By Luna Ramirez Castellanos
After reading, the first thing that comes to mind is the categorisation of immigrants: how does superimposed language alter the public perception of refugees? How does it bend, shape and regulate their own identity?
The New Odyssey follows the journey of Hashem al-Souki as he leaves his home in Damascus, Syria, to reach Sweden in the hopes of acquiring a legal pathway for his three children to emigrate with him.
The Arab Spring, a wave of anti-authoritarian protests across the Arab world – namely in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen—reached Syria in February 2011. Under the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, the Free Syrian Army emerged as a guerrilla-rebel force. Hashem, a regular worker at a water plant, was abducted, tortured and unjustly incarcerated by the regime, as were at least 11,000 others. Faced with a country becoming unrecognisable, Hashem is forced to flee. However, as he leaves the country, he encounters a paradigm: “does it make him any less Syrian to leave?” On a personal level, leaving the country also means leaving those who rely on him, especially his father: “I have to go – not for me, but for my children and my wife.” His journey out of the country also confronts him with guilt; at checkpoints he is cursed by soldiers, “Why are you abandoning the nation?”, or by members of the Islamic State ‘, You’re abandoning jihad. You don’t want to be mujahideen. His seeking of safety is constantly permeated by a “failure” to be patriotic, to love his country, to be Syrian.
A similar theme is explored in the New Arab’s piece: uprooting and belonging, as Syrians have built a new home far from theirs. Far-right politicians, in particular, have seen the fall of the Assad regime as a call to depart. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann commented: “Those who have already integrated well are still cordially welcome. But it is clear that there are also people who have been here for 10 years and don’t have a job and haven’t integrated well, and then it’s right to help them return to their homeland”. Assimilation, to him, is a taxonomy indicator of worthiness: His use of language equates it to the capacity of Syrians to join the labour force. The piece further reads:
“superbly integrated in our country, have a job and are urgently needed here” and no one is thinking of getting such people to leave Germany.
The construction of social hierarchies for migrants enables a discursive construction of “otherness.” Who are “such people” relatively valorised against other Syrian migrants? What makes them deserving of refuge and others not? The piece draws from an “ideal” migrant. Recursive language used by language politicians creates a mediatic depiction of Syrians as docile, hardworking and grateful, juxtaposing them with the dependent, aid-demanding and unassimilated. This comparison produces “relative valorisation” and “civic ostracism”, where an ideal citizen-in-the-making is pushed against an unwanted removable immigrant. Thus, reinforcing a perception of migrants as “passive market and state subjects” (Valles, p. 290). [1]
A social construct that characterises migrants as a threat to order justifies punitive legal and security measures in immigration policy. Because it is clear that some have not been well-assimilated into the labour market, then it is “right” to “help” them return to their homeland. But is that truly what they want? Yamn Molhem, a Syrian emigré who has lived in Germany for ten years, is ready to stay: “They can’t deport our family,” he said, “My son is German.”
Molhem believes “Germans should think twice before they even consider sending back Syrians who work, pay taxes and help keep the economy running.” As an immigrant himself, he places value on their stay: we deserve to be here because we produce for the economy.
Read against The Washington Post’s “6,000 Syrians work as doctors in Germany. Some weigh whether to stay or go.” This valorisation and uprooting becomes more evident. The piece sets the theme in its opening phrase:
Amid rising calls in Germany for Syrians to return home after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, one group of professionals is being encouraged to stay: doctors.
Indeed, politicians view this population sector in high regard; for Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, Syrian doctors are actively sustaining the health sector. Rania Kadib Alban, a Syrian ear, nose and throat specialist, notes this distinction: “As doctors we’re a little safer, because the German health-care system needs us,” but she says, “If my family and friends aren’t allowed to stay, then I don’t want to either.”
For doctors, like for Hashem, their decision to build a home away from home is underlined by guilt. Mohamad Ghazal remarks that even if he feels “obliged” to help Syria rebuild, he sees himself in Germany long-term.
In her memoir, Loubna Mrie makes a similar appeal to finding identity as she carries the ‘guilt’ of leaving. Like Hashem and the doctors, Loubna deals with the guilt of what is left behind: her mother has been abducted and murdered by her father in retaliation for her defiance against Assad’s regime.
Received in Istanbul as an activist, though, Loubna experiences a different categorisation of “otherness,” one that exploits her identity for meaning-making and political discourse. Loubna retells her experience attending Civil society workshops sponsored by the US and the EU. Her initial perception is that they have been made to appear diverse:
The participants, who come from different parts of Syria, seem to check all democratic boxes: The woman wearing a headscarf, the man with a beard, the Christian, the Isma’ili, the Kurd.
They are curated in appearance. Loubna jokingly adds, academics are there to “explain the concept of civil disobedience to [them] in broken Arabic.” And the pointless metaphoric exercises, like the partition of an orange, are only “intended to reassure donors that their quest to save Syria is going well”.
“It all feels so performative.”, she says, and it is.
To me, this performance of media evokes a greater tension in journalistic work: how to humanly portray experiences of those affected by violence? And most importantly, how do we remain true to their experience when there exists a narrative pressure to weaponise their suffering? How we use language actively shapes, redresses and strips identity. Discursive resources can attribute value to the experience of immigration, justify violence, and reinforce stereotypes. No matter who the source is, a far-right politician or a seemingly well-intentioned multinational organisation, how we choose to tell stories of migration can actively diminish the lived experience of those who’ve made the journey.
Notes:
[1] The text by Valles examines the case of ‘Haitianos’ in Tijuana. His theory of valorisation, though, is applicable in a similar scenario: “what grants someone deservingness of legal status?” Read more in: Cuando llegaron los Haitianos”: Black and Central American Migration, Respectability, and the Asylum Crisis in Tijuana, México
