{"id":180,"date":"2017-04-18T11:10:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T10:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.projects.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/?p=180"},"modified":"2018-10-04T15:53:29","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T14:53:29","slug":"the-gratitude-politics-around-refugees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/2017\/04\/18\/the-gratitude-politics-around-refugees\/","title":{"rendered":"The gratitude politics around refugees"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One of the students, Iona Walker, sent this article, ‘The ungrateful refugee’ <\/a>by Dina Nayeri, as food for thought.\u00a0Thinking about gratitude (and related issues like gifts and reciprocity, indebtedness)–or more precisely, how we might inadvertently demand\u00a0certain groups of people to be grateful–is an interesting and important dynamic to consider. Do all acts of ‘doing good’ demand a grateful response in one way or another? Could a humanitarian act be sustained without a grateful recipient? In what other ways do humanitarian acts discipline recipients?<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt from the article:<\/p>\n

********<\/p>\n

‘With the rise of nativist sentiment<\/strong> in Europe and America, I\u2019ve seen a troubling change in the way people make the case for refugees. Even those on the left talk about how immigrants make America great. They point to photographs of happy refugees turned good citizens, listing their contributions, as if that is the price of existing in the same country, on the same earth. Friends often use me as an example. They say in posts or conversations: \u201cLook at Dina. She lived as a refugee and look how much stuff she\u2019s done.\u201d As if that\u2019s proof that letting in refugees has a good, healthy return on investment.<\/p>\n

But isn\u2019t glorifying the refugees who thrive according to western standards just another way to endorse this same gratitude politics? Isn\u2019t it akin to holding up the most acquiescent as examples of what a refugee should be, instead of offering each person the same options that are granted to the native-born citizen? Is the life of the happy mediocrity a privilege reserved for those who never stray from home?<\/p>\n

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One of the students, Iona Walker, sent this article, ‘The ungrateful refugee’ by Dina Nayeri, as food for thought.\u00a0Thinking about gratitude (and related issues like gifts and reciprocity, indebtedness)–or more precisely, how we might inadvertently demand\u00a0certain groups of people to be grateful–is an interesting and important dynamic to consider. Do all acts of ‘doing good’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"

One of the students, Iona Walker, sent this article, 'The ungrateful refugee' <\/a>by Dina Nayeri, as food for thought.\u00a0Thinking about gratitude (and related issues like gifts and reciprocity, indebtedness)--or more precisely, how we might inadvertently demand\u00a0certain groups of people to be grateful--is an interesting and important dynamic to consider. Do all acts of 'doing good' demand a grateful response in one way or another? Could a humanitarian act be sustained without a grateful recipient? In what other ways do humanitarian acts discipline recipients?<\/p>

Here's an excerpt from the article:<\/p>

********<\/p>

'With the rise of nativist sentiment<\/strong> in Europe and America, I\u2019ve seen a troubling change in the way people make the case for refugees. Even those on the left talk about how immigrants make America great. They point to photographs of happy refugees turned good citizens, listing their contributions, as if that is the price of existing in the same country, on the same earth. Friends often use me as an example. They say in posts or conversations: \u201cLook at Dina. She lived as a refugee and look how much stuff she\u2019s done.\u201d As if that\u2019s proof that letting in refugees has a good, healthy return on investment.<\/p>

But isn\u2019t glorifying the refugees who thrive according to western standards just another way to endorse this same gratitude politics? Isn\u2019t it akin to holding up the most acquiescent as examples of what a refugee should be, instead of offering each person the same options that are granted to the native-born citizen? Is the life of the happy mediocrity a privilege reserved for those who never stray from home?<\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/anthropology-of-aid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}