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Ep. 185: Nativism in Media (Part II) - The Artificial Cold War Distinction Between 'Migrants' and 'Refugees'

Added 2023-07-19 16:13:55 +0000 UTC

Immigration law should "stop punishing innocent young people brought to the country through no fault of their own by their parents," the Obama White House stated in 2013. "Migrant Caravan Continues North, Defying Mexico and U.S.," The New York Times warned in 2018. "Biden Administration Invites Ordinary Americans to Help Settle Refugees," NPR announced in early 2023.

For over a century, U.S. policy and media have distinguished between supposedly different types of immigrants. There are refugees, who are fleeing political persecution, and migrants, who are crossing a border for reasons that aren’t necessarily so noble. There are deserving immigrants, who are upwardly mobile and law-abiding. And there are undeserving immigrants, who are tax-dodging gang members.

It may be easy to take this hierarchy of displaced people for granted, as it’s become so commonplace in U.S. immigration discourse. But there’s nothing natural or organic about it. These distinctions––between, for example, "refugee" and "migrant" –– are historically informed by racism, gendered notions of labor and a superficial, ideological distinction between negative and positive rights. The plight of certain immigrants is instrumentalized and prioritized over others, depending on their proximity to contemporary notions of whiteness, their ability to create cheap labor, and their utility to combating the spread of dangerous leftwing ideologies like anarchism and socialism.

This episode – Part 2 of our three-part series on media narratives about immigration (listen to Part I here!) – examines the U.S. government's pattern of arbitrarily categorizing displaced people as some version of "good" or "bad." We'll look at how these distinctions are informed by, and often obfuscate, the U.S.'s global relations and imperialist expansion, and how the policies behind these categories turn people seeking safety and stability into geopolitical pawns.

Our guest is writer, historian and professor, Dr. Rachel Ida Buff.

Guest

Dr. Rachel Ida Buff is a writer, historian and professor. Chair of the History Department at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, her writing has appeared in academic journals as well as outlets such as Jacobin, Truthout, and Jewish Currents. She is the author of the book A Is For Asylum Seeker: Words For People On The Move, published in 2020 by Fordham University Press and is currently working on her first novel, entitled "Holy Toledo."

Show Notes

How the Red Scare Shaped the Artificial Distinction Between Migrants and Refugees

Sarah Lazare | February 5, 2018 | In These Times

The Ideological Limits of Asylum

Jordan Von Manalastas | June 25, 2018 | Jacobin

The Problem with the Concept of a 'Good Immigrant'

Joe Zadeh | October 11, 2016 | VICE

The 'Good Immigrants,' The 'Bad Immigrants,' The Deported

Vanita Gupta and John C. Yang | August 1, 2017 | Huffington Post

The Right Kind Of Immigrant: The Narrative Of Deserving And Undeserving Immigrants

Sujatha Fernandeson | June 14, 2019 | BESE

Not all immigrants are “nice”: Critiquing the “good immigrant” trope

Katherine E. Entigar | January 29, 2019 | CUNY Academic Commons

Good immigrants, permitted outsiders: conditional inclusion and citizenship in comparison

Andreas Hackl | March 11, 2022 | Ethnic and Racial Studies

Stop dividing immigrants into the ‘good’ vs. the ‘bad.’ They all deserve due process

Jean Guerrero | March 10, 2022 | Los Angeles Times

The Existence of Human Beings Is Not a “Crisis”—Our Nativist Response Is

Adam Johnson | September 21, 2021 | The Column

Dangerous narratives and climate migration

Brami Jegan and Kim Bryan | February 11, 2021 | 350.org

The myth of immigration as a security issue

Daniel Denvir | January 30, 2020 | Verso

Why we need to abolish borders

Arun Kundani and Harsha Walia | April 5, 2023 | kundnani.org

The Particular Harms of the "Good Immigrant" Versus "Bad Immigrant" Construction on Black Immigrants in the United States [PDF]

Sophia DenUyl | 2021 | Georgetown Immigration Law Journal

Framing Climate Change as a “National Security Priority” Isn’t a Clever Maneuver to Get People to Care — It’s a Centrist Co-option Strategy to Bloat the Budgets of ICE and the Pentagon

Adam Johnson | November 24, 2020 | Medium

How racist narratives about Muslims in the British press were reconfigured during the initial peak of COVID-19

Elisabeth Poole and Milly Williamson | September 7th, 2021 | LSE British Politics and Policy

Visual tropes of migration tell predictable but misleading stories

Sarah Bassnett | November 5, 2018 | The Conversation

Rethinking humanity and responsibility in the refugee ‘crisis’: A visual typology of news media [PDF]

Lilie Chouliaraki and Tijana Stolic | 2016 | London School of Economics and Political Science

What So Many People Are Getting Wrong About the “Border Crisis”

Fernanda Echavarri | March 27, 2021 | Mother Jones

Phantom Menace: The Psychology Behind America's Immigration Hysteria

John B. Judis | February 13, 2008 | The New Republic

Central Americans and Asylum Policy in the Reagan Era

Susan Gzech | April 1, 2006 | Migration Policy Institute

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here. You can find transcripts of past episodes and News Briefs here.

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