Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: This article discusses the pragmatic dimension humanitarian classifications and discourses play in hierarchical and discriminatory practices taking place in the refugee regime. It does so by focusing on the notion of “vulnerability,” very much used in contemporary humanitarianism. The paper deconstructs the two main uses/understandings of this notion: its use as a humanitarian tool to categorize those most in need among the humanitarian beneficiaries – i.e. its use to categorize “people with specific needs;” and its “unofficial” use by humanitarian workers. In addition to being both limited and stereotyped, they are further in contradictions with each other; yet, they both ultimately reproduce hierarchies and inequalities among refugees from Mali. Eventually, performing the ideal, vulnerable refugee becomes impossible for urban refugees in Burkina Faso, and most other refugees too, thus making it harder for them to be perceived as legitimate refugees in the eyes of the humanitarian community.
Source: Public Anthropologist
Author: Nora Bardelli
Institution: University of Neuchâtel
Language: English
Topic: Migration and Exile Studies
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4307286010