One World: Public narratives on human mobility

Dr. Kesi Mahendran

Countering technocratic and humanitarian refugee narratives with a “one‐world” solidarity narrative

Abstract

This article articulates a one‐world narrative, which reconfigures human mobility in dialogical response to the ideational borders of the European Union. Fifty‐two semi‐structured interviews, in Scotland and Sweden, bring participants, ranging from people with refugee status to the generationally nonmobile, into dialogue with the integration ideals of the European Union. Within this ideational space, participants employ I‐positional dialogical capacities such as “outsideness” and “multivoicedness” to articulate a postnational “one‐world” solidarity narrative (OWN). OWN is revealed as distinct from a posthuman “one‐earth” sustainability narrative, which was found to “border” and delimit mobility. Three dimensions of OWN, (a) borders as constructed; (b) citizen of the world; and (c) accidental nature of existence, together repoliticise depoliticised technocratic reasoning, culturalism, and the asymmetries of humanitarian narratives on refugees. In conclusion, articulating the public’s dialogical capacities is key to moving beyond public opinion towards public dialogue on vexed political questions such as immigration.

Introduction

The overarching aim of this article is to contribute to a fuller understanding of the public’s dialogical capacity to respond to vexed political questions. The question under scrutiny is the parameters of human migration into and across the European Union (EU) in the context of unprecedented levels of forced human displacement of which 54% in 2015 were from Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Despite media attention on “Europe’s refugee crisis,” the majority (86%) of people seeking refuge do so in neighbouring countries (Grandi, 2016; UNHCR, 2016).

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