Concept: Refugee

Definition: (noun) a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.

Related Terms: exile, alien, migrant

Description: Two starkly opposing representations of refugees exist in the popular realm. There is the refugee who is forced to flee his or her homeland but brings great distinction and talent to the country that gives them shelter. They are often artists or scientists, philosophers or entrepreneurs. In the early twentieth century, European Jews forced to flee Hitler and the Nazis were the prototype of this kind of refugee. Others moved from war-torn areas to practice their art. They came to New York, London, or Paris and enjoyed successful careers there. “We refugees must become absorbed in this atmosphere,” wrote the modernist painter Fernand Léger (1881-1955) of the American milieu where he had relocated, “[We] must hold fast in this luminous, electric intensity; [in America] life is burned up.” Through their paintings, sculpture, films and radio programs, these refugees found new ways to make sense of their experiences as well as to contribute and critique the culture of the host societies.

The more familiar image of the refugee, however, frequently flashed on television screens across the world is one of anonymity and abjection. The refugee as stateless and homeless, trekking long distances to escape war, famine, or natural disasters has become the paradigm of the young 21st century. In 2007, a fifteen-year old Sudanese boy from the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya produced a drawing showing a long line of people walking barefoot and carrying their belongings on their heads, with some skeletal figures in the foreground. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees had sponsored art produced by refugees on the experience of being a refugee. Another quintessential image is of a tiny boat or raft crowded with people and surrounded by water. In 2015-16, many photographers have been documenting such journeys. A third kind of refugeeism is, according to the Palestinian-American writer and scholar Edward Said, less visible. This pertains to those who are internally displaced, having become refugees in their own homeland. Media makers have sought to give voice to these groups through song, performance, and film. The core question in all of the above is the degree to which images create enough of a knowledge base for conditions to change.

S.C. 2016

“We wanted to run, but we had to walk because we were tired and so hot and hungry. In my picture the people are wearing clothes, but of course we didn’t have any clothes. We saw people dying, it was always the young ones, the hungry ones and the old ones.”

— David Kumcieng, Kakuma Refugee Camp, 2007

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