Human rights violations as humanist performance: Dehumanizing criminalized refugee youth in Canada

Abstract

This paper explores the dehumanization of criminalized refugee youth. The concept of “institutional humanism” is used to explicate how the ideology of humanism is deployed through the denial of rights to dehumanize, objectify, and animalize racialized and criminalized refugee youth in Canada, setting them in opposition to mainstream whites who are deemed normal, rational, and autonomous—in essence, human. Drawing on qualitative interviews with criminalized refugee youth and professional adults who work with them, the paper shows how institutional policy regulates inclusion in the human community by specifying who may be denied human rights. The interview data are set within the web of theoretical relationships among humanism, posthumanism, animalization, institutional policy, and categorizations based on race, gender, class, ability, age, and immigration status. The paper demonstrates how these theoretical nodes attain bolder relief when operationalized using a theory of performativity. In contrast to conventional analyses of dehumanization, rather than arguing for an extension of liberal humanism, the paper seeks a transformation away from humanism.

Migratory birds: Dehumanization of migrant workers in West Hungary

“…We aim to extend these studies by focusing on migrant worker experiences with dehumanization (Santa Ana, 1999;Vezovnik, 2012). We argue that the depiction of migrant labourers as nonhuman in our West Hungarian context sheds light on social relations of dehumanization beyond more oppressive geographical and historical contexts, often in the focus of previous geographical work (Clark, 2017;Francis, 2019;Harrison & Lloyd, 2011;Morin, 2016;Strauss, 2012). These earlier insights lead to our first research question examining how various actors portray migrant labour as nonhuman in different socio-spatial contexts in the labour process.…”

“…As a working definition for our case study, we understand dehumanization as the act of denying humanness to other human beings or social groups (Francis, 2019; Volpato & Andrighetto, 2015), leading to exclusion, exploitation, harm, or decreased willingness to help people stigmatized by discursive practices (Haslam & Stratemeyer, 2016). Hence, we focus on cases where humanity is stripped from people's livelihoods.…”

“…Dehumanization became an immanent feature of modern capitalist labour through worker exploitation. Though it appears individual in source and nature, the systemic, institutionalized, socio‐spatial nature of dehumanization demands emphasis, particularly concerning the exclusion and oppression of certain groups (Anderson, 2001; Büscher, 2022; Francis, 2019). To understand the processes, most geographical accounts considered the role of race, ethnicity, (im)migrant/asylum‐seeker status, physical/mental illness, disability, gender/sexual orientation, language, class position, age, and political preference in constructing differences between the human and nonhuman (Francis, 2019; Haslam et al, 2016; Merrill, 2011).…”

‘Criminal Beasts’: Metaphors that Reveal Common Oppression to Humans and Animals

“…However, examples found in Canadian immigrant policies exclude refugees by specifying who should be denied human rights, working hand in hand with ideologies that objectify, criminalize, and animalize refugees in Canada (Francis 2019). Scientific classifications, legal contexts, and language uses have institutionalized discriminations to NHAs function in identical ways as the direct oppression against non-westerners and animals underlies the problematic "racially loaded" humanization (Ko 2017, 21).…”

“…In addition to the above examples, homosexuals are marked as outlaws since they commit "crimes against nature," "the crime of bestiality," or "sub-animal behavior" through the establishment of sodomy law (Rydstrom et al 2000, 240). The others, as considered by the humane humans, are so broad, and they can be interrelated through language and legislations as "institutional humanism" (Francis 2019).…”