Some Human's Rights: Neo-liberal discourses of otherness in the Mediterranean refugee crisis

Abstract

Taking as its starting point Hannah Arendt’s (1994/1943) observations on the public response to the mass exile of Jews during World War Two, I argue that the UK’s mediatized reaction to those escaping conflict during the Mediterranean refugee crisis followed similar ideological patterns: fear, suspicion, antipathy, and finally reserved compassion. I then move on to examine the role that human rights organisations had in the sympathetic re-construction of migrants/refugees and argue that at the same time as media platforms have become progressively more intertwined, ideologically complex, and perhaps as a result more responsive to shifting narratives and the changing public mood about the perceived other, the message proffered by NGOs attempting to exploit the reach of digital media environments rehearsed its role in the public sphere debate in terms of an established Western system of representation. In response to this reading of the refugee crisis, I offer the conclusion that while discourses produced by the various actors with a stake in the construction and counter-construction of the refugee crisis were multifaceted and dynamic in their response to the evolving situation, the competing narratives surrounding the event remained resolutely embedded within a neo-colonial discourse of otherness.