizes an assemblage is the degree of coding or decoding. Coding refers to expressive components that aid in fixing and stabilizing the identity of the whole (DeLanda 2016, 22). For example, within organizations, “linguistically coded rituals and regulations” provide some legitimacy of an authority; coding can be exemplified in “written rules, standard procedures, and constitution” (ibid). 

Methodology

In conjunction with the previous sub-chapter, this chapter discusses the assemblage theory in its applied form. I employ a similar methodology to that of Puar’s work in Terrorist Assemblages, with the idea that there is “no a priori system that taxonomizes the linkages, disruptions, and contradictions into a tidy vessel” (2007, xv). Due to limited time and space, I focus my analysis on discourses emerging from various news articles online and in print, and “representational and cultural artifacts” (Puar 2007, xv) of images, videos. The main reason for taking Puar’s lead on methodology is that her analysis is critically relevant to my project, especially with regards to sexuality, terrorism, and hate. The formation of the assemblage of the refugee is the result of interaction between various parts, some of which I will discuss below, including discourses, humanitarian organizations, supranational organizations, nation-states, events, policies, reports, technology, images in the media, and physical spaces. Again, one must keep in mind that the refugee is irreducible to these aspects. Once formed, the assemblage of the refugee works in a top-down manner, defining and limiting what it means to be a refugee. The assemblage of ‘economic migrant-terrorist-sexual predator’ can be understood similarly to that of Puar’s conception of the terrorist assemblage as ‘monster-terrorist-fag’ (2007). The assemblage is composed of these various but interconnected parts; it is the refugee assemblage that emerged from the European refugee crisis of 2015-2016. 

Because assemblages require that we study both the parts and the process involved in the interaction between the parts, this paper looks at certain key events and the resulting discourses that allow for the connection and interaction between the heterogeneous parts. However, these events and the parts themselves must not be viewed in isolation; they are connected to wider and broader histories of colonial discourses of sexuality and race. This paper seeks to uncover the connections between ostensibly unconnected facets of the refugee assemblage—connecting the terrorist, the economic migrant, and the sexual predator to each other, where there is a “denaturalizing expectation through the juxtaposition of the seemingly unrelated, working to undo…taken-for-granted knowledge formations” (Puar 2007, xv). 

Therefore, the paper not only tries to reveal the connections and the interactions between the parts, but also, in effect, reveals the unexpected paradoxes that result from that interaction. For example, the requirements at borders for adolescents to prove their age through medical certificates contradicts European and national law of informed consent that a child cannot provide. Disregarding reified generalities, as the assemblage theory encourages us to do, we face various lines of flight. For instance, analyzing the refugee ‘crisis’ through general North versus South would not do justice to all the refugees fleeing conflict. As I will later elaborate, some refugees from particular regions are conceived of as more of a refugee than others or worthier of the refugee status. Syrian refugees became the ‘ideal’ refugee, and as such policies resulting from that conception reflect it. Refugees from Afghanistan or Iraq, for example, were not considered proper refugees and therefore, turned away from the borders. Coding, which stabilizes the assemblage, has been analyzed through such requirements by law and through policies that are required of asylum seekers to gain refugee status. Therefore, I look at what are considered ‘bogus’ claims and pose the following question: who exactly is viewed as a true refugee, one worthy of asylum?

Finally, becoming is a key part of assemblages, an assemblage is an event and a process; the refugee is always becoming, always changing. For example, with the regime change after the departure of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Afghan refugee gained acceptance as a refugee worthy of the status of refugee. My paper deals with the refugee ‘crisis’ of Europe, in particular, by slowing down and providing “flashpoints” and “snapshots” of the ‘crisis’ that may provide some insight (Puar 2007, xvii-xxii). My text in its entirety can be considered a flashpoint—“a concretized movement from one incarnation of being to another”—wherein asylum seekers become refugees and terrorists and sexual predators and economic migrants; wherein events such as the Cologne Attacks can be conceived of as snapshots—“a break and an explosion”, “a history-making moment” and a “history-vanishing moment” (Puar 2007, xvii-xix), and wherein an event that should be slowed down in order to understand its effects and a moment where details remain unclear but “allows different temporalities to emerge” (Puar 2007, xvii-xix). Puar notes that in times of crisis, “in the midst of frenetic speeds of crisis and urgency…a matching of increased speed of thought that accompanies responses to crisis” (2007, xxi) should be met with “the slowing down of individual frames necessary to really comprehend and attend to that crisis” (2007, xxi). This is what I do in the text: slow down the Refugee ‘Crisis’ of Europe, wherein I examine various events and processes that contributed to the becoming-refugee. 

III. The Figure of the Refugee

In the previous chapter, I have elaborated on the theory I will use to analyze the refugee ‘crisis’. In this chapter, I will discuss some facts and figures of the current flow of refugees, and explore what it means to be a refugee now and what it meant to be a refugee in the past in relation to international law. I will also demonstrate that the refugee ‘crisis’ of Europe is actually a crisis of Europe. Here are some figures of the recent ‘crisis’ that will help put this paper in some context and would also help in dispelling some preconceived notions of the ‘crisis’. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently 82.4 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, of whom 26.4 million are considered refugees (half of which are under the age of 18). In 2017, the majority of the refugees were from four countries—South Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria and Palestine. Now, the numbers have not changed much, sixty-eight percent of all refugees come from Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Palestine. The number of displaced persons has surpassed that of the post-WWII era and is the highest it has ever been (UNHCR 2021). Only around 190,000 refugees were resettled in 2016 and the hosting countries of the most displaced persons are located in the Middle East and Africa. Only one European country in 2017 was in the top ten of the majority-hosting countries, with Germany being in ninth place (UNHCR). ‘Developing’ countries host approximately eighty four percent of refugees (Edmond 2017). These figures are largely a rough estimate and are potentially unreliable as organizations such as the UNHCR often rely on host countries for this information (Harrell-Bond, Voutira, and Leopold 1992, 212). The ‘official’ number of refugees is very much embedded in geopolitical and funding concerns, as I will later go into detail. Refugees tend to reside in countries of their immediate vicinity. For example, most of the Syrian refugees have fled to countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan (Edmond 2017). Refugees arriving to Europe had sharply decreased in the year 2016, in part due to the Turkey-EU deal, but also due to the increase in the death toll of people making the journey to Europe (Al-Jazeera 2017). 

It is also important to note that increased flows of migration are “not unique to our present conjecture” (Nail 2016, 161). The figure of the refugee emerged from WWII—the United Nations multilateral treaty of 1951, Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, sought to provide protection to European persons “fleeing events occurring before 1 January 1951” (UNHCR). Therefore, the original figure of the refugee was limited to the European refugee, and this was later amended in the 1967 Protocol, making the protection of refugees universal. What the mostly European member-states were initially signing up for were Europeans, primarily from the Soviet bloc (Marfleet 1998, 70). The acceptance of the refugees from the USSR was politically advantageous to the signatories at that particular time of Cold War tensions (Marfleet 1998, 70). Hathaway (1990) aptly notes, “it must be recognized that the linkage between refugee law and human rights was selective in a way that reinforced the economic and political hegemony of major Western states during this time” (142). Thus, the early figure of the European refugee was conceptualized in an entirely Eurocentric context. The definition of refugee is based on the 1951 convention and the amendment of 1967 is:

the term shall apply to any person who… owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

Note that the refugee’s primary action is crossing the border to flee persecution based on race, religion, nationality, and political opinion. The aspect of the refugee needing to be ‘outside the country of their nationality’ is problematic, as in order for one to gain asylum, one needs to cross the border. Crossing the border requires the presence of documents, such as passports, which in a time of conflict may be left behind, lost, stolen; in some cases, refugees do not possess these documents in the first place. The number of people internally displaced represents the majority of displaced persons. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center has recorded a total of 40.3 million internally displaced persons due to just conflict and violence at the end of 2016 (IDMC 2017). Yet, under the narrow definition of who constitutes a refugee, internally displaced persons do not qualify as a refugee under international law. 

The legal aspect of ‘persecution’ is not only broad but also extremely difficult to implement as it is based on the ambiguous criteria of subjective and objective determination of the refugee claims (Nasr 2016). Yet, due to the non-legally binding treaty, the ‘subjective’ nature of the criteria becomes overwhelmingly evident in the questioning, especially related to the determining persecution based on sexual orientation, which I will elaborate in my chapter on sexuality. The lack of reference to economic rights is also worth noting. This lack of reference to the economic aspect is of key importance to the current climate surrounding the refugee ‘crisis’, as terming them as ‘economic migrants’ seeks to delegitimize their status, which I will go into more detail. Furthermore, refugee status is not provided to those fleeing climate change and natural disasters and this has serious implications. The poorest countries, therefore developing countries, are impacted the most and bear the most burden of climate change—an intergovernmental panel on climate change has shown that the countries contributing the most to climate change will have the least impact of climate change (Vidal 2013). 

Rather than understand the law within the paradigms of humanitarianism or human rights, one must understand refugee law as:

…a compromise between the sovereign, prerogative of states to control immigration and the reality of coerced movements of persons at risk. Its purpose is not specifically to meet the needs of the refugees themselves, but rather is to govern disruptions of regulated international migration in accordance with the interests of states. (Hathaway 1990, 133). 

The overall effect of these legal limitations on the refugees is the lack of true commitment to refugees and the few that fall under the conditions per law “enjoy less than fully adequate rights” (Hathaway 1990, 133). Even with the amendment with the Protocol of 1967, the refugee laws fail to recognize the evolution of what prompts forced migration, thus excluding those most vulnerable—the non-European refugees (Hathaway, 165). Finally, due to the nature of international law, it comes down to the individual states to fulfill the obligations to which they agreed. Therefore, they can also decide the degree to which they want to fulfill their obligations. Individual nation-states are in control of who can enter and which claims to accept. Hathaway touches on an important point of how this provides “an enhanced opportunity for states to shape their compliance with refugee law to coincide with their perceived self-interest” (1990, 165).  The states also have the privilege of signing the treaty with reservations, and this only adds to the subjective nature of determining the claims of the refugees. 

Thus, claiming that this recent flow of refugees is somehow constitutive of a label of ‘crisis’ is telling more of Europe than it is of refugees. The crisis is not just a refugee crisis. It is also a European crisis. This European crisis:

…is that it is forced to choose between its pretensions of liberal democracy—based on the idea of universal equality—and the fact that its provision of certain rights is absolutely limited by territorial, political, legal, economic borders. The real crisis is that one cannot have both (Nail 2016, 161). 

The crisis of the inability to reconcile universal human rights within just European borders is epitomized in the Turkey-EU deal. Sending back asylum seekers from EU member states required cutting legal corners, more specifically EU and international laws (Collett 2016). For refugees to be sent back in accordance with EU law, they must be sent to a safe country and Turkey was categorized as unsafe at the time (Collett 2016; Gagou 2017). However, two months later, Turkey was deemed safe enough for the agreement to go into effect (Gagou 2017). The next two chapters will discuss the figure of refugees at borders and in camps, wherein the refugee is held at ambiguous status, as asylum seekers looking for refuge. They have not yet gotten their status as a refugee and/or have not been resettled. 

At Borders

In this chapter, I will discuss the way a country is operated as a home, resulting in methods of exclusion. These exclusionary methods are manifested as requirements to gain refugee status; medical certificates ‘proving’ trauma or age are required to determine genuine claims from ‘bogus’ ones. Additionally, borders and the violence that surrounds them are largely the reason why media attention is drawn to the refugee’s plight. I will also analyze the ways in which ‘iconic’ images of children have been discussed and reproduced in the media. In the last decade, more than half the deaths at borders have occurred around the European Union (EU)—even before the Syrian war—becoming the most dangerous border to cross in the world (Jones 2016, 16-17). The violence at the border only hit international news in late 2015 where a number of various events took place—the erection of the barbed fence in Hungary, the seventy-one bodies found in an abandoned truck in Austria, the closing down of the train station in Budapest which stranded thousands for days, and the subsequent march towards Germany (Jones 2016, 18-19). Yet arguably, the story and the image that had the most impact was of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy, whose body was washed onto Turkish shores when the family attempted to cross the sea to Greece in September 2015. Many newspapers called this a turning point in the debate on refugees (Berry, Garcia-Blanco, and Moore 2016, 5; Jones 2016, 19). 

The image of Alan Kurdi’s dead body certainly became ‘iconic’ as the innocent, human face of the Syrian war, which brought the resulting refugee ‘crisis’ to the forefront. Artists recreated the image of him lying face down on the beach—the more popular works include graffiti artwork created by Becker and Sen which adorns the banks of the Main river in Frankfurt. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei recreated the image by laying on the ground in a similar fashion to that of Alan Kurdi’s body. The Finnish government minted a commemorative coin with a rescue worker holding the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi. The list certainly goes on. The printing and online sharing of the photograph was widespread, fulfilling the “ultimate release of productivity and consumption” (Puar 2007, 108). The death and the image of Alan Kurdi’s body cut across the right wing and left wing media; the traditionally hostile media stance by right wing outlets reported the event in sympathetic light. The sympathy was likely the result of not the death of a refugee or their plight; rather, that the body was clearly that of a child’s, as right-wing news headlines read “Tiny victim of human catastrophe”, “Unbearable: three-year-old boy…” (Greenslade 2015). As I later discuss in the chapter, children who are edging towards adulthood are viewed suspiciously under bogus claims of asylum and because Alan Kurdi was clearly a dead child; he was treated with sympathy. 

The image of Alan Kurdi was later put alongside that of Omran Daqneesh, a Syrian boy, aged five, that was pulled out of the rubble in Syria after a Russian bomb hit his home on August 2016. The pictures in relation with one another implied, and in some cases outright spelled it out, that Omran Daqneesh is what happened if you stayed in Syria, and Alan Kurdi is what happened if you tried to leave and seek refuge. The media’s focus on the images and the ‘viral’ nature of the images were that of Syrian children, only reinforcing the common misconception of refugees as only Syrian and others as ‘economic migrants’ or ‘illegals.’ Yet, the photographs did go away, as opposed to Sontag’s claim of the digital age that “the pictures will not go away” (Sontag 2004, para. 4; Puar 2007, 110). The same platform that Sontag attributes to the forever-ness of the digital age has only served to insure the ephemerality of the images. Social media, Dabashi notes, “looks like a Hieronymus Bosch painting; murder and mayhem everywhere screaming for attention for a second before this scream is lost in the next, in this echo chamber of hellish ferocity” (2016). The change in the discourse was temporary, as simply a year after Alan Kurdi’s body washed ashore, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council at the time, announced the closure of the main refugee route through the Balkan states, as mentioned in the first chapter. Europeans fell quite short of their promised number of refugees accepted, accepting around 5000 refugees instead of the 66,400 they had promised (Kingsley 2016). 

The digital age brings a new aspect to the refugee ‘crisis’; smartphones were not only used to record the crisis but are a lifeline for most refugees (The Economist 2017). It is how they coordinate their routes and transportation, determine who to trust, where to go, and how they stay in touch with their loved ones (The Economist 2017). Technology is also used by many European countries to keep track of arrivals in order to monitor their borders, and this is done with the help of NGOs, such as the UNHCR using iris and fingerprint scans for identification purposes (The Economist 2017). In addition to land borders, maritime borders are also monitored with the help of online databases. EU states often avoid interfering with boats until they reach the shores or unless the boat is visibly in distress (Jones 2016, 24). The recording and storing of sensitive data can pose security problems as stateless persons without citizenship rights are at risk of exposure (The Economist 2017). The body of refugees are not only used to record and store information, and to identify them, but is also used to determine who a legitimate refugee is. In short, it is used to establish parameters of being considered worthy of refuge. 

Medical certificates proving that the person who put in an application for asylum has suffered torture, mental or physical, are taken into consideration to validate the claim made (Fassin and d’Halluin 2005, 598; International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI)). The ‘truth’ of whether or not they have suffered and are at risk if they return to their home country is taken from the body. The search for evidence of torture from the body is problematic as torture does not always leave evidence on the body and scars on the body do not concretely indicate what caused them (Fassin and d’Halluin 2005, 604-605). These evaluations are not limited to physical health; mental health evaluations can also be used to assess the “credibility” of one’s claims (IRRI). Yet, these medical certificates provide little to no help in increasing the chances of asylum (Fassin and d’Halluin, 2005, 600; 602). Medical tests are also used to verify the age of child refugees whose ages are disputed. 

Politicians on the right in the U.K. have remarked on the age of refugee children, claiming that adults may try to pass themselves off as children in order to gain asylum (BBC 2016). A conservative MP remarked on photographs of refugees coming to the UK from Calais, “These don't look like ‘children’ to me. I hope British hospitality is not being abused” and another saying that the refugees looked “mature for their age” (BBC 2016). These ‘imposter-children,’ a term coined by Silverman, are seen as a threat to national security and are needed to be sequestered and assessed (2016, 31). The assessments to determine the age of these ‘imposter-children’ are done to “appear more defensible in the face of an escalating global crisis of displaced children” as the children are cared for and adults posing as children can be rooted out (Silverman 2016, 31). The assessment of age is done through various examinations of the dental, skeletal, and sexual development nature (Silverman 2016, 33; Sauer, Nicholson and Neubauer 2016, 300). Age examinations are often unreliable, invasive, and simply an educated guess. For example, dental examinations have a margin of error of up to three years (BBC 2016; Silverman 2016, 35). Furthermore, experts in the field of child development are often not involved in the process, such as pediatricians or child psychologists (Sauer et al. 2016, 301). Age assessments become less accurate with increased age, which ironically, are used in most cases on children who are closer to be misidentified as adults (Silverman 2016, 33-34; Sauer et al. 2016, 301). Finally, there is a paradox that goes unacknowledged: invasive examinations require informed consent and informed consent can only be given by adults, yet the examinations are how refugees prove their claims of childhood (Silverman 2016, 35-36). The burden of proof will always fall to the refugee, and if they fail at proving it, the claims are labeled as ‘bogus’ as those who try to ‘jump the queue’ in order to gain benefits that belong to the true citizen. “Queue jumpers” is a term used to refer to those who cheat the system in order to gain benefits that belong to citizens (Foye and Ryder 2011, as cited in Dykstra 2016, 34); this idea has become pervasive to the point where the Refugee Council had to post a fact sheet online to debunk such myths, citing facts such as “asylum seekers do not jump the queue for council housing and they cannot choose where they live” and “asylum seekers do not receive more benefits than pensioners in the U.K.”

These rules and regulations surrounding what it means to be worthy of refuge by nation-states at borders, thus who a refugee is or who deserves the status of refugee, works to stabilize the refugee assemblage through the process of coding. The coding process gives legitimacy to authority, as we witness with the doctors who provide medical proof of trauma and age to the refugees. Yet, this coding and decoding is a process that is subject to change as nation-states are more likely, in the current political climate, to tighten their rules and regulations for accepting refugees, thus changing who qualifies for asylum. Borders are also marked by actual spatial territorialization, as refugees by definition of humanitarian and supranational organizations are those whose “primary action…taken is crossing a border” (Jones 2016, 20). 

The borders of nation-states can be understood in terms of domopolitics, manifesting “in a spatial politics of exclusion and marginality” (Darling 2011, 264). The borders work to “select, eject, and immobilize,” taking on the role of filtering out and selecting which people to let through, the border becomes “a place at which impure or unwanted elements are to be classified, removed, and separated from more benevolent or beneficial flows” (Darling 2011, 264). Darling (2011) argues that nation-states are governed as homes, regulating the flow of population into the home and subduing forces they perceive to be threatening (265). As such, asylum requests and refugees are then framed as security concerns, and works with other parts of the assemblage to form the refugee by seeking to organize, filter, and categorize them. Yet, the burden of proof is “always passed on to those seeking asylum, who at every stage of the process have to repeatedly demonstrate their ‘genuineness’, or risk being considered as ‘bogus’” (Bhatia 2017). The borders take part in the creation of genuine and deceptive refugees; medical certificates root out the deceptive refugees—the ones who attempt to take advantage of the system and acquire benefits that do not belong to them.

In Camps

In the previous section, I have discussed refugees lacking status at borders, specifically at European borders. In this section, I look at those who have been placed in camps, using Agamben’s concept of state of exception and camps as the ultimate space of exception in which life is reduced to the homo sacer. Less than one percent of refugees are resettled in a year and approximately 6.6 million refugees live in camps. A camp works as a state of exception whereby a “gap between the categories of ‘the human’ and ‘the citizen’ is exposed in the figure of a denationalized citizen”, in this case “the stateless refugee” (Perera 2002, 2). The state of exception is initially a temporary suspension of the rule of law which then becomes permanent (Agamben 1995/1998, 169). In the camp, the state of exception becomes a physical space as “it’s given a permanent spatial arrangement” (Agamben as cited in Perera 2002, 2). As with the borders, camps become places where the refugee assemblage is re-territorialized, where boundaries, and in this case, physical boundaries, are sharpened. The stateless refugee is a figure that cannot be “contained within the nation-state because of anxieties over ‘national security’, and is therefore relegated to a new space, ‘the camp’, within state boundaries, and yet outside” (Perera 2002, 2). The camp is a place of hybridity, wherein law excludes it yet it still works within that law of exclusion; it is external to the nation-state but not outside its borders (Perera 2002, 2). The state of exception is a place of indistinguishability, a place where terrorist and refugee become indistinguishable, and this certainly extends to camps, the epitomic space wherein the state of exception is realized (Perera 2002, 3). Refugees are reduced to bare life in general, but more so in camps, where they are organized within a “logic of the national order of things” (Malkki 2002, 353). Bare life, or Homo Sacer, a figure which emerges from Roman law, is one that can be killed but not sacrificed (Agamben 1995/1998, 7). The subject, i.e. the refugees, cannot be sacrificed because “their deaths were of no value to the gods” and could be killed because “their lives were of no value to their contemporaries” (Gregory 2006, 406). They are both outside divine law and juridical law (Gregory 2006, 406). 

In other words, camps are one way in which bare life is produced, life that is reduced to its barest form and which is stripped away of its political voice (Edkins 2003, 196). Humanitarian organizations, separated from politics, can only grasp human life as bare life, as sacred life, thus making refugees as objects of “aid and protection” (Agamben 1995/1998, 133-134). Indeed, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in accordance with its statutes, claims “the work of the High Commissioner is humanitarian and social and of an entirely non-political character” (Agamben 1995/1998, 133). When refugees and asylum seekers become an object of aid, they are rendered passive and helpless (Dykstra 2016, 41). And with the non-political nature of humanitarian organizations, they remain uncritical of nation-states, thus “despite themselves, maintain a secret solidarity with the very powers they ought to fight” and as such they “cannot fail to reproduce the isolation of sacred life” (Agamben 1995/1998, 133-134). Malkki (2002) notes, in her visit to the camp Mishamo:

The people of Mishamo lived in complex systems of relationship. These systems of relationship were social, political, juridical, mythico-historical, economic, etc. Their lives in the camp were also marked by a chronic tension between their presence there as ‘bare life’…and as political actors, subjects of history. The camp administrators wanted to see docile bodies…wanted to see the docility proper to objects of humanitarian and development assistance…the refugees’ presence as ‘bare life’ was more manageable than their politics. (359)

While refugees and asylum seekers resist this depiction and reduction of them as bare life, bureaucratic limbos, camp administrators, humanitarian organizations and other such controls would prefer to see and reduce them to bare life (Malkki 2002, 359; Bhatia 2017). 

Humanitarian action in the form of donations by nation-states allows for continued prevention of the naturalization and resettlement of refugees, “the reintegration and recognition of refugees can be delayed and denied as long as ‘humanitarian aid’ can be substitute for more meaningful action” (Dykstra 2016, 42). For example, many European countries pledged to donate millions of pounds yet many are actively pushing out refugees. Furthermore, the monetary donation is going to host countries, with the largest recipients being Syria and Turkey. The total aid given to Turkey from 2016-2019 is around €6 billion, largely in part due to the EU-Turkey agreement. Nonetheless, humanitarian aid instead of resettlement reflects the fact that most ‘developing’ countries have camps that have become permanent—the oldest camps are in countries such as India, Palestine, and Kenya (Finch 2015). Living in camps creates a permanent limbo state and prolongs the refugee’s dependency and continues the cycle of depoliticizing them (Harrell-Bond and Voutira 1992, 8)—a permanent state of bare life. The permanent state of living in refugee camps is indicative of the lack of adequate protection under the law vis-à-vis the legal definition of a refugee. Therefore, refugees that are not protected must make do with humanitarian assistance (Hathaway 1990, 134). The de-politicization and reduction to bare-life by humanitarian organizations is also strategic; the refugees need to be represented as helpless and dependent to raise funds (Harrell-Bond, Voutira, and Leopold 1992, 214). 

This dependency is further exacerbated by the rules and regulations that refugees and asylum seekers must follow. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work in most countries until they are granted refugee status, which can take years. In the U.K., for instance, asylum seekers are given a stipend of approximately £35 to spend within a week if they have no savings; otherwise, they must live off their savings (Lyons 2017). Refugees are also confined to the boundaries of the camps. Even when the camps have become their permanent place of residence, they are unable to leave since if they are caught they could be detained as illegal immigrants (Finch 2015, 53; Rosenberg 2011). Some refugees in the Dadbaab have not left the camp grounds since it was established in 1991 (Finch 2015, 53; Rosenberg 2011). One must then question why camps remain an attractive solution to the refugee ‘crisis.’ Camps allow for an exercise of control and serve as a source of information to determine the resources needed (Harrell-Bond et al. 1992, 209-211). Gathering information to produce official statistics on the number of refugees becomes necessary for fund-raising, as nation-states demand humanitarian organizations, such as UNHCR for statistics (Harrell-Bond et al. 1992, 212). As mentioned, the statistics are often unreliable, especially when we consider that most refugees do not live in camps or other settlements. Instead, they self-settle (Harrell-Bond et al. 1992, 212). Recording and counting the number of refugees is politicized as well, for example, countries that have good diplomatic relations will likely play down the number of refugees (Harrell-Bond et al. 1992, 213).

IV. Refugee Assemblages

In this section, I discuss some of the processes that contribute to the formation of refugees, namely the media’s attention to the Syrian war. Some common misconceptions surrounding the refugee “crisis” usually emerge from the media attention surrounding one conflict over another. Media attention is usually determined by the potential global impact of a conflict—especially with regards to U.S. foreign policy—the decipherability of the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys,’ and the scale of the conflict including the number of casualties (Taub 2016). Crisis or conflicts that concern United States’ “open-ended global war on terror” or the “long war” (Bacevich 2008, 1) will more likely be covered by the media. There is no doubt that the Syrian war is catastrophic and complex, with a recorded number of 465,000 people killed and missing by the end of 2017 and with multiple actors involved with their own agendas (McDowall 2017). The Syrian war itself can be analyzed within the context of assemblages, as nation-states such as the U.S., Turkey, Russia, Jordan, Iran, and multiple Gulf states have political interests in the region. Rebel groups and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and the Islamic State, and the Kurdish independent movement are also involved. There are various ways to examine the Syrian civil war. It does not simply boil down to the number of casualties. The Syrian war has the identifiable ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,’ which creates a good narrative (Taub 2016). Certainly, the assemblages I discuss are contingent on the mis(understanding) of the refugee crisis as a Syrian refugee crisis, as those not fleeing the very publicized war were considered economic migrants. The terrorist refugee is also the Syrian as the terrorist is always an Arab. Finally, the refugee is also a sexual predator as the terrorist is a sexually perverse creature. The next few chapters cover refugee assemblages, those of the economic migrant, the terrorist, and the sexual predator. 

Refugee as Economic Migrant

Often, the media and politicians play on people’s fear, usually concerning employment opportunities, and this fear is then (re)located onto visibly different bodies (Plumly 2016, 167). In this case, the bodies of refugees are viewed as threats to the already precarious economic order of a nation-state. In this chapter, I analyze the discourse of the refugee as an economic migrant, a distinction made by those who have an interest in politics of exclusion. The press coverage of the refugee crisis, especially that of the United Kingdom is highly revealing of a popular (mis)understanding of the refugee crisis as a Syrian refugee crisis, as a journalist reported on Calais:

I was with the migrants who were being evicted from camps by the French authorities earlier in the week and it was clear that they come from absolutely everywhere. Lots and lots of Syrian refugees as you would imagine, but also lots of migrants, economic migrants from West Africa and all the sub-Saharan countries from the Horn of Africa, from Eritrea in particular from Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan (as cited in Berry, Garcia-Blanco, and Moore 2016, 54)

The report prepared for the UNHCR on the press coverage in the EU notes that “the situation in Calais was consistently referred to as a problem of ‘illegal’ ‘migration’ or ‘immigration’ rather than an issue that related in part to the resettlement of refugees…aside from the Syrians all the other nationals were categorized as economic migrants” (Berry et al. 2016, 52-54; Jones 2016, 27). Furthermore, the wars or similar events in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq were not mentioned in news coverage as the driving forces for the refugees’ movements (Berry et al. 2016, 35). The lack of information on the driving forces behind refugees’ movement implies that they are not in fact escaping war or conflict, that they are not refugees. Conflation of terms such as immigrant/economic migrant with refugee is important as it indicates the perceived level of security and protection that the law should offer to the refugees and asylum seekers (Berry et al. 2016, 36). It also demonstrates that the EU leaders are taking the situation seriously whilst denying obligation to people from other places (Jones 2016, 27). Thus, Syria is the most cited, by various British newspapers and broadcasts, as the country of origin for refugees (Berry et al. 2016, 36). Right-leaning newspapers would cite the general region where refugees originated from, using language such as ‘Africa’ and ‘Middle East’ (Berry et al. 2016, 36). In reality, studies conducted by the UNHCR indicate that the vast majority of the people who crossed into Europe would in fact qualify for asylum (Berry et al. 2016, 36).

The ‘economic’ migrant’s claim is a ‘bogus’ one, in which one who seeks asylum is disguised as a refugee, not only stealing the spot of the legitimate refugee but also jobs from the more deserving Europeans, and in the case of the U.K., from the more deserving Brit. With the increased migration flows, job determination became the renewed key concern through which anxiety over migration manifested itself in (Berry et al. 2016, 16). However, the hate and resentment towards refugees cannot be boiled down to a neoliberal framework where resentment towards refugees can be explained by lack of market opportunities due to an increase in labor supply. Not only is the population of the countries with the largest economies in the world shrinking, but the dependency ratio is increasing—meaning that the population is aging, they are living longer and having fewer babies. The number of people over the age of 65 is rapidly increasing (The Economist 2014), and without any policy changes, the growth of the labor force in Europe is set to decline. What is needed is a larger and younger population and while the flow of refugees provides just that (half of the refugees are under the age of 18), different ways are sought out to delegitimize their claims and their entrance into Europe. Consequently, ‘economic migrant’ is just another assemblage of refugees delegitimizing the claims of refugees. 

This discrepancy in viewing certain nationalities as economic migrants and others as refugees or asylum seekers has led to people from certain nationalities being denied asylum, when earlier refugees were allowed a wave-through policy (Psaropoulos 2016). The wave-through policy was adopted by certain member states of the EU that allowed in refugees and asylum seekers before the start of their application process and resulted in a route across Western Balkan states (European Commission 2016, 2). In early 2016, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, announced the tightening of policies in allowing refugees coming to Europe through the Balkan route:

We have to end the so-called wave through process…I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants wherever you are from: Do not come to Europe. Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing. Greece or any other European country will no longer be a transit country (as cited in Psaropoulos 2016). 

Afghans were no longer eligible for relocation in Europe; only Iraqis and Syrians were allowed relocation services— “ostensibly because overt war continues to rage in those countries” (Psaropoulos 2016). The assumption of who is a refugee and who is not has influence over policies towards those who would qualify for asylum; a Syrian refugee’s claim to asylum is seen as more legitimate than, say, that of an Afghani’s. Furthermore, terming refugees as economic migrants is just another way to exclude non-Europeans. As Marfleet notes, “differentiation between ‘economic’ migrants, ‘refugees’ and others becomes meaningful only for those most determined to perpetuate systems of exclusion” (1998, 71). Thus, the idea of who a refugee is and therefore who should be granted asylum, is a Syrian one, or broadly speaking, a Middle Eastern one, following the thought of right-leaning newspapers.

Refugee as Terrorist

This chapter discusses the second part of the refugee assemblage, the terrorist disguised as a refugee. As mentioned in the chapter on camps, the state of exception is used to label any non-white/Arab/Muslim coming in as a terrorist with the justification of national security. In this section, I also discuss the reading of the conflation between Arab, Muslim, and Islam. Not only is a refugee from the Middle East, but also a terrorist—hence, the refugee ‘crisis’ cannot be understood without understanding the crisis of Islamist terrorism (Nail 2016, 158). Nail argues that these two crises were in fact never unrelated to the “nationalist imaginary,” but since the November Paris attacks in 2015, the largest attack in Europe since the Madrid bombings in 2004, “what was only implicit in the European response to the Syrian refugees has now become explicit in response to the tragic attacks in Paris: that migration is understood to be a form of barbarian warfare that threatens the European Union” (Nail 2016, 158). While the crises are the opposite in that they evoke certain forms of nation-states, refugees evoking open borders and inclusion, terrorism evoking closed borders and exclusion—all leading the “figure of the migrant” as a potential terrorist in the West (Nail 2016, 159-160). The conflation of the two points to the Other-ing of those non-white, non-western, or anything that does not align with the perceived characteristics of the West. In short, good old-fashioned Orientalism and racism are at work. Politicians and newspapers, even those who claim to support refugees, use colonialist language such as “rattling Europe’s gates”, “invasion”, “illegals”, “cockroaches”, “swarms”, “boatpeople.” They even go as far as comparing refugees with natural disasters such as “storms,” “floods,” “surges,” “waves,” “human tide,” and “human river,”  suggesting that refugees are perceived as a burden (Nail 2016, 161-165; Dykstra 2016, 39; Jones, 2015). The use of natural disasters to describe refugees emphasizes the perceived destructive effect they would have on their surroundings (Dykstra 2016, 39). The two crises of refugees and terrorism are linked to national security as racist ideology is often propped up by concern for national security, from FBI’s operation COINTELPRO to mass surveillance of the Muslim community under the PATRIOT Act in the U.S. Thus, the two discourses, migration/refugees and terrorism, “feed off each other and rely on the same imagery of violence, danger, and warfare…This is possible only under the condition that both are perceived as threats to the nation-state” (Nail 2016, 165). 

Both of these perceived “national security threats” are fought with increased militarization of borders under a state of exception, for example, post 9/11, Bush increased the number of patrol officers at the U.S-Mexico border and a representative of Colorado introduced a new bill on immigration, arguing that “How many people in this country have to lose their lives before we come to the understanding that defense of the nation begins at the defense of our borders?” (as cited in Doty 2007, 123). The rhetoric and perception of the link between terrorism and migrants was not just limited to politicians—post 9/11 saw the propping up of billboards on highways claiming, “Terrorists love open borders” and the cropping up of groups such as the Minuteman Project; a group of civilians who volunteer to patrol the U.S-Mexico border (Doty 2007). The threat towards national security creates a state of exception wherein there is a “suspension of the rule of law on the basis of a factual state of danger” (Agamben 1995/1998, 169). 

Thus, the militarization of borders is done through this state of exception. The events of 9/11 have not only allowed for the militarization of borders but also contributed significantly to the reinforcement of Muslims being synonymous with Islam and Islam being synonymous with being Arab (Perera 2002, 8; Puar 2007, 13). Moreover, the events reinforced and cemented the idea that asylum seekers and refugees were ‘sleepers’ for terrorism, thus making asylum seekers “stand-ins for terrorists” (Perera 2002, 8). This is in contrast to the fact that asylum seekers and refugees are the ones most effected by terrorism, fleeing from countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria (Global Terrorism Index 2016, 9-13). The under-reporting of such events in the media certainly brings into question which bodies and which lives are considered ‘grievable’ in comparison to others (Butler 2004, 31). Refugees are not dehumanized per se. Rather, they are reduced to bare life and “there is less a dehumanizing discourse at work here than a refusal of discourse that produces dehumanization as a result” (Butler 2004, 36). Rather than dehumanization or complete invisibility, there is visibility, a “racial production of the visible…the act of seeing is simultaneously an act of reading, a specific interpretation of the visual” (Puar 2007, 183). The visibility of refugees’ plight is only visible when they arrive at Europe’s borders, when one part of the assemblage, refugees fleeing conflict, interacts with another, European borders, otherwise:

…if there is a ‘discourse’, it is a silent and melancholic one in which there have been no lives, and no losses…None of this takes place. In the silence of the newspaper, there is no event, no loss and this failure of recognition is mandated through an identification with those who identify with the perpetrators of that violence (Butler 2004, 36). 

As mentioned, only under specific circumstances do bodies and lives become visible, and the Syrian war became an exception due to its narrative, the US foreign policy, and the involvement of various actors. 

The conflation and the forced relation between the two concepts of terrorist and refugee is key in understanding the refugee assemblage of the European Refugee Crisis in 2015-2016—it is a key rhetoric in anti-refugee, anti-migration, and xenophobic discourse. It is important to note that refugees are well aware of the conflation and slippage of refugee and terrorist and seeing/reading of their bodies as terrorist bodies. For example, in August 2017, refugees in Rome who were protesting their forced removal by the police from an office building in which they resided due to lack of state-run shelters, hung a sign arguing the difference and accusing the authorities of treating them as criminals: “We’re refugees, not terrorists” (Al-Jazeera Plus 2017).

Refugee as Sexual Predator

This final chapter discusses the assemblage of the refugee as a sexual predator, one whose sexuality is perverse, both excessive and repressive, recalling the historical colonist discourses of sexuality, race, and gender. The Cologne attacks on New Year’s Eve of 2015 and the immediate and long-term reverberations are key in understanding the climate of refugees going to Europe for asylum, specifically the policies put into place concerning sexual norms. Nevertheless, it would be imprudent to say that the Cologne event was the raison d’têre for the policies because as noted, refugees are perceived as potential terrorists and as I will demonstrate, terrorists viewed sexually perverse (Puar 2007, 81). The Cologne attacks occurred almost immediately after the Paris attacks in November 2015, further cementing the conflation of terrorist and refugee that emerged from the events of 9/11. Migrants and refugees of various racial and ethnic background were accused of a mass sexual assault on white German women; while the circumstances remain unclear, it is clear that it was not only white German women who were assaulted (Plumly 2016, 169). A report showed that refugees were responsible for 3.6% of sexual offences in 2015 (The Economist 2016). In fact, many refugees are victims of rape and sexual violence due to their vulnerable and stateless status (The Economist 2016). The media classified the perpetrators as Muslim refugees, ignoring the fact that Muslim refugees only constitute some refugees—this essentialist narrative on who the victims and perpetrators were ran rampant in the media (Plumly 2016, 175). 

Plumly analyzes various images published in the German media in reference to the attacks on New Year’s Eve, one of which depicts in grayscale, a white German woman with black handprints on several places on her body, with the title of the magazine placed diagonally across her body, evoking the imagery of a crime scene. Another similar monochromatic image depicted a woman’s legs with the space between the legs in the form of a black arm and hand reaching towards her genitals. These images reflect the thought that somehow “black rape, unlike white rape, leaves a visible stain on the female body” and that the refugees or rapefugees, as protestors called them, threaten the “purity of these white bodies” (Plumly 2016, 176-178). The images not only reveal how the public thought of the perpetrators—as the Other—but also who they considered to be the German Self: the white woman (Plumly 2016, 176). The responses to the Cologne attacks were threefold: demands of retribution, return (sending refugees home), and integration. The latter, being a classic liberal solution, demanded that refugees attend integration classes wherein sexual norms of the host country are taught. Germany was not the only country contemplating teaching their ‘Western sexual norms’ to its refugees. The United Kingdom, Belgium, Norway, Finland, and Sweden are countries that either already offer mandatory courses or are in the process of proposing to offer these courses. 

Various proposals cited the Cologne attacks as proof that refugees had to learn to “integrate” into the Western culture. The underlying assumption is that not only do they violate gender norms of the West, but they are doing so because they are unaware of those norms. Worth noting is the right-wing media’s reaction to the courses as wasting the taxpayer’s money on teaching refugees ‘manners.’ The courses attempt to instill in the refugees a wide range of ideas, such as ideas of equality between sexes and genders, homosexuality, basic sex education, consent, as well as more complex issues. For example, a course taught in Belgium advocates actions such as opening doors and carrying items for women, labeling it as “gallantry” (The Economist 2016), which is problematic as ‘chivalric’ actions promote benevolent sexism, reinforcing stereotypes of women as weak and in need of help. They also teach the refugees about sexual freedom; photos of famous popstars are used to teach that however scantily dressed they are, that does not indicate availability and are instead signs of individual freedom (The Economist 2016). Under liberalism, the ultimate freedom is that of the body (Puar 2007, 81). In Finland, a reporter captures a teacher’s demeanor and words while teaching:

“So, in Finland,” she says softly, “you can’t buy a wife. A woman will only be your wife if she wants to be—because here women are men’s equals… But you can go out to the disco with a woman here,” adds Johanna brightly. “Although remember, even if she dances with you very closely and is wearing a short skirt, that doesn't mean she wants to have sex with you” (Kirby 2016). 

Two elements are clear: the refugees’ sexuality is both excessive and repressive because they are assumed to be Muslim and/or Arabs and “Muslim masculinity is simultaneously pathologically excessive yet repressive, perverse yet homophobic, virile yet emasculated, monstrous yet flaccid” (Puar 2007, xxv). The courses play on the idea of gender and sexual exceptionalisms of the West, wherein people, including refugees, can finally be liberated. 

The West as a place of gender exceptionalism is where men and women are equal, where only white women can save “oppressed” women elsewhere, and where the “feminist subject par excellence” resides (Puar 2007, 5). Sexual exceptionalism follows along similar lines: it is in the West, i.e. Europe and the U.S., where queer Arabs and Muslims find their liberation, and in fact, the mechanism through which sexual exceptionalism is “mobilized” is through discourses of sexual repression (Puar 2007, 9-13; 94). We see this replicated with reporting on LGBTQ+ refugees; the West is a place where the gay Syrian refugee can “finally be open about his sexuality” (Hutton 2017). According to a BBC article, “living in a liberal city in a country where homosexuality has been legal for 50 years this July, and where same-sex marriage was introduced in 2013, he is taking advantage of being openly gay for the first time” (Hutton 2017). Closeted gay refugees are told: “in Germany you can be open about your sexuality, for instance…you can hold your partner's hand in public” (Dammers 2016). Puar remarks on some of the features of exceptionalism:

…the exception insidiously becomes the rule, and the exceptional is normalized as a regulatory ideal or frame; the exceptional is the excellence that exceeds the parameters of proper subjecthood and, by doing so, redefines these parameters to then normativize and render invisible (yet transparent) its own excellence or singularity. Sexual exceptionalism also works by glossing over its own policing of the boundaries of acceptable gender, racial, and class formations (2007, 9). 

The sexual exceptionalism of the West not only provides “liberation” but also determines how this liberation is to be achieved via the adherence to specific norms and methods. LGBTQ+ refugees are put through questioning to determine if claims of their sexuality hold up. Intrusive questions include but are not limited to why the refugee “felt the need to have sex every day when that was not even normal in heterosexual relationships,” “what a relationship with a man could provide that was absent from a heterosexual partnership,” and were also asked to describe the various positions they had sex in (Travis 2014; Meaker 2017). Although photographs and video evidence are prohibited by the EU, gay refugees are increasingly recording themselves having sex with a same-sex partner in order to prove their sexual orientation (Lewis 2014, 959). In part, this is due to immigration officials refusing testimonies that corroborate the asylum seekers’ sexual orientation from people who have not had sex with the asylum seeker, a part of a “culture of disbelief” that surrounds refugees and asylum seekers in general (Lewis 2014, 959), as we saw with ‘child-imposters’ and medical certificates. 

The classes taught on sexual norms speak to not only the perception of the sexually perverse asylum seeker but also the homogenization that is required of refugees once they are inside their borders, which is done as an attempt to homogenize the refugee to their larger conception of the refugee: the sexual predator. Teaching sexual norms only reinforces and confirms the facet of the refugee as a sexual predator—reterritorializing the refugee as sexually perverse and therefore stabilizing the assemblage. Additionally, the refugee assemblage is working in a top-down manner, limiting the idea of what it means to be a refugee. 

The refugees, once they prove their sexuality, are either accepted and thus liberated in the West or are repressive and excessive in their sexuality, as evident in the questioning they are put through. Puar (2007) explains further:

Queer Arabs and Muslims, doubly indicted for the fundamentalist religion they adhere to or escape from and for the terrorist bodies that religion produces, are either liberated (and the United States and Europe are often the scene of this liberation) or can only have an irrational, pathological sexuality or queerness. These entanglements, debatably avoidable to an extent for queers from other traditions such as Judeo-Christian, plague Muslim queers because of the widespread conflation of Muslim with Islamic and Arab: Muslim = Islam = Arab…the agency of all queer Muslims is invariably evaluated through the regulatory apparatus of queer liberal secularity (13). 

I would add that it is not just liberal secularity through which queer refugees are evaluated but through liberalism in general; the refugees that identify with the labels of the West (there are different and various categories of sexuality in the rest of the world that are not present in the U.S. or Europe) are seen as queerer than those who do not, especially with regards to male homosexuality. Women queers and lesbians are often denied asylum on the basis that their sexuality can be hidden; therefore, they could avoid persecution, but they also often face more intrusive questioning, including questions concerning sex toys, sexual positions, ‘lesbian’ novels and shows (Lewis 2014, 965). This speaks to what a quintessential gay or queer person looks like, in this case at least: a male homosexual. Massad (2007) argues that in fact what is taking place is the idea that only the West can truly define what is gay and lesbian. Queer Others are not “fit to define themselves” (43). The agenda of the West is to assimilate the Rest, under the assumption that gay and lesbian are universal categories, into their definitions of queer sexuality. (Massad 2007, 47; 163). 

Refugees are framed in the media in various ways, as a burden, a danger, and as helpless—in need of humanitarian aid (Dykstra 2016, 37). With the Cologne attacks and the confusion surrounding it, the liberal media was vague in their descriptions of the alleged attackers, standing by their one-dimensional portrayal of refugees as suffering and helpless; it is important to note that those are not mutually exclusive. Žižek (2017) makes an important point that “there is nothing redemptive in suffering: being a victim…does not make you some kind of privileged voice of morality and justice (83). Refugee organizations in Europe acknowledged the perpetrators and asked that the public not “generalize based on the shocking events in Germany” and that the perpetrators “are not representative of the majority of people living and seeking refuge in the European Union” (Transform! Europe 2016). They also acknowledged the conflation of Arab, Muslim, and Islam, further stating that “nor should we point the finger at Islam as somehow incompatible with European values or women’s rights as this is a great disservice to the majority of Muslims who condemn this type of behavior” (Transform! Europe 2016).

V. Conclusion

Events, discourses, images, organizations, human bodies, and state actors all contribute to the formation of the refugee assemblage. All these aspects become the heterogeneous parts that interact with one another, such as humanitarian organizations interacting with human bodies at borders or in camps. An appraisal of aspects in isolation would not do justice to analyzing complex situations that involve various actors. Three aspects of the refugee assemblage are prevalent, especially in the media, humanitarian, and political discourses surrounding refugees, which consist of the refugee as an economic migrant, a terrorist, and a sexual predator. The assemblage theory helps us bring together the seemingly unconnected and uncover the hidden connections and relations between the heterogeneous parts. 

While the initial refugee emerged as a European figure during the post-WWII era and has evolved since then, international law concerning the status of refugees fails to account for this evolution. The refugee status is given to the select few who fit the narrow definition under international law, denying the status to those who, for example, are fleeing the dangers of natural disasters or climate change and those who are internally displaced. Europe’s claim of liberal universality that ends at the borders of Europe poses conundrum for Europe, and can be critically considered the real crisis of Europe. 

The primary action the refugee takes is that of crossing a border. Leaving his or her place of nationality is what qualifies him or her for the status of refugee under international law. It is at the borders where media attention is drawn, where the violence of the border and the crossing of can be fatal. It is at the border where Alan Kurdi’s body hit international news and became viral and convinced some that the debate had changed. But any change, in the media or in policies, was temporary. For instance, only a year after Alan Kurdi was found, the EU made a deal with Turkey to return the refugees coming into Europe to Turkey. Heavily controlling borders is also a way to filter out those whom the nation-state views as worthy of the status of a refugee. Filtering is done through medical certificates by reading the truth of their claims from their bodies. While borders are a clear indication of one’s positionality, refugee camps on the other hand are spaces of indistinguishability—a space of exception. Camps are where refugees are reduced to bare life, where their voices are depoliticized and made into objects of aid. 

In the current flow of refugees, the assemblage has evolved to become economic migrant/terrorist/sexual predator. Anyone not of Syrian origin was classified as an economic migrant, which is largely due to the lack of attention paid to conflicts in other parts of the world. Regardless of the lack of knowledge, it still points to the need for exclusionary politics. The next part of the refugee assemblage is that of the terrorist; the formation of this aspect can be traced to the attention to the Syrian war as well; the refugee is of Arab descent and consequently, is a terrorist. The events of 9/11 had reinforced the perception that borders, threats, and terrorists are connected. In the state of exception induced by a terrorist threat, the borders must be the first to be secured. Finally, because the terrorist is sexually perverse, so is the refugee—their queerness is either accepted and they can finally be liberated in the West or they their queerness is classified as perverted and irrational pathology. The events of Cologne on New Year’s Eve and the nation-states’ response to the events, of teaching sexual norms, reveal the reading of queerness as perverse from refugees’ bodies.

The implications of the assemblages of refugees previously outlined are of resentment and hate with which the refugees are constantly faced. As with sexuality, trauma, and age, refugees’ narratives are often framed in a culture of disbelief, and therefore, any hate crimes that might have been committed against them need to appear as ‘genuine’ and they need to appear as ‘genuine’ targets; proof of the crime needs to be provided (Bhatia 2017). In order to move the refugee and their family from an unsafe area, proof of the hate crime requires that the refugees report the crime to the authorities, provide their forms of the report, and provide a letter detailing the incident (Bhatia 2017). Refugees are then seen as contagions (as mentioned above), evident in the use of the imagery of natural disasters to signify that the surroundings are in danger (Dykstra 2016, 40). This contagious nature of refugees is then linked to radical Islamism—newspaper articles certainly refer to possibilities of radicalization of refugees and camps as “breeding grounds” for radicalization (Dykstra 2016, 40). As Sara Ahmed (2004) notes, “fear involves relationships of proximity…it does not reside positively in a particular object or sign. It is this lack of residence that allows fear to slide across signs and between bodies” (63-64). This fear can, therefore, appear from within and towards any body within a range of ‘not-us’ and “allows for the figure of the terrorist to retain its potent historical significatory ambiguity while it also enables the fear to ‘stick’ to bodies that ‘could be’ terrorists” (Puar 2007, 186). This stickiness draws anyone into the “affective economy of fear” as “feared bodies are contagious” (Puar 2007, 185-187).