Humanitarianism with a neo-liberal face: vulnerability intervention as vulnerability redistribution

Date

2020-08-17

Author

Sozer, Hande

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The notion of vulnerability has recently gained prominence in humanitarian discourses. This article examines the contemporary humanitarian deployment of the notion of vulnerability, with respect to Syrian forced migrants. It argues that current humanitarian deployment of vulnerability hints the emergence of a new humanitarian morality responding to and reproducing neo-liberal political-economic configurations. The article, first, identifies a recent shift in humanitarianism's lexicon of concern from forced migrants' vulnerability to 'vulnerable' forced migrants. Accordingly, it became thinkable, morally acceptable, reasonable, and even desirable to provide humanitarian assistance only to segments of forced migrants. 'The vulnerable' becomes an unevenly distributed label. Second, it examines neo-liberal vulnerability interventions via cash-transfer by means of specific redistributive schemas. It claims that such interventions indicate not only a discriminatory distribution of assistance but also a recalibration of the purpose of humanitarian assistance from relief to terminating migrants' use of negative coping strategies. Finally, such deployment of vulnerability, at best, redistribute vulnerability, if not in financial terms, by jeopardizing 'vulnerable' migrants' relations within and outside the migrant community. Overall, the article problematises the use of the notion of vulnerability in humanitarianism for its damaging effects made between all forced migrants deserving of humanitarian empathy and the newly 'vulnerable' forced migrant.

Subject Keywords

Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous), Demography

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63475

Journal

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2019.1573661

Collections

Economics and Administrative Sciences, Article

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Citation Formats

H. Sozer, “Humanitarianism with a neo-liberal face: vulnerability intervention as vulnerability redistribution,” JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES, pp. 2163–2180, 2020, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63475.