Refugees, migrants, neither, both: categorical fetishism and the politics of bounding in Europe’s ‘migration crisis’
Coventry University · Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy · +1 more institution
Abstract
The use of the categories ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ to differentiate between those on the move and the legitimacy, or otherwise, of their claims to international protection has featured strongly during Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ and has been used to justify policies of exclusion and containment. Drawing on interviews with 215 people who crossed the Mediterranean to Greece in 2015, our paper challenges this ‘categorical fetishism’, arguing that the dominant categories fail to capture adequately the complex relationship between political, social and economic drivers of migration or their shifting significance for individuals over time and space. As such it builds upon a substantial body of academic literature…
Citation impact
- FWCI
- 227.06
- Percentile
- 100%
- References
- 34
Authors
2Topics & keywords
- Politics
- Fetishism
- Refugee
- Refugee crisis
- Political science
- Categorical variable
- Bounding overwatch
- Political economy
- Reduced inequalities